I don't think I would have ever found out about you guys if it
wasn't for a meal and. Yes, Yup.
And Emil said he's going to some event that's like an Oldhammer
event in Sydney. And I said really?
I said, OK, what's can you tell me more information about?
Oh yeah, you know, I'll send you the link to their Discord.
I said OK, that's great. So that's how I found about.
This. Down under channel here, Yeah.
So Down under Empire is the actual official title, isn't it?
That's the one, yeah. So.
Maybe, maybe we can start here. Matt, how did this all?
Well, we'll actually start with your origins first maybe and how
maybe that was sort of lead into how all this sort of became
about. So, OK, if you want to get us
underway, Matt, tell us your tell us your origin stories,
mate. So as a kid I was kind of always
into, you know, fantasy and sci-fi and you know, like many
of us grew up, you know, Conan movies, hey man, cartoons,
Transformers, all of that. And then the gaming stuff really
started with two things. For one year, it was either my
birthday or for Christmas, I got the Space Crusade box set.
So that that'll give us a, you know, that's kind of dating me a
little bit, but that's fine. Yeah.
So I got that. And it just, like, blew my mind.
It was my first. I'd never seen miniatures
before. None of my friends at school
were into it. And I was like, it was cool And
like, played that for hours against friends, against my
sister, like, and around that same time, I discovered that the
primary school library had a stash of the fighting fantasy
books up on like some, some little shelf up the top.
And I saw the, the green spines on them and was like, what is
that? And I saw the, the covers with
like orcs and witches and stuff. And I was like, this is my
thing. So very quickly after that, my
friends and I got into why I'm a fantasy.
It was around, you know, 4th, 4th edition was still was still
going. It was like end of 4th into the
start of 5th. Yeah.
And we're kind of, I've been hooked on and off since then,
you know, like, like so many of us, you know, drop out for a bit
in high school when you when it seems a little, you know, it's
lowering your social standing or your discover goals or whatever.
And then get, you know, every couple of years I'd pop back in.
Yeah. And now it's like, it's my
thing. It's.
My, that's great. That's wonderful.
That's quite a common story, I suppose, about many of us.
And we discovered it. We fell out of it, and then we
came back to it like a long lost, long lost love.
Love affair that I never die. Be like, we mean cigarettes, but
with cigarettes. I had to finally say, you know,
sorry, my love. We'll have to pack you away.
Otherwise my wife's going to kill me next time.
She. I have one of those in my mouth.
So yeah. I've been through that as well.
That's that's quite an achievement.
Kicking nose. Yeah, yeah, that's like an extra
marital affair I can no longer have.
But so you're you're probably random.
My vintage then, mate. If you discovered Space Crusade,
what age were you then? Like like 8 or 9, I think,
right. Yeah.
OK. Yeah, I was.
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah.
All right. Yeah.
OK, mate. Yeah.
So that's great. Have you?
Have you still got your copy of
Space Crusade by chance? I don't, sadly.
I don't actually have a lot of the stuff that I originally
owned. I've got a couple of models.
I would go through this thing. I don't know where Space Crusade
went lost in a in a move when I was a kid, I think.
So that's definitely on the list of like things to track down now
to like relive my childhood. But you know, it's one of those
things that's hard to find a complete copy for a reasonable
price or a price that I'm willing to, to part with or to
relive those memories. I, I, I, I think this is pretty
common as well. I would, any time I fell out of
the hobby, I'd, I'd give it away to, I'd give away the minis to
friends that still played or I'd sell them on, on marketplace or
whatever. And, and now looking back, I'm
like pretty bummed I don't have that stuff anymore.
But I think like so many of us now that I'm that I'm older,
have a little bit more disposable income, I've started
grabbing not just the stuff that I did have, but the the things
that I always wanted as well, which is a cool thing about
being into this when you're when you're older, yeah.
That's right, you got that chance of reliving those old
lost loves that you wanted to have and now you can reclaim
like the Holy Grail in some cases.
And, and actually play the game as intended.
Like when we were kids, we you know, you'd read the rules and
you kind of know what you're doing with it.
You're fudging it as you go. Like, yeah, the only bits we
were really following were the the, the point values for
building our armies, the profiles for the units and then
the the ticket and worn tables. Everything else was like
everyone had their own, you know, 12 year old interpretation
of how it all worked. Everyone was forgetting things.
It was like as fun to be that like casual about it, but it's
cool like now doing it as intended to.
Yes, yeah, we had to actually play it properly.
Yeah, with the right miniatures, better painted models.
Yes, yes. We know the rules, so it does
help. It does help, that's for sure.
Yeah, I think, I think a lot of us maybe it was just like a, you
know, when I looked at 3rd edition Fantasy Battles rule
book, never really played it, but I just fell in love with the
imagery and that sort of cemented in my mind of, yeah,
this is what I really want to do this, this really connects with
me. And it only happened until 4th
edition, but I've never really got to really play that to its
full extent until now, you know what I mean?
So yeah, I think that's yeah come full circle, as it were.
Yeah, lots of the lots of the artwork got recycled at least
into the 4th edition raw books. So I remember seeing that, that
some of that same artwork and just being like my mind was
blown by like the, the imagery of it all and the just the world
that they had. And then looking back now,
that's, that's kind of the, the era that really speaks to me now
is that, you know, third edition fantasy Rogue Trader 40K.
