Laserburn.

I said I was happy to have spoken to  Bryan Ansell at my first Wargames show, but that wasn't the first time I'd seen the him, oh, no, he'd been into TTG in the summer...

Tony Yates illo

So I suppose I need to write about why Bryan and TTG were linked in those days, and what happened to end this relationship.

TTG and Bryan had history going way back into the 70's, Kate had said the Bryan had first started casting miniatures in her kitchen on Acton Road in Arnold, but I am unsure whether she meant casting for Asgard, or Citadel, or why even he wasn't using his own kitchen (?!?), but hey that was the story...

Bryan had been instrumental is starting Asgard in the mid-70's, with I think at least two other people, Paul Sulley being one, and had sculpted quite a number of their early miniatures, but as always, with his eye on the main chance, he'd jumped ship in in the late 70's (78?) and started to work with Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone at Games Workshop to start Citadel miniatures.

Bryan's Robin Hood sample piece for GW

GW had a license to to produce Ral Partha in the UK, and had been importing for the past few years. Bryan, I was told by Richard, had submitted 5 self-sculpted minis to Steve and Ian and they were keen to become involved, so Citadel was founded, and started to produce minis from a lock-up garage off High Street in Arnold.

And it was a success.
By the early 80's Citadel were operating out of Newark, Notts, and making a large range of fantasy, sci-fi and historical miniatures and growing rapidly alongside Games Workshop.

In 1980 Bryan had tried to get a sci-fi game/rule-set printed through Games Workshop, and although GW (Steve and Ian) were sold on the idea, and went on to commission Sparefarers, a rule-set based around Citadel sci-fi range, they didn't use Bryan's rules. (details here on BoardGameGeek)

Spacefarers rule book cover by Tony Ackland

Quite how put-out by this Bryan was I don't really know, but regardless, within months Bryan was back with Bob, to set up Tabletop Miniatures to print Laserburn and produce a range of  miniatures to support it...

Laserburn was 15mm based, which I think was a bit of a revolutionary step back then... All GW/Citadels miniatures were in 25mm (inc Sparefarers), and maybe Bryan switched scales as a way of mollifying his partners at GW that he wasn't competing with them... or maybe he and Bob thought 15mm was a better scale for larger sci-fi battles, or possibly the move to 15mm was a trend, economic conditions generally weren't good in the early 80's, so maybe they figured a change to a smaller scale would get people buying, and 15mms were a growing part of the fantasy/sci-fi market, Asgard also produced their own 15mm ranges.

Laserburn was published in late 1980, and was quickly followed by a large miniatures range, covering all the types of troops necessary for the game. Looking back it was quite derivative, the basic game, as Bryan says on the BGG page given above, owed a lot to Western Gunfight games and the background given, to many other current 70's sci-fi staples, the Law Offices were borrowed from 2000AD's Judge Dredd, the Imperialist were classic Heinlein Starship Troopers, and the Red Redemptionists owed more that a little to the Fremen in Dune.

Law Officer (not Judge Dredd)

Tabletop Miniatures started casting this range out of the Daybrook shop, with a machine bought from Citadel, although I think the early miniatures were both moulded and cast in Newark, with Bryan doing the sculpting duties on all the minis, including TTM's range of historical as well...

By '83 when I got to TTG, the range was going cold, Bryan had stopped sculpting and writing for Laserburn, and although he did bring 5 new miniatures when he came to the shop in July or August, these were there first to have seen the light of day for a year or so, and would be the last he did with Bob. I was told after the event that Bryan had come to sign-off with TTM, handing ownership fully to Bob (& Kate) in exchange for a royalty on all his work.

At this point, from my view of it in the back kitchen, it looked like an amicable split, TTM had served its purpose, Bryan was moving on to bigger things and TTM had inherited a lots of Citadel 'staff' to work on side projects, including Rick Priestly, Tony Yates and Tony Ackland on sculpting duties...

But this wasn't really the end of Bob and Bryan's relationship, that comes tomorrow, 30 years ago...

(Interested in reading my copy of Spacefarers, check it out here, on my Scribd page)

First Show.

Wargames Conventions are, I assume, as old as Wargaming as a hobby...
Wargaming by it's nature, and unlike say, model railways or model flight, needs groups of people to make it worthwhile, so where two or three are gathered together, then a 'Show' and the accompanying Trade are bound to follow.

