Yeah. Thanks again, Chris, for coming
on. Mate.
I know you. I know you're busy getting
prepared to go down to bring out your lead.
Now that's now, you're in Nottingham at the moment, is
that right? Yeah, yeah, but I normally live
up in Hadrian's Walls sort of like up north, but I, I went to
university here in Nottingham actually, and I've worked here
in Nottingham for years. And so, yeah, it's a, it's a
three day event at Newark War Games Foundry where everyone
gets together and it's, it's, well, they keep it very, they
call it boil actually. They they've for sure, because
they found that they had big signs saying bring out your
lead, sort of like attracted people that thought, well,
actually we're going to go there and steal all the lead off the
church roofs and stuff, you know, which is a big problem
here in the UK. So it's called boil colloquially
and locally, but bring out your lead.
Yeah. It's the idea about going to
just get all your old lead toy soldiers out from sort of like
the days of when toy soldiers predominantly metal, you know,
that was 1983 to 2011 I think so.
Yeah, yeah. Well, actually just talking on
our discord at the moment before because I said what should I
call you guys like boilers, but boilers doesn't sound very, very
attractive. Name someone said.
I think, I think just boils or boilettes or boils on your cock
like Coc, Chronic Command, It doesn't sound very nice at all.
So yeah, we're coming up with some interesting names for for
people going to to bring out your lead or regulars that head
down there. But I know there's quite a few
new guys heading to bring out your lead this this year.
They've never been. So it's very exciting.
I'm very excited for them. Yeah, we had lots of famous
Youtubers sort of like get wind of it last year actually.
And sort of like they all turned up with film crew and sort of
like doing high dents and stuff, which is a bit odd actually.
It was, you know, it's, it's nice that sort of like, I always
think nostalgia is a stagnant pond and that you're going to
have events like this dwindle and dwindle, but you can sort of
like recruit new people into nostalgia.
And I, I think that people can get a nostalgia for things that
they haven't actually experience.
It's just nice, like stepping back into another world or
stepping back into sort of like kind of a faux nostalgia.
Before social media, basically, like, yeah, they should.
They should. Yeah, I think, I think it was a
little bit contentious, some of the people coming down last
year. And I know that I know
personally that some of them just weren't happy about that.
They, they liked it that it was kind of secluded away from all
of that, that it was their little private space that they
could get together and and do all this sort of stuff.
So I get, I get it both ways. I know, I know Jeff from
Oakbound Studios, he does a wonderful video presentation
every year. Bring out your lead.
And I really like his videos. He's he's been there since the
start and I think a lot of people respect him a lot.
He sort of sits back a lot and sort of lets the video camera
sort of pan from a distance. So he's not really up in your
face kind of thing. He's letting people get on with
whatever they're doing, but respectfully, that sitting back
and just talking about it subjectively about the whole
event. So that's really cool.
But yeah, I mean, it's good that it's attracted a lot of
attention. I think it did because of
course, Brian Ansell passed away recently and well, that was
actually after the last event, obviously, but it's been, it's
been put into people's minds more.
I think it's just being covered more by a lot of more people,
which is only a good thing because we want it to keep
going. We want it to keep existing.
So, you know, more people coming down, the merrier, really.
Yeah, I've got this sort of weird sort of complex feelings
about it because when I sort of like went to my first one, I was
living in Nottingham. And for me it was just a 10
minute walk from my house. And it, it, it, it's grown over
the years. And if you, if you just a 10
minute walk from your house and you just like pick stuff out
your cabinet, you're like, oh, this guy mentioned that you can
bring along 250 points of 3rd edition fantasy chaos arches for
it. And you know, you that, that,
that, that sort of makes you approach the event one way.
And you sort of like, it's just a sort of a normal day out, you
know, because you might just pop into the war games Foundry
anyway just to pick up some blisters.
But then when it gets so large and you get people coming over
from sort of, you know, planning international trips around it,
it then comes with a weight of international expectations.
And it means that it, it, it's nice that people come from that
far and apart, but it's like it changes the vibe from being a
local show to an international event.
And I, I think some people still wanted to be sort of like quite
low key and quite local, but that, that, that sounds sort of
very protectivist. And so I'm not sure.
