Thanks again David for re changing the time for our
meeting today. I apologize, OK.
That's OK. I cleanly forgot about my wife's
birthday of. Course.
Oh dear. Don't tell her that.
Don't tell her I. Didn't actually forget about her
birthday. I just thought, Oh my God,
that's right, we've got a meeting at like 6 and then I
should be cooking dinner and all this kind of stuff.
So I thought, Oh no, I'll have to ask David to just reschedule
a little bit earlier. So thanks.
You can do that, mate. That's great.
That's OK. It's it's quite hot in the UK
now, so doing it a bit earlier is is fine.
It's it's a bit cooler tell. Me about, I've got, I've got
something to cool me down over here.
I can tell you now mate, it's still 72% humidity 33°.
Oh wow, that's hotter. That's about as hot as it was
yesterday, I think. In the UK it's getting really
hot, isn't it? I saw.
That yeah, it's a bit of a heat wave at the moment.
It's a, it's one of those late summer ones.
It was really hot yesterday. I think it's a bit cooler now.
I think it's going to be going to be cooling off.
It's not going to break though. It said it was going to break in
a couple of days, but I think it's just going to keep on being
warm and just kind of Peter out. So yeah, we're getting the
summer eventually. Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Because I know you had guys had a lot of rain or something.
It sort of wasn't a real, yeah. It started very slowly, but now
it's gone to now it's gone to full warmth.
But yeah, considering we, we virtually didn't have a summer
last year, so that at least it's all saving up for this year.
Yeah, that's good mate. That's good mate.
Just to ask you, do you work from home?
Is that right? Yes, I do.
Yes, OK. OK, So you're like me, so you're
kind of flexible with times and, you know, getting stuff done or
whatever. That's good.
OK, nice. Yeah, yes, it's all, it's all
fortunately in, in, in the spare room that has now been taken
over by this, this, this channel and all of its associated
technology and bits and pieces that I need to to keep it
running. All right, City, I'm getting an
auto queue delivered today as well, which is another piece of
technology. So that'll hopefully help out
some bits. So may I ask, are you doing this
full time? The old and demon thing.
Kind of yes. I mean as full time as I can.
I can manage around other bits and pieces, but it, it, I would
describe it as probably half full time, but it, you know,
it's, it's a, it's a nice little thing.
I, I can, I can truck a lot of time at it, but I still can't
truck the kind of hours that, you know, professional Youtubers
and people who, who do videos every week can, can Chuck at it.
But I've, I've got a decent amount of amount of time to
Chuck at it, which is just as well because it's, it's quite
demanding in certain areas, because every new topic that I
want to do involves learning a new piece of software or
learning something else or learning a new piece of kit.
But yes, I can, I can put a, a decent amount of time in it.
But yeah, I'm, I'm still not at the level of, of the people who
have editors or, or things like that.
And they can, they can really churn the content out.
But yeah, that's not something that I I can financially do at
this point. No, that's understandable mate.
Not like tabletop tactics. You know that Ed's part of Ed
from Mini Swords. Yeah, yeah, aim of people that,
you know, do the editing one does the editing one's like full
time painter, you know, some people are filming and then
they've got the crew to do all the gaming and stuff.
It's incredible. I, I, I just think it's just
amazing that they can do that and.
Yeah. I mean, financially that's
that's, that's an impressive little get up that they've got.
I mean there's a there's a few of them out there that are
basically professional recording studios and there is a a big
team behind them and they can financially generate that
revenue. But unfortunately with the
dynamics and the mechanics of YouTube and the way that it's,
you know, the older channels and certainly the channels that are
recording and doing things during the pandemic, they
grabbed a lot of market share of the people who would pay.
Because at the end of the day, you know, the, the money comes
in through either adverts or a little bit of subscription money
and that's about it. And if you know, if your, if
your subscribers are already subscribed to all the people
that they were subscribed to five years ago, there's very few
of them left to, left to, to, to and, you know, a couple of
pounds every month. But yeah, I mean that's just the
the dynamics of of YouTube and market share, I guess.
It's good to see your last videos kicking ass on 117,000
views. Yes, yes.
I mean that's yeah. I mean, this year I decided to
take a, a slightly different tack for the channel after last
year. Last year I went very kind of
niche. I mean, last year was the first
year and I did at times go very niche and very experimental,
especially around the Christmas area.
And a lot of the videos just bombed.
And that was the time where I've been told put your really good
content out before Christmas because it'll get the, the good
click through rates or good advert rates.
And I went experimental instead. And it they both, they all
bombed. And then at the end of the year,
I thought, OK, I probably should do some, some big hits so that
they could actually generate kind of views and money.
Because, you know, I did things like the gear video and that
didn't really didn't really capture the audience.
And then I did a kind of mini battle report with the great
Devourer. And I thought, oh, if I, if I
make it really, really pretty, but I make a really small one,
would that help? And it didn't really help.
But yeah, this year because we also, because we've had quite a
few nostalgia adjacent releases, we've had Epic effectively under
a different name and we've had well, Hammer, the Old World.
And now we've just had Age of Sigma, which was going to be a
fairly big release. But I thought I should put out
something, something old Hammer related around that just to kind
of capture the demand. I mean, that's a that is a thing
with YouTube. If you can, if you can put a big
video out at the moment that Games Workshop do a big release,
there's this big advertising bubble and you can capture a
part of it and then sail through.
But yeah, I mean, yeah, we're fortunately, I think it's Kill
Team next. It looks like they're teasing
Kill Team for the kind of quarter four release, and that's
not really old Hammer adjacent. So I can do other things.
I can go back to doing battle reports and things like that.
Oh, good. A.
Lot of my sorry, I know that a lot of my listeners and people
on Patreon, you know follow you for the battle reports so
they'll be very excited to hear that so.
So yeah, we've got them. Well, the Great Devout, I'm
going to do a proper video on the great Devourer, which I, I
kind of didn't really give it a good enough shot last year.
That is, it's scripted. There's still a few things
coming before then. It's I've got a Talisman review
that I need to rush off and edit after, after this call, because
of course, Talisman version five came out.
That's another Games Workshop, a nostalgia adjacent release.
