Yeah. No, Henry, Look, I'm absolutely
privileged to have you on the crown of command.
I know we tried to do this some time ago, a couple years ago
during the pandemic, but for some reason that the time zones
were all mixed up. And I felt really bad that we
just couldn't get that show together.
We couldn't meet in person and talk together.
But this time it's the second time the revenge recording as
they say, you know, so I'm really that we can finally meet
and talk in virtual space and that you can come on and talk to
our listeners in the Crown Command and to Share your story
mate and to show and to tell who you are and your place in the
hobby. So thanks for coming on.
Well, you're very welcome. I mean, and seriously, I'm
delighted. I'm always.
You know, you you've picked me up so much online.
It's, it's lovely, Josh, but I'm always slightly surprised when
people want to interview me, right.
And it's it's, it's something that I've got much, you know,
better about dealing with. But I think it comes from kind
of imposter syndrome that I suffered with for a long, long
time. But I've for various reasons,
I've learned a lot of psychology in the last couple of years.
So now it's like, well, I suppose apart from anything
else, I have been around quite a long time and I suppose I have
got a kind of prominence in the hobby.
Partly because, well, for a number of reasons, I think.
Well, back in the day when I launched my own magazine, you
know, back in 2006, you know that I suppose put me, gave me a
kind of prominence that I hadn't had before.
Although to be honest, I kind of, I suppose I kind of put my
head above the parapet wall. This is ancient history for some
people. I did my created my first battle
Games website on the 18th of June, which is Waterloo Day in
1998. Back in the days when I was one
of the very first web designers in our part of the UK and I was
saying to clients, oh, I could do a web because we called them
web pages back then, didn't we? I could do a web page for you
and they were saying either. What the Hell's a web page or
why the hell would I ever want a web page?
So it was like, you know, for quite some time I was knocking
on people's door and so actually starting my first battle games
website originally was actually just a result of a self
brainstorm thinking about what could I do.
To convince my graphic design clients that I can do websites
and that they're a worthwhile thing.
And I was like, oh God, so I was in a reenactment group at the
time. And so I did a little web page
for what was then the Shire of the Seven Deans.
And part, if people listening might have heard of an
organization called the SCA, the Society for Creative
Anachronism, which is a big. Actually based in America
organization, but has worldwide membership and we have great fun
dressing up in full armor and whacking the hell out of one
another. On hot days like today.
I seem to remember there's nothing quite like the smell of
a sweaty Gambason. So but I started as a website
for that and then I thought, what else can I do?
Well, OK, I'm a war gamer. And you know you back then we
had the magazines, we had War Games Illustrated, we had
miniature War Games. We had for a time as well.
Practical War Gamer had had died out just a few years before.
I think it was just before War Game soldiers and strategy came
on the scene. But there'd been things like
Battle magazine and stuff and I thought, well.
Surely there must be, you know, war games out there.
I knew a lot of war games were quite tech minded, so I thought,
I bet there's some out there. So I created the Battle Games
website, which was what we'd now of course we'd call it a blog,
but back then no one had heard of the word blog.
It was, you know, it was a web page.
And to my astonishment, people started emailing me.
I mean, e-mail was a pretty rare thing back then anyway.
But suddenly there was a guy in Latvia emailed me.
And someone in South America and Portugal and the the United
States and Australia. Oh my God, where are these
people coming from? And within a matter of weeks,
suddenly I had hundreds, which back then was big audience time.
Hundreds of people logging onto my battle games website and my
the Internet service provider I was using at the time, I won an
award for their best performing website a couple of months
running back then. You know, because this was
before. Big businesses had really kind
of latched on, you know, So anyone who was attracting like,
you know, a few 100 or even into the low thousands of visits a
month was like, whoa, big time. So they got really interested in
me and I showcased what I did and that was great because it
also meant that some of my clients started knocking on my
door and saying, oh, you said you could do one of those web
page things for me, Henry, oh, I saw you in the, you know, this
local thing. How about could you do 1 for me?
So that was how the Battle Games thing started back in 1998.
And obviously, so the website's been running now for Oh my God,
how many years is that? You know, we're coming up for
Wow coming up for 30 years, aren't we?
That's mad. That's mad.
And so I kind of felt that, you know, that I'm happy with this
and it gave me a kind of an online presence in the hobby
that was really surprising to me, you know?
And then obviously what then happened was, gosh, back in the
days of Yahoo groups, if people here remember the Yahoo online
groups, back in the days when lots of us were still on forums,
old fashioned forums and things, the Yahoo groups, there was a
group started called Old School War Gaming and it turned out
there were some guys on there. It started off, didn't have a
lot of members, a couple of 100 members, but they all seemed to
remember an article I'd written in Miniature War Games magazine
back in Oh my goodness. I mean, 1986, right?
All about fictitious wars, what are now called imaginations.
And so I joined this group and they're like, wow, you're Henry.
Wow. We remember that thing you wrote
with the illustrations you did. And and I was like blindly
really. You know, because.
Back in 1986, pre Internet days, you sent an article out.
If you were lucky, the editor sent you a check in return, you
know, and that was kind of it. You know, we, we were living in
such siloed existences back then.
But in comparison, you know, you hoped that someone might have
read it. So when I joined this Yahoo
group and they were all saying, oh wow, Henry, you you're the
Henry that did that thing. And I was like, crikey, OK,
right. And there was some discussions
in that group. It had been rumbling along for
about a year, I suppose, and there was a lot of discussion
about the fact that a lovely magazine.
Had been written, put together, edited by the now sadly late
Stuart Asquith, who was, you know, really quite well known in
historical war gaming circle. He'd been around for a long
time, but he'd had this magazine called Practical War Gamer that
was really had a really lovely, very inclusive approach to the
hobby. There was no kind of.
Oh my God. You know, if you can't, if I
can't put it under the microscope and see the gold
braid in the material of that miniature that you're painting,
You know, right then, then you're not working.
Now his was completely the opposite.
You know, I look back now and some of the stuff that they had
in his pages. Was pretty slapdash to be
honest, but it had a really lovely inclusive feel to the
writing and it covered a broad range of stuff and also it
covered fantasy and sci-fi stuff.
In fact, he employed a guy well known called John Treadaway, who
was one of the major organizers of the Salute show the South
London warlords, for a long time and is now the editor of Finally
Have Miniature War Games. But so a lot of people missed
that magazine, as did I, And it was like, oh, wouldn't it be
lovely if only someone picked up that bat on and ran with it
again. You know, that kind.
Now the fact is, because of copyright issues and stuff and
the way the magazine had been owned by a company called Nexus
Who. Literally.
Just had rung Stuart one day and said, Stuart, I'm sorry, there
won't be an issue next month. We're closing the magazine down.
It's not making enough money for us.
So the poor guy was just dumped on his ass, you know, and the
magazine just fell into nothing. It just disappeared.
Anyway, a lot of these guys on this group said, oh, we really
missed that magazine it we had this lovely kind of old school
feel and all the rest of it. And I just realized, do you know
what? No one's going to do something
about this, are they? Unless I do something about
this. So I launched my own magazine
called Battle Games and it had a complicated start.
That was supposed to be someone else who was going to be helping
me to do the magazine, and for all sorts of complex reasons,
they had to pull out of the venture.
Literally about a month before the 1st issue was due to go to
press and I, so I had one of those.
Seminal moments of OK, do I just look at this and think, oh, that
was a nice idea, Never mind. Or do I say it?
I'm going to, I'm going to do it anyway, right?
And I'm a I I'm a kind of, let's use Battlestar Galactica
terminology, I'm a fracket kind of guy, right.
And I just decided, you know what?
This is a once in a lifetime thing and I will regret it if I
don't give it a go. So how can I make this happen?
And I literally put out an appeal, said look, what I need
are what we call Charter subscribers who out there
please, will basically pay their first year subscription upfront
to help me to pay the initial print bill to get it off the
ground. And I to my astonishment, 100
odd people said, yeah, I'll do that.
And I think there's something like 150 Charter subscribers,
which is astonishing. And also there were a couple of
friends who said, look, Henry, here we go.
Look, you know, we got fairly deep pockets.
We'll put it on the credit card for you, pay us back when you
can, which is like, wow. So Battle Games was launched.
That was in March 2006. It was a bimonthly magazine, and
I was. Well, I was chef, top cook and
bottle washer. So I was commissioning articles
from other people and one of the lovely things I managed to bring
some old school people in on day one.
Stuart Asquith who was still alive.
Then he came in and wrote some articles for me.
Charles Charles Stewart Grant, who is still alive with this
Brigadier ex, Brigadier Charles Grant.
He came in and. Revived his table top teaser
series, which if people don't know what table top teasers are,
they're scenarios basically. So he would set up a scenario,
here's the scenario, here's the forces at your disposal.
Go on, have a go. And they've been really popular
back in Practical War Gamer magazine and previous magazines,
actually military modeling with CARNAC magazine for years and
years before. So with those two big
heavyweights on board, a load of other people said, Oh yeah, I'll
write for you Henry. So but it was mad.
I mean it was just me here in in the attic, which I think I've
told you but other people might not know, was christened by one
of my original battle games website visitors.
It was christened the Loft Buffer.