TTG used to have  big calendar in the back room on which were displayed all the events that Bob would be attending in the year. The Season, started in late January or early February and ran through the whole year with a few weeks off in the summer, until the last week in November or first in December... There would be a show almost every weekend, and Bob would attend most of them.
At the time names like, Triples and Midland Militare were all new to me, I didn't really know what went off at these events, all I really knew was that on these Saturdays, Bob would be out of the shop on the weekend, taking half of the shop with him, and Kate and the other Robert would be left alone to hold the fort.

Once Mark and I had started work it became obvious what a large part of TTG's business Conventions were. We would spend the later part of most Show-weeks, getting the stock ready, rules and games all counted and boxed, miniature stock filled to the brim and display cabinets repaired and updated with new items... and by Friday afternoon, there would be a large pile of heavily taped brown card-board boxes stacked by the door waiting for the command from His Lordship to load-up so that he could be away that evening, or early next morning.

Balrog in constant need of fixing...

Tuesdays the reverse would happen, all the stock piled near the door would have to be counted, filled or repaired again and stacked away waiting for the same to happen over and over again... Mark whose job it had become to repair the mini display cases, would become thoroughly sick of constantly having to re-stick dragon wings, or hydra heads to the fantasy range display or tank turrets that had 'taken a knock' in transit... 

Kate had promised Mark and I that when it can to the bigger two day shows later in the year, that Bob would take us one of us with him to help, which would mean a weekend away from home.

But...
The first major show, after the small summer pause, would not require us to go very far, as the British Nationals Championship would be held on our doorstep in Nottingham.

Arena, as I'm sure the event was called, was a result of  the Sherwood Foresters (off whom more later) winning the team prize at the previous years event, and opting to host the event themselves as was the tradition at that stage...

Victoria Leisure Centre

The event itself was held at Victoria Leisure Centre on the outskirts of central Nottingham, less than a mile from the city centre, over two days on I think the 17th and 18th of September 1983. The venue was split into two main halls, with games and Trade in the sports hall and more games and the Bring & Buy in the (covered) swimming pool hall...

From what I recall, Bob had set the trade stand up on the Friday evening so that when I got there on the Saturday morning there was very little in the way of work required of me for the first hour or so until the event opened, and I had chance to wander around... 

The centre of the hall was given over to the games championship, with those grass-green 6x4's borrowed from Notts Wargames Club featuring... but around the outside were other traders like TTG. Bob introduced me to Paul and Teresa Bailey, who had the Minifigs stand, next to them were Jacobite miniatures, who had travelled from Scotland for the weekend and also in the Hall were Dixon miniatures, whose adverts I had seen in White Dwarf magazine and many others.

Also there, taking up one side of the hall were Citadel miniatures. I was very pleased to speak to Bryan Ansell for the first time, He said hello and was I Bob's 'new boy', I was wearing a hand knitted jumper with the logo on, so I guess it wasn't too big a leap for him to make,  I asked about what new minis they had along that day... and in front of the Citadel stand was a huge siege game run by The Players Guild using the new Warhammer Fantasy rules.

And outside, were the Treasure Trap, Live Role Play people, who were offering a free weekend to anyone who could defeat their Champion in hand to hand combat. Mark had about 10 goes at doing this and I think eventually they just gave him the prize for persistence...

I don't really remember much about the weekend other than I spent a long time on my feet, serving customers with minis and rules, I left Bob to serve the people wanting the tanks, planes and ships, as these were well beyond my knowledge... and I came away on the Sunday afternoon with a Jacobite 15mm English Civil War royalist army (with which I hoped to start playing Tercio when I had some painted) 

I think John Blanche won the painting competition, with an Asgard half-troll stood on the most elaborate base I'd ever seen, it had resin as a water effect at the lower levels of it and I just had to (just HAD to) touch it to prove to myself that it wasn't real water... 

I can't really remember much about the games, Ancient and Medieval using WRG 6th, Renaissance using the new edition of Tercio, Napoleonic with To The Sound of the Guns, ACW using the Newbury rules and Modern and WW2 using WRG or maybe Challenger... Who won? can't remember... Not the Foresters, or Nottingham club, I think the over all Champions were The Bun Shop a London club, so the next years event would be theirs to organize.

Casting

Tabletop's casting operation was tiny...

The whole place, shop, warehouse, casting room and Bob and Kate's living space was situated in two three story Edwardian terrace houses with shop fronts... When I started they didn't need all the space they had so the 'house' above the second shop (55 Mansfield Rd Daybrook) was rented out to a couple of Police officers, who would come and go though the shop or back rooms at will.

The shop fronts were backed by a small room with a fireplace which I assume would have been the main living room in days gone by, but either Bob or the previous occupants had had the living space moved up-stairs and added a kitchen and Bathroom on the first floor... But at the back of the old main room was what might have been the old kitchen, or scullery, a room 4 yards square that opened on to the 'back-yard'... this was where all the casting was done.