So I thought, OK, I'll do a video on that one as well.
And then there's there's another video planned.
And then hopefully I can get around to doing the great
devourer because I've got all of the you've.
I mean, if they, if they follow the channel, they've probably
seen the kind of trailer that I did last November, December,
where it was all of the units are done and the like the, the,
the map is all done. But I just need to actually get
round to doing a break by like a turn by turn breakdown like I
did for the other ones. Plus I've got a, a special thing
planned for it that I've just discovered that I could do,
which is going to be hopefully some themed merch to go with the
battle report. So we'll see how that works.
All right, nice. Because I've just learnt
Affinity Designer and the reason I did that is because I've done
a big channel rebrand I finished off yesterday.
So we've kind of moved away from the kind of gradient demon head
thing that wasn't entirely retro adjacent, but it, I thought it
was a bit like a golden demon demon.
And we've moved into that kind of retro bevelled effect that
you got on the 90s publications where they had all had the kind
of light gradients going over a kind of 90s metallic background.
So I just changed all of our my logos off to that after learning
affinity designer. And so I thought I could
probably do this kind of effect for other other games because
I've got a big stack of those old, you know, white dwarves and
and codexes and things like that.
And they've all got these lovely kind of winged, glowing,
metallic kind of bevelled effect text and logos on.
And I thought, well, I could probably make a few of those or
just like a non IP infringing version of a few of those.
And, and that'd be, that'd be quite interesting.
So yes, it short answer, yeah, the bad reports are coming.
They just take time. And I, I kind of, it's kind of
scope creep. It's everything else that I want
to do with it. And I think, oh, that'll be a
good idea. I can Chuck batting with it as
well. Because yeah, I've only got, I
mean, I think I looked at how many there were and there's only
about 15140 thousand battle reports that you can
realistically do on YouTube. So I thought I, I got to kind of
space these out for my own sanity because they're quite,
quite demanding edits as well when all the, the models start
moving around. But yeah, the great devourer is
coming. And then possibly I've also got
one scripted for the the howling Griffins as well.
But again, that one keeps getting pushed back because it's
not not as finished. Great to hear mate.
Yeah, I'm looking at your rebranding logos right now on
your YouTube channel and yeah, make that look very swish.
So very, very nice indeed. So I think a lot of people
enjoyed that they got 393 likes. And so yeah, I think a lot of
people are quite happy with the new rebranding image imagery
they can see there. So that's awesome, mate.
So let's talk a little bit about because, you know, obviously I
think most people know you through either YouTube or
Instagram because you run a very successful and very well known
painting competition that's been running for the last, I think, 4
years. Is that right, David?
Yeah, it's since 2020. It's the old and demon painting
competition started like all the other good things during the
pandemic. I think it was, It must have
been 2020. I can't exactly remember why.
I'm pretty sure Games have probably announced that due to
the pandemic, they were cancelling the Golden Demon
competition. And so I thought, oh, I'll do a,
I'd had this idea floating around in my head for a while
and I thought, oh, I'll do a kind of retro Oldhammer theme
painting competition myself and I'll just post it on YouTube and
yeah, not YouTube, sorry, host it on Instagram.
And I thought, OK, we'll do that.
It'll, it'll probably only get like a dozen or two dozen
entries. That'll be, that'll be good.
And yeah, it, it just, it just really took off.
It really kind of captured the imaginations of a lot of people
out there. And yeah, we, we got some
amazing, amazing entries In the end.
I was, was not expecting them to be as good as they were for the
first year we did it. And then I was like, OK, well, I
could, I could just keep doing this every year.
And every year I just thought, OK, and people aren't, are going
to be bored with this now. They're going to move on.
They're going to move on the next year.
I did it and I was like, OK, well, well, we'll, we'll do it
this year and we'll see if anyone's still interested.
And we got more entries and they're even better.
And I was like, wow, OK, so I just kept doing it and kept
doing it and it, it's, it just keeps growing and growing and
growing. And yeah, this year we did it.
And I to popular demand I, I split the categories in two.
People were saying, OK, do a, do a sci-fi category and a fantasy
category. So you can kind of split the,
split the winners between the two.
And yeah, we've got two amazed. We've got loads and loads of
amazing entries, but some amazing winners on the first,
second and third. I mean, it was, it's, it's
really tough judging this thing now because they are really,
really talented people out there who are very happy to paint up
incredibly old models for this competition.
And yeah, it's, it's just grown and grown and grown.
And last year, well, this year rather, I partnered with Matt
Avis from the Miniatures Compendium, and he's also done
things for Cult of Paint. And he created an entry form so
that people could just log onto a URL and just send pictures of
their entry directly to that place.
And then I can just look through it all quickly download them all
to use in the videos. And yesterday I, I finished
adding all of those links in and he's, he's made a little gallery
for me. So you can see everyone's
entries for this year now on my website if you're on the front
page, because that's another thing people requested and they
was like, oh, we can, thanks for the everything.
But we, we'd like to really see all the entries, everyone's
entries, because there's like there's like 200 or nearly 200
for each category. And so, yeah, if you, if you
head to oldendemon.com now, you should be able to see on the,
the top menu the 2024 entries. I've also updated the Hall of
Fame so you can see everyone's or the top, however many winners
there are for each year. And in 2024, you can see
smoothly, it'll go through to a nice little page where it'll
have a giant scroll of all of the entries for, for Olden
Demon, the painting competition this year.
So yeah, it's yeah, there's a lot of stuff going on in the
background here that I'm trying to trying to do, but yeah,
that's, that's another thing that we've got going on.
But yeah, it it's, it looks really nice if you look through
the the entropies and the fact that Matt Avis has his Blood
Angel space moon as the first one is pure coincidental, but
that's just because. Now I'm looking, I'm just
scrolling through it right now. I'm really glad this is put
together. So please thank the the
gentleman who's responsible for doing that for you, because
that's it looks like an awful lot of work.
Yes. It's, it's a great accreditation
to all those people who put on those hard hours and all that
work into, into creating these beautiful, beautifully painted
miniatures and then submitting them.
And then everyone can check and everyone can look.