When, you know, as a kid I looked at that and like you'd
see people with all the models and stuff that's that's not as
cool as the new stuff. Like the details aren't as
sharp, the models aren't as big. But looking back now, it's like
that's, that's the charm of it. It's also so weird and, and odd
even even compared to other fantasy art and stuff.
It's like got this little oddness to it that's that's
really appealing now. Yeah, there is.
There's a certain style to that artwork and as you said, like
when you touched on about, you know, like maybe Tony Ackland, I
think is the one of the prominent artists then of that
time. And then he saw and in thanks to
Tom Evans too, with his film deck videos.
You get to see a lot of interviews with these great
people, luminaries of the of the time of the hobby, like Adrian
Smith and and you know, I think they can sort of came into
prominence later. And then you saw them, you saw a
lot of their artwork feature a lot more heavily.
Adrian Smith, Wayne England. Steven Tappan.
That and that that was the era era for me was like the, the
Adrian Smith, Wayne England, you know, around, around Warhammer
Quest, which is just full of artwork from both of them.
And it's like so evocative, but it's very, very crisp.
You know, the, the 3rd edition stuff looks, you'd almost want
to say amateurish, but it's like not in a disrespectful way.
It's, it's like it's not as polished and that that makes it
cool. It's like the the rules, it's
like the miniatures. They're everything's a bit like
half done or overdone in the case of a rules and you're like
that. That's so exciting.
And so if what makes it fun? I I think maybe because of with
Tony, I mean, maybe he was like the lead artist in the studio
and he had to pump out so much artwork like Gary Chalk with
that second edition Talisman game.
He apparently had to do that in two weeks.
And even within two weeks they were like, why is it taking you
so long to do this? You know, like they were sort of
kind of on his back about it, you know what I mean?
And if you look at the artwork on 2nd edition Talisman, wow.
I mean, even the front cover of the 1st edition box is
beautiful. And the all the internal art,
the board, the cards, the whole lot, he did all that within two
weeks. So I think maybe it's just a
sense of, you know, these guys weren't doing it within a
leisurely time. It was like under pressure, you
know? Production.
Very small budget, they weren't probably being paid very well.
It was kind of like doing this for the love, love of what
you're doing kind of thing. And so I think like with Tony, I
think it probably would have been the same for him.
He had to pump out a load of artwork and in a very short
amount of time. And I think maybe the other guys
later on maybe had more of a luxury of being able to spend
more time on their artwork, I don't know, Or they just had a
higher caliber of artists. But then you can look at a lot
of the 3rd edition stuff. They had really high caliber
artists working for them then. They certainly, yeah.
I think it's probably just a later, it was maybe a, a matter
of having a bigger team. So, you know, the, the, the
workload is, is divided amongst everybody.
It's not just one guy doing a whole box.
Like you just said, Gary Chalk had to do it.
One guy's doing the cover, one guy's doing internals.
And, and I think they were, like I said with the 4th edition
book, they had this backlog of art to, to recycle so that they
could, you know, fill the layout.
So maybe there was less pressure because of that as well.
And I think what one of the unique things about that era
too, is that there are so many artists that you just can't name
them all. There were just so many people
involved with all of that, you know, outsourced from various
different freelance artists. You had like internal artists.
You had all types of people involved with that, you know,
like Paul Bonner, of course, is one of the the gods and legends
of of this time. Who else has loaded?
There's Black specific artists who did all of the will have a
fantasy role play, Martin McKenna.
And there was another gentleman involved doing all of the, and I
forget his name, sorry, but all of the Blood Bowl and Dark
Future artwork, you know, very stylized, comic book stylized
kind of artwork. And it really fit that kind of
genre. Yeah.
But there were just so many people, so many people.
Even Jess Good was involved with doing the artwork.
You know, Dave Andrews was doing artwork, you name it.
Like everyone had a hand in it, so.
And and you know, John Blanche, obviously who gets, you know,
everybody cares about John these days, but that's when his art
was weird. That was, it was kind of at the
the peak of of like you were saying, like it had all this
love put into it and then it was all a bit everything.
You know, when you look at and Ian Miller too, if you look at
the artwork, the thing that always struck me as a kid was
like even the when there'd be picture of like a castle and
people fighting in front of it. All the dimensions of the
buildings are a bit off. And in some people's art, like
in Ian Miller's art, obviously that's an intentional surrealism
thing. But in some of the other
artists, it's just, it's just a style thing.
And it, it really made Warhammer seem so much more interesting to
me than that, just on an art level than, say, comic books at
the time or, or anything like that, or, or the covers of
fantasy novels, which were like very crisp, very detailed.
This had, yeah, like I said, it was all so strange.
And it just, that's what really drew me in was like, what I've
never seen anything that looks quite like that.
And, and, and these orcs look strange and, and there's this
chaos stuff and all these kind different kinds of elves.
It was like, there's a whole world here.
And you you can tell the depth of it just from the art.
