Hello, everybody, and welcome again to the Chronicle Med
Podcast. Again, this is another live
stream, another great conversation.
It's a long one that goes over about two hours that I did with
my friend and patron Cody over there in the US and Tennessee.
And we had a great chat talking about his origin story and how
he got into the tabletop war gaming hobby and how he's still
involved with the tabletop game hobby.
So I hope you enjoy our conversation today.
He also has a YouTube channel called GM Cody.
And if you like, especially if you like RPG games and that kind
of thing, then you'll really dig what Cody does as he brings back
a lot of nostalgia type games and modern games on his channel
for review. So if you think about one in the
first edition role play, Rd. Trader, the original Rd.
Trader book, Shadowrun AD and the 2nd edition, you know all
those kind of titles from back in the 90s.
So if you like that kind of genre of RPG and tabletop game,
as he does cover those as well on his channel, I would highly
recommend you go and check it out and and give him a like and
give him a sub if you can. So, and hopefully Cody will come
back after his break away from from the tube with some new
fresh content and some new fresh ideas and that kind of thing to
present for us. But in the meantime, you can
know all about Cody in this interview with him that I did on
YouTube as part of a live stream.
So you will have like, you know, questions that have been asked
during the course of the interview by our people who have
joined the stream. So just just to make you aware
of what you know, how this was, how this was recorded, and I
hope you've enjoyed the series so far.
If you have missed them on the YouTube channel, if you'd like
to see this in in a video format, preferably more than the
audio format, just head over to Chronic Command Games and on the
top there you'll see a live tab. Just click on that and it's got
all the live interviews I've done with all the various guests
that are brought in. Some you've heard before, some
voices you've heard before, and I've brought them back, which is
kind of the reason why I did the live streams, to have people
come back onto the show and to have some interactivity between
themselves and the audience in a live format.
And I have to bring those back again in the near future as
well. So please stay tuned for that.
And but anyhow, guys, look, sit back at your paints, get your
models out, get your painting guides and enjoy our nostalgic
talk with GM Cody today. Until next time and please enjoy
listening. Yeah.
Hey Cody, how you going mate? Good.
How's it going, man? Very good of you to join us
mate, thank you so much. Good.
Thanks for having me. Yeah, absolutely.
Big fan of the channel. So it was.
It's an honor to come on and to, you know, talk to everybody and
talk to you. Oh, that's good mate.
Thank you. No, I really like you.
Oh, I don't know how I found you or how we got to contact each
other. Maybe you joined our discord.
I think you joined our discord and then you started posting
really cool Rogue Trader pics of your Harlequin army.
I think that's how we initially met.
Yeah, yeah, that's exactly it. Then I I've been jumping in the
paint and chat when I can and when I'm because usually every
other day I'm painting and I figured might as well jump in
there. That was the reason I joined the
discord is to join in the paint chat.
And yeah, it's been really cool to talk to all the guys there
and paint some miniatures and yeah, so yeah, I think that's
really how we got, you know, got to know each other a little bit.
We. Meet each other.
Yeah, that's really nice. It's good that you did it, mate,
because I'm. I'm glad you jumped in and did
that because we found your channel and the nice stuff you
present there as well at GM Cody.
But a special shout out to sci-fi now sci-fi I met through
the week. He jumped in out of paint and
chat as well. And he lives all the way in
Newcastle and he asked about the live live stream this week and I
said I'm I'm talking to Cody in Tennessee and I said it's going
to be like really late for you because Oh yeah, I want I want
to join. I said OK, so he, I think it's
like 2:00 AM in the morning there in the UK now.
So. Oh, wow.
Yeah. For sci-fi, we're coming in.
Yeah, that's awesome. Really happy to see.
And Chris is here. How you going, mate?
Chris is also in the States and I think Chris is trying to
organize a remote game with you, Cody, for Man of War or
something. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I really want to try out some Man of War and I'm really
interested to try out the remote gaming thing.
That's something I've never even thought about doing until I met
you guys, and it seems really interesting to do, so I really
want to try it out. Cool.
And Man of War is a game I've always wanted to play and never
really had a chance to to try out.
So yeah, looking forward to that whenever that can happen.
Awesome. OK.
So yeah, Crystal and it's good for you because you're in the
same time time zone. I think you're an hour
difference, something maybe between Chris.
And yourself? Yeah, he's Eastern Time and I'm
Central Time. Right, OK.
So it's good for you guys time wise to do that.
That's awesome. So I look look forward to seeing
that game. I'm free this week, Chris says.
He's he's desperate for somebody.
Well, we'll figure something out.
Yeah, it's. Kind of like a lonely hearts
Discord group, remote play thing or whatever.
So yeah, now Chris and Chris and Cameron are always looking for
people to show and play and give demonstrations on Man of War
because it's such a great game and I'm glad you guys want to
jump in and do that. So I think he did a game with
the Grognard and maybe you jumped in to check out what when
you were there. I don't know if you were there
at all, Cody, But yeah, we're watching that one through the
week. And that was really good
demonstration game again, because the Grog dad's got all
the stuff, all the Man of War box sets you could ever think
of. 80 plus miniatures, just I don't think had ever played it
or something. Maybe his uncle gave it to him
or something like that. So he's sort of rediscovering it
and he's got the entire collection.
So that's really nice. Yeah, that's cool.
That's really cool. Yeah, so that's cool, mate.
So yeah, let's let's talk about, let's talk about yourself, Cody,
because you have a very cool video on your channel that I
watched this week about your origin story, how you got into
the hobby. But for people who probably have
never seen your channel or don't know much about you mate, would
you like to introduce yourself? Sure.
I'm Cody. I was raised here in Nashville,
TN. I'm still here in the Nashville
area. I was not born here.
I was actually born in East Texas and that's where all my
family's from is from Texas. But I, you know, I call myself a
Tennessee and I grew up here. You know, I still reside here.
So I'm a Tennessean. So I will start off before I get
into the origin story, which I love a good origin story.
That's one reason I really like your channel in the podcast is I
love hearing people's origin stories.
So hopefully people like hearing mine, but before I jump into
that, like I will say that I was a guy that was well primed to
fall in love with all this stuff right before I even discovered
role-playing games, miniature games, card games or any of that
stuff. I you know, so my dad was a big
history buff, right? And when I was about four years
old, we moved into the house that my parents live in still to
this day. And my dad, or I guess that was
about 3. And then when I turned 4, my
sister was about to be born and he converted one of the bedrooms
into his basically man cave, right?
It was his study. And he was a, he's a big lover
of history and he's a ferocious reader, right?
So he had this just library of books and he still does.
So he converted that room to basically be his library.
And he's a Carpenter. And that's why I'm a Carpenter.
And he built this, you know, just wall to wall library like
shelving all the way around this room and just filled it with
books. And so, but my sister was about
to be born when I was four years old and I needed my own room.
He realized, you know, I'm going to have to have my own room now.
So he gave up his man cave, his study or whatever, and gave it
to me. Well, that had a big impact on
me because he left all the books in there, right?
And so from a young age, I became really infatuated with
all this stuff that was in there and there.
It was mainly all. My dad does not read fiction at
all. You know, it's all history and
facts and knowledge. That's what my dad's always been
all about. He's never been a lover of
fiction like, like I am or whatever.
But that had a big impact on me because from a young age, I
would spend all this time that was my room filled with all
these books. And before I could even read, I
would open up all these books about the American Civil War and
Napoleon and the Aztecs and the Vikings and the Romans.
And I would just look at the pictures and especially the
maps. And a lot of those old books,
they also had a lot of, I remember specifically some of
these like really old books from the 60s and 70s would actually
have miniatures in them. You know, they'd have like these
dioramas set up in the in the books with like these miniature
like dioramas. And I was actually looking for
one of these books because I do have it and I couldn't find it.
So Needless to say, I became really infatuated with military
stuff, military history. And also my grandmother live in
Virginia. So every summer I would go up to
Virginia and spend the summer with her.
And I have a ton of cousins. I have a big family.
And basically all my cousins would come up there and my poor
grandmother would load us all up in her big cargo van and drive
us around Virginia, which is just loaded with American
history, right? So we would go to all these
Civil War battlefields and we go up to Washington, DC, and we
would go to all these, you know, Williamsburg and Jamestown and
all these places. I don't know if my cousins
enjoyed that stuff so much, but I loved it as a kid and
especially the battlefields, you know, So Needless to say, I
became really kind of hooked on that military kind of stuff in
history and all that from a very, very young age.
And on top of that, I got I was in love with science fiction and
fantasy and all that from a very young age.
So, you know, I grew up like every all of us did, right,
watching Star Wars and Star Trek.
But I was also a big fan. And it was kind of unusual for
being a little kid of all these like black and white and, you
know, very early science fiction films from the 50s and 60s like
This Island Earth and Forbidden Planets and shows like Lost in
Space and, you know, the original Star Trek, which my
parents thought was real strange that, you know, a little kid
would want to watch this stuff. But anyways, you know, so and,
and I grew up with all the 80s films that we all love, right,
Like Willow and Legend and Blade Runner and, you know, the list
goes on and on. Dark Crystal and the Labyrinth.
So I just loved fantasy. I love science fiction and I had
a great love of like history and military stuff.
So now we get into the origin story.
It actually, it's interesting because that origin video I did,
I didn't mean to make that video my origin story.
And you can notice if you watch the video, I'm actually going to
be talking about something else. And I ended up talking about my
origin story. But since I've done that, I've
actually had like started to think about it and had to go
back and really piece together my memories.
And I made some mistakes in that video.
And I think I've piece together the history sort of.
So I was 10 years old. I'm not that old by the way, I'm
only 37. So I was 10 years old.
This would been the fall of 1996, so I would have just
turned 10. I was entering the 4th grade and
I didn't, I didn't have many friends at all back then.
I had two friends, they were twin brothers and they lived
right across the street from me and I had known them since the
1st grade. And when I was in the 3rd grade,
they had moved across the street from me and that was the only
two friends that I had in school.
And we had a lot in common, you know, comic books and
superheroes and all that old science fiction stuff.
Like I was talking about. They love that too.
And, you know, so they, they were the two friends, the, the
only two friends I had. And they were not in my 4th
grade class. So I'm stuck in this 4th grade
class. I don't know any of these kids.
And it must have been really early on in the school year
because I can vividly remember not knowing anybody's names or
what was going on or anything. And I was a pretty awkward, shy,
introverted kid. And, you know, so I'm like
sitting there, you know, doing whatever, probably not paying
attention because I never was. I think we were doing some kind
of like homework or test every, everything was quiet in the
classroom. And I saw this more awkward
looking kid with frizzy hair. And sorry, Andrew, by the way,
because he might be watching this, but he he was just a
really awkward looking kid back then.
He was a little chubby, had really like this fro ish kind of
hair and just, you know, big glasses from what I remember.
And he just very, very, very stereotypical, like nerdy kind
of awkward kid. But I noticed he was flipping
through this magazine. I could just kind of see it.
He was maybe like three deaths up for me.
And I was really intrigued by this.
I mean, of course, like back then, as we all know, like
magazines were kind of a big deal, right?
You know, like, and if you're in school and somebody had a
magazine, no matter what it was, you kind of were interested in
what, what is this? But I could see there was just
something, something was going on there and I had to see what
it was. So I get up from my desk and was
asking, acting like I was going to go sharpen my pencil.
And so I passed by and he closes the magazine and I see this
cover now. It's the cover that you had on
your, on the like the, the thumbnail here, which is the
1994 Citadel Miniatures catalog. Now, actually the funny part is
I've talked to Andrew about this and he claims that he never
owned this catalog, never seen it in his life.
And so it might not actually have been that catalog.
It might have been a different one, but that's how I remember
it. So I'm going to tell it the way
I remember it. So either way, it was, it was it
had been between 1994 and 1996. It was one of those Citadel
miniatures catalogs. And he closes the cover and I
see this World Eaters Space Marine on it.
And it just blew my mind, you know, like I had never seen
imagery like this in my life anywhere right up to this point.
And so I was just like, yo, man, like I'm not exactly what the
words are, but, you know, I was like, what is this?
What, what, what is going on here?
He's like, oh, and he was really excited.
I, I remember that part. He's like really excited.
And he starts flipping through the magazine.
He's just going 100 miles an hour, you know, and it's like in
the middle of class too, you know, like we're supposed to be
doing Hobart or the reason. Oh, it's this great game.
It's called Warhammer 40,000. You know, it's in the 41st
Millennium. He's telling me all about it,
like, you know, as quick as he can.
And it's, he says it's a miniatures game.
And he he's like, you collect these little toy soldiers that
are metal and you have to, you know, you have to buy them and
collect them and put them together and paint them.
And then you build a battlefield.
And then, you know, there's, there's all these different
factions and all this stuff. And then the teachers like, you
know, obviously is like, hey, you guys are interrupting class,
go back to your desk, you know, whatever.
So I begrudgingly go back to my desk and I sit down and I could
not get my mind off this brief moment.
You know, whatever it was like maybe a minute or, you know, 30
seconds of what Andrew was telling me about this game,
apparently. And I was immediately just
hooked. I was immediately enamored.
I could, I could not think about anything else.
Everything was a blur. So luckily, you know, the rest
of the day, like whenever we were going on recess or lunch or
whatever, he would, I was like, you know, got right behind him.
I was like, dude, you got to tell me more about this.
So he starts telling me all about the lore and you know, he,
he knew all this stuff, right? Like, and Andrew was really more
into the lore in the history, like, you know, all that stuff,
like the stories more so than he was into the game, right?
Like he, he liked the idea of it as a game, but he really liked
the the art and the stories. And Andrew's still kind of like
that actually, even though he is still a gamer today and he plays
games. He really likes the aesthetics
and the stories and he's a writer too, so that makes sense.
And actually that probably was a big inspiration for him, you
know, being a writer, I think. And so he's telling me all this
stuff and I was like, man, this is, this is awesome.
You know, like I, I got to get into this and, you know, he's
telling me how to get into it. And we're like building an army
on like notebook paper and, and recess and doing all this stuff.
And we're actually like trying to, I, I remember actually like
trying to play it on like notebook paper, you know, like,
and we did, you know, we were just making up this little game
because we saw there was like a, there was a battle report in
either that one or maybe he had a white dwarf with him too.
Then when I saw a battle report, I was like, well, we can just
play this like on a piece of notebook papers.
So I, I just drew out, you know, like, like it was a battle
report. And we were like, I just made-up
some shit, right? We were just making up some
rules. And then of course, the other
kids in the class became enamored with what we were doing
too. They're like, oh, whoa, you
know, what's this? And all of a sudden we had all
these other kids that were interested too.
Now, one of the other kids in class, within a short time
frame, I'm not sure, you know, whether it was like a day, a
couple days, a week or whatever. It was like, that's pretty cool.
I got something cool I'll bring to school tomorrow too.
If, if you don't mind that we were like, yeah, yeah, totally.