So this is wonderful. I'm really I'm really enjoying
just scrolling through all these excellent 90 miniatures, painted
so well and all in different. Stuff yeah, I recommend throwing
Mat some money. He he runs the Golden Demon
compendium. I think he's got a Patreon page
to go with it. So certainly sign up there if
you, if you like his work, because he's really donated a
lot of his time and effort. Because there's no way I would
be able to do anything, anything remotely like this for, for
myself because I do not contain the appropriate knowledge.
But yeah, it looks amazing. Now.
It's just a, a long page of all of the entries.
And there are some, there were some amazing entries in there
that just, yeah, yeah, the quality is so high now.
Stripping the, the top three away from the, the, the
commended entries is hard. And then stripping the commended
entries away from the, the rest of them is, is incredibly hard.
I could have just kept adding more and more to it, but I had
to cut myself off eventually. Yeah, now Matt's one person I
need to get in touch with and get onto the podcast too,
because, yeah, he's done a remarkable job.
I think I visited his site several times to check various
different golden demon entries from the past and yeah, he's
doing a spectacular job. So yeah, we need to get him on
there and, and have a chat with him mate, because you know, we
need people like that and like yourself to, you know.
Archive a lot of this stuff. Yeah, he's he's doing a
fantastic job in his in his website, which if you've not
seen it, the the golden Demon Compendium, it it's effectively
just a going to be a full list of all of the old golden demon.
Well, every Golden Demon entry sorted by event and and things
like that, because, you know, a lot of this stuff was only
really, you know, the the golden Demon entries, you know, there's
after they have the awards, especially in the 90s and the
early 90s, it just kind of gets forgotten.
A lot of this stuff just just vanishes.
And if it wasn't for a few websites that actually probably
only, I think it was a Golden Demon winners free website that
held most of those things for the far last like 20 or so
years. And if it wasn't for that, it
would just, it would just have gone completely vanished for the
Internet. So yeah, he's hopefully he's be
he's his website's looking lovely.
Yeah, no, it's great. I'm looking through some of the
entries now. Bit of a shout out to Max
Desmond. I love that Wahama cows quest
Chaos Warrior he did. I think it's absolutely
glorious. I think maybe it could featured
in your latest video actually too, I think, David.
But it's a beautiful, beautiful rendition of that old classic
model. I think Gary Morley sculpted
this one and it's one of my favourite all time favorite 90s
Chaos Warriors It looks like exactly like one of the artists
there. Oh, I keep forgetting his name,
it's terrible. Gary, are you thinking of Wayne
England? That's it.
Thank you very much, Wayne. England style.
Wayne. 'S name yeah.
So Wayne England's sort of art style in that miniature and that
Gary reproduced in a miniature and the paint job is just
stunning yeah. So I really, really enjoyed just
really enjoying looking through this.
I didn't actually know that was a gallery here until now, so I'm
just looking. To know it, I, I added it in to
the website literally yesterday because I thought, oh, I'm
going, I'm going on the podcast. I've got to get the gallery
sorted out. I've got to get the Hall of Fame
sorted out. I know you're going to ask me
about all of this stuff and I better get it all working,
working ready for the podcast. So I thought, OK, just we'll,
I'd work through the heat. Just keep, keep sticking this
stuff up there. But yeah, we've got a, a little
search function at the top which worked really, really nicely.
So I was very quickly able to to search for Max Desmond and then
bring up the the Chaos Warrior in question.
But yeah, it's a, it's a lovely job.
I mean, there are so many lovely, lovely old models out
there that that need to get shown off because they are just
otherwise just just kind of kind of vanish and and get forgotten
about. Some are actually upside down,
which is quite funny, so apologies.
Yes, there's a few that got in that that need to be rotated.
Yeah, I, I don't know how people did that.
They, I think they must have. I don't know how that would have
have happened. Maybe they held the camera at an
angle, taking the camera, then submitted the picture in.
Because there's so many, so many images in there.
There's a few of them have unusual angles.
Hold your laptop at a. Hold your laptop at a 90° angle
and you should be able to see it fine.
Inquisitor Lord in Terminarama 1989 by Timu Pesonen.
I think that's how you pronounce their name.
Sorry if I butchered that one, but really nice looking
Inquisitor Lord. Yeah, that's that's wonderful.
So yeah, there is just a smorgasbord of 90s goodness, all
painted in beautiful. High saturated colours.
So if people are listening to this, please go and check out
the old and demon website and go and check out the entries for
2024 and you can see them all there and see your name and
lights hopefully down bottom. If you did submit your entry, I
actually did for the very first time submit it in this this
year. Azag the Slaughterer is not very
happy because he wasn't. He wasn't the winner.
Obviously he wants to be the winner because he's Azag the
Slaughterer. He was going to fly over to the
UK and hunt you down. David, I saw him.
No, no, don't do it because that's not a very nice idea.
There was a very nice gentleman. He he knows and it's a very
tough job how to, how to judge all these things.
So he understood in the end, very begrudgingly.
But yeah, but that was fun. I'm really, I really enjoyed
entering the competition. I'll again, we'll do it next
year. And I'm just so happy that it's
growing that you, you know, I can see it's getting more and
more popular. And like dates from Anvil of
Doom, he entered as well. He's got a really, really nice
looking troll Slayer. That, yes, yeah.
Here, and it's wonderful that everyone's celebrating what I
think, and I think you would feel the same.
David is like the, it's the penultimate time of miniature
sculpting. It was the, IT was the greatest
era of, well, I think anyway, of Games Workshop, you know, as a
brand, as, as an identity, as a tabletop.
They sold tabletop miniature gaming through these glorious
pictures of photographs of, of miniatures on the battlefield in
White Dwarf magazine. When you walked into a Games
Workshop store, you'll just embrace all this, you know,
this, this, this red, glorified red around the walls and
everything, you know, wonderful and sparkling and you know, you,
you just fell in love with it because it was hard not to.
You just mesmerize with it and you know, these painting
competitions and everything that represents 90s gaming and
painting, you know, sort of exemplifies that, uh, to the NTH
degree. And I, and I think it's really
wonderful that people are celebrating that still in 2024.