Yeah, mate, it's, it's really a fascinating time because you
know, I'm just thinking now, just as you're talking Dave
Gallagher, I mean, yes, he he, you know, he was probably more
well known for his sort of 90s artwork, box cover art, all that
kind of stuff. But he did.
He did a lot of stuff during the earlier times as well.
Yeah, yeah. Early 90s.
Late late 80s. Yeah.
Yeah, there's this so many to, to to name.
It's incredible when you think about it.
It it is. It is.
And yeah, it's, I think it's common for everybody that that
the art is what gets you hooked first.
Yeah. That that that cover painting of
the 4th edition fantasy box set with the Hiles and the orcs
facing off against each other was like, it was the coolest
thing I'd ever seen. It was, you know, everything I'd
read in all these these fantasy novels and stuff.
Here it was. And then and then you go, oh, I
open this box and I get to do that.
I get to fight that out. This is amazing.
Well, there you go, Jeff Taylor. I'm looking up here at my wall.
Jeff Taylor Renegades epic second edition supplement Jeff
Taylor grudge drong Jeff Taylor type legions Jeff Taylor What?
We have won a 4th edition box set.
Jeff Taylor, I mean, that guy was just on a different level.
I mean, I can only dream of having art of his on my wall.
Like the original stuff. It'd be just incredible just to
see it. I mean, just that.
That's what I think, you know, talking about people who do this
not for a living, but for the love of it.
Andy at the old Hammer, old Hammer artwork.
Paige, I can't that's the actual name of his channel.
Sorry about that, mate. Sorry, Andy.
He may listen to this, but he basically curates, he sells work
on behalf of the artists. He's got a really good rapport.
I actually interviewed him during the pandemic.
He's a really nice guy. And he he actually unveiled a as
on the stream, I think was a stream or something or whatever.
I think we did. And at that time he he unboxed
something he just received from Adrian Smith, and it was that
skate and warlord artwork that yeah, man.
And like, if you see, if you it it, it's nothing like when they
reproduce it for publications. It's nothing like seeing it in
real life, you know, like, and now sort through the screen.
It looked better on the screen than seeing it, you know,
obviously on in a book. But you know, imagine just
seeing that in front of you would be just incredible.
Yeah, yeah, it really would be. And, and that's what's so
interesting about the artwork from that time is you for for
people around our sort of era that that got in at that that
stage, you can say something like, oh, it's that Scaven
warlord artwork and it's there like there's everybody,
everybody who I knew straight away, which PC meant everybody
listening will know as well. And it's amazing that that this
artwork from from twenty, 30-40 years ago now, it's like is, is
sort of stuck in our, our brains and in our, our hearts.
And it's so much a part of the connection to the hobby.
See, this is This is why you asked me to send you some some
questions about what we're going to talk today.
But we never talked about art. So this is what we.
Did about this 10 minutes talking about it.
That's awesome. Yeah, but that's what I like
about it. I don't, I don't want to keep, I
don't want it structured. And I think, I think this
organic conversations do work better and.
Of course, of course. But that's good, yeah.
Because, yeah, you know, we could, we could talk about art
all day, I think. And it's just, it's not even,
not even a visual medium so. No, no.
But you know, as you say. Everybody who's listening, go
yeah, go grab your old books off the off the shelf and have a
flick through them while we're while we're yapping about
artwork. That I am, I'm very envious of
of Andy as he gets to have all these beautiful artworks sent
him. He does it for no money, which
is incredible. I mean, he does it out just out
of the love of doing it and helping out all these guys and
getting them the best money they can get, which is really, you
know, like I said, he's a really nice guy.
I have to get him on the podcast or a live stream again at some
point. We should do that.
I know he's very busy and hard to get a hold of, but but yeah,
he he works as kind of like the middleman between the artist and
this and the buyer. But what an?
Incredible service to to offer not take any money for like.
I know you see. You see every now and then
somebody's, you know, collection or estate pops up and it's being
sold by these big auction houses and going for crazy money and
they their Commission on those things would be insane.
So for him to be doing it. Just to just to help out and to
give back is incredible. What a sounds like a great guy.
He's a really nice guy. Yeah.
I need to get him. I need to get in touch with him
and get him back on the the podcast for a live stream.
Maybe that'll be nice or Splat and Adder, the live streams we
do. We just wrapped up 1 today with
with Ross at stone stone house, stone horse, not stone house.
Maybe he does live in a stone house, but a stone horse gaming
really nice guy. And so that was really nice.
But yeah, we'll do that. Yeah, yeah.
Andy had links on his YouTube channel to things way back in
the 80s where they went to Games Workshop stores before.
This is before the Brian Ansell era.
This is like the the like prior to that.
So who was that again? Ian Livingston and Steve
Jackson, that kind of era. Well, it was just a retail store
selling everything. That's right.
Yeah. It was really fascinating those
those links he had on YouTube where you could watch those
interviews with people and the staff there and everything and
talking about D&D and Quest and all these other role-playing
games. And they'd sell these little
minute, they sell the miniatures that they had, I presume through
Citadel, where they had like just bays and bays and bays of
all these trays. And people come and say, Oh
yeah, I want, you know, like 4 hobgoblins, you know, carrying
Spears. And they say, oh, we're all out
of hobgoblins, mate. Sorry.
You know, And like, it's really funny.