He said yeah, yeah. It's really cool.
I think it's a game. I'm not really sure.
So the next day he comes into class and he brings this, this
exact book. This was the Advanced Sons and
Dragons Monsters manual. And this also rocked my world,
right? And so I was like, whoa, this is
really awesome too, you know? And so I was like, yeah, it's
obviously a game. I don't know how it's played.
I was like, you know, I, I, I didn't understand any of the
information in this book, but I could tell that there were,
there was statistics in here and all this stuff and information.
And I was like, hey, can I borrow this?
And he's like, yeah. And so again, I just made-up
rules for this game. And I remember actually like,
writing out a whole game based on just this monstrous manual.
And I think I called it Castle Wars or something, and actually
wrote like a whole book and drew pictures, stabled it together.
And we were basically playing a role-playing game without really
knowing the rules of a role-playing game.
We weren't really playing D&D because we didn't know there
were like, other books and stuff.
Nobody had the other books. And at the same time, Andrew
tells me about this other game that him and his brother were
into called Battletech. And he's telling me all about
this game Battletech. So I got into all this stuff all
at the same time, you know, so I, I got into miniature games,
role-playing games, even card games like Magic the Gathering.
It was another one that he like, told me about.
And you know, so it kind of all happened at the same time.
Well me and Andrew started hanging out a lot and I started
going over to his house. Specifically his grandmother's
house, his parents were divorced and he spent a lot of time at
his grandmother's. So I would go over there on the
weekends and we would hang out and we would.
And his older brother was actually a gamer, right?
And his older brother was probably, he was probably two or
three years older than us. So at that time he would have
been like 12 or 13. And he was actually old enough
to actually understand, you know, how to play these games
and was actively playing them. And he actually had like, you
know, a Warhammer army, you know, a Warhammer Fantasy army.
And he had Battletech miniatures and he had role-playing games
and he had all that stuff. And so I was really fascinated,
you know, because Andrew like to talk about it a lot, but Joe,
Joe, his brother actually played it.
And so I became kind of friends with Joe too, which was kind of
a story of my whole life. I always was hanging out with
the, the older guys, you know, I, I would hang out with guys my
own own age, but I also like was really into whatever the older
guys were doing. Still am, it seems.
And so, you know, Joe, Joe and me would hang out occasionally
and he would show me like his Warhammer Fantasy army.
And he had like this fully painted Beastman army, which is
thinking back on it, you know, he was 12 or 13 years old and he
had this full, you know, fully painted Beastman army.
And it was well painted. Like I, I still have some of
this miniatures hanging around. I can't find them.
And they're pretty well, pretty good, you know, like not, you
know, like they're, they're pretty good for, for the time
and for like a 12 year old. I was like these, you know,
these, these are pretty well painted.
He was actually like a really good painter and probably the
best I had seen, you know, up until, you know, I got to like
high school. I was like, you know, I, I
thought that he was like the best painter I had seen up to
that point beside, well, other than what you saw like in White
Dwarf or whatever, right? And so me and Andrew would hang
out and we would, I would try to get Andrew to play some games
with me. And we did, we did play some
games, mainly role-playing games.
And we played stuff like, you know, Shadowrun, you know, we
played this and I got that book, another role-playing game I got,
which I don't think Andrew played this with me, but the
twins across the street that I was talking about, it was like
Indiana Jones and we played the, the, the Star Wars role-playing
game. So, you know, I, I role-playing
games were kind of like my early Ave. just because I couldn't
afford as a kid to get a lot of miniatures, but I could afford
to get like a role-playing game book, right.
But that didn't stop me from buying miniatures.
You know, every once in a while I go to the store and, you know,
I think the main place we would go is Hobby Town USA, which it
was a big chain of hobby stores here in the US.
And I'm not sure if they're still around or not.
I think they're mainly all closed down.
There might be, there might be a couple open, but there's none
around here anymore. But that was the place that was
the closest place we could go. And they had a really big, a
really big gaming section. You know, they had like two
whole aisles of, you know, role-playing games and miniature
games. And they had one whole aisle
that was just dedicated to Games Workshop stuff, you know, So,
you know, that's where we would go and buy our role-playing
games and miniature games and all that stuff.
And so, you know, me and Andrew are playing games and stuff.
And I think the real first like war game we played was probably
battle Tech because that Christmas of 1996, Well, I, I
originally asked for the Warhammer 40,000 box set.
And my mom's like, no, you know, like you're, I, I don't know
why. I, I guess she was like, you
know, you're maybe like a little too young for that or whatever.
I don't really know. But she was just kind of like,
yeah, well, we'll wait on that. What else do you want?
And I said, well, maybe, maybe it's too expensive, I don't
know. But I asked for, you know, the
Battle Tech box said that was the next best thing.
So she got me the Battle Tech starter box.
I think it was the 4th edition. And it had just come out and it
came with two paper maps and a bunch of card standies, not any
miniatures, which I kind of got gypped because the previous one
actually came with all these, like, plastic miniatures, right?
But like, I didn't know the difference.
I didn't care. It was awesome.
And the cool thing about Battletech, well even today, but
especially back then, was that was a fully self-contained war
game. I think that was probably the
perfect war game for me to get into at the time because you
could get a lifetime of fun out of just that one box.
You didn't need to get anything else.
You know, it had everything you needed and it had tons of
options in there and you could expand outward.
And we did eventually, but I had years of fun just out of that
one box set. And so I would say Battletech
was actually the first proper war game that I like bought and
actually played. And, and I think it's actually
kind of crazy 10 years old that I actually knew how to figure it
out how to play Battletech. I, I think that just, and I
heard this on one of your podcast, actually, you were
talking to somebody about, you know, a lot of adults don't
think kids were able to learn complex games.
Are, you know, able to retain rules like that.
But I beg to differ because I did, you know, I was playing
battle tech and stuff at like 10 years old.
Now, we might have got some things wrong or whatever, but I,
you know, we were playing like full games, battle tech on a
regular basis and having a, having a good time.
So anyways, we, you know, so from the ages of like 10 to like
12, that's pretty much how it went.
I, we did a lot of role-playing either one-on-one with me and
Andrew or maybe his brother. And occasionally like Joe would,
you know, play Warhammer with me.
He had some extra like stuff and we'd play.
And actually when I was the first like Games Workshop big
box that I got, I think I was, it was my 11th birthday.
This would been 97. I got the Warhammer Fantasy 5th
edition box set. The one there on your back wall
is the one I that was the first Games Workshop like product that
I got. And I remember going to get that
with Andrew. We went to the store and my
mom's like, OK, that's what you want.
So we went to Hobby Town and she said, you know, pick out what
you want. And I think originally I wanted
to get the Warhammer 40,000 box set, but they didn't have it.
And then I was like, maybe we'll get Blood Bowl instead.
And Andrew's like, I think Andrew talked me into getting
the fantasy box set. I was like, OK, let's get
fantasy. So I got the fantasy box set
immediately. We went home and we went to the
craft store first, actually. And I talked my mom into buying
a piece of, you know, just green felt that we could lay over the
kitchen table. I was like, oh, we got to have a
battlefield. And she's like, OK, so she takes
us to the craft store. I'm like, I need a four foot by
6 foot, you know, piece of, you know, whatever.
So, you know, we went to the craft store, got that and then
like immediately we get home and me and Andrew like hardly like
gluing together, you know, all the miniatures so we can play a
game of, you know, Warhammer Fantasy.
I'm like reading through the rules trying to figure this game
out and I don't we were, I, I remember us like trying to set
it up by the end of the day, but I don't think we actually played
a game that day. But we did eventually like play
a lot of games out of that box set.
And that was a fantastic box set and a very, very good entry to
the hobby. And it, you know, it came with
that little castle tower in the the Hut and it came with
basically everything you needed except for the magic system.
But there were no magic users in the box set.
So it was fine. And then eventually, like I took
that over to Andrew's place and Joe was really keen on, I think
me and Joe were playing, you know, with his Beastman and my
like, I used the Bertonians and we were playing some little
games like that. And he has some Burtonian
miniatures. And he would give me, he gave me
some, you know, a few more figures to fill out my like
Burtonians that he, he just bought just a paint.
And he's like, well, I'm not going to use these here.
You have them, you know, and he gave me some more like
Burtonians so I could fill out the Burtonians.
And he's like, I really want those lizard men.
And I really hate these beast men because he, Joe would always
lose every game he played. Like he, he just like he, I
remember him like coming home from the game store and course
me and Andrew, like, you know, how did it go?
You know, how did the game go? And he's like, I got my ass
kicked and you know, it was terrible.
Like I hate these, I hate these beasts, but you know, and so
finally he's like, I'm really, I really like these.
I really like these. Like lizard man.
How about we make a trade for your lizard man for my beast
man, I'll trade you one for one, which was an amazing deal
because these were all base. Most of them were metal figures,
you know, and I think he just wanted to get rid of them and
wanted to try something new. So I traded him all the lizard
men for an equivalent amount of beastman.
So now I had like a a beastman army made-up of partly metal.
And some of them were like the Monopo's, you know, like
beastman warriors with the halberds or whatever.
But that that was a killer trade.
And that was my first, I think that was probably my first like
metal citadel models. And they were all painted too.
He, you know, he painted them all.
So, you know, I played out of that fantasy box set for a while
with Andrew and I tried to talk the twins in a plan
occasionally, but for the most part, like nobody was real hot
or in heavy on fantasy, you know, at being a kid that age.
So it was kind of hard to find like people to really get into
it. And so my interest in it didn't
dwindle, but I just couldn't find anybody my age that was
really that interested in playing.
Like Andrew would play occasionally with me.
Joe would play when he, you know, had time or whatever, you
know, when he wasn't hanging out with, you know, the cool kids.
And you know, like the twins weren't really into it.
They were more into the role-playing games.
So I was, by the time I got to 6th grade in middle school, I
wasn't really actively like playing war games, but I was
still, and I wasn't really, you know, I was role-playing, but it
was not real heavy. I didn't have like an organized
group or anything, but that all changed when I got to middle
school. So when I got to middle school,
I met this kid. Well, you had two choices in
middle school, right? You could join, you could be in
the gym class or you could join band.
So band sounded a much more appealing for a couple reasons.
One, I didn't feel like going to gym class and running laps every
day. But the other reason is I
wanted, I wanted to be a musician.
I wanted to play drums and so I was like, yeah, I'm going to I'm
going to take bands. So I took band on the on the on
the assumption that they could teach me to play drums.
I don't know what I was thinking.
So I get into band and short but funny story that's unrelated to
gaming. Like so I get into band and they
had like tryouts for to join the percussion section for a bunch
of 6th graders that never played anything.
Right. So this did, you know,
hindsight, I'm just like, what was this guy thinking?
Why would you try out a bunch of like 12 year olds?
You know, they'd never played an instrument in their life.
But anyways, we had tryouts. So I go in there and he gives me
a pair of drumsticks and he's like, you know, he plays a
couple like, you know, rudiments and tells me, you know, to
follow along. So I'm like playing along and
he's like, stop, stop, stop. He stops me real quick.
He's like, you'll never be a drummer.
You just don't have it. He's like, you know, go out
there, pick out another instrument that you like, but
you're not going to be a percussionist.
So I go outside and I look out in the band and I'm like looking
at all these instruments I really was not interested in,
like I, I wanted to play the drums.
That's what I joined band 4. So I'm, I'm like looking around,
like sleeping the band class and I see this really weird looking,
twirly looking horn. It was a French horn and there
was only one kid that was playing it, another awkward
nerdy looking kid. And so I was like, well, he
looks like my kind of people and that looks really cool.
And I'm like, I want to play that.
And he's like, OK, yeah, you know, that's a pretty hard
instrument to play. But he's like, you know, there
we only have one French horn. It it'll be good to have
another. So yeah, you can play the French
horn. So I ended up playing French
horn. Now, the funny part is I
actually did become like a really good drummer and played
professionally and all this stuff.
And years later, I, I kind of got revenge on that guy.
Like my brother, when he went to middle school, I sent him one of
my demo tapes or one of my albums from one of my bands.
It was like, hey, tell him your brother Cody sent sent you this.
And you know, just just tell him I, I did actually become a
drummer. So that's another story in In
the Hole. But you know, that guy admitted
defeat in the end. He was like, Oh yeah, you know,
tell your brother he was, you know, he did really well, blah,
blah, blah. So anyways, so I ended up
playing the French horn and I met this kid also called Andrew.
Different guy. And so me and this kid are
talking or whatever and, you know, for a couple weeks.
And of course, because we're, you know, we're band mates and
we're playing the same instruments that we're always
like communicating with each other.
And within a couple weeks he brings in AD and D book to class
and I'm like, holy shit. You know, like you're into D&D
and he's like, yeah, yeah, I'm, I'm into D&D and like, you know,
I play D&D and we got a couple other kids to play D&D and
stuff. He's like, hey, you know, you
should come, I'll see if you can come play.
You know, we got this group, we play every Friday night.
You should, you know, you should come hang out and play with us,
but you got to be invited to come, you know, like I, you
can't just show up, you know? So ANYWAYS, so I'm like, OK,
well, you know, see, you know, see, see what you can do or
whatever. So the kid that ran the group
was named Dustin. And Dustin was older than all
the rest of us. He was in the eighth grade and
we were in the 6th grade. And so Dustin was like, I, I've
been talking about all these people like they're the, the
worst dorks of all. But dusted was really the dusted
really was the icing on the cake.
I mean, he, he looked like that, that nerd from the John Hughes
films with the curly hair. You know what I'm talking about?
Like he looked just like that kid.
And he had this like bomber jacket that he wore every day
and he, he never put on deodorant.
So he smelled terrible. And he had these huge like
1980s, like, you know, 20 years out of date, you know, glasses
and just the whole deal. The only thing he was missing
was like the pocket protector, you know, so I had seen this kid
around, so I knew of him, but I didn't know him.
And so, you know, a couple weeks go by and we're I'm in computer
class and Andrew comes up to me, the other Andrew.
And he's like, hey, you know, I talked to Dustin and he says,
you know, you can come play with us.
Like we need another player if you want to come.
Like we're going to play this afternoon.
I'm like, yeah, totally. You know, so I called up.
I, I, maybe I called my mom. I don't know if I did or not.
I, I really don't know. May, I probably just took off,
you know, to be honest, I don't really know.
But I will also say, you know, I hadn't mentioned this up to this
point. My parents were really not
excited about me being into any of this stuff Also, and that's
really worth noting. You know, I grew up in the South
and I was definitely a, a product, you know, the Satanic
Panic thing that was still going on strong here in the South in
the 90s. So my parents were not thrilled
at all with me being into D&D and match at the gathering and
battle, battle tech they didn't care about.
But Warhammer, they were kind of like, it's OK, you know, like
they, they weren't, they didn't really understand it.
My dad kind of understood it, but he's, you know, so they
weren't, they weren't like, they weren't completely turned off by
that, but they were, they were also kind of like uneasy about
it, you know, with all the demons and chaos and stuff.