Right, which I thought, yeah, so do I I thought it's stuck ever
since and. So basically Battle Games
magazine did all right you know for probably about where I said
2006 two to 2011 and then but there was obviously it's a
highly competitive market and it was just me up here in my attic
trying to do everything on my own or sorting out all the
advertising, writing loader, the copy, doing the editing, sorting
out the distribution. But da da da da mad really.
Don't know where I found the energy to do.
And so that it got to about 2011.
And basically a couple of the other major magazines were War
Games Illustrated magazine that most a lot of people would have
heard of, got a huge cash injection when it became
partnered with shall we say Battlefront miniatures who gave
it a load of money, and War Games Soldiers and Strategy
magazine that had been Spanish owned.
Got taken over by a Dutch company and they again injected
a load of cash into that. And there was a little old me.
I couldn't even afford to get onto the shelves of the big news
agents like WH Smiths over over here in the UK because again, I
don't have people realized to get onto the shelves of a big
chain newsagents. They take like 50% of your cover
price. Plus, they demand that you have
to pay a special fee, a special promotional fee and of course,
you know, you wonder what kind of promotion are they actually
giving me other than condescending to actually put me
on the shelf, right? So I you know that competition
just went sky high because of course that suddenly looked the
magazines look really glossy and glamorous and huge.
I think War Games Illustrated suddenly jumped up to like well
over 100 pages every month and this little old me every other
month saying please hello, so things got really difficult and
it was going to hit the buffers and so I actually, I was just
really honest with my subscribers and said look.
This is the situation. I don't know if I can carry on.
And I put my tin hat on and went into the bunker and thought, Oh
my God, you know, people are going to tear a strip out of me.
How wrong I was. The vast majority of my
readership like Oh my God, Henry, this is tragic.
What can we do to help? And more importantly, I heard I
got messages from. Both.
Well, all three of War Games Soldiers and Strategy magazine,
War Games Illustrative Magazine and Miniature War Games
magazines, All their editors got in touch and said, look Henry,
we'll see what we can do to help you out and maybe, you know,
give you a job or something. Well, two of those magazines
said, look, what we could do is, you know, we don't really want
Battle Games magazine, but we'd love to have you as a regular
columnist, but of course. The amount of income you get as
a regular columnist in a War games magazine won't pay the
mortgage rate. Whereas the people who owned
miniature war games at the time said, look, we're quite
interested in buying battle games off you.
And even more extraordinary, said we'd like to keep you on as
the editor as well and doing the layout because basically we like
what you're doing. But we want to support it.
But obviously we'll buy the title from you.
Don't get excited, folks. It really wasn't a lot of money.
We'll buy the title, buy the title from you, and keep you on
as editor, designer. So basically it was like, Oh my
God, huge sigh of relief. It was weird because I went from
being selfemployed to kind of being.
I was still technically selfemployed, but effectively
working for someone else for Atlantic publications.
But yeah, so that was 2011. Then what happened in 2013 was
they said, oh, it's coming up for that.
I think it was like the 400th issue of Miniature War Games
magazine. We'd love for your design work.
Would you revamp Miniature War Games to make it look more
modern? And I said, yeah, sure, I'd love
to. So I did a design proposal.
And went to see the boss of the publishing house because they
did a number of other magazines as well.
Model railway magazines, that kind of stuff.
Garden Railways. And the guy said to me, we, we
love your redesign. But more than that, we actually
think we'd like you to become the editor of a combined Battle
Games with Miniature War Games magazine.
And I was like, seriously? And I said yes.
So sadly they let go. The guy who had been the editor
of Miniature War Games. Lovely guy called Andrew
Hubbard, if he's listening. Hi, Andrew, Hope you're OK.
But suddenly my workload went from doing all I'd been doing
every other month to a magazine twice the length every month.
So it was like, Oh my God. But it was OK, and people were,
you know, it was well received and sales went, you know, it was
great. And then he got to 2015 and the
guy who owned Atlantic Publishers just suddenly decided
literally overnight, oh, I think I'm going to retire.
And so, without telling me, sold the magazine to Warner's, a big
magazine publishers up in Lincolnshire.
So literally, I was driving back from a meeting one day and the
phone rang. So I pulled over and, oh,
Trevor, hi Trevor. Oh yeah, Henry.
Need to let you know you don't work for me anymore.
And I was like, what? What?
Sorry. Have you fired me?
Is it? Oh, no, no, no, no.
You now work for this other guy at Warner's.
Here's his phone number. Give him a call, he'll fill you
in. Bye.
It was literally kind of like that.
And I was like. Thunderstruck.
Anyway, the guy, it was a really lovely guy rang Warners and we
got to ever had a meeting and he essentially said, look Henry, I
come from a motorbike background.
I have no clue what it is you do.
I know nothing about this war gaming thing.
So would you please just carry on doing what you're doing and
here's a 10% pay rise right. So it was like that was really
weird because he kind of just. Let me get on with it.
And my liaison with Warner's, shall we say, it was minimal for
quite some time. It was like, OK, I'll do
whatever. Anyway, that was great.
So that was 2015. That was great until about the
end of 2015 when suddenly he contacted me and said, oh, I've
been given a new job, Henry doing this other thing.
You're now and I won't name any names, but you're now.
Under the purview of this other person, and cut a Long story
short, Josh, me and this new person didn't get along terribly
well because this new person was only interested in numbers.
They again, had no knowledge of the hobby, didn't actually care
about the readership, and just wanted to come in and impose
their ideas of what the magazine should be like.
My the fact that I've been a war gamer since 196869.
Something like that didn't matter a damn to them, right?
It was just, I think you should do this because this is what we
do with our other caravaning, camping, fly fishing, whatever
it is magazines. So we want you to do that in
this magazine to get the numbers up.
I put up with that till something like September of
2016. At which point I said, you know
what, Enough. So I handed him my resignation
and walked away. And then, of course thought, Oh
my God, what have I done? So I'd gone from, you know, not
a massive but a decent salary every month to zip.
So then it was like, oh God, what shall I do?
Then life intervened. My mum died, bless her.
And it was all, you know, anyone who's been through a family
bereavement and has had to deal with being an executor, that
kind of stuff. I don't have to tell you what
that could be like. And that kind of took over my
life for a bit. So when I reemerged the other
side of that kind of 20/17/2018, I suppose it was, I was
literally like, Oh my God, what am I going to do now?
I was desperate for money by that point.
In the meantime, I've been keeping an eye on the birth of
this thing called Patreon, and so I just decided to take a
punt. It's like literally, what could
I lose? I'll contact the people who used
to subscribe to battle games and say, hey, I'm going to try and
do the doing this. I've been doing a few magazine
articles in the meantime and to my astonishment, I went from
zero to like 100 and something patrons within a week.
It was amazing and very heartening.
So that's how I started Patreon doing, you know, my battle chat,
podcasts and blog posts and that kind of stuff.
And then also at the same time, gosh, back in two concurrent
with this cause my the the book that a lot of people know me
for, the War Gaming Compendium. I've been approached to do that
back in 2008 by Penn and Soul. So when I was editor of Battle
Games, they, I think it was at the Salute show in London.
That guy came out and tapped me on the shoulder and said, oh
Henry, we're interested in getting into this war gaming
thing and I think it could be good for us.
Would you write a book for us? And I was like, sorry, that's
not how things happen. I've spent my whole life wanting
to be a writer. I'm thinking I'm going to have
to do multiple drafts of manuscript viron agents, sending
it off to 50 different publishers, waiting two years.
And this guy just walked up to me and said, oh, Henry, would
you write a book for us? Mad.
So I, you know, I was young, I was gullible and I said pretty
much where do I sign? And then so I, you know the war
gaming ended well. What?
So I said what do you want me to write about?
And I said I would leave that up to you.
Big mistake, right. Saying to a guy like me it's up
to you because of course I'm not the, you know, I struggle to
have limited goals let's put it that way.
And so this thing just grew and grew and grew.
I mean, it's ended up even in this edited version.
It's 520 pages, I think with Compendium and but again, to my
astonishment that that was published in 2013.
So that was in the midst of me having just become editor of
Miniature War Games with Battle Games when they combined the
two, to my astonishment. Wow.
It it, you know, in in its tiny sphere.
It became a bestseller, you know, got that coveted little
Amazon, little orange tag there. And it was just like, I was
blown away and the publishers were blown away and said right,
well, we wanted to write another one for us, please.
And in fact, the complicated factor there was they were quite
clever. They got me to sign 3 contracts
for three different books, the first of which was Wargaming
Campaigns, plus a couple of others, which I'll come back to
in a minute. But the war gaming Campaigns
thing is that I oh great, that seemed like a logical following
because I've done a chapter on campaigns in the compendium and
it seemed logical. Well, if I'm going to expand on
something that was in that world Campaigns, because Don
Featherstone, the one of the grandaddies of war gaming back
in the 70s, had written a lovely book on war gaming campaigns and
there hadn't really been anything of that style of
quality since then. So I thought, Oh yeah, there's
there's a gap there. Plus people knew me for doing my
mad, highly intricate mapping and that kind of stuff.
So that seemed like a logical place to go.
Well, the first book would take me, what, 5 years to write?
War Gaming Campaigns took me 9 years.