When I started they had one casting machine, an ex-Citadel, swinging weight thing powered by a belt driven motor. White metal casting works by spinning a circular mould at a few 100 RPM and then dropping the hot metal into the central feed-hole and letting gravity, centrifugal and centripetal forces do their work...

Saunders Spinning weight machine similar to the TTG one

The only real issue with this is that it works too well, and pressure is needed to stop the still hot metal from shooting out the sides of the mould. Early machines, like TTG's, had three 'towers' place evenly on the spinning plate from which swung levers with weights attached which when spinning, swung outward and levered the top plate shut.
Cleaver huh?

Well to a certain extent it was an ideal way to work, but unfortunately it had one big draw back... The areas in-between the swinging weight would receive less pressure that the rest of the mould, and as a result these areas would flash (excessively fill) the cavities and if these cavities were large or particularly close to the edge of the mould, the still molten metal would shoot out of the mould and spray the inside of the machine... and as the lids on these machine were quite low to the spinning plate, and never shut satisfactorily, the metal would spray from the machine and blast a line of cooling lead alloy across the crotch of the operative... It didn't hurt, fortunately, but it would leave a line of metal embedded in the trousers of every caster in town... For years after it was possible to tell people who were working in the same job as me for other companies, by the 'Caster's Crotch' they all had...

In the middle of the summer of '83 TTG took delivery of another new casting machine, and this one was a bit different. The new machine, with an electric motor driving it's spinning plate directly, and its pressure controlled by a pneumatic ram was a huge step forward. Speed and pressure were now controlled by the caster, allowing for minor adjustments to keep a warming mould spinning for longer in a day. Previously a mould would have to be rested to cool once the swing weights could no long apply enough pressure to keep it running without the flash becoming too bad...

The new machine was delivered by MCP (Multi-Coupling Pneumatic), with a gentleman called Ray Tutt doing the fitting, whist his boss Mike chatted with Bob and Richard. Ray said that the machine that was being delivered was the first in a run of new machines which Citadel had ordered to replace their old spinning weight machines, and we were getting the prototype model ahead of them.

The new machine was fabbo, the pressure controller cured the flash and spitting issued almost instantly, and the dropping of the plates well below the the lid height meant that if you did get a mould that spat, the metal no-longer splashed into your groin...

BYC7 sculpted by Ali Morrison

TTG kept the old machine, so across that summer there were pretty much always two of us working in the tiny room... As I mentioned in the last post, Rees Taylor was one of the other casters, who I was told was just making up a little pin-money whilst being a full-time Father, but my main work mate was Richard Evans, a 27 year old local man, who I don't think actually spoke to me for over a week or so once I'd started...
He and  I would become firm-friends over the next four years while I worked at TTG.
(more on Richard later, a very interesting character, who I was to discover had his own history in the Wargames-world)

Casting isn't a bad job, its not difficult to master, but it is hot and heavy work, and requires long spells at the machine if the job is to be done efficiently... and although I'd jump at a chance to do anything else at TTG if the chance arose, I didn't mind if I had to stand casting all day... it gave the two of us in the tiny room time to chat, and listen to music...

Oh, and the first mini I ever cast... Well it was one of these... BYC7 Asisiactic light-horsemen with bow and javs.

Nottingham Wargames Club

They'll be there tonight you know...

And not just tonight, as if I'd chosen to write this on the one night a month or for the first time in ages, when they would be there....

They are always there... well maybe not always... Christmases, and Bank Holiday Mondays,  there wouldn't be a club, but every other week, like clock-work at 6.30pm the place is open for walk in gamers and regulars alike.

Nottingham Wargame club dates back to the late 1960's, but I first started to go when I started work at TTG in the summer of '83. Bob would offer to take me and Mark, as he was virtually driving passed where we lived, to collect Richard from his mom's, to take him to the club... so keen as mustard types that we were we hitched along to see what the crack was...

The club it's self was at that time on the top floor of this building, Queens Walk Community Centre, in Nottingham's less than salubrious Meadows area... up three or four flights of stairs, which didn't help those members who were carting 25mm cavalry armies in large tool boxes, to the large room at the rear of the building, where there were plenty of trestle tables on which grass-green 6' x 4' chip-board tops were placed for the games to take place... 

Queen's Walk view of the Community centre

...and to tell you the truth, this place was probably the first place I'd seen grown men playing wargames... I think I'd seen the Callan movie at this point and was I was kind of expecting retired Brigadiers types with tweedy jackets and pip-pip attitudes, but this was all a bit different... Blokes, normal blokes, some of whom I'd seen from the shop, sitting behind units of tiny troops, measuring with expandable tape measures and either cursing their luck or looking smugly at their dice... 