I don't know. I can feel two things at once
about it, you know? Yeah, I, I, I really hope to go
there one day. I'm really sad that I could
never meet Brian Ansell. Now just to shake the man's hand
to say thank you so much for all the awesome years of wonderful
stuff that he, he brought to us, you know, in the early days and
how it's sort of evolved after when he left.
But it's, it's great that people are still celebrating this
stuff. Hey, Chris, because like, you
know, we're going to talk about the stuff that you make, the
models you make very much in the style of the 90s.
But it's it's great to see people still playing with their
old miniatures, people maybe using alternative models now,
but in the same spirit as the 90s or the 80s.
So it's great that people still want to play old games that are
considered unfinished or broken or whatever, like third edition
fantasy and Rogue Trader 40K. You know, Rick Reese's talked
about it that some, I think Rogue Trader wasn't it that it
had parts missing out of it. So he just just went, oh, I
think was that or the siege book.
I can't remember exactly which publication it was, but things
were just missing and he just couldn't work out why or how.
People are still playing it, but they'd still played it and still
enjoy it, which is which is great.
So yeah, I, I, I saw an interview where he was
explaining that Rogue Trading was meant to be just a sort of
like a stand alone summer release.
And the concept was that it was people would have a large
existing collection of fantasy miniatures and they would just
spend that summer with the Rogue Trader book, sort of like
porting their fantasy miniatures into a a space setting and have
their space vampire fight their space dwarfs and stuff with just
a spattering of models with guns.
And then they'd move on with their lives.
And the idea that it's sort of like they captured lighting in a
bottle is quite strange in that it's this juggernaut that's
still going 30-40 years later. It's brilliant.
Yeah, and a lot of the old games shop luminaries like Rick
Priestley, like Jervis Johnson, who else?
Tony Ackland. So a lot of those old, older
existing former Games Workshop employees are going down there
just to say hello, seeing what everything's about.
And they, they really enjoy that.
I think that'd be wonderful as a creator to see your game still
played after 30 odd years. That's pretty impressive really,
isn't it? Yeah, the reaction Blanche
popped in one year, I think Trish Morrison's been down.
Tim Prowl's been along. It, it, it, it, it's nice, like
shooting fish in a barrel. And it's kind of like
celebrating an era of very creative lead and personality
LED games. And Nigel still came along one
year actually and brought his bought US helmet, which was sort
of like that. I felt very nostalgic to that
because there's was that picture of him sort of like wearing it
and talking about, you know, it put out just the chariot War
supplement for Warhammer Ancient battles.
And being able to see that first hand was sort of like quite a,
you know, special thing. It's like religious experience
in a way. Yeah, I hope Nigel.
I really hope Nigel comes down this year.
I think he'd be, he's been missed because he hasn't been
down there for quite a few years.
So let's hope that he can make it down there and to see his
fans and to meet the people that love his games and and all that
kind of stuff, mate. Come overseas for it or?
I, I hope so, I hope. I've been saying to people that
I'd sell armies to go there just to, just to fund the voyage over
to the UK. It's quite an expensive trip,
even from, well, it would have been more expensive from
Australia, but even from Japan to the UK is quite, you know,
quite costly, especially when you factor in transport, hotels,
food, all that kind of stuff in it as well, apart from the
airfares. Yeah.
But who knows? I don't know.
I can't say that I won't be going.
I hope that I can make it over one day because I, I think more
than anything, it would be just great to meet a lot of the
people that I know through the Crown of command through our
Discord. Another thing, other places
related to that, it'd be just great to go and meet them, you
know, just hang out and have a few beers and have a chat.
Yeah, I, I think the kind of the successful way of doing it
because if you just come over just for the event, you might
just find it sort of a few 100 people in a, in a, in a sort of
a fairly standard UK venue is a lot of people sort of trip it,
combine it with the trip to Warhammer World and then they
pop into Warlord Games. And then some people go and
visit the Mantic shop. And then some people sort of
like then branch out and sort of like bring the wife and then
show them a couple of UK sites like Nottingham Castle.
And then they kind of like treat the UK as like a big
destination. They can go to Edinburgh as well
because flying into Edinburgh is quite a good thing for
international travel. So you can start off with a
couple of days in Edinburgh and so it's not just a sort of a,
you know, 2000 LB airfare to pop in to a sort of like a free
local event. Yeah, you'd have to make it a
big holiday built around it especially.