Well, it was, you know, so that was commissioned pretty much,
yeah, 2013 and it didn't come out until last year, 2022
because a number of things that happened in the meantime, which
we can gloss over briefly, including prostate cancer and a
mental breakdown, Those are the probably the two key things that
happened. And trust me, that kind of thing
takes the wind out of your sails a bit.
So work on it on this vast book kind of got put to one side
because, you know, particularly when you're undergoing
radiotherapy, your energy levels just go through the floor.
It's just, you know, and I couldn't think straight and you
know, the drugs they put you on, that's what led partly to my
kind of mental breakdown. So I'm going to say this out
loud right now. I'm a big champion of mental
health. I hope I'm living proof.
You might know things over. I hope I'm living proof that you
can have a mental breakdown. Doesn't mean you're not normal.
It just means that stuff got too much for you, but you can come
out the other side. Some people might dispute that I
come out the other side, but never mind.
But but but anyway, so the book, that ginormous book came out
last year and that again I, I this is, it's at 526 pages.
I saw the video mate. So almost exactly the same as
the compendium had been. So that you can use them as
weights, you know if you're doing weight.
I really enjoyed that. It was really good, Josh.
Yeah. Yeah.
Do you know some people took that seriously?
Some people thought I was. Some people just don't have an
irony gland, you know what I mean?
But anyway, so but that, again, is the edited down version.
So anyway, and again, I've been blown away at how that's been
received. I mean the most extraordinary
thing, Josh, for not just those books but also my subsequent
books. We'll talk about in a second the
way that people ordered them. And when the book has arrived at
their home, they've taken a picture of it and posted it on
social media. I mean, it's like, wow.
I mean, I can't, I can't express how moved I am by that and how
grateful I am for that. That's just extraordinary.
And also, let's be blunt as a now self-publishing author, wow,
what amazing publicity. Effectively, I've got to
confess, free advertising. Every time someone does that, I
just come along, click, retweet, thank you very much indeed.
And effectively it's a form of free advertising for me, which
is priceless. I mean, because social media
advertising, as you may well know, Josh is going to be pretty
hit and miss and can be expensive and is at the mercy of
algorithms and all that kind of stuff.
So when that kind of thing happens, that that's just
phenomenal. Anyway, so that book came out
last year, very well received. It was kind of after that
earlier this year, in fact, kind of February, March.
I had a bit of an epiphany because I got a call from the
publishers Pen and Sword, and they said to me, wow, Henry, we
thought you'd like to know that the first print run, 2000
copies, We've sold out, we've ordered another print run.
And I was like, wow, seriously amazing.
And they said, yeah, yeah, yeah, so I, you know, I was doing a
quick calculation in my head because the cover price is £40
and the contract said 10% royalties, you know, and so, oh
wow, So anytime now, March, sometimes I'm due quite a nice
check then. And I said, so I imagine it's
going to be about X. And the guy on the other end of
the line paused and they said, oh, that's not the number I've
got in front of me here, Henry. I said, oh, what is the number
you've got in front of you there?
And he told me and it was about half what I was expecting.
So I said, can you explain that please?
And after a couple of minutes conversation he directed me to
something like clause 29 sub clause D near the end of the
contract in small print where it says that Oh yes, if they sell
copies on mass to retailers at greater than a 50% discount, my
royalty rate is halved. And guess what?
They sold a huge number of those copies to people like Amazon and
Waterstones and others at 55% discount on the cover price
without telling me. This is the thing about
traditional publishers. Hey, I'm just an author.
Why should I be told anything useful, right?
I'm just, I should just be happy and honored that they've
published my book and that my name's on this book jacket and
that they condescend to give me a bit of money as a thank you
while I was incandescent. I've been involved with the
self-publishing world, doing design work in the
self-publishing world and and consultancy work in the
self-publishing world for a very, very long time.
And of course I self published my own magazine, Battle Games,
for 5-6 years and I was like, do you know what?
Never again. So I set myself, you know, in my
anger can be a really good motivated for change basically.
Yeah, that's true. So, absolutely.
So it was like, right, I'm going to show him something.
So that's why I then I contacted the guys, the team at War Game
Soldier Strategy magazine, for whom I'd written a series of
articles about tactics table talk, battle tactics and said
look, you know, would you be okay if I the rights reverted to
me and I did something with them and they were, yeah, absolutely
it's fine. We're never going to reprint
them. Do what you like with them.
Basically the only thing was that all the maps that have been
with the original articles in the magazines have been done by
their in house illustrator and with their copyright.
So to solve that problem, I redid all the maps and
everything myself, redid all the diagrams and everything, Reject
the text, made sure, because they'd obviously edited down my
text. So I was like, okay, actually,
this stuff I wanted to put back in, correct.
And brought out that Tabletop Battle Tactics book.
Was it March? I think it was end of February,
March this year. And let's just say that book has
already earned me more money in that period of this period of
time than working nine years on war gaming campaigns.
Wow. Thank you, mate.
Really? Yeah.
That's incredible. That's wonderful.
Really. Really.
Haven't here that for you, mate. That's great.
I mean, it's just it was a what, apart from anything is it proved
to me that, yeah, there is a market for this stuff.
Yes, I do have an appeal outside of whatever pen and sword total
lack of marketing does. I mean when you when you
traditionally published, if you're lucky they put the they
put your book on their website and they have a little printed
catalog they send out twice a year and probably in the first
year your book is published, you might appear in one or two of
them. You know if you're lucky you
might get in the one that comes out just before Christmas.
That's their idea of marketing, right.
They've only in the last year or two hired someone who
specializes in social media. But that means if you're lucky,
if you do a tweet like I do on Twitter, if you're lucky, they
might retweet you once or twice. So it's like, well, I'm doing
all the work anyway, right? So why am I not being paid for
it? So that was the lesson that the
tabletop battle tactics thing taught me.
And so then it was like, wow, okay, that's done.
All right, what do I do now? And God bless social media.
A few months ago there were I posted, I'm really into war
gaming campaigns. You know this Josh and I posted.
I got back in the day. I kept really meticulous
notebooks about, you know, all the campaign moves, where each
unit was on each day and what they were doing and what my
thoughts were about what the enemy was up to and stuff.
And I dug out some of these notes and just put a couple of
pages of them up on Twitter. There was one guy in particular,
but a bunch of people said, oh wow, you should, you should do a
book of this stuff. And I was like, really,
seriously, who? It's that's so niche.
Who the hell would buy it? And they say, Oh well, I'd buy
it. So it was like, well, again, a
bit like with the battle game saying what the hell, give it a
go. And so that's why the the Martin
Stark 1744 book came out, I suppose it's about a month ago
now, isn't it? And again, it's like, wow, I
can't. It's selling.
And again, people were getting their copy, posting it on
Twitter, It's like, this is amazing.
So now yeah, I've got I I there's one contract I can't get
out of from the traditional publishing route.
I've got to fulfill that. But I've managed to buy myself
plenty of time for it because I'm not going to rush into it.
But basically self-publishing is where I'm at now.
So now it's literally OK, I've done that one, I've done that
one. Now what?
Because, you know, that's that's the thing now.
It's like all my income I'm having to generate from outside
my my own head, you know, So there you go.
So that's kind of the story of all my books and stuff, Josh.
And as I warned you before the show, if you press a certain
button, I can happily talk for 36 minutes.
I'll let you loose now, Henry. That's wonderful, man.
I told you I can let you off the chain and you can.
I've always like you know, like I've enjoyed listening to you
and I. And the way I found out about
you was through. Through the View from the
Veranda series. Oh, with Neil Shark.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, and that's how I first
found out about you and listened to you and Neil talk and help.
They're actually my favorite podcasts.
I love the Maples and Miniatures podcast and I'm really sad that
it ended. But yeah, you're, I think 12 or
13 episodes you did with Neil over a great span of time that
sort of followed your story, your personal journey, you know,
you know, going through like what you just talked about, but
in much more detail. About what you're going through
and your struggles and that kind of stuff.
So it was really good to just hear you talk about that and
then you know talk about many other different things about on
different aspects about war gaming with Neil.
And yeah, it was wonderful. It's great to I I actually
listened to them again, I think a few years ago and just went
back and listened to them and I just, I kept hearing the the
word Scaven over and over and over again.
You're the main reason why I started collecting Scaven.
Really. Yeah, it was my dear.
So thanks. Thanks.
Thanks to you and your and your yeah, I think sometimes you
talked about Warhammer or your past, you know, spells playing
Warhammer with your friend guy or something like that.
And yeah, that's true. Always referred to Scaven as one
of the main races at the Clave. So do you still actually have a
lot of those armies or books or things like that that you had
back in the day? Well, you know, how far back do
you want to? Go Wow.
Beautiful 5th edition. Nice.
Yeah, that's what I started with because what I I There was a
box. It was a box set, wasn't it?
Which I think had was it having it scaven an empire or
something? Those Protonians.
That particular set had the Protonians.
The the It's a lizard. Oh the lizard man, That's right.
Yeah I I kind of forgot but at some point I mean this God, I
look back at this. So this would have been what
1996 right. It says that the copyright 1996
because I'd I'd been living up in South and or Sea in Essex and
I moved down to Brighton, Brighton and Hove in.