I think that Mark and I just watched the first week, I don't remember playing, but in the following weeks he and I would bring Bob's old Airfix Napoleonic (of which more later) and we'd have a game or two with those...

In those days their could 20 to 30 people gaming on any one week, and of course this meant that there was a large variety of games to get involved in, there was of course WW2 with more Airfix plastics, and other periods that were new, Ancients, Medieval and Renaissance games, as well as others with metal Napoleonic and micro tank games of 'Ultra-Modern' and more WW2... Loads of stuff, and to add to the verity each of the major periods also had a choice of rule-sets to use, Wargames Research Group (WRG) and TTG had rules for all, and others would surface form Newbury or Skytrex or other independent Wargames groups... 

Players tended to like one rule-set for one period, which could reduce your choice of opponent, but usually if you fancied a game against a particular player you could find something compatible to play, or if you want to play a particular type of game there were plenty of players willing to play along...

Callan and Lonely

Now I suppose that every largeish town in the UK and every city, has its equivalent Club to NWG, London has at least 2, Birmingham and Manchester a couple, Liverpool, Leeds, Glasgow and many more, and by the very fact that they are open to new members, they act as a starting point for very many gamers, young and old, who might otherwise struggle to get into the hobby, but it is this very openness which is the downside of them. For every cool Callan or retired Brigadier, there has to be a Lonely, and this bottom end can be a bit off putting... 

But...

If you could stand the smell of 'ripe' wargamer on a hot summer evening then NWC was a great place to be, and I'd meet loads of folks to game with, many of whom like Steve Bruce, Keith Tate, Karl Tebbe (who was running a role-play group downstairs) and Steve Clark, will crop-up again in connection with my future working life, and others; Andy Revel, Andy 'Nick' Nicholson, Gary, Chris Thorn, who I still say hello to as I pass them at shows...

And after the club... off to the pub... the Queen's Hotel near the station, which is now a carpet warehouse, for a Britvic55 (well I was only 16) and a debrief of the evenings games... before Bob ran us home in the van... perfect... 

Ok, so then, for the next four years of this blog, you can take it that on any given Monday evening, I'll be there... a tool box full of soldiers, expandable tape-measure in hand, either cursing or hooting with joy, at the dice rolls in front of me... I am a Wargamer.

Strange coincidence time... Whist looking on t'web for details of Nott's Club I noticed that the name given for contact is Rees Taylor, who I think is now Chair of the club, but in '83 he was one of the two people I worked alongside in my first few days as a Caster at TTG... Its not a small world, its a Miniature world...

Next time... Casting...

Nottingham, and the Run.

As I implied in the last post, TTG was shut on Mondays, Bob would often not arrive back from Wargame Shows until Sunday afternoon, and I suppose that it was time-off to do banking and paperwork, without the shop bell ringing, or interruptions on the telephone...

Also on a Monday, Bob would get back in the van and take advantage of Nottingham's place in the Wargames world to get out to see other companies in our area.

Nottingham was not, as yet, known as the British Lead-Belt, a term which I don't think I heard first until the advent of the internet in the late '90's, but is was ideally placed, in the middle of three or four other little centres of miniature production.
Asgard, as I mentioned were in the City, not quite the center but in the city never the less, as were TTG's printer, Trent Printers in the Meadows area. To the south was Loughborough, home to Skytex, manufacturer of small scale tanks, boats and planes for the wargames trade, as well as the agents for Heritage minis in this country, and of course to the north-west in Newark were Citadel miniatures the big-boys of the hobby even then...

VW T2 Transporter

So Bob would jump in the van, and trundle off to see these other companies on a Monday afternoon, bringing back rumours and news from them, as well as picking up new stuff and out-of-stock items to for-fill mail-orders back at HQ.

It strikes me now just how much Bob devoted his life to the wargames industry, working all week at mail-order, spending his evenings typing  rules in preparation for them being printed, driving on Friday or Saturday to a show, standing all day (sometimes two days), and then driving home, only to jump into the van again on Monday to head-out on to The Run, to see all these other people.

Amazing...

But there was one more thing to fit into Bob's day-off  (?!?), and that was Nottingham Wargame Club... and that dear reader is where our travels will lead us, next time...

Full time.

So after two or three weeks of working on Saturdays, I knew I wanted a job at TTG.