Yeah, it's really, it's really nice.
But it's like a little window window back in time before my
time in the hobby. You know, this is, this is
before my, when I got in there. But yeah, I mean, some of those
guys are still around. You know, it's just fascinating
seeing how all that came into what it is now, which is
incredible, which kind of is going to allude to your, you
know, you obviously got into the hobby during the 90s when Space
Crusade was out and your fond memories of that and, and
finding the Finder. Was it Finder adventure?
No Finder adventure. So there were the ones that I
was into was the the Fighting Fantasy series, which was
fighting. Fantasy.
That's it. Steve Jackson and Ian Livingston
wrote those as well. That's right.
But like it all kind of neatly, you know, tied together.
And then I was also pretty into the The Lone Wolf Game books,
which were a similar thing, and Gary Chalk did all the art for
those. He did.
Yeah, so it's this he did. It was this strange little world
of all these connected pieces. I saw it.
I saw an interview. Yeah, I saw an interview on
YouTube with him. Some guy interviewed him for
Lone Wolf and wow, the artwork he did for that was just
incredible. Yeah, yeah, because it's it's
own little world. Some of it's like it pretty,
pretty strange even compared to the Warhammer art because it you
know, it's had it has its own creatures and stuff.
But that, that his style was so was such a big part of the
playing through those books as a kid.
You know, you're sitting there with your, with your two dice
and your photocopied page from the book with all your stats on
it and flicking the page. It's like, oh, I have to fight
this monster and this one. And it was, yeah, it was cool.
Now, Gary, Gary's a bit of a gamer too.
Actually, he he made a game. Now, what's it called again?
He made it like a board and chip game is based on the baron's
wall. He was very popular at the time,
I believe. And they had various different
iterations of various different armies.
You could play with it. But, you know, you think about,
you think about. Yeah, I'm just trying to think
of the name now, which is just, I can't think of it.
I've never played it. OK.
I know it's kind of well known within the, you know, that era
of board games when it came out. So if I remember it, I'll, I'll
bring it up later in their conversation.
But I think, I think they're thinking of remaking it through
futsal. Futsal and games in the UKI
think they're thinking about reprinting it.
Because that would be very cool. Yeah.
I'd like to have a go at it. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So what I, it seems like the nostalgia is kind of working its
way into modern gaming a bit. Now you've got, well, like, you
know, Games Workshop are diving back into their, the lore of, of
things and reviving, you know, factions that they haven't dealt
with for, for a long time. You know that it's we're in the
middle of a new era of Blood Bowl, for example.
So I'm trying to find the the name of this game.
It's going to, it's going to haunt me now.
Yeah, yeah. I still can't find it so I'm
sure someone later will scream at me and say what it is, but I
can't remember now anyhow. Yeah, listeners jump in in the
discord. If you know yeah what what the
game is, let us know. I'm I'm very interested to check
it out too. Yeah, it's, it's bugging me now
that I can't think of the name. Anyhow, we'll have to have to
think about it. So basically, yeah.
Because like you said, there's a new Blood Bowl and I know that
Jervis Johnson's now working with Mantic Games, working on a
new, not Guild Ball. What was the name for the?
I don't know. I don't know what it's called
for Mantic Games, but he's making a new.
Game they had they had one as well.
Yeah. And then and then you've got
things like the the the gene Steeler cults are back in in the
new form in in 40 Ki know that's a couple of years old now, but
it was it was interesting to see that yes, re envision the of the
look of them. Yeah, it's interesting how it's
sort of evolved over the time and, and you get a lot of
things, like a lot of throwbacks coming through again in, yeah,
like I say, new iterations of them, new, new, new people
envisioning how they look. A lot of like Blanketsku,
Blanketsku, Blanketsku, Blanketsku.
I discovered a new name, Blanketsu kind of style to a lot
of the design work. A lot of that.
Like I, I quite like the new demons and stuff for all the
play Marines and stuff for Games Workshop.
They look more like the the Adrian Smith artwork nowadays
than they did back in the time, you know what I mean?
Yes, yeah, that that the what I was going to say about like sort
of staying in the hobby was I played chaos all through the the
sort of Warhammer fantasy eras and they never looked as like as
as disgusting as like the the old hammer, the 3rd edition
stuff did. And then it kind of lost that
along the way and it and it was the same with the chaos marines
too. They, they got less weird and
it's cool saying that like, you know, the chaos stuff in Age of
Sigma, like the corn stuff looks like the way it showed and the,
the, the noggle stuff is all rotting and disgusting and, and
they've done the same in 40K. It's cool that we're getting
back to that where things look more like the artwork.
Yes, and I'll, I'll give a shout out to Nightmare Games.
I've just painted up a Commission for a mate of mine
doing a lot of corn Renegades and that kind of thing.
And yeah, those, those minis look very much like the early
artwork of the Loss of the Damned, that kind of thing.
So, you know, kudos to them. I think they've done a really
good job in representing, you know, old school, old Hammer 40K
with a lot of their designs that Diego does at Nightmare Games.
Then he does. Yeah, there's a.