It was about 1991 and I had been doing some kind of the
historical war gaming stuff with my friend Guy and it was kind of
the early 90s. I discovered Games Workshop in
the Lanes area of Brighton. It's kind of the old, what used
to be an old fishing village in the center of Brighton, Little
Twitten Lanes and that kind of stuff.
And there was a game, what was then called, of course, Games
Workshop, not Warhammer, called Games Workshop.
And they sold all kinds of things as well, not just
Warhammer and that sort of thing.
They sold, you know, chess sets and all sort backgammon and
other board games. Some Dungeons and Dragons I seem
to remember. It was all before, kind of.
The branding men really kind of took hold and said enough.
This is going to be the pure temple of Games Workshop only,
right? But I was intrigued by this box
set that had, you know, two small armies in it.
And the measuring sticks, those plastic measuring sticks and
some templates. And the rule book.
And if I recall, the battle book as well.
And I was like, wow, that looks really interesting and colorful
and apart from anything, as it also came with the, you might
have it in your collection there, just the the the, the
painting guide, the first little painting guide, like a little
magaziney thing. And I thought, wow, that's
really good. Of course the whole Citadel
paint range as it then was, and citadel miniatures on the walls,
you know, in blisters and what have you.
And I thought, well, I've done some Dungeons and Dragons, but
Theatre of the Mind D&D way back when I was at university, so in
the early 80s. But this kind of intrigued me.
I think I had bought a few or there had been a game shop when
I was at university and they had some.
I think it was Ral Partha miniatures back then, and I
bought a handful, but I've never really done fantasy miniature
gaming. There were a couple of rule sets
out there for it, but under the guise probably of war gaming in
Middle Earth, something of that. Nature.
But when I saw this, this Warhammer stuff, I was like kind
of blown away. And it's like, wow, amazing.
And I look back now, all these people I now know extremely
well. The Peri twins and Rick Priestly
and what have you with them all in the photographs in these
books, looking so young. Oh.
My God, it's a bit bit of a while ago now, wasn't it?
Oh my God. Dave Andrews, Alessio Cavatory,
people like that. It's like, wow, they had hair,
you know? Right.
But also, the other thing that was really lovely was all the
terrain making advice and that kind of stuff, and just the fact
that they'd really got their acts together in terms of
effectively creating a game in a box.
So they made no assumptions about how much you might know
before you came to the hobby. They didn't make any
assumptions. You know, one of the problems
with historical war gaming historically, pardon the pun,
has been, yeah, well, you know, if you're interested in World
War 2 history, you can play this game.
If you're interested in 18th century history, you can play
this game. But that's making a big
assumption that people are sitting at home reading, you
know, the memoirs of Napoleon or something like that, you know,
which is like, no, that's not what most people do.
You. Yes, there is a market of people
who do do that. And in fact this weekend just
gone, you will have seen on Twitter loads of posts about a
big show that happened up in, I think it's Northamptonshire
called the We Have Ways podcast show.
There's a couple of famous guys, James Holland who is a
historian, very well known popular military historian and
Al Murray who formerly was a comedian actually but is
actually has a history degree as a highly knowledgeable guy.
And between the two of them they run this amazing podcast called
the We have ways as in we have ways of making you talk podcast,
you know? And they together with obviously
shed load of help put together this huge festival that took
place over this previous weekend where a bunch of guys from 2 Fat
Lardies, 2 Fat Lardies being a very popular brand of historical
war game went along and put on some amazing games for public
participation at this show. And it looks totally sense of
purposes like they had an amazing experience.
But of course what they were able to count on with that is
that people who went to that show are history nuts.
In particular their World War 2 history nuts, right?
Because let's say the tickets were cheap, right?
And so they would pay probably upwards of £100 to spend the
weekend at this place listening to lectures about various
aspects of World War 2. And people were driving around
in tanks and armored personnel carriers and they had, they had
reenactors and stuff. It looks incredible and in this
big tent that apparently was like 100 degrees inside
basically the the two fat largest guys put on a series of
games over the two or three days of the game was.
But as I say, that's great, that's fantastic.
But of course the assumption there is the people at that show
are already interested in military history of one kind or
another, and so would look at a a World War 2 game being played
and go, oh, that's interesting. That looks like Normandy 1944.
I wonder what that's all about. That immediately draws someone
in. Of course, the big question is
historical war gaming. How do you reach out to people
who aren't history nuts, who, you know, might watch the
occasional war movie on, you know, Netflix or something, but
aren't necessarily the kind of people who would spend their
pocket money, as it as it were, on books about the battle of
Waterloo? You know, I I was one of the
kids who did. I did save up my pocket money
because I I had got the bug because of my father.
But of course, I'm also part of that generation whose fathers
fought in the Second World War, right.
And or or or, you know, we're involved in it in one way or
another. So I got my bug, if you like,
for history from my dad. Now, of course, that's not so
much the case. And there's a lot.
Yes, of course, there are veterans of Iraq and Iran and
what have you, but the numbers involved are so much smaller.
That's the first thing, you know, whereas World War 2, there
was conscription, right? Millions of people went to
fight. Nowadays it's a much, much
smaller and you know, as a matter of debate how small, too
small, tiny. You know, it's a tight,
relatively tiny number of people.
And of course the more recent wars that have been for are
more, shall we say, problematic in terms of the public's
attitude towards them. And of course, as as I know, I'm
a supporter of a charity called Combat Stress, lots of guys
coming back with post traumatic stress disorder and more
complex. So this is where going back to
Games Workshop, this was where the genius was of a shop on
every High Street, right? I can't, you know, they're now
is it? They're the most profitable
company in the world or something.
It's quite extraordinary how they've managed that basically
with shops selling toy soldiers. That is absolutely phenomenal.
And This is why hats off to them.
You know, I I, I've like most people who've been involved
with, you know, fantasy gaming. At some point we've probably
gone, oh God, I think the prices are a bit steep, aren't they?
And they're a bit exclusive. And now it's all you know.
This is where I have to admit I've kind of lost interest.
Since it's gone all age of Sigma and that kind of stuff.
My interest kind of started to wane probably at what would I
know, was it 6th or 7th edition? I can't remember roundabout
whatever edition that is. 6th edition I think I bought because
the 7th edition book was hard back, wasn't it?
And I think I bought that and it, but I think it was after 6th
edition I definitely started to feel like it's not the kind of
fantasy gaming I want to play anymore.
But up to that point certainly I could see, you know, no brainer
as a way a gateway drug if you like, of getting people into the
hobby of playing with toy soldiers and the the way that
they look after, looked after the customers in the shop.
Hey course, come in, we've got, we've got a club, not play a
game. Come in and learn how to paint
your figures just coming off the street.
Look mate, look, we've got some of our new paints there, the
base colors or whatever they were back in the day.
There you go. Paints, brushes, couple of
miniatures we've put together, just have a play paint with
them. Wow, phenomenal.
And this is one of the reasons why, of course, comparatively
speaking, historical war gaming has suffered.
Because back in the day, if you wanted historical war games
miniatures, it would have been a probably a general hobby shop or
model shop where they would have probably had model railways and
model sailing boats and kits, you know, plastic kits, maybe
even some art stuff. And Oh yes, there's a little
corner devoted to wargaming, and probably that shop would have
been run by a grumpy old bastard.
In the Cardigans, I know those types.
I met them, yeah, Grumpy old bastard in the cardigan who
looked at you down his nose as if you were some sort of piece
of dirt on his shoe. What do you want?
Right. Hardly encouraging.
And of course makes you beg the question of, well, why did they
bother to stock the stuff if they didn't want to encourage
people in to come and buy it? But their their their specialty
was probably model railways and they were pretty antisocial and
introverted. You know, I I've learned enough
psychology now to know they probably had real problems.
You know, that they didn't know how to address, you know, social
problems. But anyway, that compare that
with a Games Workshop where, oh hi, you know, let me know if you
need anything. Certainly in the in the better
branches where they didn't just hound you to buy something, you
know, from the moment you got in the door.
But the better branches with the, you know, they acknowledge
you come in the door. Hi there.
Let me know if there's anything you need.
Right. Fantastic.
So they've acknowledged your existence, you know.
And so if you're standing there and you're, oh, oh, right.
Is there a particular paint color you're looking for?
Can I help you? Or, oh, what army do you tend to
collect? You know, and I've got, you
know, I've had some laughs over the years with that, where I've
been in the Games Workshop. So someone's come up to my show.
Oh, right. So.
So what armies do you collect most, oh, 18th century Prussians
and Austrians. How about you?
Right. And now that's just been me
being nasty, really. But no, yeah, I've had many
conversations with because I the other thing is, obviously you
look at my age and I would be twice, three times the age of
the average shop assistant in a Games Workshop store.
So they're like, what the Hell's he doing here?
But I actually know an awful lot of my compactions of my age
group who will want wander into Warhammer because they want a
couple of pots of paint or they just want to see what painting
techniques people are using or just look at the pretty pictures
in the books, you know, or you know the astonishing painting
skills on display. And I think that's that's
important. What I've I'm very much a
generalist. You know, I play all kinds of
stuff and I think that one of the biggest problems can be if
people silo themselves and say I'm just a fantasy game or I'm
just historicals and and the fancy games are the work of the
devil kind of thing, which is just like really over it, you
know, It's like why we can all learn so much from each other.