That's for sure, mate. So, Chris, tell us about how you
got into the hobby, mate, because you're quite, you're a
lot younger than me by the look of you on the camera.
Oh no. No, no, I I'm just babyfaced.
I'm, when I was eight years old, I, I, I went to Tesco and I was
having a big top trump phase. You know, that's sort of like
those cards where it's all like Formula One cars or Dragons.
And I just, I, just, everyone in the school loved Top Trump's and
I got a pack from Tesco and I was eight years old for the kind
of citical space war combat cards, which were the Rogue
Trader miniatures. And I, I, I didn't know for
years and years and years afterwards, they were actually
something that you could purchase and pay.
And I just always assumed they were just one off statues they'd
done for the, for the top trump cards.
And I loved them. And I know all their names and
you know, those wall masks, Gore and the squats and guts muncher,
the York heavy plasma gunner. And I loved them.
And it was only a couple of years later when my uncle down
in London sort of like gave me a load of his old miniatures.
He had a load of Colin. No, no, they were Dixon
Miniatures Samurai, which is these 28 millimetre medieval
samurai with large pumpkin heads with all the kind of correct war
gear, which is from the 1970s. And he gave me some of his old
Rogue Trader Space Marines as well.
And I, I suddenly kind of like realized these were the things
from the Top Trump's I had as a kid and still a kid then.
And, and so that was me just like instantly hooked.
I found there was a shop in the local town one over that I could
go to and Necromunda was just coming out and I went into my
first painting lesson. I got a Goliath Ganga and I
painted him. And I've never really sort of
like spent money on anything else regularly since really
it's, it's been like that since I've been a kid.
I've been going to tournaments, I've had lots of different
phases where as a kid you'd sort of like just play the kind of
like sanctioned games night from 4:00 to 8:00 PM and, or at your
house. And then as you go into, got
into my 20s, I thought, oh, you know, I did a lot of
tournaments, a lot of the kind of the grand tournaments or the
independent tournaments. And these days, I'm just a sort
of, I've stepped back from this like the tournament affair, but
except for boils, not really a tournament that's more of an
event. And it's playing on a Tuesday
night at a local club and sort of like, you know, painting in
my spare time now. Yeah, mate, your, your painting
is really exceptional. Looking at your wonderful work
now that you've released well several, several products as
part of Kickstarters for the ROK, ROK Nort, is that how you
say it, ROK Nort? Well, technically it it should
be said Rok Nort because that O is an on lock, which sort of
like makes a long sound. But I'm very guilty it it's just
a stylistic choice. Like Blue Öyster Cult had AO
above the O and Blue Öyster Cult and like Motörhead had it.
And so it's just sort of like a, a way of making the word look
sort of exotic in a 1980s cliche way.
So it should be pronounced Rok Nort.
But then the accents, sorry, excuse my phone, but then the
accents are just sort of an affectation, which is a bit like
the the the the slain comic by 2000 AD, which is Slaine about
the sort of the Greek, the Irish dark age hero.
It's got an accent above the A, which means that protects the
correct pronunciation should be slonia rather than slain, but
the word's meant to say slain, and they've just added it as a
an affectation, really. Right, OK, yeah, mate.
Now talking about your history into miniatures, what you talked
about, you got the combat cards 1st and you got into Necromunda.
So I've got a feeling that you're really into the 40K side
of game special games, is that right?
Yeah, well, I'm, I'm, I'm an absolute greedy person who will
have anything. And back in the early days there
was a shop called Manchester Model Shop that I could go to.
And we were living in the golden age as well.
When the main record shops on the High Street, Virgin
Megastore would stock really strange indie games constantly,
which I always found very odd. Like you wouldn't get it
nowadays and you'd be able to go into this High Street street
record shop and it would have flintlock game that, you know,
the sort of the weird Napoleonic dwarves versus orcs metal
starter sets. And then it would suddenly have
some battle tech in it. And then it would have some
Harlequin miniatures Doctor Who. And there's someone who probably
worked at the store that was just sort of like really had a
kind of like a passion for local games.
And it was just nice sort of like going on this experience of
going in and like seeing what are the games that are out
there? You know, I, I went through my
teenage years playing Void and there was 4 into the Maelstrom
and there was the Doctor Who miniatures game and there was
there was War zone as well. And so anything that's like
could appear in the local shop in a blister pack was just
absolutely fantastic. But Games Workshop was always
the juggernaut because it had it's own retail stores.