But other than that, you know, I was like, Oh yeah, look at these
imperial guard and stuff. My dad's like, all right, you
know, that's all right. You know, So they, they were OK
with that. But so they weren't, they
weren't really too hot on me, like playing D&D and stuff.
But that didn't stop me. In fact, it probably just
incurred, you know, I mean, you know, when you're a teenager,
young teenager especially, and your parents tell you not to do
something, you know, you just want to do it more, you know,
and especially if it's something you're really interested in,
right, you just become more enamored and interested in it.
And I think that's actually part of the reason why I'm so
obsessed with it today, because it was kind of this forbidden
fruit. And so I took it all in.
Well, I took it as much as I could when I'm young.
And now that I'm, I'm an adult, you know, I can do what I want.
So it's just like, you know, I, I still, as I'm passionate about
it, as it was when I was young and probably more so now, I
probably appreciate it more maybe.
So anyways, that afternoon, like I walk to Dustin's house and
it's like a few miles, you know, the other cross, it's across the
Main Street on the other side of town that I'd never been to.
And so I walk over there and we go to Dustin's house and we get
there and it was like the most stereotypical, you know, D&D
scene you could ever imagine. So we like go into his house.
It's like this very 1970s eighties kind of house.
And we go down the stairs and I can already hear like, you know,
there's like, you know, clamoring going on down there.
And there was this big old kitchen table, huge, huge dining
room table down there. And this massive basement that
has like wood panelling, a giant like floor TV, you know, like
one of those old like wooden TV's, like on the floor.
They had like a dartboard down there, a fridge.
And it was like dark and kind of dinky down there.
And, you know, so I was, you know, it, it it was it was great
for a bunch of teenage boys to go down there and have a place
to hang out. And it was it was a big space,
too, you know, it was a big space almost the size of the
rest of the house, you know. So I get down there and
introduce myself and Dustin's like, hey, how's it going?
You know, you know, and he was Dustin was like, you know, you
know, how to play D&D and stuff. I was like, yeah.
And up to this point, I'd only played really a little bit of D
and DI didn't own any of the books.
So I was kind of bullshitting my way through it.
I really didn't know what I was talking about.
And I was just kind of like trying to play catch up.
And so we Needless to say, we started playing D and DI started
playing D&D with those guys. But we played a lot of
role-playing games. We played, you know, D and DAD
and AD and D Second edition. We played Gerps.
We were playing Shadowrun, Vampire the Masquerade a little
bit, even though like, we were a little too young to understand
the vampire thing, but we did play it a little bit.
We played all kinds of stuff and that group was great.
But what happened is Dustin left middle school the next year and
got to high school, and he started falling in with this
like goth, like punk kind of crowd and got a little too cool
for us, right. I was still invited, by the way,
which was interesting. I guess I was cool enough to
hang out with the older high school goth kids or ever, but he
he kind of like pushed the rest of the guys to the side.
So I continue playing with Dustin for a little while, but I
wanted to play with my other friends.
You know, that I'd made that were my age and you know, I'd
met a lot of other guys that were my age through that group.
And So what happened is we kind of broke off from Dustin's group
and made our own little group and we started meeting at the
other Andrew's house. And that was great because his
mom did not give two shits about what we did there.
You know, his mom just let us go crazy, which is good and bad but
you know, whatever, she's just like all right, you boys have
fun and just like what's your room?
And we did whatever, you know what the hell ever.
So we had the run of the place, which is great.
So we started doing that like every Friday night.
And then one night I'm like, and I would spend the night there
and I would walk home like Saturday or Sunday, you know,
we'd play for like 2 days straight.
Not get any sleep. And then, you know, I would walk
home Sunday morning with my dad yelling at me on the phone, tell
me to come home and do chores and mow the lawn and all that
stuff. And so, you know, so, but one
night when I'm staying over there at Andrew's house, I'm
like sleep. I'm sleeping on the floor and
he's sleeping in the bed and I look up on his shelves and I see
some miniatures up there and he's got some Space Marines and
I'm like, oh shit, I'm like, you're in the Warhammer 40,000.
And he's like, yeah, he's like, I, I didn't even know you knew
what that is. So I was like, yeah, totally.
Dude, I love Warhammer. And like, I've been looking for
people to play with and stuff. And he's like, well, we should
play some Warhammer 40,000. And I'm like, heck yeah, we
should. And so I was like, well, I'm
going to start, you know, I'm going to start a, I'm going to
start a Warhammer 40,000 army now.
I, I, I forgot to mention too, that the other box set that I
had bought when it came out was Gorka Morca.
And we actually played that a lot because yeah, yeah, we
played Gorka Morca a lot. And I still love Gorka Morca to
this day. I know it's kind of like the red
headed stepchild of GW games, but I I still have like a fun
place for Gorka Morca. And the great thing about Gorka
Morca for a bunch of young kids was you didn't need a lot of
stuff to play. And the miniatures were cheap
from what I remember, I think it was like 10 or 15 bucks for a
box of orcs. And all you needed was like a
toy truck and convert that and you're good to go.
And but I actually got the big box set and every like the twins
would come over and Andrew would come over and his brother and
we'd all play Gorka Morca on my floor, you know, and I was kind
of the game master, like 'cause I had the rules and stuff and
we'd all play Gorka Morca. So through doing that, I had
already collected a bunch of orcs.
And also before that my cousin had acquired something that I
was seeking and never got. And I got the visual aid here,
which was the Warhammer 40,000 Second Edition box set, which
was like the Holy Grail of what I wanted and never could get.
And so he just, I, I told my cousin about this stuff and he's
just like, Oh yeah, he's like, I'm going to go get it.
And I'm like, what do you mean you're going to go buy it?
And he's like, yeah, I've got money, I'm going to go buy it.
And so I was kind of jealous about that.
He actually went and bought the Warhammer 40,000 Second Edition
box set before I got my hands on it.
And he was real guarded about it too.
He didn't want me to like look at it or touch it or anything,
whatever. He got it like he went into the
other room and locked the door. It was, it wouldn't let me in.
And then finally he came out of the room and like open the box,
let me look at it and stuff and, and I helped him put the
miniatures together. And then eventually, you know,
he did. He wasn't the smartest guy in
the world, so he didn't really understand the rules, but I I
was like, well, let me borrow the rule book and I can figure
it out. And he's like, OK, so I borrowed
the rule book and actually figured out the rules, I guess
and went back. And so, you know, when I go over
to my cousin's house, we would play Warhammer 40,000 second
edition out-of-the-box set. And I did acquire a few more
like orcs that Joe would give me.
Joe was always give me miniatures.
You know, he gave me some like mega knobs and you know, an orc
war boss. And of course I had the Gorka
Marcus stuff. So I had like now I have like a
sizable like orc army and the stuff that my cousin just gave
me like the orcs out-of-the-box set and he got some space ring.
So me and my cousin were actually like playing second
edition, I guess before this a little bit.
And on the again, on the floor, right, with no proper terrain,
we would just have like boxes, you know, and whatever, you
know, maybe some army men like terrain, like some of those
like, you know, plastic, you know, sandbags and stuff,
whatever we could scrounge up, we didn't really matter and we
would just lay it out on his floor and play 40K.
We just play floor hammer, right?
So Fast forward back to middle school, you know, Andrew tells
me about the space rings and stuff.
And I already had like all these orcs and but they were really
poorly painted because like most people, I think, you know, when
you get in, especially back then, we didn't know about, I
didn't know anything about priming miniatures, right?
I didn't know what the right paints were and I was using
terrible paints. I don't remember what these
paints were called. I think they were Armory paints
and Armory I think is still around.
But these were really the ones that I got back then.
We're just these were terrible. You know, like I, I can remember
how bad these were and on top of not having like proper brushes,
I just had whatever cheap brushes I got from like the
model store. And, you know, it didn't know
how to prime miniatures, right? And so like, you know, this
army, this orc army I had was just like awful looking, right?
I, I eventually learned pretty pretty quickly that I needed to
prime the miniatures. I think I saw it in a white
dwarf. You know, they showed you like,
yeah, you need to prime your miniatures first and do all
this. So I, I think I got a little bit
better by the time I got to middle school.
And so anyways, Andrew had these space rings.
I'm like, yeah, I'm going to start a new army and I'm going
to start, I'm going to start some Imperial Guard.
And so that for my birthday that year when I was 12, my mother
got me like an Imperial Guard boxed army.
Like it was like the big box, you know what I mean?
You remember those like they had the big like boxed armies.
And she got me that, which was amazing, right?
Because that wasn't cheap. And I put all that stuff
together. And now I kind of had a little
bit more knowledge about how to paint and like put stuff
together and how to clean models.
I've learned all this while, you know, experimenting, buying
random models and painting on the orcs and stuff.
And so I had this pretty sizable, you know, I don't, I
don't know how it was probably 1015 hundred points of Imperial
Guard or whatever. And we started playing, we
actually started playing, you know, 40K start edition because
that's what came out. Now, at the time, I really
didn't care, you know, I just didn't see, I didn't see the
difference because I was a kid, right?
Like I, I, I think everybody else made a big fuss about it,
but like at the time we didn't care.
It was just 40K to us and some kid at school had the rule book
and he had like bought the box set and he didn't really care
for it. And he, he heard me talking
about it. He's like, hey, I got the, the
rule book if you want it, I'll just give it to you.
I was like, OK, so he, he gave me the rule book.
And this is the rule book that we played with back then.
This is the exact book. So we started playing third
edition because that's what was out.
And I think that was probably actually a good thing for us
being young teenagers. I think 3rd edition was probably
a good place to start because it was, even though I like second
edition better and probably still did back then, I think it
was more easier and accessible for everybody else, right?
So me and Andrew started playing and Andrew was kind of a spoiled
kid, right? His parent, his parents were
divorced, but they were like fight for his love and they
would just buy him stuff, give him, he was an only child too
and they would just give him stuff.
And so he got whatever he wanted.
So quickly he had this like huge Space Marine army and his dad,
his dad bought him when they went to a auction at the Games
Workshop store and they had a professionally made Games
Workshop studio made table. He bought it.
And so that was awesome. That was an awesome way to like
really get properly introduced. And so we had this like awesome
table and we had all this awesome terrain.
And the other thing he got was he got a fully painted, like
studio painted metal Necron army, like the old Necrons, you
know, like so big money, right? And like his parents were just
like, get, you know, get him whatever he wanted.
So, but that was cool for me because I, we go over to his
house and we stopped playing D&D and just started playing 40K all
the time. And it was like every Friday
night, I think the other guys kind of got pissed because we
were like, Nah, man, we're playing 40K all day.
Like you either you either get a 40K army or like you know,
whatever. We played D and DA little bit,
but it was mainly like 40K was like what me and Andrew were all
into playing on this awesome board.
And then the other guys started getting 40K army.
So like one guy had like he got Dark Eldar and another guy got
Space Marines and I think another guy got Eldar.
And so we had like five or six guys that would come over just
about every Friday night and we would play other stuff too.
We'd play like Axis and Allies and D&D and whatever, but a lot
of 40K, you know, we and me and Andrew were so obsessed with it.
We'd even bring it to school and play like in the cafeteria and
just set up like, you know, trays and Coke bottles and play
40K like during lunch and stuff, you know, like we were that
obsessed with it, you know. And so that was really like the
time that I properly got into it, even though I got into it a
few years earlier, like this is like now I had seriously got
into it. I found people that actually
played it, you know, I was actually like learned how to
paint models. And also around this time, like
I was just telling you, there was a Games Workshop store that
opened and that was the first Games Workshop store we had here
in Nashville. And it opened in the big mall.
There's a big like mall here. It's still there.
And so we'd go up to the Games Workshop store all the time.
And these guys really, really were great, great guys, right?
Like they really took the time out of their, it took a lot of
time to show us how to do things properly.
They were like, yeah, you know, like this is how you, this is
the kind of glue you need. This how you glue together your
models. You know, they showed us how to
clean the models, get rid of the mold lines.
They showed us how to paint, you know, like they were like, you
know, they would give us painting tips and stuff and we'd
sit in there and paint and and they let us play there.
You know, we could bring our models in there.
And they had, you know, they had, it wasn't a big store, but
they did have like two or three tables set up.
And if it wasn't busy, you, you know, you can bring your stuff
in and play. So we go in there and play on
their, their tables and stuff. And they were really cool group
of guys. And in fact, I'm still friends
with one of the guys that work there and he, he works at
another game store that I frequent.
So that's kind of cool. So anyways, through middle
school, I, we, we were playing 40 KA lot and fantasy.
I couldn't really find anybody to, nobody was interested in
playing fantasy with me. And I'll, I will say that I was
way more interested in fantasy than I was 40K always.
But I just never could find anybody that wanted to really
was as interested in it as I was.
It was always 40K40K. So I, I just, you know, 40K was
cool to me too. It still is.
But like fantasy was always, especially back then was really
what got me going. But I just couldn't find anybody
that wanted to play it. So we during middle school, we
would just play 40K and then by the time I got to high school,
all those guys that I was playing with went to a totally
different school than me. We, we got totally split up.
I was the only one out of that group that went to a totally
different high school because I lived on the other side of the
street, the other side of the tracks, if you will, And they
lived on the other side and they went to a totally different high
school than me. So we totally lost contact and
that group broke apart. Now, they didn't stop me from
gaming. I was still role-playing with
the twins and I had a few other people that we played with and
stuff. But I've met a whole another
group of guys and they were much older than me.
They were all seniors when I was a freshman in high school.
And one day I was in the cafeteria and we're I was
running D&D. And that's what in high school,
if there was like a free moment, we were playing games of some
sort, right? Like whether it was magic or
maybe some kind of miniature game or D&D or whatever, board
game or whatever, we were always playing games.
And so during like some kind of, it was kind of like a, it
wasn't, it wasn't like lunch or anything.
It was some kind of pep rally or something.
And we never went to the pep rallies.
We went to the like the cafeteria and it's like, you
know, all the misfit kids would go there instead of going the,
you know, the pep rally. So it was like all the heavy
metal kids and the punk rockers and the stoners and, you know,
the gamer kids and the nerds and all that.
So we're in there playing D&D and there's another group of
guys right behind us playing D&D.
So I was like, holy shit, you know, anytime you see a gamer, I
was just like, hey, you know what's up?
And one of the guys knew me, you know, because he had, he was
older than us, but he played with us in middle school because
he lived right down the street from Andrew.
And he recognized me. And he's like, oh, hey, what's
up, man? I hadn't seen you in a while.
I'm like, hey, what's going on? I'm like, and he's like, yeah,
have you met all these guys? I'm like, no, I haven't.
They say, hey, this is Cody. Cody's really cool dude.
I've game with him a lot like, and he's, and he introduced me
to everybody and he's like, you should come over and game with
us. And just like that, everybody's
like, yeah, come game with us. So I started going and gaming
with these guys and they were all like three years older than
me, you know, which was, that's a big difference when you're
like 15 and they're like 18, right?