And certainly when I think of now, some of the accounts I
follow on social media for people doing painting, for
example, I follow easily as many people who painting fantasy and
sci-fi stuff as I do. People are painting historical
stuff and there's some great accounts.
People like Troy, Sonic sledgehammers, he goes under
who's got now I know 1015 thousand followers on YouTube is
mad and he paints both historical and fantasy and
sci-fi stuff, which is fantastic because it just shows that mate
we're all just painting toy soldiers really.
And so these techniques, yeah, I don't know many historical war
games who go to the length of doing non metallic metals for
example. I think that is something that's
very much in the kind of fancy and sci-fi genre.
But yeah, why not basing stuff, terrain making, it's a fantasy
tree is pretty much like a historical tree.
You know, a fantasy farmhouse is, you know, when I look at the
empire stuff, you know that Games Workshop promoted over the
years or the Britonian stuff, yeah, that looks pretty much
like medieval slash renaissance Europe, right?
So you know, there's this cross fertilization that's possible.
But anyway, going back to your original question, that was the
first warhammer that I bought when things were painted.
Very bright colors. Right.
Yeah, yeah. And there was another game I've
got to mention. Advanced hero.
Quest, I was just about to ask you there because I thought that
was your first, the very first product you ever bought from the
Games Workshop. That was.
You probably still have the box set there.
Well, I don't have the box. Well, the box is somewhere else,
but the figures get regular outings.
I'm going to dig out some stuff. I don't know if you want to take
any screenshot. What have I got here?
Hang on a minute.
I know from your recent podcast
you've been talking about on battle chat you're using for D&D
and your D&D sessions. Oh, yes, yes, yes, yes.
Which is great to hear. Now let's have a look you might
recognize. Where's the camera?
Aha. Yes, I do recognize that one.
Yeah, he's the Is it Heinrich? Yeah, that was Heinrich.
Absolutely. And of course.
Aha, there he is. The the mighty, Dwarf, the
mighty. That's right.
And and of course, if you've got a dwarf, you've got to have.
Have the ELF. That's right, have the elf as
well. And then we've got the wizard.
Great Magnus. That's him.
Beautiful. That's him.
So they were the first one. And then of course that set came
with all these wonderful kind of men at arms and things with
their howbirds and bills and what have you.
What a great and swordsmen as well, what a great set that was.
And of course that segwayed nicely into Britonians back in
the day. And who else have I got in
there? And now they get mixed and
matched. So now I've got.
I can't remember who I got in from someone off eBay, but these
wonderful D&D figures. He's a lovely Dwarf Cleric kind.
Of yeah, but of course what you're looking for, since we're
talking Scaven. Yes, you're looking for them.
That's right. The giant Stave.
And they're absolutely huge, those plastic models, aren't
they? They're huge with their kind of
saw toothed swords and things. They were huge, and I got so
many of them that I also mounted some onto square bases.
Nice, because that was the other thing.
Hero Quest. Advanced Hero Quest.
A squares based game but with round bases.
What's that all about, right? I don't know.
And funnily enough, I actually started basing my stuff with
square bases. You know, you're talking
fantasy. But then I thought.
That that looks so much cooler on round bases but the squares
don't allow you to have like they're 20 mil squares but
they're 25 mil round bases which is a real shame.
Yeah yeah yeah. So I I I use I've got both here
So I actually would use them if I'm playing on sort of open
ground non non gridded thing. But of course then I don't know
who who have I got in here. Well, it might be better off
just holding up a a thing with a.
It's got quite a selection. Of Yeah, there, isn't it?
Yeah. Nice, man.
A lot of scabing in there. Whole bunch of scabing plague
monks. Gotta love them.
And of course, one of my favorite the warp fire thrower.
Yes. And J sales.
What I always loved about the scabing, of course, is they had
some terrific stuff when it worked.
Yeah, and when it didn't work, it had this spectacular kind of
ending. Didn't it?
Oh my God, yeah, there's there's so many things.
Basically if it goes, if it works, fine it, you know, it's
deadly. But most of the time, the
likelihood is going to blow the shit out of you and.
It was really fine. I think there's 11 incident
where there's a wart fire thrower and you probably know
the wart fire broke in, right? And I think I've misfired and
exploded. And then I thought, OK, well,
they got heavy armor, so that should be OK, but oh, but it's
minus -1 saving throat. Oh well, they're dead anyway.
So why was it? Why why do they even write that
thing in there? You know, they should just say
that everyone everyone's dead. That's it.
Would move the model find up there.
I I had a I had a brilliant incident with the doom wheel.
Yeah, fabulous thing with the prongs at the front and side.
Yeah, sending out bolts of lightning.
And when it worked, wow, just like, Oh my God, it could fry an
entire regiment of, you know, Empire Halvedirs.
But I made a mistake because one game I decided to support my
doom wheel as it advanced with a unit of storm vermin, who of
course are wearing heavy armor. So when it came to the lightning
will strike the nearest target with the heaviest armor who did
it hit? So I had this amazing moment
where my chum guy who was playing Dark Elves at the time.
Because I hate the dark Elves. Oh my God, they wrote the Dark
Elves to be almost indestructible, I swear.
But anyway, I was really confidently advancing.
It's like, right, lightning bolts from my doom wheel and guy
just sat there very calmly as I was kind of doing the measuring
and stuff to his unit of Corsairs or whatever they were.
And he very comes it. Henry, that's not the closest
armored unit. And I was like what what what He
said look to your left and my unit of Storm Burming just kind
of nine inches away from the doom wheel.
So of course they just got bride fried fur and flesh everywhere.
I'm holding up one of my favorite miniatures, actually.
Here we go. Ah yes, the Death Master, Death
Master snitch. Or how it was pronouncable,
yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Unpronouncable. What a fabulous model.
Absolutely. It took me ages to work out that
that was his tail holding another sword.
You know, sometimes you get the bear casting and you're not
quite sure what it is you're looking at, particularly since
back then we had to black undercoat everything, right?
And I'm just like wow, Oh my God.
And they're all Venom Swords as well, of course.
Poisonous Venom Swords. What a fantastic character.
Here is Death Master snicks. I've got some others, some of my
other favorite models from back then.
Tell me to shut up when you need to.
No, no, no. Don't go for it.
Go for it. Loving it.
Yeah. OK, lovely.
Weren't they? Fabulous things.
Armpit hair as well. Armpit hair.
And covered in boils and goodness knows what.
And oh, the plague monk standard bearer, That kind of thing.
Yeah, of it. They were just.
I think that was The thing is, what magic banners and what have
you. Weren't they just, you know,
lovely things? I know warlocks gave them
warlocks and that kind of stuff. I like that.
Model. That's great.
Yeah, Yeah, there, there's some lovely models.
There's another one in here somewhere, I think, with a with
another thing like him. Cool.
They're they're great models. So these these models all must,
you know, they'd be called Old Hammer now, that's for sure.
They're all dating back to 1990. Something I couldn't say.
Exactly 399 three. Yeah, sadly.
I think actually some of the worst sculpts and casting at
that time were the Storm vermin. I don't know if you remember,
but they were all too big to rank up together, so it meant
you've got this elite unit of Storm vermin.
Actually, it's like they didn't like one or the other.
They didn't want to stick together at all.
But yeah, yeah, I've got box those.
But I even loved the things. Like back then, they were still
plastic, the giant rats and. Things Oh, cool.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Lovely.
Rat swarms. Rat swarms.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't know what have I what
else? Oh, God, this is a really old
one now. This was a really old warlord.
I love that guy. Yeah, it was cool going way
back. So that's one of the really
early ones, isn't it? It was the sculptor back then.
Was it Cheers Griffin or something?
Yeah, I was going to say. I think I picked up a
publication. My tiger.
Tiger called heroes for war games.
God, yes, I've got that. Downstairs down on the show.
Okay, okay, I thought it might be on the shelf next to you, but
it's downstairs. But it's got, yeah, a big
catalog spread of all the original Scaven that Jess
William sculpted. And it is my belief, and I'm not
100% sure, that I think he might have actually created the entire
race. Right.
He created a background. He created, you know, the
obviously the design of the figures and everything like that
and maybe and then worked with other designers to flesh out the
race itself. And I think the first time I
ever saw them appear in the law and that kind of thing was the
Warhammer Fantasy role play first edition core book.
Oh right. And in the back there was a
scenario where you face the Scaven.
And yeah, they're exactly, they're they're very early, just
very early. They were so much smaller, you
know, kind of like you can imagine them sneaking around.
That's right, These ones, unlike the latest cave and that kind of
got more beefed up. And as I certainly once we got
to the once of these, got to these blooming storm vermin that
won't rack up together, they're a very different kind of
proposition, aren't they? The main reason was they changed
this the sculptor. So the Moralda miniature team,
Colin Dixon designed a lot of those models, and of course the
scale of them were just too big and too chunky.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Lovely models, but yeah, they
just didn't rank up very nice. Yeah.
So there we are.
So that's me showing some of my scaven bona fide.
That's the first time I first see that mate, so thank you very
much for the privilege of seeing those.