I wrote a letter, asking if they had any vacancies, despite the fact that it would have been easier just to ask face-to-face, but that was what I'd been told in school, so that what I did, best hand-writing and everything...

Thulg, illo by Tony Ackland.

The next time I was in the shop after school, Kate said...
"I got your letter... its left me in a bit of a dilemer..."

"Why?" I wimpered, preparing myself for a big dose of rejection...

"Well" she continued, "your mate Mark asked me for the same thing yesterday as well..."

My life hung on one sentence...

"...but, I think there is something we can do..."

TTG were planning on going though a bit of an expansion, they had started a miniatures range, which was making the 15mm Laserburn minis, a few 25mm sci-fi and a small range of Dark Age 15mm's,
which they had been licensing in the USA to a company called Alliance Miniatures.

Now, it had come down the grape-vine that another US company, Heritage Miniatures, were going bust, and that Alliance in the States wanted to buy up the failed company and license them back to Tabletop for production here in the UK. Bob was already selling quite large numbers of the Heritage Napoleonics through the shop and though mail-order, so picking up on an existing range would have doubled their miniature out-put in one swoop.
So if the deal went through, Kate was sure that there would be work for both Mark and Myself, in the newly expanded Tabletop Miniatures.

As far as I remember, the deal was still to be finalized in the US, but Kate said if I could do a few days casual work, in the casting room, to see if I was up to the task, then the job would be mine when I finished school...
Casting???
Well I'd seen the machine and moulds in the back-room but I'd never done it at that time, but yes, " I can do that" as Yosser Hughes would have said, "Gizza job."

As it turned out, the deal with Heritage fell though, someone else bought the failing/failed company and their big selling Napoleonic range would remain with Skytex (the UK agent) for a while yet, but Bob, indomitable as he was, made his mind up overnight, with the aid of Alliance in the US, that TTG would start their own range of 15mm Napoleonics, using their great young sculptor Aly Morrison who was already working on a Medieval range of 15mms.

If anyone reading this has any more details about Alliance or Heritage in the early 80's I would be delighted to hear from you... I owe my Life in Miniatures almost directly to these two American companies, and I'd love to find out just exactly what went off in June or July of '83, I heard that Alliance were out bid, is this the truth? Who did pick up Heritage? What happened to them? I don't think that they are still out there... all information gratefully received...

So, short of doing a few trail days in the casting room I had a job... £35 a week for 5 days, 40 hours Tuesday to Saturday.

Saturday, Saturday, Saturday...

I did already have a Saturday job, in late February of '83, Mark had got me a job on Arnold Market, working for a flower seller, but in truth I hated it... fetching and carrying for a couple of '80's barrow boys, in all weathers was no fun at all, so after working on the stock take, I asked Kate if they needed a new Saturday-boy to fill in for Robert (who's second name I can remember), the lad who had done the job for the last couple of years and who was finishing his A levels and heading of to Bristol for Uni...

 

an afternoon tipple

Kate gave it a thought, I assume asked Bob, and said yes. The Saturday post was all about watching the shop whilst Kate got on with a day-to-day life, which from what I remember was sitting with her feet-up, drinking coffee, or after 2pm a barley-wine, and reading the paper... Bob, most weekends would be away at a Wargame Show (a what?), so Kate liked the idea of not sitting in the shop all day whilst he was gone.

'Watching the shop' suited me down to the ground...
Plonked on a tall stool behind the counter, I would sit and read game books, or White Dwarf, or whatever came to hand, and wait for the bell to ring to announce the entrance of a customer...
Saturday Mornings wouldn't be too busy, opening at 9, Kate would fulfill whatever mail-order she could that had arrived that morning, but mostly it was only a light trip to the post office before the last collection at 11.00am, and then a day of waiting for customers...

Trying to remember back to those early weekends, I don't think we ever took over £150, some weeks much less, which doesn't sound like a lot of money these days, but it could be quite hard work when we were selling 15mm minis for 7p (25's for 30p)... and even a big sale, a boxed game or D&D book, might only be £8 - £10, getting to £150 wasn't easy...

The thing that made it for me was the customers, mostly they were fabulous, people wanted to be enjoying themselves when they arrived at the shop, so every-time the bell went, there would be another happy Wargamer delighted to have found a little Aladdins cave of stuff...
 And OK, we did have our share of 'characters' though the place, (more of whom later), but mostly customers were bright, knowledgeable and funny, and I couldn't think of a better way to spend my time on Saturdays than fishing around in the figure cabinets for missing T72 turrets, or dusting down copies of Starship Troopers, or whatever else the customers wanted...

Not only was I doing something well with-in my skill range, I had started to enjoy it too.