So, you know, they were, you know, that's a really different
mindset and just that's a big leap in years when you're that
age. So I matured really quickly
hanging out with these older guys.
So I started gaming with those guys and it was mainly
role-playing games. And we would, every weekend,
it'd be like Friday night, they'd come pick me up and we
would spend all weekend again, it was just like middle school.
We'd spend all weekend gaming and they drop me off Sunday
evening and that was that, you know, like, and that was that's
how it was like, I mean, it was like non-stop too, you know, we
didn't, we'd hardly slept. It was just a smorgasbord of,
you know, Taco Bell, Mountain Dew, like usually alcohol, maybe
some weed, you know, because we are, you know, teenagers and and
a lot of like role play games and none of those guys were into
war games really. And so the war gaming kind of
fell off for a little bit until my sophomore year.
There was a game store that opened, a new game store that I
heard about that opened like in this really seedy district of
close to close to downtown Nashville.
Not quite there, but it was like it was in a weird, weird
location. It's like in an industrial area.
Like you could not even like see it off the road.
And we just heard about it and you know, hearing like any time
there was like a there weren't that many game stores around
here. So if like a game store opens,
it like spread like wildfire. Hey, there's a new game store
that opened. So we go up there to this new
game store. And to this day, it's still my
favorite game store I've ever been into.
And it was called the Jolly Roger and it quickly became our
hangout spot. And the guy that owned the Jolly
Roger was this guy did was named Jay.
And Jay was about he was probably in his late 20s, maybe
30. I don't really know how old he
was. He he wasn't, you know, he
wasn't much older than like 30. And me and Jay quickly hit it
off and became really good friends.
And again, you know, I always got along with the older guys.
And but the one thing about Jay was he loved Warhammer and he
had an amazing collection of Warhammer armies.
Like he just, he had probably, I don't even know, you know, I
mean, just just about every army for 40K in Fantasy and in a
store, he had, you know, these incredible tables and all this
terrain. He was really into Warhammer,
you know, And so there was a big group there that was playing
Warhammer 40K in Fantasy. I was like, oh shit, you know,
like I really want to get involved in this.
And by that time I actually had a job that I had my first job
and started working. So I had some money though.
And Jay was like, yeah, you know, he taught me how to he he
was like, well, if you ever want to play, just come up here, you
can use one of my armies and just play.
And he would do that like you just he was like, what army you
want? You want Imperial Guard Space
Marines, you know, And so me and him started playing fantasy all
the time and I started playing fantasy with all the guys up
there just using Jay's armies. And eventually what happened is
Jay just sold me his Chaos store for me.
And he had this fully painted, you know, old school Chaos store
for me with orcs and everything. And he sold it to me for like
dirt cheap, maybe, maybe the whole thing.
It was like 300 bucks, which is even then was a steal, you know.
And so I would go up there just about every weekend and play
Warhammer Fantasy with these guys.
And it, that was, that was great.
It was, it was a blast. And then we played 40K too.
And then we played, you know, some more, you know, going
through high school, I played fantasy and 40K and then towards
again the high school, it kind of dropped off because I, in
the, all this time being a teenager, I started playing
drums and I got really good and I started playing in bands and
music kind of took over over the gaming.
I still loved gaming, did not lose interest in it, but that
kind of took over over the gaming.
And by the time I was 17, especially 18, that's, that's,
you know, I, I, that, that was way more important to me.
So it was literally sex, drugs and rock'n'roll, you know, kind
of took over over the gaming. I still did it, but it was kind
of like secondary to that. So by the time I got out of high
school, that was really dominating my life because I was
playing in bands and, you know, making some money doing it,
meeting girls and, you know, doing drugs and all that stuff,
and just having the time of my life, right?
Like, it was great. But by the time I got to my 20s
that kind of like, I kind of like burned myself out, you
know, that the music thing, really didn't I?
I realized, you know, the music thing's not going anywhere.
Like especially in Nashville. I mean, Nashville, TN, they
don't call it Music City for nothing, right?
Everybody, every other person plays guitar here.
So it's like, it's a very competitive scene here.
And I just, I'm not a competitive person.
Be honest with you. So like I just did, I, I, I just
kind of got tired of trying to compete with everybody else.
And I still, I still play music to this day, but I just do it
for myself and fun and you know, whatever.
But I realized I needed like a real job, right?
Music was not going to be like a viable career really.
So my dad's like, why don't you come work with me?
And I was like, all right, so I did.
And he's like, hey, you're really good at this.
Why don't you go to trade school for a year and kind of get, you
know, learned up and I can pay you more and you just come to
work for with me full time. So I did.
So I went to trade school and used up all the money I'd saved.
And luckily my grandmother had put aside some money for me for
college or whatever. So I had some money and I went
off the trade school for a year in Saint Louis.
Well, I was only really had enough money to like, I didn't
have enough money to go like cruising around or buy anything
or, you know, I didn't have cable, I didn't have Internet.
I was in complete isolation. I didn't know anybody there.
I didn't have enough money to even go to the game store, which
was like 45 minutes away. So I spent a lot of time there
just thinking, listening to music, playing music and reading
a lot of books. You know, I read a lot of books
during that watch. I've always been a big reader.
But, you know, when I didn't have anything else to do, I read
a lot more. And I was also thinking about
like, when I get back, like, I was like, I started, you know,
thinking a lot. And I was like, I really want to
get back into miniature gaming. I haven't done that in a while.
I really want to get back into this.
And so the next year when I got back home, I started working and
actually was making decent money at the time and was single,
right? You know, So I had a lot more
money to blow. And so I got back into miniature
gaming and I think initially I got back into I, I didn't want
to get back into Warhammer because I did have like, I did
try to get back into it when I was about 19 or so.
And I had a really bad experience.
Like I, I tried getting back into it and went up to the store
and the guys there were just like completely unwelcoming.
They, they did not like, they like I walked into the store and
like nobody said hi to me. Nobody offered to play a game
with me. Nobody introduced themselves.
And when I asked people, they're just like, yeah, you know, I
mean, it was not a welcoming experience.
So I was like, you know what, F Warhammer, F these guys.
I, you know, I'm not going to, I'm just never going to play
Warhammer again. That really turned me off a
Warhammer dealing with that, those guys.
So I started looking at other miniature games and I think the
miniature game I kind of settled on was Malifo actually at the
time. Yeah, it because it just looked
different. I thought it, I was like, well,
I liked it. The some of the miniatures
looked really cool. I like the card mechanic that
sounded really cool. And also what was appealing
about it was I could actually play it on a small space and I
was like, well, I and the other thing is I, I was like, well, I
could buy like a bunch of little of these war bands and maybe
that way I could talk people into playing it with me.
So I did, I'd like bought all this Malefo stuff.
And so I tried, you know, talking people into playing it
and like nobody was interested except for my brother.
I, I haven't mentioned my brother in this whole story, but
my brother actually grew up with me and I forced him to play
games all the time and still do actually, you know, I still call
him up. I'd like, hey, you want to play
a game? But he's like, yeah, you know,
so my brother, my brother is kind of a gamer too.
He's not as into it as I am, but he's always been a gamer a
little bit by force. You know, I kind of press gamed
him into playing. So my brother played with me,
but other than that I couldn't talk anybody in playing.
And then I used to frequent this comic store all the time.
And the owner of the comic store was like, hey, I'm going to
start carrying like you're in the miniatures and stuff where I
was like, yeah, yeah. He said, well, I'm going to
start carrying Warhammer stuff and one of the guys here is
going to run like a, a, a league here and we're going to do
Warhammer Fantasy and we're going to do Warhammer 40,000.
He's like, maybe you'll be interested in that.
And I'm like, and I was like, well, maybe he's like, well,
it's like all new players, you know, so it's like none of these
guys have played Warhammer before.
So it'll be like a new crowd. And that's kind of what that was
really appealing to me because I'm like, Oh yeah, you know,
like a fresh, a fresh group that doesn't have any preconceptions.
And you know, you know, it's basically like building a new
community. And that sounded really
appealing to me, so I agreed. I was like, yeah, yeah, that
sounds really cool. So initially I bought up all
this Warhammer Fantasy stuff because he told me like, there's
going to be Warhammer Fantasy. And I show up to the first
meeting and nobody's playing Warhammer Fantasy.
Everybody's playing 40K. And I'm like, OK, well, I guess
I'm going to start a 40K army. So I started a 40K army.
I kept the fantasy stuff. Yeah, it was, it was a really
good group actually. And we played for quite a few
years. And even though I started, I
didn't really, I didn't really enjoy the rules as much, but I
did enjoy painting the miniatures and hanging out and
all that stuff. But it was around that time and
this is like, this is we're talking about like 2010 is when,
when I got back into it. And around that time I I was
playing for a few years and we were playing, we all of a sudden
it started to get really competitive and everybody
started going to tournaments. And I got really caught up in
that too, and did well too, I must say.
You know, like I did do good, like in the tournament scene and
stuff. But it got to the point I just
got sick of it and realized I wasn't having fun.
And I would come home every day with like a splitting headache.
And I was like, OK, I got to do something else.
And so meanwhile, my friend Andrew, the original Andrew from
way back in the day, he, me and him still, you know, we played
in bands together and whatever, but we kind of had a falling out
in our 20s. And he started coming back
around again. And one day he comes over to my
place and he's like, hey, man, I was just in the neighborhood.
I just want to drop by, see what you're doing.
I'm like, yeah, come in. So we're like having a beer and
hanging out. And he goes to my, like,
backroom. And that's where I had all my
war game stuff. And it was insane at that time.
I just had like, I was buying everything, right?
So I just had like all these armies everywhere.
And he's like, what the hell, dude?
He's like, you got back into this stuff.
I'm like, yeah, yeah. He's like, man, this is really
cool. And he starts looking at the
miniatures. He's like, I remember this and
blah, blah, blah. He's like, I was like, well, we
should play some games. And he's like, totally, man,
yeah, totally. So we start playing with the
current rules, which I think we're like 5th edition at the
time, and we play like one game and he's like, this sucks.
He's like, this is terrible, dude.
He's like, this is nothing like, I remember it.
I was like, I was like, yeah, what do you mean?
And he's like, you remember, like we used to play like you
remember all the crazy shit back in the day, like the shock
attack gun and vehicles going out of control and like, what
happened to all that? I'm like, I don't know.
I was like, he said we should play, you know, the old version
we played. I was like, yeah, you're right,
we should. And so I started like looking
around and kind of thinking about it and I found the 2nd
edition Battle Bible. So I printed that whole thing
off, got it all bound up. I printed off all the tokens and
the templates and all that stuff.
And we started playing second edition and just kind of like I
left 5th edition in the dirt or whatever it was at the time.
And we just started playing second edition and everybody
thought we were insane for doing this too.
We'd go up to the store, but they'd be like, what do you do?
What do you guys playing? We're like, we're playing second
edition 40K and everybody's like, why?
Why would you play? You know, everybody was just so
blown away that we were going back to this old game and
that's, and we, we just like, that's all we did.
We just played second edition 40K when we finally, we stopped
playing at the store and we just ended up going to his house
every weekend. I'd go over there on Friday and
we drink a lot and we'd play 40K second edition and we talked a
couple of our other friends into trying it out and it became like
a regular thing. So I guess that's kind of my
origin story, like, you know, nutshell leading up to this
point and what's led me up to where I am now.
So I know I've talked a lot and this has been a pretty long
wooded thing, but maybe you got some questions or other people
do, I don't know. Oh.
Yeah, you got a brilliant. Do whatever.
Bit of let me just check this again.
Yeah, a bit of audio replay reverb there.
I think it should be OK now. But yeah, mate, you got a very
extensive history into the miniature gaming and playing
side of it. And then on your channel you
sort of go and talk about that. Yeah.
Feedback. That's right.
Kind of fixed and it's really interesting.
Yeah. I really enjoyed your video and
you, you, you talked a little bit more extensively about parts
of your story there as well, which I found very interesting.
And I. And like you all, I love a good
origin story and everyone's got something different.
Even. Come through into the same sort
of pathway, usually through Games Workshop, but we all have
a different way of entering the hobby.
And we all all, and I think a lot of us and I, you know,
talking about most people here, we've we've come from sort of
isolated regional areas of the world and somehow we've found
it, you know, just by chance, it's just come across like you,
you with your friend at school, with him flipping through a
white dwarf or a catalogue or something.
And for me, it was like, yeah, through here request and
discovering my local comic store and then opening up all this big
world of games of Games Workshop that I've never seen before.
And yeah, we all have our own sort of entry pointing to the
hobby. And then if if you're lucky
enough, you it's it sticks with you and you keep carrying on
and, and and your adventure grows through the people you
meet and the games you play. So that's pretty awesome, man.
So you have a good break. Let's go, Let's go through the
let's go through the comments mate.
So you have a good smoke and a drink and we'll have a look.
We'll have a look to see what the guys are saying here because
we had a few people coming in and thank you everybody who's
joined us. So Chris is here and also we've
got Cameron. They are two great guys on our
discord and doing our man of war and Chris does a lot of other
stuff at second edition 40K. He does Necromanda, blood bowl
maybe I think space Hulk. We did space Hulk like remote
players on our discord channel. Yeah, right on.
Yeah, so it's good to see Cameron here. sci-fi is still
awake and is still with us, which is amazing.
I don't know what time it is there in the in the UK and it
must be like 3:00 AM or something.
So he says it might have been white dwarf 182 mate.
He checked on Google. Maybe that's what your your
childhood friend and it's it's. Very possible.
It was definitely one of the catalogs that I initially saw.
But Andrew did have him and his brother had a subscription to
White Dwarf. And so I did some digging
because on your Discord I noticed you had like a thing
that said, you know, your first white Dwarf.
And it got me thinking about what my first White Dwarf was.
So I ended up going and looking at like the white dwarfs from
that period and I think I figured out which one it was,
which I can't remember off the top of my head what issue it
was, but it's the one with the, the space ring chaplain on the
front. That's the cover of Angels of
Death, Angels of Death codex. And that was definitely the
first White Dwarf I saw. I specifically remember that
because right around that time Andrew brought the catalog, he
brought a white Dwarf. And that's the first one, you
know, he let me look through and we're like reading through it
and I, I definitely remember like the battle report in there
and like the Andy Chambers interview.
And Andy Chambers was like my guy back then.
He'd be very happy to know Cody. He'd just joined that discord.
I saw that. Yeah.
That's really.
Cool looked at himself and Adrian Woods there, so now you
guys can interact with them and ask some questions and send your
love and praise to them for all these years of great gaming
memories and in the hobby. So it's really wonderful that
they accepted our invitation to join us there and and interact
with you guys, which is even brilliant More is better.
I I hope to get them on a live stream like this so you guys can
interact with them in real time. Yeah, that'd be awesome.