So long mate shot, you know, hope it continues for many, many
years, uh, going forward, mate. Honestly, it's great to see.
Yes, excellent. I hope so.
I think, I think we've we've hit
the point where I I stopped thinking, Oh my God, it's going
to fail next year. But yeah, hopefully it'll, it'll
continue. I mean, there's, there's
certainly a huge demand out there to see this kind of stuff
because as you say, you know, this is this is possibly the,
the era of peak creativity in that kind of 90s bubble.
Certainly that's what what a lot of the, the, the designers and
the, the fans all say is that there was something very unique
about that little bubble that they had in Nottingham in one
room where they had all of these sculptors, all of these artists,
all of these games designers just feeding off of each other.
And, you know, they could, they could produce these amazing
pieces of not only miniatures, but but artwork and, and graphic
design and logos and things like that.
And then unfortunately, as all things do, once the business
becomes a little bit larger and a little bit more global, the,
the, the, the, the, how should we say, the creativity kind of
drops off and it becomes kind of more about how do we market this
to 200 different languages? And as they, as they attempted
to in, in Gorkamoka, they attempted to, to sell Gorkamoka
to, to loads of different languages and it did not work.
And I think they learnt a hard lesson there.
And yeah, and, and unfortunately it kind of watered it down a
little bit. But again, I mean, it's, it's a
nice little time capsule, a little bubble of, of artistic
style that would it be special if it was still around or would
it be special because it went away?
That is the question. Yeah, like all things, you know,
nothing lasts forever. So I suppose, and I always
wondered about that, whether it was just mainly an age group
thing where we grew up with it. We first associated the self
against worship through this era.
So we have a kind of connection and nostalgia connection to it
where the, you know, new people coming to the hobby don't have
that connection when they see these old metal models and the
way they're being painted, they don't just don't have that kind
of love or affection towards them.
I don't know. But then you see guys like
Darren Latham, who's like a very, you know, he's a big
personality online. He's he's a heavy metal painter
with gang swish up now currently him painting a model with Wayne
England's artwork that he did for a White Dwarf cover for one
of his Deathwing Terminator captains, you know, and that's
then presented to a new a new audience.
And of course they would embrace anything he does because
everything he does is, you know, to a very, very, very high
standard. And Darren's an exceptional
painter. So through through those people,
I think through social media, Goblin Green, like Will's
another person too, that's very popular online and is a very
exceptional painter as well. I love his work.
I think they're popularizing this kind of style.
Maybe, maybe I'm wrong. I think I mean really, really
big influences there in doing the hobby.
Is yeah, the hobby is so large enough that there are different
styles that have kind of built up over the years.
And I think the Blanche Jih Tzu style is another style that kind
of has has emerged out of this. You've got the, the, the, the
modern heavy metal style painting, which a lot of people
kind of gravitate to. You've got the kind of Blanche
Jih Tzu style that other people gravitate to.
And yes, there's a kind of resurgence in the old, old
hammer style, which is another visual style that that people
can embrace and, you know, build armies around and, and paint
miniatures around. I think the the hobby is that
is, I mean, you know, you've got two ways of thinking about it.
On one way the the massive global expansion did allow more
people into the hobby. And it also allowed more space
for for different styles to emerge and different people to,
you know, look at something and say, OK, that's what I want it
to look like. I don't want it to look like the
other things that they've produced.
I want it to look like this thing.
So yeah, it's just larger, More space equals more different
styles and more room for everyone.
Yep, absolutely, mate. Yeah, I've, I've, I always, you
know, even the, the, the modern Games Workshop.
Well, Golden Demon, I suppose that now there's the current
competition that's running around in different parts of the
world these days. Yeah, I, I can look at those
pieces of work and artistry that those painters put into an
artist put into it is incredible.
I can't, I can't achieve that level.
I mean, it's, it's gone beyond anything that anybody could ever
expect, miniature painting and sculpting and a whole host of
skills that goes into making those entries.
And you just sit there in awe or thinking, wow, you know, how do
they do that? But then we thought the same
thing back in the 90s when we saw Mike McVeigh paint something
for White Dwarf magazine, thinking, how did he do that?
You know, it's that that is very exceptional and very talented
people that in that really, you know, get involved and enjoy
this this hobby called miniature painting.
So, David, are you an actual painter yourself?
Yes, yes. I mean, I think I can paint.
It's just, it's the the channel and everything else has subsumed
a large proportion of my time, so much so that the actual art,
the, you know, painting to, to this degree just takes so much
time. And even painting an army takes
so much time that I just, I would, I would literally have to
just stop producing videos in order to complete a variety of
projects. But yeah, no, I've, I've, I've
painted a, a variety of things over the last couple of years,
but much, much smaller than I, I used to do before I was making
YouTube videos. But yeah, I've, I've painted the
last thing. Oh, can't.
No, the last thing I painted was a bunch of Legions Imperialist
model because that was a, an epic thing.
And you can see those on my Legions Imperialist review.
But the thing before that was a one of those I, I painted Darren
Latham's Speaking of the man himself, 90s Marine Challenge
with the, the Monopo Space Marine.
And I decided like all the good things to take it over the top.
I painted it in the style of like a Rogue Trader Minotaur
with the yellow and red stripes all down it.
And yeah, yeah, it took an incredibly long amount of time
because obviously it's, it's chevrons on every single, every
single surface. But yeah, I, I do enjoy
painting, but unfortunately there's only so many hours in a
day. And unfortunately I don't, I
mean, I wonder if people would enjoy seeing a kind of painting
video for me on the channel or I'd just sit down and paint
something. I, I do think that could be a
potential output for something, but I just don't know, don't
know what I how to, how to how to do it, what people would like
to see me paint. I think I could do a nice
commentary on on some kind of painting a little, maybe a spoof
of the the the usual paint commentaries that you get for
these videos. Yes, I, I found myself doing
painting videos really, really difficult.
And I really admire people who can do a wonderful job on
painting videos. They're not easy.
And yeah, great, great, great appreciation for people who can
really pull it off. I'm just actually looking at
your, your final entry for Darren Latham's Plastic Space
Marine. It's really nice, mate.