There's a few sculptors that have popped up doing that old
hammer style, which is great. I've got AI just got the not
that long ago the minis from a Kickstarter I backed from
Creative Sculpt Studio and it was a a set of old Hammer
inspired basement. But every model is completely
different. You know, once got a bird head,
there's a there's an eel guy in there.
There's a a guy that has no head.
It's the the faces on the body, which is like such a classic old
Hammer chaos kind of vibe. It's cool.
Yeah. So it's they're they're worth
checking out too. I've never heard of them.
Yeah, never heard. Of them, the the minis are
fantastic. They're right.
We've just got them on the table now painting them up and they're
very cool. Cool, OK, well that that's good.
I mean it's like a meal, like when I when I taught the meal
and send messages on Discord or whatever, he's showing me
miniatures he's got which are kind of a mix between yeah, the
original and new produced models as well.
So people have yeah. And I know that there are people
out there. I've seen Instagram stuff that
people are released, I think it was, I can't remember the name
of the creator, but they did like chaos tools.
Oh yes, I know the ones you mean.
I can't can't remember who that is, but it's they're they're
very are they The die hard has some, I think.
Yeah, Die Hard do some as well. That's Tim Prowl's company.
And it was another guy that I I think it's something, something
Fleet North Flakes or something like that on Instagram.
And he did a whole range of designs of sort of old hammer
aesthetic cast orbs that I think, I believe Diego did it
from Nightmare Games. He launched the cast starter for
him on his behalf and everything Cult Coltie got to paint a lot
of them and he did a really nice job.
Yeah, he does. He he, yeah, his painting really
suits that era, I think. That that that 3rd edition.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Pre pre read.
Yes, the pre read error. Yeah, so he does a great job on
those. That's another guy I need to get
in contact actually and and get him on the podcast at some
point. It would be very interesting.
He's he's just got the an old hammer themed like magazine Red
Rod and it's Yeah, it's cool. Yeah.
From what I from what I've said, very interesting.
Yeah. I have, I've seen little snips
of that looks very good as well. So it's probably good timing to
get him on the podcast actually to talk about that and maybe do
A and something we need to do with ours as well.
Our fans, they never really got a video or anything like that.
I don't. And we should do that as well at
some point because we're still working on issue #4 I think it's
4. OK.
So we're still slowly getting that done.
So thanks to Ang Hell and the team.
And we've got Adrian Wood AD Wood doing the proofreading,
which is amazing. So we've got, we've got X.
Pedigree. Yeah, X studio staff working on
doing it, which is lovely of those guys to do that.
So yeah, we're slowly chipping away, article by article.
OK, fantastic. So I'll keep an eye out.
Yeah, I, I totally respect that. If people can put down, put a
fancy together, that's a lot of work.
So huge respect to those guys who can do that for sure.
Yeah, yeah, it's, it's cool that there's, there's so many of
those around these days, you know, with, you know, obviously
the technology for doing the, the layout and stuff.
Everybody can do that now themselves.
So it's everyone has access to the tools, we just have to learn
how to use them. Exactly, exactly.
Can't do that either. Yeah.
But it's like it's cool that like you can have an idea and
then and then push it through without not really needing that
that bigger a budget. It's just time and effort and
love Which? Yes.
Which is not, which is the one thing that's you know, time is
in short supply, but in this same the the love is definitely
there across all these different facets of it.
Yeah, it's funny because earlier this year I was talking with
Angel about launching the the 4th issue of Here I Have a
fanzine as a potential Kickstarter.
Now, I've never done Kickstarter of my life.
I have no idea about the insurance and outs of it.
We sort of talked about it and thank God I never did it because
a lot of people would have been, well, I mean it, I think it
would have been understandable that they could see, OK, things
are happening and things are being made, but the final
product may be years in the making.
And I'm glad we didn't do, we didn't go down that route just
to get that initial funding to get the programs, to get to pay
people for art, to do that kind of stuff.
I'm glad we didn't go down that route.
It would have been quite scary. I've been very stressful and you
know. It would be yeah, it would be
stressful being responsible for it.
Yeah, I've backed Kickstarters that have taken a really long
time to fulfill and even that is stressful.
You're like, no update this month, Come on, guys, what's
what's happening? But the being on the other side
of it and being responsible for it would be would be stressful.
It's a it's a cool platform. It's another one of those things
that it's great that it exists to let these, you know, smaller
creators do stuff at a real professional level.
Just takes a while sometimes. That's right.
And not everyone has the patience for managing that on
either side, you know, as a creator or as a customer.
Yep, that's very true, very true.
So we love to see those kind of, you know, those efforts from
people in the community who can actually produce something like
that for other people's enjoyment.
It's really good. But anyhow, we'll just go for a
quick ad break and when we come back, we're going to talk more
about the Down Under Empire and how that all started and all
that kind of things. I'll be back in just a moment.
Our sponsor, Black Arrow Minis is a reputable reseller of
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www.blackarrowminis.com. Now before we get started, I did
remember the name of the board game.
Oh, incredible. What was it?
Cry Havoc. OK, that's very interesting.
I've never even heard of. I'll have to check it out.
Yeah, probably, probably made before you were born, Matt, I
would say. Well, you've been a very young
Matt at the time. Yeah.
But yeah, it's, it's funny how the mind works that way.