Yeah. So yeah, thanks again, sci-fi
for checking that up, mate. So that's awesome.
Okay, Cameron said I couldn't have figured out battle attack
at 18 years old. I don't think I could have
figured it out either. So Cody, you're just, you know,
you just, you just had the right mind.
You're just wide into gaming, I think at a very young age.
Well, I, I, there was another part of that story about like, I
think one of the reasons I memorized, and I'm still pretty
good at rules today, but I was really good as a kid because I
couldn't get any of the books. Like I said, I was kind of
forbidden from getting the books.
And there's a funny little story about that, especially with the
D&D stuff. My, I would have my mom drop me
off at the bookstore and I go in there with notebook and pen and
actually like copy the D&D rule books in a notebook by hand or
memorize everything. So at one point I remember being
a teenager and like, I literally had that whole rule book, like
memorize, like it was, it was amazing.
I don't know, you know, I would just sit there and be like, Oh
yeah, Magic missile. It does this and this and this
and I can't do it anymore. But back then I had like all
that stuff, like just memorize. So I think that really helped me
in my early years and also with Warhammer too, I didn't have a
lot of the books and I just kind of memorized all that stuff, you
know, I just, and so I, I, I quickly just learned and adapted
to memorize rules, you know, And of course, you know, being
young, I'm sure we weren't doing everything 100% correct.
But I, I, I do remember we were actually, you know, like, you
know, me and my cousin playing 40K and like, we were playing
fantasy and stuff. We were playing pretty close to
what it was supposed to be, you know, and you know, all that
stuff. So yeah, I think I always had a
pretty good knack with rules when I was young.
And also, I think I commented on this before, maybe on your
channel or just talking together, But as you, as you
started talking about your earlier gaming history and
walking to that, that kids basement and then you got the
older, older kid called Dustin. It's like, you know, the, the,
the cast of Stranger things, you know, and playing all D and DSI
love that opening sequence of them playing.
I think it's the very first episode of episode one series
one of stranger things with the rules sitting around the table
playing dungeons and Dragons. It brings back a lot of great
memories, even though I was never a big role player, but I
did try aid advanced dungeon Dragons second edition with
friends. And at that stage they were
really into like dragon Lance. And I think we've sort of
touched on that before as well. And I still have a lot of fond
memories of the artwork, Jeff Easley of that of that era.
Yeah, I got a good stuff, Larry Elmore hanging out behind me
there. Yeah, Larry.
Elmore is another legend, isn't he?
Yeah. Signed by Larry Actually.
Oh, brilliant. Yeah, and I, I've met Larry
quite a few times. He's a really, really good dude.
Yeah, he's a really nice, really nice guy.
I actually drank whiskey with with him one night.
We were, we were at Gen. Con and I'd met him earlier in
the day and had one at like every time I'd go there, I'd get
a print signed. And so I got a print signed.
And then later that evening we went like right by the
Convention Center and we were having a drink and eating a
burger or whatever. And Larry Elmore was there at
the bar and I was like, shit, I'm going to go buy if somebody
told me, like, if you ever want to talk to Larry Elmore, buy him
some whiskey and you know, he'll talk to you.
And so I went up to him. I was like, Hey, how you doing,
Larry? And like, he remembered me.
He would say, Hey, how you doing?
You were that, you know, guy asking me, you know, because I
was asking a bunch of questions and stuff.
I was like, you mind if I buy you a drink?
And he's like, Nah. And so I bought him a whiskey
and we're sitting there drinking Jack Daniels for a very short
time. It was just like 5 minutes or
something and just shooting the shit.
And he's, if you ever meet Larry, he's a very, very like
down to earth, very personal guy.
And like he, everybody that wants to talk to him, he gives
him his full attention. As much as you want to, you
know, interact with him, He's he's a really, really good dude.
So yeah, Larry's cool. What a great opportunity, mate.
Yeah, that's wonderful. Yeah.
I love, I love the artwork from the old D&D second edition era.
The books, well, you know that in that time and during the 90s,
you know, they were pretty hot stuff.
You know, the Dragonlands books were massive then.
You know, the whole series, the entire saga.
I don't know how many books with like 12 books.
I think it's banned out too. It's a lot now, yeah.
I mean, they just came out with some more recently, yeah.
And that's, that's something I didn't really talk about, but
like the art is really what grabbed me to from the
beginning. I've always been a big art guy.
I still love art. And that's what grabbed me
initially was the art of all that stuff.
And to me personally, you know, just my preference.
I think the art of the 1990s in the games too, just the games in
general. I think that was like the golden
age of everything gaming in my opinion.
And I, I'm kind of lucky that I kind of, I was at the tail end
of it, but I still experienced it.
And I think that was a great time to get into gaming.
And but it was the art that really got me first, you know,
like that's what it just, I mean, every time I looked at one
of those pieces and still do it, just, it just my mind would just
go to all these places. You know, modern art doesn't
really do the same thing. I mean, there's, there's a lot
of great artists out there, don't get me wrong, and a lot of
great art and stuff, but it just doesn't grab me the same as like
a lot of that older 1980s and 90s art does, you know?
It just, it really drives my imagination crazy to this day.
Like, it's just such good stuff, you know?
Yeah, I think, I think you're right.
I think for me too, I can really appreciate the older style.
Well, any, any traditional artist I can really appreciate
because digital, digital art obviously has taken its role now
in terms of the amount of stuff they can produce and how they
can access it digitally, how they can send stuff and that
kind of thing. I get it, I get it.
But it's like, OK, I'll make a mistake.
I can just erase that and do it again.
You know what I mean? Like digital art is kind of like
you sort of can erase things. You can import things with, with
traditional art, it's some some guy, some man, some woman who's
got like who's, you know, using a, a paint palette with a brush
and actually putting that onto a canvas.
And if they make a mistake, they might have to just throw the
whole thing out and start it again.
You know what I mean? Like there's some, there's an,
there's a, there's an enormous amount of talent and experience
poured into that canvas piece of paper that whatever they're
doing. Yeah.
Digital art definitely requires some skill.
It's definitely art. Like I'm not going to, I'm not
going to deny it, but the thing I like about hand drawn art and
hand painted anything like that handmade art is it has character
to it, right? Like it has, it brings out the
personality deep inside that person.
And so every piece of art, like I can tell you, like you show me
a Larry Elmore, I can tell you Larry Elmore, you show me a
Clyde Caldwell. I can tell you that's Clyde
Caldwell. You show me John Blanche or Ian
Miller or you know, all these guys or all even all these great
comic book artists. I'm a big comic book guy.
And so, you know, like you show me any of those guys, usually I
could, I'd be like, oh, yeah, that's Larry Elmore, you know,
that's John Blanche. You can just tell like they have
it has a personality to it that I think you can't really get.
You can get it in digital art and there's some guys that can
do it. But I think the difference is
those guys that can express it in digital art, they started
with physical art, right? And they just translated it to
digital art. So they're using the same
principles, but you have a lot of younger guys that started
with digital art. And so it's kind of the other
way around, right? And they're, they're learning to
do everything in a very samey kind of way.
And it's just kind of like it all just kind of like passes
over me, to be honest with you. Like I'd look at a piece of art
and I'm just kind of like it. It doesn't do anything for me
because it doesn't have that unique character to it.
It's kind of the same. And I've heard you talk about it
with like hand sculpted miniatures, right?
I, I really love, that's one reason I collect and love the
old miniatures is I love the character.
They're pieces of art too, you know, and like, I love
collecting those just to look, look at them like they're just,
there's so much character and personality in them.
And again, you can tell like if you've looked at enough
miniatures, like you know, who the sculptor was, you know,
'cause there's certain like characteristics and things to,
you know, their character and their art really comes out in
their miniature. So I like, I, I, I still think
that's the best way to do art. And I still really, I really,
really appreciate, you know, visual art of any sort.
It's, it's amazing to me actually that people can do
that. I never, I had a little bit of
artistic skill, but never that's one thing I wish I had more than
any other like skill is to be an artist 'cause I just love it so
much. You know, and I never really had
a, the right like knack for it or whatever.
I had a little bit, but not I, I wasn't that great of an artist,
you know? Now me too.
I wish I could, you know, I, I sort of did a bit of drawing
when I was younger. And because my mother's an
artist, my grandfather was an artist and my father dabbled in
art at school, he wanted to be like a graphic designer.
My, my, my sister's now a full, you know, full time graphic
designer and illustrator. So we've always had that in our
family. I've really wanted to do like
being an illustrator or, or at least a concept artist or
something like that, but I just didn't put the time and skill.
I was always into painting miniatures and but I think if I
could trade it I would, I think. Yeah.
I could trade all that skill and time I put into miniature
painting into like, you know, graphic, graphic art or
whatever. I think I would have done it.
And because you're really sort of you, you, like you say,
you're putting your own signature into you every piece
you do so that it becomes very identifiable.
OK, Well, that's you're like Paul Bonner.
You know, you. It's unmistakable.
And when you see an orc, even when he does like humans.
Yeah, yeah. War Zone and stuff like that.
It's a very iconic way he he portrays his characters and the
style he draws and paints in and that kind of thing.
It's just a Paul Bonner. That's a Paul Bonner, Paula,
like Mark Gibbons. Another one.
Very distinctive style and, you know, incredibly talented guy.
And now he does a lot of digital stuff, which I get because he
has to do that for sketches or he's got to do that for the
companies he works for. They just require that kind of
level. And it might be just easier for
him to sketch, sketch out a whole lot of concepts, send them
off to the companies and say, yeah, that's that's a go ahead.
And maybe he does a cross between, you know, laying out
the illustration in black and white, then scanning on the
computer and then doing all the digital art for color and that
kind of thing afterwards. I can see there's a cross plane
and there's like a demand for that kind of stuff because of
the amount of art they need these days.
They just don't have the finances to say, hey, you know,
yeah, we love your paintings and we'll we'll pay you for like 2
months just to finish one piece. It just doesn't happen anymore,
you know, with the shame. All right, so let's go into the
other comments. We've got Dan the man, Dan
Buehman. Good to see you Dan.
I really love your musty war gamers live streams either.
On Oh yeah yeah, Dan for the musty war gamers, you know, you
know. Dan Musty, OH.
Good. Absolutely.
I watch Murderly Great. Stuff.
Oh that's awesome. OK.
I love their live streams, Rusty.
Yeah, yeah. Hello.
Correct.
So what it was what it was called his channel, I forget
now. It's he does a lot of battle
tech stuff. And yeah, he's he's a really
nice guy. And there's Palmer in Canada and
they sort of share the hosting between the two of them every
fortnight and really enjoy their conversations and the topics
they bring up every, every fortnight.
So I'll leave a, if I, if I don't leave a link, go and check
out Musty War Games on Facebook or something and you've got
links there to check out what they're doing.
Then let's see Chris says. Fellow middle school French horn
player here. Well, there you go.
You're not lying there, mate. We have you to share that,
Chris. Yes, I think he just did it for
the chicks. Yeah, OK, all.
Right man, I just. Get successful then.
I'm not going to go into details, but in high school
those band chicks were crazy man.
OK, what's what happened to dad stays bad?
That's all I'll say. So.
And kind of fix is here to join us.
How you going mate? All the way from Australia.
What does sci-fi say? Sounds like a pub scene for the
American Werewolf in London. Totally.
So, sci-fi, you still awake? It's amazing.
You were playing old and inferior.
Inferior over new and improved madness Or enlightened.
Yeah, well, like my My name Madman.
In Japan, it's that's exactly what we're doing.
We're playing crazy old games from the 1990s like Kodi and all
of us, yeah, we might be mad, but we know what's good.
That's the thing, you know, even even people come into the hobby
nowadays, and I always find this very fascinating, like young
people like yourself, Cody, who maybe didn't experience like Rd.
Trader when it was out, but you went back and thought, shit,
this is a good game. You know, I like what they did
here. And in some ways it's far more
interesting or entertaining than, you know, the modern
iterations of this game. So.
Well, I've, I got really interested in, I've always been
interested in history of anything.
So if I get into something, I want to know everything about
it, and that includes digging into the past.
And so like with everything I got into, I wanted to know what
came before. So like with D and DI, I started
playing other versions of D and DI, got into AD and D 1st
edition and original D&D and played all those and collected
those. And it was the same with every
like game I played. And Warhammer was no exception.
I didn't know about Rogue Trader until I got older.
And when I got back in the second edition, I, you know,
that was right around the time like the old hammer movement was
starting, like it wasn't really like kicked off properly yet,
but it was starting to get going.
Like I was starting to see like these blogs pop up and stuff and
I started seeing like stuff about Rogue Trader.
It was like, that's really interesting.
And Andrew actually went and bought the Road Trader book.
And so when we were playing Second edition back then, we
started playing Rd. Trader too, and we got into that
as well. And so like, yeah, I've always
been really interested in the history of gaming as well.
And like, I think not just from a historical perspective, I
actually like to play those games.
I think there's still merits and a lot of those old games, like
there's something to be had there.
Like I, you know, there's there, it's, there's still good games
and there's something be had, right?
Like I, I don't think just because the game's old, it's
inferior or there's nothing to see there, right?
So, yeah, I've always been into older games.
That's nothing new to me. That's good mate, That's good.
That's good to know. OK, what does sci-fi say?
If he's still awake? That was a towel that needed an
old pub fly place and purpose beers for the telling.
Thanks for sharing. Yeah, it was, mate.
It was good. Yeah, that's wonderful.
OK, now whoa. Got some more things here.
What we've got here. Robo dogs here.
Yes, very much. Right.
So I didn't mention it, but when I got back into gaming, I've
always wanted to play historical games.
Even when I was like first got into gaming, I remember going up
to Hobby Town and seeing all these historical miniatures and
I was really in love with military history even as a kid.
And there was a group there that met at Hobby Town USA that
actually played historical games.
And they were playing like Fire and Fury and you know, what was
the other one? Some World War Two game and
stuff. But there were these old guys
and I remember like they would be like, you know, pushing me
away. Like, you know, step away from
the table kid. Like we don't want you, you
know, like they did not want some little kid hanging around
their table or whatever. So but when I got older and got
back into gaming, I found out that there was AII was very
interested in getting into historical games.
I just didn't know anybody that was interested in it.
And I found a group here that had been here for 30 years and I
didn't even know about it. And they met at the gaming store
that I used to go to and still go to to this day.
And so I started gaming with those guys and still do.
And it's a very old school historical war games club.
So what I mean by that is they have a, they don't play in a
game store anymore. They actually have an office
building that one of the guys owns.
And they they play there every Tuesday night.
They also play there on Saturdays.
And basically they schedule out games.
So one guy will be like, I'm running World War 2 this week.