But it was really nice just being able to sort of like see
what else was on the market. And you don't get to see that
kind of large, the mainstream adoption of the Indies nowadays,
which I think is a bit of a shame really.
You know, you don't, you don't get flintlock on sale, You don't
get this sort of strange games. You have to go to the Internet,
you have to go to indie people, you have to go to direct mail
order companies to get them. Yeah, that's a good point
because back in those days, yeah, you're right, the the main
competition was Gangs Workshop and everything outside of that
was kind of these little small fringe companies, mainly UK
based, but some US of course. But Harlequin, yeah, that's a
name from the past, isn't it? Wow, that's, I think that's
Black Tree design now. Did they go through like three
different name changes or something?
But Harlequin was like the first one.
Yeah, the EA orbits as well on their website but.
I I, I I. Do remember the first time I saw
anything, which was space dwarfy was at the Coliseum shop in
Manches, which was, you know, us, we were spoiled for choice
in Manchester when I was a kid with sort of like the number of
indie shops. They had these space dwarves and
they had their Doctor Who miniature came.
And just seeing those on the shelves together was wonderful.
And, you know, the idea that they could be available in
multiple shops on the Manchester High Street in 2024 is just, you
know, it's like, OK, Granddad, you know, and I'm sure, yes,
yes, it's time to take you home now.
Yeah. So where, where did the, where
did the love of space dwarves come from, mate?
Is it something that you had sort of in your collection back
in the day with your squats or how did that all evolve into?
Yeah, well, the first time I saw space dwarves was those
Harlequin miniatures. It was a very small range.
I think they were sculpted by maybe Tim Prow, but they were
very space suity techno dwarves. And you couldn't really get
squats from Games Workshop when I was a kid.
But I did have the black Codex, which came in the Warhammer
40,000 starter set that my dad bought me when I was about 11.
And I always wanted them, but the minutes weren't available in
the stores and you could only get them through mail order if
you sort of like, asked incredibly nicely.
And my dad started off my squat on me when I was a kid by buying
me five of the metal bikers for Christmas.
You know, the old sort of like really long fairing models with
the tiny front wheel and then it's sort of like a fat,
bearded, Hairy Biker cliche on the back.
And I've still got them in my army to this day.
They've been repainted so many times.
But the army just grew and grew. But it was always very difficult
getting hard hold of the miniatures.
And I used to have to go to this local magazine called Loot,
which was a yellow, yellow newspaper, which would sort of
like sometimes have ads in for sort of, you know, some
Warhammer miniature dwarf types. And every time you saw one of
those, you'd think, oh, maybe they're squats and you'd sort of
like call a number and see if they had sold or not.
So, you know, this is before eBay.
And, and so my, my, my squat army was very small.
And there just wasn't very much information about the, the
miniatures pack that I remember having.
I, I bought from a second hand shop, all the miniatures, which
were the chaos squat miniatures. And the idea that they were kind
like chaos squats was just, I didn't really know.
I just thought that kind of the one which had a goat leg was a
sort of like, it was just, it was, it was a sculpted bionic
leg that he had. And you couldn't just look in
the catalogue and stuff. And I came to them all as
regular squats and just thought they had funny masks on or funny
bionic legs. And I think the tentacle one was
a bit odd, though. There's one with, you know,
tentacles flying out of one arm. And I thought, well, maybe
something's not right here, but he didn't know.
It's only years later I found out about the Chaos Squats
existed and there was Chaos squat extra armour and there was
Chaos Squats in power armour and all the ones in Flack as well.
Yeah, that reminds me too. Yeah, I do remember seeing like
the corn chaos squat on on a bike.
I think it like the corn shaped helmet, the emblem on his helmet
and that kind of thing. So yeah, that were a thing.
Definitely back in row Trader, maybe as part of some kind of
White Dwarf article they released later during the
evolution of the game. They just introduced something
else like cow squats because they had cows dwarves, you know,
it's it goes to reason that they'll be abrupted somehow.
So yeah, looking at looking at you, like I said before, you're
in a very accomplished painter and a very skilled painter.