It's like I, I kind of imagine it like I'm trying to think of
something and then there's like a little old man in my mind with
this huge library and he has to walk around trying to find in my
archives where exactly it was stored away.
And he finds it and he goes, ah, it's Cry Havoc.
I think it's sort of the bubbles to the surface.
So if you haven't seen it, haven't, there's not much
information on it on YouTube, but I think Board game Geek got
a board game geek. Search up Cry Havoc and you can
find out all about it. But that's a game designed by
Gary Chalk, I believe. Very.
Cool. Yeah.
I'll check it out. Yeah, you might fight you.
You may be really lucky. You might find someone in your
group has an actual game of it. You can actually play it.
Yeah. Who?
Who knows? Who knows, mate?
Yeah. Let's talk about your gaming
group. Yes.
OK. How did all this start, mate,
with all this down under? Empire I.
I can only really talk to my where my involvement started
from it. So basically I'll jump back a
little little bit and sort of just tell a tale.
But during lockdowns, I think lots of people, it's pretty
common amongst sort of at least our group of like that's when
lots of people came back to the hobby.
You know, you're, you're stuck at home for for months on end in
some cases with, with not a lot to do.
So I feel like, yeah, lots of people started getting back into
it. They were connecting with other
people on the Internet and, and discovering things that they
hadn't seen before. And this all kind of around that
same time, there was like this explosion of, of they, they call
it the old school renaissance of RPGs, right?
So going back and referencing early Dungeons and Dragons vibes
and mechanics. And so there was that which was
sort of setting this, this sort of look and there was a lot of
there were also all these indie skirmish miniatures games being
developed. You know, people were like, it
seemed like everybody wanted to do more games with less prep.
So instead of having to paint hundreds of minis for a 2000
point game, you paint 5. That's your little war band and
you, you play, you know, lots of them had solo play modes too
for, for people who were, you know, during lockdown or, or
just didn't have a group to connect to.
So there was all these, all these things happening that
everybody got interested in. And a lot of it was also
connected to the, the, the ink 28 scene.
The Inquisitor 28, which had been going for much longer was
basically people had adopted the Inquisitor game that Games
Workshop made, but instead of playing it with the, the the big
54 mil models, they were playing it with just the normal, just 28
standard sized ones. And that was there was this
whole element of, of kid bashing and role play and, and the black
Shih Tzu art style that you mentioned before was a huge
influence on all of it. So it was like this, this thing
of playing small scale narrative miniatures games that sort of
brought everybody together. And the the connecting point for
a lot of us was actually the hive scum podcast, which is a
bunch of guys from from the US into this indie scene.
And they had a discord and which is the in rust we trust discord.
Amazing place, very cool crew. But they're all, lots of them
are all in the same area in the States.
They're all from that New England area.
And I think a lot of us here in Australia were, were jealous of
that connection of of that they were just connected by the, the
interest which brought us all together.
But but by by they were geographically close and could
interact a bit more. So a couple of the guys started
that Jackson started the, the, the discord there to give us all
a place to, to go. And I heard about it from the,
from this other discord in Russ we trust and ended up over there
and the, the community is incredible.
Just a lovely bunch of people who are, you know, there's this
amazing, there's people developing amazing games.
One of the guys, Stu has written 3 like little indie games that
are like what one of them's it's called untitled pirate game and
it's it's just a pirate crews fighting it out, amazing artists
sculpting their own miniatures and at the same time as being
into all these newer indie skirmish games, everybody a lots
of people are coming from the Oh yeah, I used I played games
Workshop games. I'm I'm still buying them minis.
I'm still, you know, in that world.
But lots of us aren't playing Games Workshop games or that's
not the primary gaming that we're doing.
Yeah. So it's it's pretty interesting.
Little saying it's very fun. Oh good mate, that's great.
I've not I've not heard of them but I do love the name.
In Rust we trust. That's a great yes.
Yes, and it's the yeah, the The Hive Scum podcast, It's the,
it's the same guy, Yeah. OK mate, I'll have to go and
check that out. Yeah, I feel, I feel like such
an oldie now. I'm not in with the new cool
guys like you guys or all these new crews out there doing.
I've heard, I've heard of Ink 28, I've heard of it, but I, I
don't think I've ever seen anything about it.
And I I to be honest, I've never played Inquisitor as a game
anyway. Neither.
Neither have I and most people haven't most people in the most
people in the ink 28 or indie scene or whatever you want to
call it. Even the people that were really
championing it. It was like Inquisitor was more
the the narrative element than the rule set.
Lots of those games tended to be like, oh, you want to, you want
to do that for up on AD 6. You know, you the, the story
you're telling on the table and the, the, the narrative
motivation to, to keep bash a little war band and and tell a
story with it. That's the the main thing, not
the not whatever rules you're using.
So it's a, it's a really interesting scene to be a part
of that has this kind of like weird little underground online
history to it. But yeah, it's cool.
Oh, OK. I know.
There's been some that's sort of
come up and to the surface and they've been quite popular.
There's another one that I'm trying to think of.
It involves turn up 28. That's it.
Turn up 28. So yes, that's that's been
adopted by by our little scene as well.