So it's, it's wonderful to see it because, you know, obviously
people are going to say, you know, can David actually paint?
Why is he judging this competition?
Well, you're, you know, I can see by this image here you're a
very skilled painter. So where are you looking at?
Are you looking at on the site or I can't remember where I I
posted it? Looks like you posted it on on
your own Instagram so oh. Yes, yes, yeah.
So, yeah, very, very skilled painter.
So that's that's good to know. And and yeah, so that's great,
man. I'm, I'm glad you get to enjoy
painting yourself sometimes. And looks like you have by the
imagery on here. I've seen it on on various
different photographs and websites that you have a lot of
the hexpots, the original hexpots from Citadel.
Yes, I went on a, some would say obsessive compulsive binge a
while back. I think it must have been, it
must have been kind of spurred on by the pandemic when everyone
was just kind of getting really into nostalgia.
And I thought, oh, I could, I could buy or I could, you know,
buy a, a collection of the, the old 90s hexpots.
And I thought I, I, I basically got a couple of eBay auctions
where I got about 60 to 70% of all of them in mint kind of
sealed format. And I was like, that's easy.
I could, I could really easily finish this collection of, you
know, mini hex pots. It wouldn't take me that long at
all. Turns out it is actually quite
hard to get some of those colours.
So obviously the, the ones that appeared in all of the painting
kits and things like that, those are actually fairly, fairly easy
to get hold of mint examples of them.
But there are certain colours out there.
I've, I've completed the collection now I've got all of
the colours all sealed. But it, it took me years and
years. Which one was it?
It was polished blue. That was the, that was the real
problem. And that took me a couple of
years to just find a, a, a part of that just pinging up on you
on eBay somewhere. But there, there are certain
colours out there that people just didn't really seem to buy
and whoever did buy them just ripped them open immediately.
But yes, I've managed to complete the collection.
And then at the moment it's sitting in a really useful box
over to my side. And I'm thinking, how do I, I
probably should get something to display these in?
I'm thinking maybe maybe I can put, I think it's nail Polish
racks people use and they stick them up on the wall.
I should probably get one of those, stick them into a nice
little, nice little rack and then I can show them.
But of course, the the by product of this is that because
I was like searching through eBay auctions, I have a lot of
spares. I have a ridiculous amount of
spares now. I mean, I don't know if you've
got a, one of the 9 litre really useful boxes, but I have a nine
litre really useful box just full of opened hex pot paints
that are just spares that I I accumulated just to get the
sealed paints. Yeah, it it took, it took years
and years and years. I think I God, was it last year
I completed it, it, it, it must have taken at least three,
possibly even four years to complete the full collection.
And that's just really annoying because at one point I think I
saw someone actually ebayed a full collection of mint sealed
paint at one point. And I was like, and I was really
close to completing my my version.
I think I only had like three or four left and someone said, OK,
I'm going to sell a fearful mint collection.
And I was like, oh, should I? I can't, I can't buy a second
batch. I really should have done, but I
ended up not doing it and and then of course, it then took me
like an entire year from that point to find a sealed pot of
what was it? The the metallic blue, polished
blue. That's the one.
It took me an entire year to find that, that paint again.
But yeah, it's, it's I, I really need to display it.
But now I'm really concerned about, you know, the sun hitting
it and then being bleached. And I, I kind of want to kind of
want to give them a second look to make sure there's no like
imperfections in the, in the, the, the stickers and things
like that to make sure they're as clean as, as possible and
they're as nice as possible before I stick them in that kind
of display area. But yeah, that was a that was a
little thing because I thought, you know, yeah, I can.
The thing about collecting old Citadel models is you don't know
what to recast. Someone somewhere has been
recasting those Imperial Guard Praetorian models for the last
20 or so years. And at this point, unless
they've got like layers of caked on paint on to them where you
can tell that it's someone who's been painting in the 90s, you
don't know what to recast. So you can't really boast too
much and the blister packs are way outside of the budget of
everything. Anyone to have a mint blister
pack collection of anything that's that's gone, that's long
out the door. But I thought for hex pot
paints, I could probably do that.
And yes, it did take me a long, long while, but I finally got
the, the entire thing. But yeah, it, it is a
collection. And I'm, I'm quite happy with it
finished now. I'm quite happy to not need to
search through eBay every day and have lots of eBay searches
set up for various paintings in various wordings to get the
correct paint. But yeah, at one point I think I
was genuinely considering paying an import fee of nearly 50 lbs
to get this one pot of Polish blue that turned up in America.
And the guy was like, I can't see the shipping is going to be
about 30 lbs and the paint it sells 10.
And I was like, should I do that?
It would just complete the selection and I didn't.
And then fortunately I can't remember what happened in the
end, but I saw a pot ping up in the UK after years and then I
snapped up as soon as possible. And then and then that's it.
That's that's my collection done now, which is all finished.
Wow, David, it's amazing. I've seen, I'm seeing some
images on your Instagram of those hexpots that you've
mentioned, all sealed. And I've always wondered that
when I saw those, I thought, is that real or is it being like,
you know, taken from another photograph duplicated somehow?
But no, there are real genuine sealed pots that you've
collected. You've you spend your hard money
on and collected all those the years and now you've got a full
set. So that is wonderful to hear,
mate. That's excellent.
I think there's not many people around that have a full
collection of sealed hex pots from this is kind of their
third, third iteration of paints.
They, they had at least two, they had one that was sort of
round pots and they went to another second round pots with
the Bob Naismith covers and then they went to the hex pots.
That's kind of when I went to the UK, that's when they were
around 9495 or so. Yeah, there there was a part of
me that says should you start doing the 1988 like circular
collection And it's like, no, no, no, no, that's that's enough
for me because those ones are even harder to get hold of.
They they almost certainly don't exist anymore.
I, I would, I would be willing to put money that the, the 1988
circular ones. I don't think you could do a
full collection of those that were mint in box because that
was before the big expansion. So you would have to find, I
don't know, someone who just bought a giant set, put it in
their loft and then forgot about it forever.