And his responsibility, he brings all the miniatures, he
sets up all the terrain and he referees the game for everybody,
right? Like so that's the way that club
plays. So I definitely got involved in
that. And I have several different
historical armies. I have American Civil War in
three different scales. I have Napoleonics, I have
American Revolution. My favorite period is obviously
like the 19th and 18th century. That's always been what's
fascinated me the most. So American Civil War, Seven
Years War, Napoleonic Wars, any of that stuff I really love,
especially American Civil War like that because, you know,
being in Tennessee, like I can literally drive 30 minutes and
I'm on a Civil War battlefield, right.
So I grew up around, you know, American Civil War history all
around me. So that's always really
fascinated me. So that's my kind of thing for
historical gaming. But I'd love, I love all that
stuff. So, you know, I, I still
regularly play historical games for sure.
And I really like them, Yeah. Oh, that's good, man.
That's great. Last, you've got an army in
three different scales. That's that's unbelievable.
You're a real historical gamer. Yeah.
Because that's a real game. Yeah, so my earliest is seems
pretty boring compared to Cody. No drug, sex and rock'n'roll for
Dan. It's just straight on the farm
out of out of college I think for him, unfortunately.
Good to learn to play the drums, mate.
That's what it was. What do we got here?
Can I can? It's going to click on it.
Yep. Have a Borgassus ball, space
Hulk or whammer quest Cody. Yeah, I definitely dabbled in a
lot of the specialist games. Like I said, we, I, I played a
lot of Gorka Marca back when it first came out, but we also
played Necromunda. I I've dabbled in all those
games. We played a little bit of
Warhammer Quest. We played a little bit of Space
Hulk. You know, if somebody had it, we
would play it throughout the years.
Back in middle school. We played a lot of Hero Quest
actually, which was actually way after our time, like I didn't,
you know, because we, I did not grow up when Hero Quest came
out. But what happened is we found it
at a garage sale and we started playing that a lot and loved it.
And then later on we acquired Warhammer Quest and we did, we
did play that occasionally too, but we kind of liked Hero Quest
better for some reason. I think it was just a lot easier
and more enjoyable and more accessible for everybody.
But I I love Warhammer Quest. It's a great game.
Space Hulk. I have played a little bit like
a conventions and stuff. Mordheim, I've played a lot of
Mordheim. I played some Blood Bowl.
I've got Blood Bowl there in the closet and some teams.
So epic. We played a little bit of epic
War Master, you know. So yeah, I've kind of dabbled
with just a lot of a lot of the GW stuff, you know, I haven't
played everything, but I've at least dabbled in a lot of it,
right. Yeah, good, mate.
OK, that's nice. Yeah, I think, I think for me
also hear requests is just, I don't know, maybe it's not just
nostalgia, but I think I just enjoyed it more than Wymer
Quest. Maybe you're right.
Maybe it's just the simplicity of it, the system, Anybody can
just get in there and start playing.
Wymer Quest would have brought these different layers and it's
still good. It's still, it's still nice and
it's got a lot of a lot of depth to it, a lot more than regular
hear request. But I like advanced hear request
a lot more I think personally, but.
Oh, do you? Yeah.
Yeah, I never played advance. Request Yeah, I love.
It, I've never played advance to your request.
I've always wanted to play it and I I've been watching you
play it on your channel and it's been really interesting.
Yeah, I I'd really like to give advance to your request a try
sometime and I'd like to play some more him requests again
too. I think that was probably that
was that was probably my favorite like dungeon crawler
game I ever played and I didn't really get to play it a lot.
So yeah, I need to I need to revisit Warham request at some
point and would like to play advanced T request sometimes.
Well, we should try, we should try asking Chris, because Chris
has got the whole base game and everything.
And I've played it with him recently for the first time
since 1995. Or when it was it came out.
Yeah, One one thing I've thought that I've forgot about.
Why my question? What I liked about it the most
was it's all driven by cards. Right.
Yeah, you, you flip the card and that's what the next tile will
be to flip the card. That's what the monster
encounter put the card. This is what.
And I love that randomness to it.
And it's it's. All AI driven, so it's like you
can just play cooperatively and that's an excellent feature
about that game. So yeah, it's got its merits and
I think I'd like to try it more. And I like to play the Kaos
Warrior and that, that sounds awesome.
I never got to do that back in the day.
Yeah, we were selling that at games, which it, when I was
working there, we were selling Lama Quest.
That was that time when it was out.
And but I just didn't have people to play with.
And when I started working in games worship, we just didn't
play games. And you were sort of just doing
demos and stuff like that. But yeah, it's got a, it's an
untapped little gem there. I've had a lot of then I started
hanging out with all the guys. I'm 10 years older than you,
Cody, so we'll get along fine playing a remote game.
There you go. Heck yeah, yeah.
I mean, I'm still hanging out with older guys, so you know.
Hang on, wait, wait, hang on me. I'm anxious.
OK, so we've got Rubber Dog. I know nothing about Battletech.
Do people still play it? Oh, for sure, yeah.
I mean, Battletechs I think bigger than it's ever been.
Like it's had this huge resurgence, which is kind of
kind of pissed me off because what a so like, you know, when I
got back into gaming, like in 2010, battle tech was one of the
things like I was like, I want to play some battle tech again.
And I bought like all this battle tech stuff and nobody
would play with me, right? Everybody's like, oh, battle
tech. Oh man, that game is like old
and washed up. Like it's, it's so difficult and
ancient. The models look stupid and
everything under the sun. Like nobody wanted to give it a
try. And Andrew did play with me to
give him credit, but he wasn't like that into it.
And then all of a sudden they kind of rebooted it, which was a
great move, a smart move. They didn't really change the
rules, which is something I do love about battle Tech.
Like it's pretty much the exact same game it has been since
whenever like 1984 or whatever it came out.
It's it's pretty much the same. But with the reboot, like, yeah,
now it's like huge, like people are like playing battle tech
left and right, right. Like it's just it's crazy.
And actually I I've been playing some battle tech with, I have
one friend here that will play like a lot of these old games
with me that I game with regularly.
And he's got a really nice set up for battle tech.
And we both have tons, hundreds of Max and we play a lot of
battle tech too. So I still love battle tech.
OK, cool. All right, that's good.
Yeah, I've heard a lot of people talking about.
Musty games as well. They're talking about it in Tim
last week he talked about it, You know, so it seems like
there's either the old crowd coming back or this is a new
crowd of people playing battle tech.
And yeah, it's seems very popular in Ireland.
I don't know why, but there's a lot of Irish people who play it.
Yeah, seems seems to be that way.
Anyway, maybe I'm wrong there, but it just seems they've got
like actual dedicated groups of people playing the game and like
organized play and stuff like that.
So Dan says and iterates yes rubber dog Battlesech is still
very popular so because I know that rusty on his channel he
does a lot of battle tech stuff there yeah, it seems to be a big
resurgence and battle tech. I think they re released the
simplified rule set also, but I think the plastic miniatures
that Cody was alluding to too and I think Tim showed me,
they're all sort of those kind of horrible PVC things, which is
sad to see. But I'm sure you can buy maybe
the metal ones somewhere you can still get on know what about
yeah, can't get a lot about that stuff and.
But. Yeah, I don't really know much
about that'll take, to be honest, but seems almost
slightly interesting. Cody, how do you have the time
to be into the all these things? Do you have a do you not have a
phone Exactly. Throw away your bloody cell
phone, a smartphone. That's really distracting.
Yeah. I don't really spend a lot of
time on the phone, but I don't know man, like.
I'm I'm a busy guy. I've always liked to keep busy.
Yeah, me too, man. I have, you know, my, my dad's
always laughing at me because he's like, what are you doing
tonight? You know, he's because he knows
I'm going to be doing something. Drinking, drinking with the boys
down the pub. I'm always.
Like I'm always busy working on something like I'm.
Just I'm very active, whether that's like making music or
painting miniatures or playing a game or doing YouTube.
Like I just like to keep busy. I don't really like sitting
around watching TV and all that stuff.
Like I like, I like to keep busy and keep active, but I really
don't know, I really don't have time to do everything.
And that it does become a kind of a problem, you know, So I
kind of have to, I literally have to make like a, a schedule
now because I have so many things going on, you know, but
it's fine, you know, I, I, I like it.
I like, I like keeping busy and I like that I have, you know,
plenty of hobbies to, to keep my mind occupied, you know.
Yeah, that's a good mate, isn't it?
It's a good thing. I'm, I'm like you mate too.
I'll just go. Nuts.
See, if I don't have things to do, I've got to keep my hands
busy. I've got to do something.
Otherwise, yeah, I'll do something silly like drink a lot
of alcohol or something. Probably.
Yeah, me too. Go, go, go and get a real life.
I'll have to catch a rest tomorrow, but it's very light
now. My sleep.
Yeah, sci-fi, you better get to sleep, man, because I think it's
like 4:00 in the morning or something like that.
Now one more questions. Unforgiving.
Yeah, much like well, much like advanced hear requests.
Very unforgiving game. Hear requests, add bit more
forgiveness, I think. But yeah.
Yeah, both of those game systems were, you know, you're going to
die. Like if you saw my advance
request adventures leading all the way to the final, then you
would know why you'd see, You'd see the evidence.
Was there remote? Ahq.
Let's do it. Yeah.
I'm more than happy to do it for you guys.
We got to party together. Let's do it.
We'll do it on Discord or something.
Oh, we'd love to do that. We'll have to work out a quest.
I might. Do something on orcs or
something. Orcs and goblins use my he
request miniatures in there and just do some kind of dungeon
like that. Maybe you guys can design it or
we get two people vote on or get someone to write a little quest
preload or something to it. And we'll preload, I should say.
And then we'll we'll sort of form something around there.
That'd be quite cool. And surprised that Josh was a
big Infinity player in the past. How about you, Cody?
Yeah, I definitely dabbled in Infinity at one point.
When I got, when me and Andrew were regularly playing games
about 10 years ago or so, we started playing a lot of other
stuff and I still do. I like, I like playing a lot of
other games or trying things out.
And at that time, I definitely, we definitely were, we were
trying out. Different stuff and we played.
Infinity for a while and we really enjoyed it when we were
just playing me and him. And then we started going up to
the shop and playing it because there was a big group that was
playing it actively and that's, I got really turned off by it.
This for one thing, there were way too many.
I, I I don't mind complexity at all.
But there was a lot of. Like little bitty special rules
all over the place. It was kind of a mess and hard
to keep up with. And the other thing, it was just
way too competitive. I'm not really that much into
like the competitive like tournament scene anymore.
And around here are local scene with an.
I don't know if Infinity still a thing here anymore, but at that
time. Like everybody was just all they
were worried about was playing like tournament competitive
games with Infinity. And so I was really turned off
by that and we just kind of stopped playing it.
The other thing I didn't like was the miniatures are
beautiful, but they were a pain in the Dick to put together.
They were, they were a real pain in the ass to put together and I
did not enjoy putting those things together nor did I really
enjoy painting them. They're not really that group
fun to paint for me, so I hope I never see another fucking
Infinity miniature ever again. Yeah, absolutely.
I really, really mean that. So yeah, I, yeah, I've done my,
my, my. Thumbs and my fingers still hurt
when I talk about it because the pain, I put those, my fingers
through the tips of my fingers, putting those things together,
cleaning them up and then pinning them into these really
tiny little, you know, they were just so small to drill into the
arms and that kind of thing to pin them on their bodies, mate,
let's just hell. And then you have to then I'd
have to cut the tabs off, drill into the feet and then pin them
into, you know, resin bases and stuff like that.
Yeah. Never, never again, Never again.
And yeah, but it was fun while it, while it was there.
I still love the, the guy who designed all the left models,
really. On Juan Navarro, I think his
name is. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Brilliant guy. Yeah, brilliant.
Stuff he did. Amazing.
Of course, now it's all 3D digital sculpting and I and I, I
got to say for the stuff, one of the guys who does it, I think
it's, is it Jag JJAGI think he's another Spanish sculptor, but
amazing stuff that he's done with 3D sculpting and he's
really, really talented. But yeah, I mean, you know, I,
it seems to have dropped off a lot.
Even Australia was massive into Infinity but then it's just all
died out and and people are just going on to other things.
So. It's a shame because it's a good
company. I really like Carlos.
I like CB as a company. The people behind it are really
good guys. But yeah, I think their game for
me. And I think with Kodi too, like
he talked about 40K where he came back with migraines and it
was just horrible. Like you just like, I just need
to get out of this. That's why I changed from
Infinity to doing the older stuff because it was like simple
fun. And we laughed.
That was the thing about you never laughed at all.
You know it was so. Serious, you know.
Everything and everything was on that one dice roll, you know,
like I think I'm talking about it like I needed nineteen or
less on AD 20 A roll 20 and I just like threw the bloody dice,
you know, it's became so intense.
I thought, no, I can't do this anymore.
I just can't do this anymore. I've got to take got to step
away and do something else and maybe come back to it.
I just never did because I went into like 5th edition and it's
like no, or 4th edition or whatever.
And I said no, no, sorry, not doing that.
I'd rather play like second edition 40K and never go
anywhere else out of that. That was just, it's just in one
big sandbox. You've got all the rules, you
get all the add-ons and stuff like that.
That's it. I'm happy it's all contained.
That's the thing. Now, the other thing I want to
talk about with you, Cody, because we talked about this
before on a paint chat, was that you also played Warhammer.
Renaissance or Renaissance? Absolutely.
Like I said, I've always loved Warhammer.
Fantasy and what happened is I found this guy, which is Jack,
the guy that I mentioned earlier, the guy that I play
with now. Now Andrew moved away the cross
country several years ago. So I don't get the game with
Andrew anymore, but I met Jack several years ago when I first
started getting back in gaming and he jumped in our 40K group
and the, the guys there treated him like shit, you know, And so
like, I really do not like that. If if there's a new guy that
wants to get into the, you know, into the group or gaming or
whatever, I treat him with the hospitality.
I'm like, hey, how you doing, man?
I'm Cody. Like you want to play a game and
instead, like this guy, like plays game of them and just like
tables in and one turns like, you know, see you later, dude.
Like and I'm just like, dude, that's no way to treat like the
new guy, right? Like, so I saw Jack over there
playing this game with, you know, I was playing 40K and he's
over there playing with this other guy and this guy just
wipes him out like two turns and Jack's like packing up his
stuff. And I was like, hey, man, I'll
play a game with you. I'm Cody.
What's up? You know, like introduce myself.
And so we got to know each other and really cool dude, like Jack
is probably, you know, one of the nicest people I've ever met
in my life, just a really nice guy.
And we share a lot of like the same sensibilities.
Like we, we'd love, you know, we just love to play games to play
games. And we're not like super
competitive. I mean, we, we play to win, but
whatever. So anyways, when me and Jack
started playing 40 Ki learned that he played fantasy.
And I'm like, oh shit, you play fantasy.
Like, you know, I have a fantasy army and nobody will play with
me. So we started playing fantasy
and at the time it was 8th edition.
So we started playing 8th edition a lot.
Like we, I just stopped playing 40K pretty much except for
second edition. And we were playing fantasy and
every week I'd get together with Jack and we play fantasy.