We had, we did a little turn up one day event last year tacked
on to another. That's what that's what we tend
to do. We we like, we sneak into the
background of these other tournament events and wrangle a
couple of tables in a backroom somewhere.
Yeah, Turnip is turnip is cool. It's how how would I explain it
for people that haven't come across it?
It's it's kind of a very straightforward Napoleonic era
war game, very cool, very fast rule set.
But the the the the background, the lore of it is the world's
been taken over by a giant root vegetable and everybody is in
some way infected with this. So you have everything's got all
the minis have grass tough stuck to them growing out of their
backs and and everything's got little vegetables sculpted on
them. And the the art style is very
weird and very cool. And it's it's yeah, it's just
people kicking each other to death in the mud is how the the
creator describes it. But it's OK.
It's it's a fun excuse to to, you know, grab a couple of boxes
of Kerry miniatures historicals and chop them up and, and cover
them in, in mud and yeah, have a little game with them.
It's yeah. I'd never had never played, but
I'd I'd made some minis for it. And then someone on the Discord,
June was like, Oh yeah, we'll we'll do a we'll do an event.
And the game was great. It's yeah, and quick too.
I think it was like 4 or five games in a in a single day.
Which is, yeah. That's pretty cool, very quick.
And that that's the cool thing about the these, these indie
skirmish or even turnips, not quite a skirmish game.
It's more a sort of, you know, couple of squads on the table.
They they play quick. So when you get a group together
to play in a day, you actually get to play against a bunch of
people in one day. And it's, it really adds that
social aspect to it of like, Oh, I got to, you know, not only did
I get to see everybody from the, from the discord say hi, but
I've, I got five games in, you know, it's a, it's, it's cool.
It's a, it, it makes the the hang much more fun than or it's
just a different sort of thing than than getting together with
a mate and playing a, a game of 3rd or 4th edition fantasy where
you you're going to be playing for most of the day on the one
game. Looking through books, no doubt,
you know, looking through pages in the books, trying to work out
rules and stuff. Yeah, that's, that's a fair
point. Yeah.
So getting back to the Down Under Empire now, you recently
had a games event there in Sydney.
Is that right? We did.
We did a Realm of Chaos event, which is, which is back to this
this thing of all of us had missed that third edition era.
We were all just a bit too young.
But looking back, we were all so, so, so into the, the art and
the, the concept of these huge books with all these D100 tables
to, to make your, your mutations and to put, put your war band
together. And, and we've been chatting
about it for a while. So this time last year we did
our first event attached to the, the Cancon event in Canberra,
but we called it can't con because we couldn't get, we
couldn't get the, the guys that organized it couldn't get free
play table space at Cancon. So they booked the library down
the road. There was a little like meeting
room there. So we played there instead.
So at that first event, people were talking about Realm of
Chaos and how cool it would be. And the idea sort of sat in the
background and was just, I couldn't shake the idea of doing
it. So I, I, I jumped into a, a
group message with a couple of the guys one day and said, I, I
think I'm going to do it. Who, who, who's are there enough
of us even interested? You know, if a couple of those
guys that I messaged were interested, then I knew that
more there'd be enough people once it was out into the wider
discord group, there'd be enough people to, to jump in.
And I was very grateful that Moss, one of our guys, he's he
goes by restful and Chrome on the discord.
He he jumped in and was like, I'd love to help you with this.
I've got ideas. We can we can sort of workshop
how to make this work together. And we went for it and it ended
up being a good couple of months of work to to make sense of all
of it. Those those third edition books
are dense. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely,
mate. Yeah.
It's you need a lot of time in your hands, not only just to
play the game, but to actually read the rules and make sure you
understand everything correctly and all that kind of thing.
And they're fascinating at the same time.
Yeah. That they they really are.
And that's, I wanted to sort of give people that with the event,
give people that experience without expecting everybody to,
you know, track down the PDFs and read hundreds of pages.
So what we ended up doing was going through and basically
creating a player pack that took all of the rules out and just
had the process for creating the war band.
So it was just the role tables and modified them where where
needed so the people could could grab that from us and roll and
know what they had to make for the event.
Because, you know, you want to give everyone was wanting to to
keep bash minis and paint them up and really put some effort
love into it. So we we wanted to give them a
few months lead time with that. You know, that's just so that
everybody could really commit to it and put some love into into
the war bands they were creating.
And then that also bought us some time to decide how the
rules were going to work. Yeah, I bet, my dear, I bet.
Yeah. And what what we ended up doing
was doing like a, a stripped down players packed up the
street. It ended up being just 2-2 pages
of basically dot points for every phase of the game.
So simple, really simplified movement, really simplified
shooting. Like basically just it was more
or less me sitting at the computer going, well, I've
played a lot of Warhammer Fantasy.
How does that work? Type, type, type, type, type.
Take out the bits that seem too hard.
Because while there might be people like myself who had
played a lot, there's also a couple of guys coming to the
event that, that were younger and they've never played
Warhammer Fantasy at all. Their only view, yeah, point of
reference for that world is like some of them have played War Cry
or, or, you know, Age of Sigma, these, these newer Games
Workshop games. So expecting them to learn the
third edition rules from 40 years ago and just seem like a
huge hurdle. And I didn't want that getting
in the way of people's fun. So I I took everything out
basically. It just made it as as
straightforward as I could. But back to that, almost back to
how we would play as kids of like, Oh yeah, you guy can move
forward inches. Cool it.