I've got a, a few of them because again, I, you know, you
know, these things got merged together when I was collecting
the, the, the mint ones. And there's a few of them that
I've got, but they, I don't know anyone could do a, a 1988 one.
A war colours had like a nostalgia 88 and a nostalgia was
it 9495 set at one point. I think they're all out of
production in war colours now, which is very fitting and
thematic. And I was tempted to, to just
get a selection of those and stick them on my wall at one
point instead, because it was so hard to complete the, the, the,
the originals. But yeah, it's, it's, you know,
connecting this old stuff, is it?
It became a, a mild hobby. And then, you know, eventually I
thought, I've got quite a lot of this old stuff now.
What we should do in a YouTube channel about this?
Good idea mate, and we're going to talk more about that in just
a moment. We're going to go for a quick
short break and we're back in just a second.
What more Crown of the Command content then Look no further my
friends, as I have you covered for video battle reports and
live stream interviews, please head over to the chronic man
games YouTube channel to see some classic games, the 90s,
such as one of a 5th edition, one of 40K second edition, epic
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Follow the links in the podcast description below.
But mate, thanks for coming back and I really wanted to ask you
about because you talked about, you know, you're obviously a
painter and you're a very skilled painter at that.
Mate. What?
What kind of games do you play? Well, only board games these
days. The the the miniature games are
more of a kind of a kind of multi time yearly, but not
really kind of weekly. I used to do you know, miniature
games with the the group that I'm with at the moment is a kind
of weekly board game set up. I mean, the last miniature games
that I played was leading to Imperialis for my leading to
Imperialis review, which it's an interesting one.
It's it's it's obviously not a finished game and I'm not sure
whether it ever will be a finished game, but yeah, it was,
it was, it was all right. It's a it's a nice experience
playing the old miniature game occasionally.
I think the casual setting is much, much more fitting, I think
for a miniature game. Obviously, I played a lot of
140,000. I mean, I think I've played that
every edition. I think you have to just to just
to give it a shot to see how it's like.
But it's the the meeting up and getting everyone to to together
to pay play with painted armies is is quite a tricky one for for
my my group, but mainly board games, to be honest with you,
because which is very appropriate because I'm about to
review Talisman, the new edition of that.
So luckily, for whatever reason, I, I have a lot of experience
with playing these games. So I can use that experience to
fully kind of take apart Talisman and what it is and, and
how it how it got to this state. But yeah, a lot of board games
basically were you interested in the board game look or were you
were you more interested in the the miniature game aspect?
No, I, I, I just talked about it recently on my, on my patron
natter. Actually, I, I played here
request on the weekend with some guys, some friends of mine.
I recently just painted all of the all of the models and
miniatures and furniture inside it.
This is like the the original here request of course.
Oh yeah, I. Really cut my teeth on board
games, you know, that's all I played.
I didn't really know. I didn't know anything about
miniature war gaming, tabletop war gaming.
You know, I played board games, and Ultramarines was another one
that I really enjoyed. That was kind of after your
request. It was the Games Workshop.
These are kind of supplementary games.
They were basically, you know, Ultramarines was basically Space
Hulk components, but then had all these Marine scouts and
they'd fight over resources on the, on the map and you'd have
the inner lid with all the hit and miss locations and you'd
roll you, you throw your dice in there.
And it was a really quick, fun intro game to get you into, into
the Games Workshop hobby. And I really enjoyed those a
lot. And through my whole, you know,
gaming career, I've always enjoyed board gaming.
I I've always liked it because it's either because of the theme
or the miniatures involved, or maybe sometimes there, there are
no miniatures. It's just more of a getting
together with people and socializing because that's
what's part, you know, part of, you know, tabletop war gaming is
the social aspect of it. And I think board gaming opens
that up to many more different people and women included and
younger, older people, whatever. So I think it's a very inclusive
kind of a hobby. So yeah mate, big big time board
gamer. Yeah, no, I mean that that's the
thing about board games is that if you, if you're playing with
one other person, a miniature game is, is perfectly fine.
The moment you add like three or five or an odd number of people
or even 4 people and you all want to have the same
experience, suddenly board games become the easiest way to have a
social experience with a large number of people at the same
time without effectively just having multiple different tables
all playing separate two player games.
And you can do that. I mean, card games and things
like that certainly do that. But just the the kind of into
multi interactive experience board games have have definitely
got, you know, miniature games. Well, miniature war games don't
necessarily work when you start bringing in multiple different
players to play the same game, because you'll end up with one
person effectively kind of taking over the general strategy
or another person where their army gets destroyed or big
chunks of it just get waylaid for the bar giant portion of the
board, but jump also at a time. But yeah, and board games,
mainly Euro games. What are we playing?
I do like a bit of, I'm on board game arena as well.
We're playing a bit of Terraforming Mars, Arc Nova.
What other things? Hold on, I'll just bring it up
and heat. That's another good one.
I'm just going to pick up what I'm what I'm playing at the
moment. Heat, sea salt and paper
cartographers, Nova architects of the West Kingdom,
Terraforming Mars. There's a bunch of other things.
Ultimate railroads load quite a quite a diverse spectrum of, of
board games. There lots of, I mean there's
lots of different things to to play.
There's lots of different mechanics that you don't
necessarily get it. It kind of really is a, a
different beast in comparison to, to miniature games.
I mean, you can, you can start and break one down and put one
together, break one down and and no one needs to paint anything.
No one needs to glue anything. It's a, it's a completely
different kind of spectrum to the the current Games Workshop
produce and their current business model.
But yeah, it's yeah, I found the board games to be absolutely
fantastic. Yeah, mate, me too.
I, I really enjoyed them. Every time I get the experience
of having people around a tabletop and we can to play a
game. I introduced Talisman's second
edition to my high school students when I taught English
here in Japan and they absolutely loved it.
I mean, it was great to see. And he requests as well and, and
those kids as high school kids really got into it and it was
really fun. It was really nice to see.
I just don't think, and I, I talk about this sometimes with
people or on on the podcast or whatever, you know, approaching
somebody with a war game, tabletop war game is a
completely different thing. I, I find sometimes depending on
the complexity or depending on how many components, depending
on how, on the theme of course, as well, where a board game can
be very approachable. I think it's, it's something you
can say, you know, especially these cooperative games.