It's great. Oh, that's.
You're welcome. You're very welcome.
And The thing is, as I say, because I'm now doing D&D and
stuff, they they regularly get used.
These things don't just sit around doing nothing, They're
getting used in a kind of D&D context.
And of course there is now what am I using?
5th edition D&DI think it is the one that's kind of vast, and I
couldn't possibly remember everything that's in there
nowadays. But there's there's a Scaven
kind of conversion that's been done because of course rat men
have always existed in D&D. But the the kind of ethos of the
Scaven needed to be kind of translated to D&D and it's it's
really good fun because I get to use these old models.
I probably wouldn't get to use much otherwise because I haven't
got a local opponent anymore who's into what we now have to
call old Hammer. But there is a there's a lovely
guy who you will see on Twitter under the handle of goat major
at GOAT Major, lovely guy called Simon Tonkis, who is someone I
know I met through historical wargaming kind of connections.
And he's a fabulous figure painter as well, but he's really
into old hammer stuff. But he's really old Old Hammer.
He's going back to like third edition, I think it was, yeah,
Because something else that I've just remembered that the very
first Warhammer I bought, the Magic came in a separate box,
didn't it? With a lot of cards and things.
That's. Right.
Yeah, so that'll be 4th edition or 5th edition, because 5th
edition also had a magic set, which I've seen on your shelf.
In one of the pictures pictures on Twitter.
So you do actually have the 5th edition magic set?
Yeah. Is it the 5th edition?
I can't keep remember what edition is what.
Yeah, yeah. I'll tell you, mate, that one.
That's all right, mate. But anyway, so that's kind of
my, the Scaven stuff that I've still got.
And I've got, I'm pointing over there, there's a shelf over
there with a couple of those really useful boxes full of more
stuff. I've got a load of basic Scaven
plastic warriors that I'm sitting in the process of
painting. Actually, I don't know if I'll
ever get around to finishing them.
And oh, God, CJ, what have I got?
Have I got it here? Oh, actually, I've got another
one of the other boxes here, which has got mostly unpainted
stuff. Oh, God.
But I will show you this. Hang on.
Let's put it over there. Yeah, because this one's heavy.
You've got things like the Warp Fire cannon.
Right, I thought that was a great model.
The warp fire. Cannon Ingenious engineering
from the skating. It shouldn't blow up, should it?
On this fire roll, don't stand in the way.
I've also got a siege ram which I haven't finished painting yet,
because of course there's this this big life is cheap kind of
vibe that the Scaven have and some other.
What's in here? I'm paying.
Oh my God, look who I've just discovered.
Do you know who he is? Is it Prasanna or whatever it's
called the the standard amulet guy.
He's like the right, he's like the top dude.
Yeah, the the inbox, right? Yeah.
And the course under remembers name What is that's that's yes.
Prasanna I can't exactly remember.
I can't. It's something like that.
Good. Things that I can never
pronounce, but but there we are. He's actually due for a repaint
because he got well used in various hero Quest dungeons and
things. So, and who else is this Thrott,
The unclean one of the original castings with the man catcher?
Yep, that's right. So yeah, you get ensnared and
that thing is going to take your head off, basically.
That's right. Yeah, lovely intention.
We've got another. He's going to be some kind of
Gracie or something like that, isn't he?
So it could be like a warlock or something like that.
Easy, yeah. And someone pointing, looking
important is pointing. He must be in charge of
something. Right.
And it's got this little warp fire pistol.
Yeah, that's right, warp fire pistol.
That's one thing, actually I do love about the Scaven is the
whole notion of the Warp Stone. Is the fact that basically it's
like heroin. It's crack cocaine, right?
And up to a point, the more of it you nibble, the more powerful
you become. But then, oh, look out for the
consequences. Yeah, this is great.
I've not been on a podcast before, Josh, where I get to get
my toys out in quite this way. That's.
Awesome. I'm really happy.
I'm really enjoying that. It's making anything that it's
good to see and also of course there have been some lovely
publications in recent years and they one of the things that I'm
going to hold up this uniforms and heraldry of the Scaven,
right. Have you not seen that?
I've not seen that because that's sort of like later
editions, maybe 8th edition or something like that.
Yeah, yeah. But I I wanted to grab.
By Neil Neil Hodgson and Robin Cruddis.
I don't know who they are now. This would have been published.
I suppose it's a few years ago now, but annoyingly they make it
really hard to find publication dates 2010. 2010, So yeah, I
remember that third edition, when it when the 3rd edition
came out. So we got the big reboot of
Warhammer, basically. Yeah, gosh, was it?
Was it third edition Crikey? I've lost.
I lost track. Yeah, 8th, probably. 8th edition
mate. 2000, Eighth edition, Yeah.
I was going to say. Not third edition, no, but it's
full of if you're a scaven nut stuff that we love.
All the different rooms and all the different clans of course.
So you got clan Eschen. Clan pestilence, Clan moulder,
Clan skrier. We've got the grace sears.
Oh, great reference. Showing you know how to paint
things. The Warlord clans of Clan Moors
and Clan Falcon, whoever. Falcon are someone just like
that, yeah. Dwells in Fortress Warrens,
carved into the searing heart of Fire Mountain.
All clan members are branded upon birth, and its warriors dye
their fur a bright red. The warriors of Clan Falcon bare
blades of shiny black Obsidian mind deep beneath their volcanic
layers. There we go.
So lots of background fluff, loads of banner designs and
stuff, and it's Clan Morbidous. This is a nice one.
Clan Crizzle. They've made-up some new clans.
Basically what I love about this is someone's gone through the
scaving and done what I do with my imaginations stuff.
Yeah, they've sat there making shit up.
Josh and I completely, I completely endorse that big a
clan septic because some of the names are great, aren't they?
Because I know what it. I know what it could be like
mate, is that someone comes to the hobby and you know, might
not have the same level of imagination as some other
people. And so to a certain extent, you
know, some of us might be moan the fact, oh God, people need to
be spoon fed these days. But actually my feeling is, if
it helps get someone into the hobby quicker and more deeply,
where's the harm of it? You know, if someone looks at a
book like this is, I mean, this is great clan scurvy.
So they have, they're like the Marines, they're the Navy of the
Scaven, right? With their mad ramshackle ships.
That's fantastic. And in fact, in the D&D campaign
that I'm running at the moment, I've decided, do you know what?
Clan scurvy fits the bill perfectly for what I want to do.
Because there's some guys, you know, they're invading this
island I've created for Denzel, right?
So they're they're Scaven have tunneled their way in and popped
up via the silver mines that are on the island.
You know, suddenly the islands are horrified that they're
looking for seams of silver, and suddenly they've come across
this glowing green stone that's in the mines as well.
You know, what the Hell's that? And before they know it, this
has attracted the attention of the Scaven, you know.
And so the the Scaven launched this invasion partly via tunnels
underneath the sea and up into the island but also partly they
do kind of a D-Day invasion, you know with Scan Clan, Scurvy as
the people who help transport the the other Scaven to the
island with of course much infighting and argument and
disasters, absolute assassinations, bad mouthing.
So actually having this kind of reference material is really
useful and some of this kind of story stuff behind it.
I think this is one of those wonderful things actually if I'm
going to credit Games Workshop with something, the amount of
effort they put into the the fluff is extraordinary.
You know, they hire people to write this stuff.
Yeah, well, I was going to say like Bill King was a massive
influence early on during the 4th edition era in creating a
lot of the Army books, and that's that cannon that sort of
carried on all the way through. For years, through various
editions and through books and that kind of thing.
So yeah, he's been a real pinnacle of the of forming the
We'll have a World in many lots. Yeah, Yeah, Yeah.
As another book, I'll hold up here, which is more recent
again, I think the loathsome ratsman and all their vile kin.
I don't know if you've seen this.
No, this is a paperback thing by Vilhelm Liber, but I don't think
that's their real name. By the outdoor press, of course,
it's not who's actually written it.
Mitchell Scanlon is the actual writer.
And this came out and oh, first published in 2004.
What? Interestingly, So this is a
reprint of something that first came out in 2004.
Yes, this is 2020, this reprint. So.
And again, it's just loads of background fluff and law about
different aspects of the Scaven. So it turns out I'm more of a
Scaven nut than you thought I would.
We're. Bringing out the closet now,
mate. Yeah, that's great.
But yes, it's the The thing is that I think the Scaven, because
there's just such a sense of fun attached to them.
You know, I've got Empire as well.
I've got Britonians as well, and obviously both those armies can
look stunning on the table top, You know, Britonians with all
the heraldry and the Empire with all the armor and bright colors,
a little thing. I don't know if you know about
me. I like the Empire because many
years ago when I was in historical reenactment, I was a
Lance Connect. I was one of those German
mercenary soldiers swinging around a great big sword.
And so the costume that I wore is direct Empire, right?
That's it. The Empire is a direct copy of
that kind of Renaissance era stress, so you know, that has
its appeal. But I mean, there's a few funky
things. I mean, obviously some of the
firepower aspects of the Empire can be quite interesting.
And of course they the maddest thing they ever had was the
steam tank. A model.
A model which I'm now told is worth quite a lot of money.