And then I realized I didn't really.
Well, OK, So what happened is we went to a tournament like a
couple years later and this is the first time I'd played 8th
edition with other people and playing with Jack was OK.
Like if we we. Had fun because Jack.
'S a good guy and it was all in the spirit of fun, but we went
to this tournament and I realized like that was like the
worst experience I'd ever had in my life.
You know, it was it was horrible.
Besides, besides the fact that like there was a lot of beer
there and like, you know, that was fun and everything and got
to play some Warhammer, I realized that 8th edition as a
game was complete garbage. Everybody had the same kind of
army, like every army looked the same.
The guys that were playing it were complete Dick heads, you
know, nobody would, you know, and it's so the first day I was
like in last place in the tournament and it was a 2 day
tournament and I'd already, you know, it was in another state.
It was in Alabama. So I go to this tournament, I'm
in last place. The beer kind of help to.
Make the day a little bit better.
So the second day I come back and the tournament organizer,
what like was looking, you know, lining up the games and he's
like, oh, you're Cody, right. And I was like, yeah, he's like,
he's like, man, I'm really shocked that you came back
today. I was like, well, I mean, like I
paid to play and, you know, I'm here to play some fantasy, like
Warhammer fantasy. I don't care, man.
Like I don't care if I win or lose.
He's like, you know, he he personally was like, hey, man,
like I'm really, really impressed that you came back.
That shows great sportsmanship and like, you know, that's
awesome that you there was a lot of people that just dropped out
like the second day. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Because, you know, they were there to win or whatever.
And like I was. Like play games and he's like,
dude, that's really awesome. You showed back up and like play
and everything. He's like, good on you, dude.
Like pat me on the back. He's like, go have fun.
And actually that second day was awesome because it was all the
people that had lost the previous day.
And so we did, you know, nobody gave a shit, right?
We're just like getting drunk because there was no, they had
like kegs of beer there. It was like 10 bucks and you
could drink all the beer you wanted.
So we're like drinking beer and having shots under the table and
just a blast while all the guys that are winning are up there
like at the at the front, like super serious and like, you
know, trying to win for what? Like, I don't know, you know,
because I mean, what are they going to win?
Like, you know, $50 a beer? Yeah, I mean, like, so we're
just having fun. We're having a blast.
But that tournament made me realize I really didn't like 8th
edition Fantasy. And Jack kind of came away the
same way. He was like, he got his ass
kicked too, by the way. And he was kind of like, we both
kind of came back and like this game really in that great.
And I was like, you know, we should, we should like try out
some of the older versions of Warhammer Fantasy.
Would you be into that? And he's like, yeah, I think I,
I think I could, you know, get behind that.
So I started looking in like I played 5th edition back in the
day. I played 6th edition.
I, I didn't play 7th at all. I don't know anything about it.
I from what I hear, it's just like 6th.
So I was kind of looking around what the best version of fantasy
is. And a lot of the older guys were
telling me, hey, need to look at 3rd edition.
Like that was like, I think you would really like it.
And I was like OK, so my girlfriend at the time bought me
and I still have it. She bought me the 3rd edition
fantasy hardback rule book and the Army's book for my birthday
one year. She saw she saw I was looking at
it and she surprised me with it. And that that was a great like
birthday present. So we me and Jackson are playing
third edition fantasy and 3rd edition fantasy is a blast.
Like I love it, but it is, it is crazy.
Like it's insane, right? Like, and we were both like,
this is fun. This is really fun as hell.
But like we maybe, maybe we should look at something
different. So we started looking at other
like systems. I started buying other like
games and stuff. And then I found Warhammer
Renaissance and I was like, man, this, it, I think it had just
like come out like on Facebook and like, I was like, this looks
really cool because it was kind of like Warhammer 4th edition
with a little bit of like modern alterations, tiny modern
alterations, but it still had that old school Warhammer
Fantasy feel. I was like, this is exactly what
I want. So we started playing Warhammer
Renaissance and we, we, we were playing that a lot right before
COVID happened. And of course, you know, COVID
happened and kind of like killed everything.
But yeah, yeah, we, I, I played a lot of Warhammer Renaissance.
I haven't played it recently, but I've been really itching to
get back into fantasy and I think when we do get back into
it, that's what we're going to play.
That's become my favorite version of fantasy now for sure.
I really like it. Cheers mate.
I'm going to, I think it's 12:30 I think.
Oh, it's 1240, I think. It qualifies me to have my first
drink of the day. Oh, there you go.
So cheers to you mate. So thanks again for joining with
us. And yeah, I think why my
Renaissance is it's part of our group too.
We play it all the time. We used to play.
I had got the guys into 5th edition. 4th edition would have
been a massive stretch. 3rd edition almost impossible.
Yeah, Renaissance basically bridges that gap.
I think the older, newer, newer gamers, older miniatures, newer
miniatures, all the profiles, new profiles, and it sort of
just merges everything in together so everyone can play.
Everyone has something familiar to them, whatever edition they
played, and everyone enjoys it, has fun.
And yeah, you still got the crazy 4th edition magic, which
is awesome. And yeah, I, I really enjoy
playing. I think it's it's.
Even though I love 4th edition. I love all the books and
everything and but yeah, Renaissance means we're playing
the game 'cause if I said if I was like stubborn and said, Oh
no, I'm not playing anything, I'm only playing like 4th and
5th edition, I would never play a game.
Yeah, I mean, so Renaissance is kind of like it's the saviour
that we, we just needed that just to get people on getting
the images on the table and actually throwing some dice and
having fun. And it's an awesome step.
Like it's a living rule book. So it's all for free.
Just download everything off the Facebook page you're in.
You know, that's that's the that's the other thing I really
like about it is I. Don't yes, much as I like
collecting the old stuff, it's gotten more expensive over the
years and it that makes it really great that we can just go
download the rule book every year in the army book and and
they have like an extensive army list, you know, like more
extensive than they did in like 4th and 5th edition.
So yeah, I, I really love it. I, I, it's definitely will be my
go to for Warhammer fantasy for now on for sure.
I still like I I, you know, if somebody told me, hey, let's
play Warhammer 5th or 4th or I would be all about it.
Me too, you know, but I think you know my go to for now on.
It's gonna be Warhammer. Renaissance.
Yeah, I still need the nostalgic, nostalgic kick of
picking up the 4th edition books.
And reading through and flipping through, I love all that.
But I can see why Renaissance is a positive mood because
basically, like Nick has done Nick here in Japan, he's worked
with Boulder. Boulder's the guy who created
the set and worked with him in order to, you know, check all
the spell descriptions, make sure they're all, you know, free
of any kind of ambiguity. You know, just making sure
everything looks really clear so that, yeah, OK, some people will
say, well, it doesn't really matter, You know, we can just
roll A4 plus whatever, and that's fine too.
But you want something that's really streamlined.
So when someone comes into the game fresh, they can read
everything and everything makes sense.
Everything is clear, The terminology is right.
And then there's no sort of, well, what we do here or
whatever, those kind of moments, because Warhammer is a system
where a lot of that comes up more so than any other game I've
ever played. There's a lot of like, OK, what
these two interactions overlap each other or they they you
know, they clash. What what takes precedence?
What you know, what happens here in this situation?
So the more clarity, the more feedback they get, the more
input they get into the game, the better it's just going to be
for everybody. So that's awesome.
That's great you're playing it because it surprised when you
said, oh, yeah, I'll play one more renaissance.
Like, wow, really awesome. That's good.
Now we we haven't played it since before the pandemic.
But I would like, I would like to jump back into fantasy.
Now, unfortunately, I don't really have an intact fantasy
army right now. My chaos army is in kind of
pieces. And I do have a third edition
era orc army that needs to be painted and a third edition era
wood elf army that needs to be painted.
But I tell you what I really want to do is I want to rebuild
that chaos door for me. And I'm really that's like the
one regret I. Have in life is.
Selling my Chaos doors, but with all the new 3D sculpts, I think
that's going to be like my, probably not my next project,
but it's going to be in line for this year, is to do Chaos
Dwarves. I think I want to do that.
And then we maybe play some fantasy.
Yeah, cool. And hopefully, hopefully we can
rope in some more people. I do know some more old fantasy
enthusiasts around here and they're all playing Kings of War
right now, which I have no interest in.
But I think I think I could convince a couple of those guys
to play some fantasy again. I'd be like, hey, you know,
we're playing fantasy. Like check this out, like
Warhammer Renaissance. I think.
I think I could probably convince a few more people we
get something going. Yeah, for sure, man.
I think once they see you playing it, and that's the thing
about one. Renaissance, if they see you
playing it, they've got more inclination to actually invest
their time in in building an army, painting and start playing
it again. You know what I mean?
If you just talk about and say, yeah, let's play that and then
it sort of just drifts off and no one does anything about it.
So like in our situation, like tomorrow, I'm going to go down
to casual to play it with the guys.
And we have, well, we did have about I think 10 people, 10
regulars, which is awesome, which is amazing for like Japan.
It's incredible. Now we've got now tomorrow we've
got nine people. I'm trying to get another guy
coming down tomorrow if he can to play.
So we're we're sort of losing people who lost Justin.
Unfortunately he moved away because of work to Hong Kong.
But now we've got another guy coming in.
We've got two other guys coming in who are urban Japan traveling
and they wanted to play in the tournament as well.
Like it's not really a tournament.
It's like games day kind of thing.
But it's good to see there's some kind of growth.
There's some kind of stimulus there that people say, hey,
these guys actually playing, you know, every couple of months
they're having a some kind of games day and having a piss up
afterwards. Let's go and play, you know, and
it's just fun. It's really welcoming.
It's like you never play. You haven't played one more that
sounds. Don't worry, it's not not a
tournament. Come in.
Let's get miniatures on the table.
You'll pick it up in no time and you'll be laughing and you know,
you're having a having a beer as you play.
And you know, it's just a good atmosphere.
It's nothing like a tournament. Because when you say when you
say the words tournament, it's this PTSD like, Oh my God, no,
like you had that experience. Like, oh, no, no thanks.
I'm not going to go to that. It's not like that at all.
We do record the points, but it's not it doesn't mean the end
all thing. It's like it's just for fun.
You know the the best I I tell you like so.
I used to play a lot of tournaments back in.
The day and the best tournament I used to go to, they don't do
it anymore, which is really unfortunate.
It used to. What was that tournament called?
It was called like the Wall or something and they played it in
Alabama and it was invite only. He had to get invited and it was
in a bar. They rented out a bar for a day
and had a 40K tournament there. And it was a blast because like
if you, if you came with like a power army list, you were not
invited back the next year. It was all about getting drunk
and having a good time. And it was, it was so much fun
because like the scenario, you know, they'd have a different
scenario every game and it'd be like this wacky, crazy thing and
everything involved drinking. So if you captured an objective,
you'd be a shot blast and you had to buy your opponent a shot,
right. So everybody would just get
wasted and just have a good time.
And that was the best tournament I've ever been to.
And it's it's kind of a shame that it's not around anymore,
but that that that guy had a good idea.
That was a lot of fun. Yeah.
That gives me good ideas actually, how we can do ours.
Like even if it's just. Like not a tournament, like just
us playing kind of thing like, yeah, you, you get, you complete
this objective or something like that.
Yeah, you get a shot of, you know, whatever.
You know, I think that's a really fun idea because what I
don't think you and UK would agree with me, and I think a lot
of the guys here would agree with me too, with the limited
time we have and that limited time we're going to have to
choose between all those games that we want to play, You know,
when we get to the table, we want to have a good time.
It's part of the enjoyment of the social aspect.
It's the game itself. And it's like, yeah, when I get
together with friends, I know I'm just going to get guaranteed
a good time because I know the guys, we have fun.
There's no competitive kind of ego in there.
It's just and we, we, we, we play, you know, to win.
Of course you can play because the winning feeling is nice.
But you know, if the way you do it, I think is a, is a big part
of the game. And yeah, absolutely, Yeah,
yeah. And we've we've all come across
various. Different types of.
People in in our war gaming hobby that we probably never
want to see ever again Oh yeah, absolutely.
But you stick, you stick with yeah, you stick with the guys
that. You know you know who are real.
Human beings and you know, really like to play for fun and,
and like you say, have a few drinks, have a bit of fun and
enjoy the game for what it is. But narrative gaming is a big
thing now. Narrative gaming is really
popular now and I like that. I like the aspect of narrative
of gaming because it's not just like it's a pitch battle, very
symmetrical. It's kind of like you're thrown
in the situation and here's the background and, and like Rd.
Trader does that very well. It portrays a story very well
and it can really throw you a real big curveball and you just
need to work your way through it.
But it's really entertaining at the same time.
So I think those kind of scenarios look really, really
popular now, I think with games. Yeah, I've always been in the
narrative gaming, and I think that's because I hung out with
my. Friend Andrew, and he's a
narrative guy, you know, he, he was a writer and like that he
had that mind. So even when we were kids
playing games, he'd be like, what's the story here?
You know, like we got to and he'd come up with this elaborate
like story and background and stuff.
So I've always been into that. And the other thing that
reinforced that for me is the historical guys, because when
you play like I play like there's, there's two types of
like historical games. There's like the competitive
historical games and there's scenario based historical games,
right? Like, and I like the scenario
based where you're either playing a historical battle or
you're playing something based off history.
It's a, it may be a made-up battle, but it's based off of
history, right? It's based.
And so like you have a referee that comes up with these
objectives and all that stuff. And so that kind of reinforced
it for me too. So I love having, I love
narrative gaming and I love having a narrative to the games
and I'm pretty lucky and that the people I usually play with
enjoy that kind of stuff too. I, I mean, I'm fine with just be
like, OK, you know, we're playing 1500 points, all right,
bring your army and we're going to set up terrain.
I'm fine with that too. Like that's, that's all great
and all, but I really like having that narrative and I like
continuing that narrative too, because you know, you play the
game and you can see the narrative unfolding in front of
you as you're playing. And that's one thing about the
older game rules too, is they kind of encourage that
narrative, right? Like Rd.
Traders, second edition, 40K, old versions of Fantasy 4th and
5th edition really have a lot of narrative built into the game.
So as you're playing the game, the game mechanics themselves
encourage that narrative to play out in front of you and you see
it all kind of playing out and you're imagining this thing
happening, you know, for real. It's not, it's not like playing
40K now where it's just like very, very abstract, right?
Like it's a lot more granular. And I really like that.
That's one thing I really like about those older rule sets is I
get really immersed. You know, I especially Rogue
Trader recently, like I've been revisiting Rogue Trader and me
and Jack have actually been playing Rogue Trader.
And he, I was like, OK, we're going to play this because he's
never played Rogue Trader. And I was like, OK, the spirit
of this game is, you know, it's a narrative experience.
So I'm going to let you like set up the terrain, you come up with
the scenario. He provided the miniatures and
he was kind of the GM, but we were both playing.
And so he set up this whole scenario and everything.