I think that's sort of kind of new or new trend these days
where a lot of games are becoming cooperative and I, I
really like that aspect to it. We don't need AGM, we don't need
someone running it. You've got a, either an app that
runs the AI for you or it's got some kind of card generated.
I think Wyoming Quest is a really good game in terms of
that where I think got to experience it again not so long
ago with guys on Discord and now around Discord group where it's
a card driven thing. You know, the cards decide where
the monsters are, which room you, you discover what quest you
get. And I really like that aspect to
it. So we can just concentrate on
defeating the game where there's no, there's no, we don't need
another person controlling everything for us.
And I I really like that. Yeah, Yeah, yeah.
I mean that, I mean that you can do so many things with board
gaming and it's, it's so varied as well like that.
But I, I think on the on the, the, the topic of Talisman that
you were talking about, I've got a review coming up for that.
And I mean it is on to some expect to some respects.
It is a 40 year old board game that feels like a 40 year old
board game, but it, it gets the, the, the thing, the, the kid,
the, the critical thing for it right is it is incredibly easy
to learn. It is incredibly easy to put in
front of a new player, our player who's, you know, a bit
unsure about board games. And there's as I, as I'm going
to shoot my own review in the foot by giving you all the
gossip first. But but basically, you can put
some of these, the technically better games in front of people
and they will just bounce straight off of them because
they will take a long while to learn a long while to get your
head around. Some of them are incredibly deep
and incredibly comprehensive and and a lot of them are very
unforgiving as well. You they are effectively
competitive beasts where you are very competitive with people at
every stage of the game. And a competitive player will
just win with with no almost no kind of luck or variability in a
lot of these big games. And there's a place for that,
but there's also a place for a kind of Talisman style adventure
where the rules are, you know, a paragraph long, you can explain
it to someone in a second. You just pick up this this
piece, move it, roll the dice, move it around the board, and
then something new will happen wherever you land.
You either draw a card from the deck or you pick up something or
you attack someone or you roll on whatever random table is on
the board. And there is there is a a niche
for that steal in in the kind of board gaming ecosystem that that
kind of has to be filled, or at least should be filled because
it is just a a excellent intro game.
I think Talisman and Hero Quest are both two games where they, a
lot of people were introduced to both the hobby of painting and
war gaming and board gaming and this general kind of fantasy
hobby that we all kind of collectively share.
Whether whether that be many things to different people
through, you know, these games where they've they've they've
picked it up and they've gone, OK, I like the the fact that
it's plastic models and I can paint these plastic models and
they've gone and done that part of the hobby.
Or they've gone and said, OK, this is kind of just like a
role-playing game and they've spun off and got into
role-playing or they've spun off And, and I thought, OK, well,
this isn't that competitive, but what if we had a competitive
version of it and they've spun off into that direction?
There's certainly, you know, certainly a call for these kind
of things to exist and and they certainly did in the in the
public spectrum. But you know, Hero Quest and
Talisman are are very much cornerstones of it.
I mean, God, when was Heroquest released?
Was it late 80s? I think I think it was. 89 I
think man. 89 Wow, yeah. And the 1st edition of Talisman
was 88. And you know, you know, they
don't technically work particularly well these days
with, with all of the advances of, of everything, but it's,
it's, you know, it's a bit like going back and playing, I don't
know, Duke Nukem, not Duke Nukem, but what am I thinking
of? Wolfenstein?
You can still play it, but you can you, you have to understand
that it is of it's time and it, it's still enjoyable for what it
is. But you know, it it it's very
much an entry level into what will become a much larger and
much, much tighter and very, very competitive sphere of
industry now. Yes, yes, absolutely, mate.
Advance, your request is another board game that I should mention
because it's one of those games I picked up and I still have the
original when I bought it in, I don't know, 1991, whenever it
came out and was obsessed by it, but I'm just didn't have the
people to play it. I think it was just the time
when that play group sort of split up.
They went on to university or whatever, or they moved, moved
to different cities or whatever it might have been.
And I sort of hung onto it and got to play it probably in the
mid 2000s, probably 2010 or so with some people and very
briefly a couple of sessions. And then I only got to play it
again in a solo adventure on my channel.
I thought, why not, you know, I can just play it solo.
You know, I've got no one else to play it with.
I'll just play it and I really enjoy it.
I think Jervis Johnson is, is a great game developer.
He's he's he's developed some of the my favorite games, Blood
Bowl, Epic Space Marine. He's been involved with a lot of
the 40K second edition stuff. Of course, he's been involved
with as well. He's just got a really keen mind
for stuff and advance here. Requests is just one of those
titles that just had some extra stuff in there that just made it
a little bit special and very memorable and yeah, I'm really
glad I got to experience it myself, but.
Yeah, there's certainly A level of nostalgia involved with with
board coming. I mean, that's sad.
That's the popularity of these things as well, that you, you
kind of play it when you're younger and you think, yeah,
that was, that was quite fun and what it would be like.
I wonder what it would be like playing it today.
That's how I introduced Talisman to my gaming group.
Because a lot of them are saying thing, saying things like I
played, I played that when I was younger.
I wonder what it would be like if I if we played it today.
And the answer is it doesn't really hold up particularly
well. But you know, there's, I think
there's AI think there's a niche that it slots into quite neatly.
Yeah, absolutely. And it's good to see technology
working alongside board games as well.
We played HERE request using the new Here request companion app
All. Right.
And it works perfectly because all the scenarios are all based
on the original Hasbro or then Milton Bradley game.
It's now run by Hasbro and another company.
And yeah, all the scenarios are the same.
It's all basically US edition. So we got to use the app have
four players don't have no, the basic the app is your GM and it
it it sort of tells you where to to go and where the doors are
and where all the monsters are laid out and that kind of thing.
And it rolls all the dice for the for the monsters as well.
It's wonderful. I think that's the beauty of,
for me anyway, the dungeon exploring.
It's that sense of anticipation. You don't know what's going to
be behind next, the next door, the next corridor, what treasure
you're going to find. It's that that sense of
adventure that I think tabletop war games don't give me, and I
think I really love that dungeon crawling experience that board
games give me that I just can't get anywhere else.
