Before I became the bitter gamer of later years, I did a stint as a child, playing pretty normal childhood games. It has to be noted however, that the games I played were coloured by the TV adventures of Dr Who, and the Tomorrow People. Like many of my generation, I would watch from behind the sofa, clutching my sparking ray gun as the good Doctor battled the assorted alien races intent on the de struction of the universe. It is of course a proven fact - to children at least - that the average sofa provides a barrier impervious to anything short of an all out nuclear assault. No monster can ever hope to penetrate its protective field. My bedroom was filled with the toys that you just don’t get anymore. Stickle Bricks, Action Man - I mean a proper Action Man with guns, grenades and dynamite and not the politically correct, rather effete incarnation of today - Billy Blastoff, and realistic toy guns that would get a child locked away for some serious corrective therapy today.

In a shameless plugfest, I'll just add that the website for my book is; http://sexanddiceandrocknroll.co.uk/

Take a look at http://greblord-littlemen.blogspot.co.uk Pete Armstrong was a great inspiration and irritant to me in my formative years. Modern painters, take note... You didn't write the rule book, it was people like Pete and the amazingly talented Andy Ritson who got there first, using paints and methods that today's generation, frankly would not know what to do with. That said, Pete is still evolving and absorbing the latest mediums into his own style. Originality of this type will always score top marks in my books over slavish following of fashionable 'en vogue' styles...

'I realised this morning that a year has passed since I had a really good rant about the attitude of a particular group of gamers that I and others encountered last year on the convention circuit, with particular disgust at Fiasco and the Derby World Championships. Briefly, there was a group of forty-something gamers doing the rounds who looked like extras for a reality show about bailiffs or survivalists in the deep southern USA, who appeared to think that ladies and children were there to be literally in some cases, brushed aside so that they could indulge their repressed man-child which was straining at the chains, beneath their shaven pates, pilot jackets and fatigue trousers. They were in essence, acting like top class arseholes. Back in the golden days of gaming yore, known to mortal man as the 80s, we had lots of kids in this hobby, less in the way of ladies. Over the intervening years those kids (and I was one) have grown up, married and added to the gamer biomass by

I am a gamer...   We are all gamers... But what I am not is someone who sees a need for self-appointed bodies claiming to be national or world federations, setting themselves up as the spokesmen for our hobby. Almost as bad are the types of groups who then whore themselves out to be no more than a front for a given company. But worst of all are the gamers who wish to give themselves a sense of   importance by carrying a membership card for this kind of body in the delusion that it makes them in some way superior. Save the money and use it to buy more toys, join a local club if you must, but stop giving a few nobody's an excuse to call themselves somebody. It's a sad day when a collection of people who traditionally revel in the freedom of thought and independence of action roll over and become clone thinkers, sneering at the very people they were themselves until they paid an extortionate annual subscription to feel part of something. And as for magazines that are no more than

A few pics of the stuff I actually manage to get painted for personal use:

Back in 1984 I was heavily into Warhammer... Proper, old style Warhammer where fantasy was the name of the game and crushing your friends beneath your boots was the order of the day. Back then, whilst we all wanted to paint like Pete Armstrong or And y Ritson, we also played games every week and as a result were churning out regiment after regiment of tiny men and monsters in a toy cupboard arms race of sorts. Back then I was heavily into Lizardman miniatures and built a sizeable force from the wonderful sculpts done by Tom Meier and the not not so wonderful sculpts of Aly Morrison whose only saving grace when it came to bipedal reptiles was that they were for the most part depicted as armed with bows, and bows allowed you to rain dice-laden death on your foes. I wanted a range of figures known as Reptiliads produced in Canada by RAFM Inc, but on £3 or so pocket money each week it was a pipe dream. After many games and the ban from the store around which my life centred, I finally sold

Might as well face it, you’re addicted to love... Errrr, lead.   My name is Mark and I’m an addict…   There’s no point in trying to deny it. I’ve never touched an illicit substance nor do I smoke or gamble. But I am every bit as bad as the worst type of junkie. My addiction is to lead.   I think that if you are still playing with toy soldiers beyond your teen years, it’s a pretty safe bet that lik e me, you developed a craving, a need to own, paint and play with one inch high metal figures. You probably read about them, talk about them, daydream about them when you should be working. Some people go into denial, ashamed of what they have become, some take it ‘one day at a time’ and the rest go hell for leather into it, oblivious of the opinions of others. I fall into the latter category I am proud to say. I recall that back in the early days of my addiction, I carried a copy of the Dungeons & Dragons rules with me everywhere I went. I read it in the bath, my bedroom, on bus journeys