And I've got one over my and, yeah, and the the Bretonians,
you know, they've got their kind of philosophical law behind it.
And obviously the the sight of all those nights in their
comparisons and stuff stuff can look amazing on the tabletop
once you've spent months and months and months painting them.
But I just think that those are two armies that are quite
serious, you know what I mean? They're quite, you know, you
could put them on a historical war game battlefield and they
would do perfectly well, yeah. That's right.
So it's the Scaven and and the other army that I've kind of got
but haven't invested much time in painting it is the goblins,
you know, with their with their doom divers and and mad squiggs
and that kind of stuff. That's another army that I just
think what I laugh. So what I really ought to be
doing is playing games of Scaven versus Goblins, because of
course, they bump into each other under the, in the tunnels
under the. But that would just be utterly
random as a game, wouldn't it? Would be just completely random.
Two totally mad armies doing mad things fueled by mad potions.
What a laugh. And also, they're relatively
small, the goblins in particular.
I mean, I don't know. Probably.
I haven't seen recent goblins. Have goblins grown in the same
way as scale? I think so, yeah.
They're probably exaggerated 32 mil or whatever now.
But yeah, might be like the ones like.
And I feel the same way because I, you know, I first started
more Hammer with Heils, which are beautiful models from 4th
edition. Beautiful gorgeous Jess wooden
designs, and they're gorgeous. They look beautiful on the table
top, but they're so methodical. There's no kind of, you know,
there's no kind of sort of randomness to them.
But then when I switched to much later on the night, goblins
later on and I had just a ball playing them because they'll do
all this crazy wacky stuff. You have the fanatics coming
down and swinging their ball and chain and we'd have coming
through into the sky and plunging themselves into the
units and killing themselves in the process and.
And all this wonderful wild magic and the shamans will head,
the heads will blow off because they're way too much wild power
going surging through them. And I just had so much fun and
I'd lose every time, but it wouldn't matter because I just
had. Yeah, it's an enormous amount of
fun playing them. And I think they even are kind
of the same. And I think this is where the
contrast between me and my friend Guy.
For example, Guy Guy is a typical Dark Elf player.
The Dark Elves are just ruthless, right?
There's. And I looked, you see, I look at
that army and I think, well, it looked amazing, right?
And with all riding the Velociraptor things and the
corsairs and the sea green and you know, looked amazing in the
same way as many elf armies do. But my feeling about them was,
where's the fun? You know, if I want to play
serious war games, I'll I'll go historical.
You know, whereas I play fantasy, my, and this is
obviously a personal opinion because not everyone's like
this, Some people, for example, people who are very much into
kind of the Lord of the Rings and that kind of stuff.
It's a much more serious, almost pseudo historical kind of thing,
isn't it? You know what you've got.
There are armies that look. Pretty much historically ancient
slash medi, early medieval, doing battle with one another
with a few orcs and things thrown in shore.
But even the orcs behave in kind of.
You could say that, all right, they're savages in some way, but
they're also they behave in a kind of pseudo historical way in
the way you might expect, say, a native army facing a colonial
force might behave, you know? Whereas with Warhammer, I've
never wanted to take it terribly seriously, right?
I've My primary thing is I want it to be fun and there.
And part of that has also come from, I think, starting with the
Advanced Hero quest, which was these guys going down the
dungeon assailed by untold numbers of initially scathing,
right? And what a mad wacky situation
that was. And I think that's kind of it,
is that to me, Warhammer's almost like Wacky Races, if I
can put it that way. And I love the fact that as you
described the goblins there, in the same way as you could
describe the skating, is that, well, you know, wow, there's a
chance they might taste pieces, right?
There's also a chance that they might utterly implode, right,
and run away. And it takes a certain kind of
player to go, you know what? What the hell?
I'm just going to give it a go, right?
And sometimes it works, and a lot of the time it doesn't,
right? And it's the because of course
it's the same with magic. I think that was one of the
things as well that happened when at some point magic, or
maybe it was this edition, magic just became more like deploying
heavy artillery, right? They changed the magic system
and it became much more like magic became kind of more
predictable, but also more vicious, right?
And I kind of feel like I want my fantasy gaming.
I wanted to have magic, but I I don't want the magic to dominate
the game because there can be that feeling, can't there?
That what was the point of me turning up?
I I didn't. I just didn't have enough
dispelled dice, for whatever reason, because I chose a silly
army. I haven't got enough dispelled,
I said. Basically, I'm dead the moment I
make my first move. And that, to me is like, well,
you know, what's the point? I like, you know, magic to me
should be something that's not quite so predictably,
predictably powerful all the time.
It shouldn't feel like, Oh my God, this is World War One,
trench warfare, and we're going into no man's land.
If we reach the other side, we're lucky.
You know that to me is that's not a game.
That's right. I like to feel it's that balance
isn't with all with all gaming, unless you're doing directly a
historical simulation of some kind, that notion of the
imponderable of chance has to be there in a kind of tangible way.
I'd like to, but but it's a balancing act, because also you
don't want it to feel like it's too random.
You want to feel like, actually, if I use good tactics in this
situation, I should stand a better than Even's chance of
winning the game. If if I, if I use my troops
badly, If I deployed them badly, you know, okay, that's my own
fault. But I like to feel like do you
know what if I've really thought about this and supported my
units as they advance and and given covering fire and all that
kind of stuff that should count for something rather than sorry
mate, you just turned up with the wrong army, blacked right
And having just written not so long ago the book about tabletop
tactics, I would like to feel that those tactics could apply
whether you're playing a fantasy game, a sci-fi game or a
historical game. Basically if you're using your
mobile units correctly, your light troops correctly, you're
you're placing your fire, your you know the your long range
weapons in the you choose your position carefully so it covers
the units advancing and so on and so forth.
You're supporting your units. That should count for something.
Whereas if you're playing a rule set where you just, Oh yeah,
Plague of Doom Blatt oh okay, I'll just pack up my figures
now, then I'll move to, right. That's and.
But, and if and if mad things are going to happen, they need
to be done with a sense of humor.
Like we've described something like, you know, you walk
lightning cannons too close to your own heavy units or
whatever. You know, your your Pretonian
tribuchet. Oh, it's way off target today,
you know. But but I kind of feel like it
doesn't matter whether it's historical or fantasy, as I say,
or scifi indeed, that tactics that are appropriate for the
level of force that you've got. If you use those tactics, they
should work more often than not. That's how I feel.
Of course, I'm going to get your views on this in a couple of
days time. That's right.
Exactly. Yeah.
No, I love. I love.
So you can more about that. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So you can repost to what I've I'm saying here, but that's
that's kind of how I feel. I I feel about it.
But as I said certainly back in the early days of playing the
Warhammer what a laugh. And you know, I I haven't
played, I confess I haven't actually played a game of
Warhammer Fantasy Battle now for oh God, it's probably a couple
of years with my godson just before he went off to
university. But what a laugh.
It brought back some memories. That's great.
That's wonderful. Brought back some memories and
I'd like to be doing some more again.
And say Simon Tonkis, Goat Major encouraged me to go out and get
a copy of I think it's third edition rule book, which is
apparently really old hammer for me to have a look at.
And yeah, that would be quite interesting.
Right. Yeah.
I think I think those especially 4th edition that's that's that's
the era that I sort of started with and I think it's was always
Rick Priestly's approach when creating those rules was that
you know he wanted you to have fun on the tabletop with the
miniatures and have you know create your own stories and and
narrative and. And you know, have the magic be
wild and crazy and the armies also appropriately so, so that
you have have fun. You can never laugh at the end
of the day. And it's not too serious, not
too dark. It's all very colorful and you
know, and very cartoonish. And that's something that's
really appealed to me and it sort of followed me all the way
through until I got back into. Collecting this stuff again that
it brought it, and I can see with you, with your escape and
that kind of thing, it brings an awful lot of joy and happiness.
Just looking at all those bright colors and all the cartoonish
character to the miniatures and everything.
And the games reflected that as well.
And it sort of just got more in dark or more serious later on.
And I think that's where you know, it sort of lost it for me.
But yeah, because I think also this is where I've all I can
confess I've only ever played one or two games of 40K.
Just doesn't appeal to me. And also, the real grim, dark
aspects of that universe don't appeal to me.
Yeah, each to their own. And I can see, you know,
Warhammer 40K is probably what the most popular game in the
world just extraordinary. It just doesn't float my boat in
the same way. There was some, there's
something, there's something about it just makes me
miserable. I don't know how to describe it
just makes me miserable. Even the even the visuals for it
make me miserable. I can see again on Twitter or
Blue Sky and all the other blooming social media places,
these people posting pictures of the most phenomenally painted
Space Marines and stuff. Eldar and what have you and I
can, I can. That's an aspect, OK, I can
appreciate that. But the game itself doesn't do
it for me, Also because it's, you know, it looks much more
like a modern war game, if you like.
The notion of all these closely packed tanks going wheel to
wheel across a four foot table is it's just preposterous to me.
You know laser weapons technically have infinite range,
right? And so you know, the notion that
people are getting toe to toe with the Las cannons, it's
really seriously, no. One of the characteristics of
real warfare, which I know something about is, and one of
the terrifying thing is the notion of the empty battlefield,
where a battle's going on. But you, you really can't see
anything. You know that that shot that
takes your head off could come from absolutely anywhere.