The first days work

Pathetic Stock-taker!

Right-o then, fast forward a couple of years, '81 to 83, me and my best mate Mark Weston were in and out of TTG two or three times a week, several things happened in this two year period, expansion, Laserburn, to mention two, but I'll get to these later...

In March of '83 Kate Connor asked me and Mark, if we'd like to help with the stock taking in the shop. He and I lept at the chance. I think that we did two days, Tuesday the 29th and Thursday the 31st, just before the UK Tax year-end in April..

We arrived at 9.00 and after coffee and a chat about why we were doing the count, we set to totaling up box games, and tiny tanks, Citadel minis and Davco ships, and everything else they had in what amounted to the warehouse space in the back of the place. TTG did quiet a number of rule sets and micro-games and all these had to have their components counted, books, QR, record and counter sheets...

At lunch time Kate fed us all, Mark and I, and the other chap who was working full-time in the casting room, Richard Evans, something she would continue to do whilst we worked for Her/Bob.
It didn't really strike me at the time, but it was this kind of small thing that made work feel like home, they didn't have to do it, but they did, and even in later years when we 'workers' stopped using Kate's kitchen and living room as a canteen, they continued to provide cash for us to buy food, to cook in the work's kitchen...

I don't remember what we got paid for the two days, or why we weren't in school for that matter, maybe we were on holiday or maybe school was winding down for 5th year exams, but what I do remember is finishing on the second day and being given a little handful of folding cash.

illo by Tony Yates

 On the way-out that evening, I grabbed a couple of Laserburn scenarios that I wanted, Sewerville shootout and Tarrim Towers heist, and asked Bob
"...how much?"
"Oh you can have those", the great man said...

Money and free games, just for standing around in the shop all day, looking at whatever they had...
I think I'd found something in my skill-range...
Result!

Now the only thing was to turn a couple of days casual work into a Career...

A new shop in town...

I've always been of the opinion that Daybrook Square was the centre of the whole wide world, a fact proved to me in early '81, when a wargames shop open there, right on my doorstep, with-in a 100yrds of where I had first played with Airfix Knights and Astronauts on my Grandma's front room carpet...

Once again I think Andy Black was the bringer of the great news, he must have had to walk past it that morning to get to school and by the time D&D club started at dinner time it was pretty much old news that we had our own shop with-in walking distance...

Images stolen from Richard Scott

My first memory of going though inside was one tea-time after a dentist appointment with my mother...
ding-ding-ding, went the the door dell on entry and we were greeted by a friendly blonde lady, Kate Connor, behind the counter who explained that they had just opened, after working out of their house on Acton Rd, Arnold for years.

My Mum and Kate chatted for awhile whilst I shot to figure racks to see what they had...

And they had loads of stuff, everything Citadel had; Adventures, Monsters, Historicals,  plus loads of Ral Partha and others...

NOT my painting

The shop was also full of other stuff, plastic kits and modelling supplies which Kate later told me had been bought it to fill out the space, and also Dungeons and Dragons books and Modules, rules from other people, and 'Wargames Miniatures', tanks for WW2, soldiers for Napoleonics and ACW, none of which I'd ever seen before... and board games, loads of them...

But, on that first visit I only had eyes for the fantasy figures, Kate lent me a chair to stand on, so i could reach the top of the rack and from there I picked my first ever Citadel miniatures... a slime beast with sword (FF2), and a Fighter in plate-mail (FA1), amongst them...

From then on, for the next couple of years, I'd cycle through Arnold Park and down to TTG after school and spend half and hour or so, going through everything fantasy and sci-fi they had... I knew there stock as well as they did... which was handy...

Next, Stock taker!

Asgard for the first time.

Ok, so my first Visit to Asgard was a bust...

But luckily I was making better friends with the lads at the D&D club and on one Saturday Simon Maze suggested that I go with him into Nottingham to have a look at the place...


Now from what I remember this was probably my first trip into Nottingham on my own, OK I wasn't on my own, I was with Simon, but without a parent, if you see what I mean...

I went to his house in the morning, he lived a mile or so from where I did, and we caught the bus in the City Centre... Simon had said that we should save our bus fare and walk, but Nottingham seemed like a million miles away to a lad of 13 so we spent the 7 or 8p that was the cost of the ride and got into the city as quickly as the bus would carry us...