Yes, I, I mentioned Gloom Haven in my review and it's like a
super advanced version of what, what dungeon crawlers kind of
have have over time merged into and you can kind of see how you
know it it, it Gloom. I don't know whether you have
played Gloom Haven. I haven't either.
It's a technically fascinating game.
It takes a long time to set up and breakdown, but if you can
move past that, it is a it is an amazingly tightly themed and
very interesting game that I'd absolutely love to play a
campaign with one day. It it's kind of like everything
that dungeon crawlers could potentially be.
It's very, very clever the way that it it handles all of the
mechanics and and things like taking injuries and then
levelling up and things like that.
It is so tight and so well balanced.
Yeah, I'd, I'd sorry, I'd, I'd, I'd recommend Gloom Haven
because if you're not interested in the 200 LB mega adventure
that currently takes 200 hours to finish.
They do smaller versions as well.
And I'm definitely tempted to, to pick up their, I think their
new one bugs and I think it's buttons and bugs, which is
basically, I don't know the size of, I don't know, I'd say a
phone. It's just, they've managed to
compress Gloom Haven into a tiny, tiny, tiny box and keep
most of the mechanics pretty much the same and just have a, a
very small little scenario that you play through.
It's, it's really, it's really, really clever.
And I definitely, definitely remember if you like hero quest,
I'd definitely pick up Gloom Haven.
And, and if you've got, especially if you've got a group
of people who who are happy to play a campaign, that's what I'd
really like to do because you effectively you get a a deck of
cards and those that deck is quite small.
And those cards represent your actions and also your, your
health as well. So you draw your from your hand
and you can use one of these cards and they're like multi,
multi use. So you can use either the A side
or the B side. And if you take a hit, you have
to then discard a card from your hand.
So it's quite a quite a tight little designed thing, but very,
very clever. Yeah, I definitely, definitely
recommend that if you're interested in in hero quest,
probably it's it's a different beast than Talisman.
But yeah, definitely if you're a dungeon crawler, I would I don't
know if you can get Glenhaven where where you're based.
Actually, it might be excessive on the import charges.
So. Yeah, well, it's funny to say
that because I go to a a little games club here, or games shop,
I should say, called Miniature Forest.
And in that shop in Japan, in Chiba, they have a, you know, a
wide array of board games that people can play, all in
Japanese, of course. And one of the guys who who
organizes some of the events has Glenhaven.
I've seen it played. So it's good to see that a lot
of the Japanese players embrace a lot of the games that aren't
translated necessarily initially.
They do all the translation themselves that that's been gone
on for years since like Advanced Dungeons and Dragons, you know,
backed since then. They always rely on one person
to translate all the rules into Japanese and they teach the
whole group and they all play it, which is awesome.
So I have seen it played here in Japan.
I have seen other games which I thought, oh, I'd like to play
that. I think it's a Seamon game and
it's also Dungeon Crawl and I just can't remember the title of
it. It was.
Oh, they did. A few of them, yes.
Super tiny adventures. Or was it something like that?
I can't. Something darkness, something,
something, something darkness. And I really was interested in
that. I think that was a really cool
looking game. And I saw some Japanese players
playing and I thought, oh, I'd love to sit on that and just,
you know, see them, just watch them play it or just get
involved and have a go at it. So yeah, I'm always interested
in those kind of things, especially when they're really
well produced because Guillotine games especially and Seamon
games do some really, really top notch level presentation on
their work and they look very enticing.
They also did one and I I almost backed and I backed out of it.
It was also another dungeon crawler that set in a fantasy
world against a lot of zombies and stuff like that.
I think it's called Black Plague.
Oh yeah, a a zombie side is another zombie side kind of 1,
yes. Well, I've never played zombie
side. I know it's been massively
popular. I would love this one as well.
So yeah, there's a like you say, there's there's a whole host of
games that you know, you just don't have enough time, money
and to get around to playing all these things.
And of course you need a dedicated, dedicated group to to
enjoy these games with as well, which is another big thing about
board gaming. But yeah, I mean, they both have
their pluses and minuses, pros and cons, you know, tabletop
ball gaming and board gaming. Board gaming necessarily
sometimes means you need more than two people to play it.
And then tabletop gaming, you need only two people, generally
two people, you know, tends tends to work best.
So and they both have different levels of commitment.
Some need to be paid. You need to paint an entire army
something. People just need to open the box
and get the components out and the way you go.
So, but both are equally fun and I both we both enjoy both
obviously. And I think that people who
enjoy tabletop ball gaming, enjoy board gaming, card play
games, computer games, You know, we all have a very and wide
range of tastes in, in, in gaming.
So David, mate, it's been wonderful to have you on.
I'm sure we could talk another hour or so about various
different things. Oh yeah.
But mate, I want to really want to thank you for your time and
from the crown of community, crown of command community as
well for you to come on and Share your story and tell us all
about old and demon. And again, I just want to say to
people, if you haven't checked out the website, you can go to
that now. I'll leave a link in the show
notes where you can see what David's been doing in terms of
the painting competition. Of course, there is now the
gallery that you can go and look through all the wonderful work
that all these people have submitted all around the world.
You've got a merch store that you can purchase a merch from
David as well to help to support him.
He's got a Kofi page as well. If you want to join that and
support David on his on his very hard work in creating a lot of
those wonderful battle reports and other videos he does and
watch his YouTube channel. So you know, you've got lots of
different avenues that you can enjoy.
David's content and also through Instagram of course, and keep
keep in touch with the next old and demon 2025 mate, which I'll
be definitely working towards painting something special for
that. Excellent.
Well, thank you very much for having me on your podcast.
Mate, it's been an absolute pleasure and enjoy the rest of
your day mate. Will do, will do.
Thank you for listening to another cracking show here on
the Crown of Command, but I hear you cry for more.
Well, you're in luck. Join Gork and Mork's Org Mob on
the Koranic Command Patreon, where the Org gods deliver you
ad free audio and video content, including painting tutorials.
So head on over to patreon.com/the Koranic Command
Podcast.