You just measure 4 inches and away you go.
You know. Yeah, yeah, it's it was, it was
even that process was fun of like reading through those old
books and how am I going to make that work?
And. Yeah, that's a lot of work, but
it was pretty rewarding. That war bands is it played on
A6 by 4A, 4x4, 2 by 2, three by three?
We did. We did 2 by twos because.
I'm glad you said that, not 6 by 4.
No, no, that was. That would just.
Well, partly the smaller table size was the the.
So Moz and I had decided early on that we wouldn't be playing
on the day. Then.
Our role was basically going to be to to play as the chaos gods
for the day. We were going to be GMs for, for
everybody's games, or just wander around and reward this
player and pester this player and, and try and balance things
out when they got out of control.
And because the rules were so simple, they were, every game
had a, these little things that would pop up of like, oh, this
weird thing has occurred and there's 2 pages of rules.
So how do we resolve that? And we'd be able to lead them
through that. And, and in doing that, not
having to commit to making minis for myself for the games I
wanted to make themed terrain. So 2 by 2 was partly so that the
games would be quicker because the movement distance is
smaller, but also to keep the scope of how much terrain I had
to make for the event a little a little more reasonable.
Yeah, now that that sounds good. I I do like the smaller table
size games with skirmish games, especially because, yeah, 6 by 4
can take a long time before you actually get to meet anybody
across the other side of the table.
So it just makes sense. And like you say, for terrain as
well. Yeah, totally makes sense, mate.
That's great. Just a quick shout out to a
couple of guys in Japan here who actually also have done this.
They've done the oh, cool cast war band stuff.
Yeah, but they did it by the book.
They played it by the original rules.
So that's off to them. That's, that's Dave.
Dave. Yeah, that's a big commitment.
But I know that James, one of the mates here in Japan, he said
it's pretty clunky. So I think maybe your, your
method, your method methodology, there is probably a better way
of doing modernizing it, streamlining it, making it fun,
making it very intuitive and just sort of fast to play and
enjoyable. I think that's what counts now
you know what I mean? Yeah.
For a one day event like this where you're bringing people to
get there were people from all over the country.
One of the guys, Dan flew in from Perth, couple of guys came
up from Melbourne, Jackson came down from Brisbane.
Really like the the yeah, our our little community is pretty
motivated to to show up in in person if you give them enough
notice. So I for a one day thing like
that, you, it's got to be, it's got to be easy in terms of
playing on the table. And then I, I think if you were
doing like a, a campaign with some, some mates that lived near
you and you can get games in every week, you could probably
do the, the full on 3rd edition rules with the the two realm of
chaos books, like by the book. I think that would be pretty
rewarding experience with a, with a more local group, I
think, yeah. Yeah, yeah, for sure, mate, for
sure. For something like this, it was,
it was just, it just would have been too much expectation on the
players, I feel like. Now the Denon Empire, is it, is
it centralized within Sydney or do you have pockets of player
groups around the country? It is.
There's pockets of people around the country.
There's only, there's only a couple of us sort of more active
members of the of the group from Sydney and there's a few guys in
Newcastle, couple of guys in Brisbane, couple of guys in
Perth and then yeah, a few more guys in Melbourne.
They have a group that meets in person every every week or so in
in Melbourne. So they've sort of like brought
in people from their group to to the Discord.
Oh, that's good. I'm glad that that's kind of
like a shared thing you can do through Discord.
You can keep up with events and when it's going to be held,
what's going to be played. They can make arrangements to
get there if they can, if it's feasible for them.
So that's, that's really good to see.
And yeah, long may that continue, mate.
So and that's been great to have you on the podcast.
I really appreciate your time today giving it to myself and to
the listeners and I hope that we can form some connections there
with our Aussie gamers, our Aussie Aussie old hammers.
And absolutely if they want to get in touch, I'll leave a link
here for the discord and maybe a e-mail contact or whatever.
However you want to be able to be able to reach you and they
can get in contact with there. And, and let's see, we can get a
few more Chaos War bands out of the closet and under the tail,
mate. That would be awesome.
Yeah, fantastic. Thank you very much for having
me on. It was it was fun having a chat
about all this stuff. But thank you, and thanks,
thanks to Emil again for making this connection happen.
And it's just, yeah, like I said, I was really surprised to
see it. Great to see the Discord
flourishing there with lots of people there actively, you know,
doing some hobby, doing different types of games and
that kind of thing. We always encourage that and
it's always nice to make those connections.
So it's nice to meet you again today, Matt.
Thank you very much. Enjoy the rest of your day,
mate. And I'll, I'll keep I'll keep
watching what's happening on your Discord there to see what
you guys are up to. And I'll be definitely be sure
to mention that in our Discord or Facebook groups or whatever
you, if there's something happening around the town that
people might be interested in coming down, even just to say
hello and just see what's happening.
Yeah, yeah, that, that would be great.
Thanks mate. OK mate, you take care and we'll
catch you again next time. All right, see you mate.
Bye. Thank you for listening to the
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