Everything's camouflaged. Everything's over the horizon.
You know it's like and if you for scifi gaming for me to be, I
don't use the word realistic, I use the word plausible, right.
I need to feel this, some of those characteristics about it,
that it's actually not just wheel to wheel but of course of
course this is the marketing guys, isn't it?
This is the Oh yes you've got to have 10 Lear Russ, whatever it
is, tanks and stuff and 10 companies of space marines to
fit on your 6 by 4 table. What?
No. Whereas with Warhammer Fantasy
Battle actually a medieval battle was a pretty crowded
place. You know I can I can go with
that. So it doesn't offend my
sensibility in that way. I I need to kind of put in a
proviso because I've really got into, I've finished reading and
listening to now all the novels of a wonderful guy called Joe
Abercrombie. Do you know Joe Abercrombie?
I said I don't know, right? Well, here's a recommendation.
A fantasy British fantasy novelist called Joe Abercrombie
who's written a series of God. It must be about a dozen or 15
novels. I've lost track.
The first lot are called the First Law series.
The blade itself start with the Blade itself, but more
importantly by the audiobooks. They're narrated by a guy called
Steven Pacey, who I swear is the greatest narrator I've ever
heard. And I've listened to a lot of
audiobooks. His ability to do different
voices is staggering. And the way he's characterized
all these different characters in the Joe Abercrombie novels is
nothing short of, frankly, miraculous, absolutely
extraordinary. So there's a recommendation,
folks, the First Law series of the Starting with the Blade
itself by Joe Abercrombie, narrated by Steven Pacey.
Go and have a listen. Absolutely incredible.
Now that that's pretty grim, dark, grisly fantasy, but it's
absolutely gripping stuff. And the and the important thing
there's a there's a vein of humor that runs through a lot of
it as well but the way it's narrated you will just I swear
within book one you will going to fall in love with this
series. Absolutely amazing.
So, but it's that so that I I I could relate to that for
fantasy, for this particular fantasy series, but this.
But normally I like my stuff to have a touch of light about it
somewhere. You know, and I think that's why
the four, the 40K universe just doesn't do it for me.
It might appeal to kind of depressed teenagers or
something. Yeah, well, that was a beauty
about the 90s because everything was played on green tables and
it had gotten into the spaces. And once I started getting back
into it about five years ago, just painting those bases green.
Just. Those glorious colors are yellow
and red. They just you know just full
color spread on this is the battle book where and the way
that you painted you did your bases back then so you get your
base and you sprinkle a bit of sand on top let it dry the whole
thing gobbling green and then was a bit of sunburst yellow you
just dry brush the top of the gravel.
Yeah, job done. That's it mate.
It's just, you know and look at look how vibrant, look how
beautiful those armies look. Table top.
I mean, they really do. And the thing, but you know, it
actually looks really consistent because the Goblin green matches
the color of the mat. Now I'm really lucky because
those original Games Workshop mats and they're like gold dust.
And I've got three of them, which you know is a real bit.
And I use them all the time for my historical gaming as well
because they actually look like grassland.
They've got a really nice texture to it.
But yeah, I mean things like, oh, here we go, here's the
Empire army. Beautiful colors are absolutely
outrageous, aren't they? They're fabulous.
Incredible, yeah. It's one of the best painted
armies I've ever seen in like terms of fantasy, historical.
It's one of the greatest examples of miniature painting,
I think, being, yeah, just beautiful.
And that steam tank is just phenomenal, isn't it?
Absolutely phenomenal. Yeah, absolutely phenomenal.
I mean for for your listeners who can't see what I'm holding
up, I'm referring to the the Battle book that was produced
and when was this 1996 fabulous. Another great book that I wanted
to point out was the. It was it called The Generals
Compendium. I know you've.
Moved a few times in your podcast, I think that Yeah, Yeah
Yeah, Yeah, which is full of loads of ideas for scenarios and
terrain making and painting and all kinds.
Now that was put together by the the team, the GW team over in
the States rather than the UK thing, but it's a beautiful
thing which I recommend to historical gamers, let alone
fancy gamers or Warhammer gamers.
So there we go. So I don't what else do you want
to ask me? Well.
As if, as if confessed to be a Scaven nut, I thought I'd give
you a quick quiz mate, to see how pulled you up on the
Scavens. So I presented a few questions
here for you, Henry. So I'm about to listen to this.
He's got like 20 pages of questions there.
Here we go. It's a wrong problem.
I'm going to fail this test. Go ahead.
So how many Scaven do you require to push the screaming
bell? Maybe you know the screaming
bell. You remember that?
Oh my God, yes, Now the screaming bell.
I was. Wasn't that 16 or something?
16 Very close to 10. You'd only need to 10, right 10,
only 10. Is the preferred.
Preferred #18 was the preferred number.
Yeah, because if you kill, if you if they died, you still have
enough to push it, keep pushing it till you get to the enemy and
then it starts ringing the bell. It probably kills more gave and
then, you know, the actual enemy of all the time it gets there.
But actually, you're probably right because they did ranks of
five, didn't they? So, yeah, yeah.
OK. Yep.
Now as you, as you mentioned to before, just before did the
interview, did actually you'd actually go back and listen to
one of my podcasts? Talking to the creator of the
4th edition Army book for the Scaven, so this should be a
really easy question. So who wrote the Scaven army's
book? You just listened to the
podcast, you said no, I didn't. I was going to listen to it, but
I got I I didn't have a chance to listen it.
If you can, I could tell you I could.
And I can cheat. And which book was this fourth.
It was that? Was it that one?
No, it's not. That's the 6th edition.
But maybe it's maybe it might be the same writer.
I don't know because he was still working at games worship
at the time, but he looked like a skater.
He looked like a skater. So was it.
Was it Alessio Capatore? It wasn't Alessio Capatore.
It was Andy Chambers. Oh, no, I should have known
that. Oh, I'm doing terribly, folks.
I knew I. Was if you listen to, if you
listen to that podcast, I did the interview with Andy, he
talks all about. How he created the book and you
know, the reasons why he created certain characters and regiments
in the skating only book, which is really, well, I definitely
have to listen to it now. Wasn't it embarrassment apart?
From that it was a good chapter and he's a great book.
Now what color is Iket Claw's fur?
Iket Claw is one of the characters for the scabing and
he was a magic user and he had just big mechanical claw.
Ick it now. Didn't he have white fur?
Very good, very good, Henry. You've got one point, mate, one
out of three. So what is the result for the
screaming bell when you roll 18 plus on the chart?
So you gotta roll, you gotta roll either 1D6 or 2D6, and each
time you ring the bell, you gotta roll an extra dice each
turn. And it sort of accumulates from
there. And the higher the score, the
more powerful it gets. But if you roll 18 or more,
doesn't it shatter and kill all its crew as well?
Exactly, Exactly. Which I'm sure you've
experienced in your time playing Scaven.
Media time. Yes mate, Brilliant okay.
And who wrote the stories contained within the Scaven
book? Now there's a storyteller, Law
Master, who created a lot of the stories and background for the
Scaven. I sort of hinted I hinted his
name earlier in our conversation.
I can't. No, I don't know that off the
top. Of Bill King.
Bill King. Right, Bill King.
Oh, right. OK.
He also wrote He also wrote the He wrote a series of books with
Gotric and Felix and one was called The Scavenslayer, which I
don't want. To get the audio book mate,
because it's absolutely hilarious to listen to, OK?
Because I've seen that advertised somewhere, right?
Did I ever have it? I don't know.
No. Anyway, so it's a black library
thing. It might be a black library
thing. Otherwise I'll get you a link
and you can listen to it. Cool, thank you mate.
And okay, the last one who drives the doom wheel?
Who's the driver? He's a warlock engineer.
Isn't he very good? Perfect.
Okay. Wonderful.
So 2 out of 6 not bad. Henry.
Not bad. I thought I was three.
I've got three out of six there. I've got three.
I'll give you 3. OK, That's all.
OK. 50% hit rate that would do after this length of time.
I'll take that. I'll take that.
Not too bad at all mate. So I really, really enjoyed
chatting with you today, Henry. Like I said, it's been it's been
in the making and the planning for a couple of years now.
I really enjoyed listening to you and Neil shook.
Talking about on the Veranda Podcast when I first discovered
you and following your whole journey.
And now, of course, I'm a patron on your Patreon.
You are. Bless your heart.
Thank you Kev and mate. You've entertained me now for I
don't know how many hundreds of hours of your podcast on Battle
Chat, and I think anybody should go and check it out because it's
now available on most podcasting platforms.
Now people can access that and listen to it.
Certainly on Spotify and stuff. Spotify definitely, for sure.
And they should come and support you on Patron because there's a
lot of other bonus content on there that you can listen to
until many, many hours. So.
But of course I look forward to the flip side of this and coming
on Battle Chat to talk to you more about Kira, Hannah and
Games Workshop and the red period and everything.
And brilliant. Look forward to that mate.
So enjoy the rest of your day and thanks very much again for
your time. Thank you very much indeed.
Josh, it's been a real pleasure talking to you.
OK, Henry, thanks. Thanks, mate.
Take care.