And like, we started playing and like, it was just, we, we played
two games like that late the past few weeks.
And it was just like some of the IT, it was amazing.
Like how immersive that was, you know, like, like the, the story
just really like unfolded and like, we were like, well, what
are we going to do? Like in the next game?
We're already like creating a campaign based on these just
impromptu like narrative games. And I think those older games
really, really enforce that and encourage that not just in
their, their, their, their style, but in the rules
themselves, you know, just because of, of how the rules
interact with the game. Like they really encourage a
narrative style and it just unfolds naturally whether you
want it or not, right? Because all this wacky shit is
happening in front of you. And it's, it's like a movie
playing out or like a comic book or whatever, you know?
So it's, yeah, I, I'm really into that and I love that.
And I think that's a big part of war gaming for me is the
immersion. Like it is I, I love that, you
know, and, but I'm sure some people out there will say, well,
Josh, your favorite game is epic.
Space Marine and it's not narrative at all.
And that's true. It's not.
It has no narrative in built whatsoever.
It's purely a tactical game, but I love it because of that.
I love the hidden deployment set up.
It's all for war stuff. It's I know where the objectives
laid out and there's no random there's no sort of random
element to it so much but apart if you play, if you play orcs,
there are some sort of random roles you've got to for the mad
boys, which are just hilarious. Every time they get shot, you
got to roll up two dice and see what happens to them.
They might play dead or they might run off or they might just
go completely Rambo on on the enemy and something like that.
So it's got some fun random elements into there.
But the straight epic spaceman is just very kind of straight
cut. There's no proof, you know,
there's not many, there's not many chance you need to roll on
that kind of thing. Whereas Rogue Trader is this
really. It's built for randomness.
Oh for sure, Just your creation of your army like the orcs.
You know, I don't have much experience.
With the whole system, but for the orcs itself, yeah, you're
basically saying, OK, I want to play this particular clan.
This is the limitations or prerequisites.
And from there it's all random, you know, And that's that's the
beauty of it, I think. And the name generation is
random. The, the weapons are random and
then you sort of got to build your army around that.
And I think, I think the Nigel Stillman philosophy of wargaming
really is built around that kind of thing where you create an
army and you it's fixed. It's that's it.
That is your 1500 point Rogue Trader war coming, for example.
And then you just play that forever.
You know, I think that's a real beautiful thing.
But if it's a it's a thing of its time and but I think it's
nice that people like us are sort of revisiting those things
that we missed out maybe all of our past that was sort of
rediscovering them now. Well, I will say like, you know,
you was talking about like epic. Epic not being a narrative game
rules wise, but you already come from that narrative mind space,
you know, so you can play any rule set and if you're in that
narrative mind space, like the rules don't have to enforce that
to create a narrative, you know, So I, I think you know that you,
you already have that narrative and unfolding in front of you
because you grew up with that narrative experience of playing
a lot of these older games. And that's still hot.
How I approach any game, whatever we're playing like I,
you know, it doesn't matter what it I think also it kind of for
me, it comes a lot of that probably comes from the
role-playing experience too, because I've always been a heavy
role player and still AM. And so I kind of want to role
play too when, you know, when when I'm more gaming, I'm like,
I am this Orac were boss or this Harlequin, you know, whatever,
you know, grand Harlequin or whatever, you know, so like, and
it come up with a name for the guy and like start thinking
about like what his background is and stuff and like really
putting myself in the headspace that.
And but I I like that. Like it's it's an escape and
it's yeah, it's really cool. Rogue Trader.
It's been really interesting to revisit that game.
I will say I don't think I'll be honest, I don't think it's the
greatest rule set. Like rule set wise, I think
second edition is a better rule set.
But all the ideas in row trader I think are amazing.
You know, like all the all the aesthetics of it, the all the
wacky ideas and the free form expression of Rd.
Trader is really, really cool. That's what I really enjoy about
Rd. trader. The rule set I actually think
has a lot of flaws. It has, I'll be honest, like it
has a lot of problems. I feel the same way with 3rd
edition fantasy. Like I love, I love the same
thing about third edition fantasy.
It's got a lot of like the aesthetics are amazing, the arts
amazing, the ideas and they're crazy cool.
But as a rule set, it's, it was better like in 4th edition, 5th
edition. So what I think I'm probably
going to do is take a lot of the ideas of Rogue Trader and
interpret those in probably second edition and such, you
know, like I, I think that's probably the way I'm going to
approach it because I, I have found playing row trader again,
I'm like, there's a lot of rough edges in this real set, You
know, you know, I mean, it's not a bad rule set and for the time
it's great, but I, I think like, you know, it, it definitely has
some things that could be better.
And I think second edition was better in my opinion, But you
can still take those ideas and bring them into second edition.
And in fact, if you look at a lot of those old battle reports
and stuff, a lot of the, you know, the studio and stuff,
we're still kind of doing that. They always, they were still
kind of playing in that, that narrative like style and stuff
from the road trader days. And, and so that's, that's I, I
think Rd. trader is a great inspiration is basically what
I'm saying. You know, I think that's like
the main like thing I love about Rd. trader.
I love I I still would like to play more of it and like
experiment with it, But overall, like as a game, I think second
edition 40K is really like my sweet spot for 40K, you know
yeah, I think I'd agree with you there because yeah, if.
I think the cards for second edition built the narrative
around you get the mission cards, you get the strategy
cards, and it sort of tells a story within the game through
the randomization of those cards.
And I think I like that. I like that how it does that in
second edition. So yeah, it's it's kind of like
if every edition has their kind of memorable parts or things
that did better. And and then, you know, you just
find the edition that you want to play or like you say, take
things, extract things that you want from an edition and sort of
built into that. And Rick Priestly, I think said,
I don't know who said it, but he said that he likes when people
play the games, but he's sort of disappointed when they don't
want to change it or they don't want to evolve it somehow make
it their own game. So I think even 4th edition, if
you if you look in those books, he always comments or has some
kind of commentary to say, you know, use these rules as a pure
guideline and please feel free to change it in any way you want
to, to suit your play style. So if you take 4th edition
fantasy, for example, but you like third edition aspects of
3rd edition, you can sort of just import those into 4th
edition and play as your own sort of home brew rules and that
kind of thing. Yeah, yeah, for sure.
So yeah, it's it's very flexible.
It's it's your own game, you know, make.
It make a make of it as you as you will, because in those days
like Rd. trade and that kind of thing, it wasn't a competitive
game. And I think that's the beauty of
those games. They were not designed for
tournaments. They were not designed for
competitive play, organized play.
They were designed for you and your friends to create some kind
of scenario play out at play out some kind of narrative and enjoy
that experience. And I think Cody, you'll you'll
agree with me that those narrative experience games we
play are the most memorable of all the games we've ever played.
You know what I mean? Like that at the time when
someone set a scenario or, and there are moments in games where
you think, oh, man, I'll never forget that.
That's so cool what happened there, because it was just so
against the odds, but I managed to overcome it.
My role to, you know, to 66 or things like that, which, you
know, does stick in your mind forever.
Yeah, exactly. The campaign sets for 5th
edition are of particular. Interest of me because I didn't
play those during the day and I only did those when I came back
to playing 5th edition Warhammer.
And they are just beautiful because what it really gives you
is it sets the background for you.
Each, each of the the four-game scenarios you play have some
kind of consequence. So if you're the winner, like if
you, if you're the protagonist and if you win the game, you
have certain benefits. If you lose the game, you will
lose certain, certain benefits Towards the end for the final,
final, penultimate, you know, 3000 battle, 3000 point battle.
I love how they put them together.
I think the guys who wrote those, I think Nigel Stillman
did some, I think Rick Priestly did some, Thomas Puranan did a
few as well. And I think they did it for the
reason of creating a narrative thing where characters weren't
the dominant thing. They had a name, they had some
sort of special weapon or something like that.
But every everything apart from that was just your troops.
There was nothing really special, you know, and they had
all the maps laid out. They had like special rules for
everything, like the the the grudge of drunk had drunken
minors. They'd like this really cool
rule where they either had, you know, they'd either, you know,
either get drunk and throw up and do nothing for the turn or
that they'll should have charged forward in some kind of drunken
rage. Yeah, though it had some really
beautiful rules in there. And I think it was so.
And those games are very memorable to me playing those
scenarios for sure. Oh, for sure.
Yeah. Yeah.
I remember the only one. I I actually.
Bought one of those back in the day, right after I bought the
5th edition box set. I bought the High Elf and Dark
Elf one, which I can't remember the name of it.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I saw you and Paul played the
first scenario of that and originally like me and Andrew
were like, OK, I'm going to, I think I was going to play High
Elves and he was going to play the Dark Elves.
It never happened. And we started buying a few
models here and there, but it never panned out.
But I did actually buy that like campaign.
And I remember it was, it was amazing.
It was glorious. I never looked at the other
ones. I never got it.
I mean, I think I've looked at them nowadays like PDFs and
stuff, but I've never never got to peruse really through the
through the other ones. But yeah, those were really cool
looking really cool. Yeah, absolutely, mate.
So they're they're really a gem you.
Can you can import other like he play one of renet renaissance
with those campaigns easily. You know you can put any kind of
rules that in there kind of fixes.
Got to agree with Cody Tony Tony socket together is way better,
that's for sure. I think you're all good there
and then my good mate Camilo. Damn, I missed this.
Glad I got to pop in to say hello.
We'll watch the full video afterwards.
Good name Camilo. It's good to see you here mate.
In Australia, is that Camilla the the Space Wolves guy?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I love that video.
Yeah, he's a great guy. Yeah.
Yeah, That was the first video I saw on.
Your channel was that? Video you played with him with
the Space Wolves and I loved him through all his Space Wolves and
talking about like the history of his army.
Yeah, really cool dude. Yeah, I want to get Camilla on
the live stream if he if he's up to it, if he wants to.
Come in and talk about his history to into gaming and stuff
that'd be really fun to do with him.
So rubber dog. I wish you had the chance to see
Joshua's pre yes, Falaheimer Winter Pano and his his left and
his pre sectorial Tunguska he painted for Melbourne player.
They're truly phenomenal. Thank you very much mate.
I did yeah. They were my first commissions.
I did. And when I first did commissions
in Australia, I did all Infinity stuff.
So I did a big Toha one for my good friend Paul in Melbourne.
And then, yeah, I sold my huge JSA army to another guy in
Australia, which I kind of regret about that.
I I really like that army. But again, it's kind of like the
opportunity was there, I needed the money, same old story,
nothing's changed. And then the Pano got sold as
well. And you know, you know, it's the
story of my life really. I paint and sell.
That's, that's my, that's my job.
Paint, play and sell. That's the paint, paint, build
and play. Whatever it is with the Dave
Taylor, it's the opposite. It's the paint, build and sell.
So yeah, mate, yeah. I really enjoyed doing those at
the time. I loved Infinity.
That was that was everything for me.
Like that was the only game I ever played, the only miniatures
I ever painted. I really enjoyed that time when
I did it and 2nd edition, the artwork, the miniatures, the
books were brilliant. And 3rd edition sort of
detracted slightly because it went into digital artwork,
digital sculpting and that kind of thing.
But I still see, I still see, you know, I still keep looking
at it. But I think it all looks very
much the same now. Everything looks the same.
Nothing looks distinctively different.
And that's kind of the, the off putting thing for me about it
now. So yeah, hell yeah.
Thank you, GM Cody. Nice.
Absolutely keen to be part of the live stream to talk.
About narrative. Army building and converting.
Well, let's do it mate. We'll set you in for April, my
favorite month of the year. And Camilo, you'll be on here,
right? And, and, and Cody's going to be
chatting to you and asking you lots of questions, I'm sure.
OK, well, Cody, we'll, we'll over two hours, mate.
Look, I don't want to keep you all night.
I know you have your wife or partner there probably wanting
to hang out with you or something like that.
You probably want to go to the toilet probably, or eat
something or do something like that.
Something it's something you need to do apart from talking
with me. But look, it's been an awesome
time, an awesome chance to catch up with you on the live stream
And, and that way hopefully people can can see you and, and
hear your story and and know you better and check out your
channel, which is GM Cody. Is that right?
That's right. Yeah, I got a little YouTube
channel. GM Cody.
I mainly it's very low production.
I I, I do that on purpose. Well, it's just like this.
As I say, it's just like this. Yeah, it's exactly like this.
So I just. Turn the camera on and I talk.
I like. It and I just talk about old
games I like. The one difference I would say
that sets me apart from a lot of people is I go really in depth.
So if I'm looking or viewing at a game, I don't care how long it
takes. I go through the whole book and
look through the whole thing. I don't care about chasing the
algorithm or all that stuff. Like I just do it for fun.
I I love talking about games. I love games and I do a lot of
role-playing stuff. I do, you know, I do some live
plays on my channel and I'm part of some other games too.
I run games. I am the game master, right?
GM Cody, but I also play in some games with some other people.
Just about every week you'll see me.
Either playing or running a game.
On my channel but lately, you know, obviously I'm a big war
gamer too so I've been wanting to do some more war gaming stuff
on the channel and I'm trying to expand out into that so yeah go
check it out GM Cody and see if you like it or not you know yeah
no I'd like I said I I when I met you and thanks for joining
our. Discord community because that's
how we met. I took like you talked about
your channel. I thought I'm going to check
that out then and I saw your videos.
You reviewed Rd. Trader, the book, so basically
the PDF of Rd. Trader, which is really
interesting. You go through all the parts of
the, of the actual book itself, the artwork and how to construct
armies and the sort of philosophy behind Rd.
Trader. I really liked the 1st edition
role play one you did because I love that book.
It's one of my, my books I've gotten was about 15 years old.
It's awesome. So yeah, please go and check out
Cody's channel. It's, it's full of great stuff.
It's got a lot of AD and D in there.
AD and D second edition, other role-playing supplements and
books that Cody's really passionate about talking about.
And mate, look, overall, I'm just really happy that you, you
come on and we, we found each other because I think, you know,
we really clicked it off or hit it off when we first started
talking. We, we, we liked the same things
and it's just really nice that we got together mate, and we can
do this together, mate. So cheers to you.
I, I drank all my, my sake now. Yeah, cheers, dude.
I really appreciate you having me on.
It's it's been great. Yeah, I've been, I've been
really having a lot of fun connecting with you guys on
Discord talking about all these old 90s GW games because that's
a huge, like passion of mine is 90s GW.
So, you know, that hits all, all the stuff for me.
Awesome. Well, you've got a nicer
subscriber, Camilla, to subscribe to your channel.
AD and D and also Vampire. Which vampire is great.
Yeah, so that's good. So go and check out Cody's
channel. It's good stuff.
I like how Cody presents it, and he just talks from the heart,
which is what we want to see. OK, buddy.
Well, you enjoy the rest of your evening, and I'm going to see my
little Pokémon boy downstairs and see what he's up to.
All right, let's go back. OK, brother.
Take care, man. Peace.