The Asgard shop I first visited was on Commerce Square, which I was lead to believe was their second shop in roughly the same area of the City, off High Pavement, in what was then, quite a run-down area called The Lace Market.
The Shop, which was really nothing more than a front to a warehouse or old mill, was up a couple of big stone steps, with what I assumed was a little workshop and storage space to the rear...
The walls were lined, as was the fashion in those days, with a large areas of 'peg-board' racks, on which were hung all the miniatures they had in stock... Some Citadel, mostly fantasy adventures, some Ral Partha, and loads of Asgard minis they had made on the premise... and that was about it... No painted minis that I can remember, no gaming tables, no racks of rules and modules, just minis and a few old copies of White Dwarf magazine...
The chap behind the counter, I later learnt was Paul Sulley, who at this time owned Asgard...

I'd seen White Dwarf at the D&D club, someone would always have the latest copy, but a back issue took my fancy, so I came away with one mag and one mini... The front cover of the mag that had taken my interest was issue 20 something, with this excellent Les Edwards Ghoul on the Cover...

And the mini... well it was this this Ogre, FM63, a cracking model with tonnes of character...

 

So, I'd broken my duck with Asgard, it really did seem like a cool place, hidden away as it was, filled with all this stuff, and inhabited with what looked like an 'interesting' crowd of people... but little did I know that at this point, that the next time I was going to set foot in a wargames shop it wouldn't be Asgard but a new shop, almost on my doorstep... TTG was just about to come into my life..

My first metal miniatures

These are they then...

What Andy Black was showing me were these three (and I suspect a fourth, now broken) minis, wrapped in tissue paper...
They blew my mind....
We'd used bits of graph paper and the odd small dice or two for working out tricky D&D stuff like combats and party order and stuff, but the prospect of adding little men to the games was a terrific idea, more like the Miniature Wargaming I'd seen in the Airfix guides.

I wanted these, and I wanted more...

The two (badly) painted chaps on the flanks here, are both from Ral Partha, although a swift search fails to reveal which codes they are, or who designed them (help Dave please), but the chap in the centre, stripped clean of my childish gloss paint, is by Asgard miniatures, DA25 Gnome which is probably still on sale today...

Turned out Andy had bought these from Asgard, a shop, "near the courts", in Nottingham...

From what I remember, this revelatory experience was close to the end of summer term in 1980, and over the summer I promised to my Mum that I'd keep up the writing exercises that I had been given for my Dyslexia, if she would take me to Asgard to get me the D&D books before the new school year started... I did the exercises.

I got the books, not from Asgard, we couldn't find it, turns out I was by the wrong Courts, der... instead we got The Players Hand Book from Nottingham Model Soldier Shop and the DM's Guide and the Monster Manual from Beaties.

I can't say why I was less than excited by these other shops, NMSS had lots of minis, but they were mostly Minifigs historicals, which were of less interest then... Beaties was the biggest toy shop in town, but not cool...

So Asgard would have to wait for another time... I had a few tiny toy chaps, I had all the rules I needed... 3rd year was going to be a good year for D&D.

My writing and spelling improved too if you are interested, now I could write and spell; strength, intelligence, wisdom, constitution, dexterity, charisma, experience, armour class, hit points, equipment and "miscellaneous items", quite fluently...

Arnold Hill D&D club

So my first ever game of D&D was with Andy Chambers, and a lad called Grant Wesselby.
I was given a Half-Orc character by Andy, and unusually we were in a wilderness adventure.
It took me 20mins of so for me to get the jist of the role-play aspect, I just though Andy, the DM was doing a lot of talking about the set-up, but after I got-it, the world(s) just opened up...

TSR's advertising tag-line for this period was D&D; A Gateway to Adventure, which is pretty good, but for me D&D proved to be a gateway to imagination.
The possibilities were endless, just by imagining what we were doing we could be anywhere doing anything... and OK, mostly we'd spend our times in imaginary 10' x 10' dungeon rooms killing Goblins, but in theory we could have been doing anything...

And it wasn't just D&D, there appeared to be loads of these types of games around, Gamma World, Tunnels and Trolls, and more traditional board games with sci-fi and fantasy twists; Rivets, Ogre, Dungeon, loads of them... and we used to make games up... all this stuff  stuck me as a perfect way out of dull Thursdays (any day!), so everyday from then on, it was off to L7 for an hour or so of escapism...

One morning I came into school, and fellow D&D'er Andy Black said, would I like to see these... and in a old bacca-tin  he had three or four tiny model dwarves, he said he'd got them from Asgard...

I can't remember if I gave him my dinner money there and then, but by the end of the day those minis WERE mine...

Next up... My First Minis & Asgard, where was this mythical place...

A chance encounter

I came across the Arnold Hill Dungeons and Dragons Club by accident...

Second year Integrated Studied lessons, a mix of History, Geography and RE, were I discoverer, a bit of skive if you knew what you were doing... If you wanted to wander-off to the library, for research on your project, you could... Same went for 'the labs', large tables outside the general classrooms, which could be used for painting or modeling, drawing-up big graphs and presentation materials, you were allowed to... So, nominally I was painting-up a star map for a project, but in fact I was listening in to a group of lads from the classes next to mine talking about pretending to be dwarves and killing goblins...
Fascinated I poked my head over the intervening bench and said "that sounds fun, can i play?"
They all sort of looked at each other, and at one lad in particular, Andy Chambers turned to me and said "Only if you pass a test... what does XP stand for"... slightly baffled and dyslexic, I stuttered... "Extra Power?"

Chambers stared at me...
He was a big lad then, and always promoted a hard man image, to the extent that he had been banned from the 1st year recreation of the Battle of Hastings, after hardening a tennis ball in plaster and paint, and fixing it to a chain and handle like a flail...

and stared...

"Close enough..." chirped a voice at his side... Simon Maze came to my rescue, "its Experience Points, but it leads to extra powers..." "Andy is starting a new campaign, he needs players..."

and stared...
"12.10, L7" Andy grunted...

I was in.

Bleak times...

It was a rum time for Employment, the 80's...
It would seem, in the two final years of my schooling (82-83), that the jobless rate in the UK was 12 or 13% of the workforce, the highest since the war and with I assume, youth unemployment running at much higher levels, finding any kind of work would be a challenge.
What made it doubly difficult was that I had absolutely no idea what I wanted to do.

Mum worked at a builders, book keeping and office work, so I was offered 'trade' jobs, I turned down an apprenticeship with a Joiner, a job snapped up by my cousin Paul a year or two later, and I had written to a local painter and decorator about a job with them, but to be frank, I was delighted when they turned me down...

They sent me to see a Careers Adviser, outside of school, some chap attached to the local Job Centre I would have though, but the poor man, grey and desperately dead behind the eyes, just sighed when I showed him the part-time course in ceramics I'd picked out at Mansfield school or Art and Design...

So, as 1983 arrives with prospects of finding work tough, with no skills, little chance of  serious qualifications, and no idea what the big wide world had to offer, things were not looking good of our hero...

Luckily there was one more thing that kept me in school, apart from the odd game of Wall-ie or Wembley if someone had a ball, or Badminton on a Monday evening... D&D Club.

Best days of your life?

Ok, post two and I suppose I'd better get personal...

30th June 1983 is remarkable for me in three ways; firstly it was my sixteenth birthday, secondly, and completely co-incidentally, it was the day I left secondary school, Arnold Hill Comprehensive, and thirdly it was the day I started full time employment at Tabletop Games.

Its always make me smile to think of myself as working at 16, Old-fellas that you'd hear would say, "I started down t'pit at 14", or "I've been at the factory, man and boy" and although the work that I was just starting wasn't 't'pit' and the factory was only a cottage industry, not some huge old textile mill, I did rather enjoy being thrown-in at the deep-end, a boy in a mans world.

I left school with virtually no skills and very few qualifications, I'd always struggled to write, I'm dyslexic, so getting loads of O levels was never going to be an option.
I scraped a C at Geography on my Boy Scout map reading skills alone, and stumbled over the line for a C in Maths, simply because there were less numerals for me to muck-up, and numbers worked in a way that words never did...
There were I'm sure, other lessons (English Lit & Lang, Physics, Chemistry and Social Studies) but nothing inspired me enough to be bothered to pass the exam... And in the only subject I did enjoy, Pottery, no writing see, there wasn't an O level graded course...
I could see that me and formal education weren't going to get on...

Getting to 16 had been the easy part, getting out of school, only a matter of time, getting a job, let alone doing something that I enjoyed, might have proved more tricky...

In part 3 dear Reader, "Giz a Job".

Welcome.

Hi Everybody,

Welcome to the Life in Miniature blogspot.

This is going to be a blog about my life in Nottingham's Miniature Gaming hobby/industry.

Its been 30 years now since I started work, Thursday 30th June 1983, and a generation has passed since then, literally in some cases, so seeing how memory fades, I thought I'd better get all this down whist I can.
I'll cover the companies and individuals I've worked for and with, and hopefully give a little insight into what has gone-on in this little city's Miniature Gaming hobby and associated trades over the last 30 years.

I hope to deal with things in a roughly chronological order, but as I've a few weeks of catching up to do and an important event to talk about on the 8th of November, expect a flurry of activity in the next few weeks, and then a steady drip-drip of stuff only when changes happen.

:-)

pete