How did that sort of coming to? Being like, were you more of a
painter and collector more than a gamer, or is it more of a all
three combined? I like to think of myself as a
very balanced hobbyist, and I do painting and collecting and
gaming, but I have this disconnect when some people talk
about complaining about painting where they're like, oh, I've got
so much painting to get done. I don't want to paint all these
models for the tournament. I think that's what's one of the
best elements. It's like complaining that, you
know, saying, oh, I've got I've got to paint 10 squads for the
next tournament. I think that's like complaining,
oh, I've got 10 chocolate Easter eggs and I need to eat them all.
I find the idea about making an evening of sitting down and just
quietly painting with some podcasts or some DVD
commentaries on in the background is it's just absolute
bliss. And it doesn't really matter if
the minute she gets finished or just sitting down and being in
the space where you can sort of put down the highlights and put
down the face coats is just sort of Nirvana really for me.
And I don't, I don't, I don't game to a very high standard.
I don't have any sort of perfectionism creep in there.
And I don't have any sort of competitive pride creep in
there. But with the the painting, I
think there's always a call to mastery where if you've got the
miniatures with studio paint jobs in front of you, you want
to get them close to that level or you sort of like think the
expectation as you get them to that level.
And I think that I probably internalized that before I
realized how kind of toxic and unhelpful it is.
Actually, I think it's maybe the wrong way of looking at the
hobby is just getting awash with studio images and images from
magazines and thinking, oh, that is the standard I have to paint
them to rather than the standard, which some people can
paint to as an aspiration. And it's fine if you paint it to
a, the standard that you're comfortable with or you're happy
with really. And then I went through a golden
demon phase in my, in my 30s where I sort of would plan my
year rather than about I, I'd moved on from the tournaments
because when I was in my early 20s, I was, I was doing
tournaments very regularly, like maybe one or two a month where
you'd kind of like gather up all your friends.
And then on the Friday night you'd travel down on the train
or one of you would have a car and you'd drive down to
somewhere in the UK. Sometimes we went overseas as
well, actually together and you'd have like 2 days of solid
gaming with sort of like nights out at the pub or even nightclub
when we were really young and sort of energetic thrown in.
And there's that sort of like that group sort of like
gradually grew apart. And then sort of to get my, the
focus was went into like trying to enter the golden demon
painting competitions. And so I'd plan a year around
what I'd want to enter into next month's gold, next year's golden
demon categories and sort of like spend a lot of time
focusing on that and using that as a sort of like the major
tentpole to think, do things around.
And then you'd go down to golden demon with a couple of friends
that were sort of like minded as well and make that the, the
weekend out. So I, so my, my painting came on
quite a lot when I was doing that regularly.
But now I've I I I I find it very be difficult to enter the
modern Golden Demon contests because I don't even they they
announced them with only like 6. Previously you could depend on
it being a games day sort of like at the same time every year
and the categories being largely the same every year.
But nowadays it's very difficult to work out where in the year it
was. And one year I, it was October
the 1st, 2022 was when they announced it sort of a couple of
months before. And I was like, well, I'm
getting married that day. And it was my wedding.
And I thought and, and then I sat there and sort of I thought
you. Don't want to accept the bride,
mate, that's for sure. Yeah, OK, yeah, they're having,
they're having it all around the world, aren't they?
Because that in the USI think wasn't the first one in the US
Adepticon. Yeah, it's a bit, it's tempting
to sort of sort of like fly over for that and try and compete.
Actually, I've, I've never been to the Depticon actually.
And sort of like it's a very good excuse to sort of like say,
oh, actually I came to the Golden Demon there.
But the category information that they send out ahead of time
is, is, can be a little bit sort of hazy and you've got to sort
of like start painting things a year in advance.
And so you've got to be very clear on what the category and
the rules are. And you can't just sort of like
start painting and then sort of like work out sort of like, you
know, the month before if it fits into a category or not.
So. Yes, yes, it does.
And the standard now for Golden Demon is just like through the
roof, isn't it? Like, mate, I would have no
chance, mate. I think if I entered something
Golden Demon, it just wouldn't even get a look in.
I think it's yeah. The painters now are just yeah,
they're just. I don't know if they're sold
this, sold their soul to the devil or whatever, I don't know.
But there's some really amazing talent out there in the
miniature painting world. And and it's just not just
painting, it's like converting or just scratch building stuff.
So yeah, Golden Demon is really different now than it was back
in the 90s. You know, you can see it.
I. Think that I think that you you
could actually enter Golden Demon.
I think most people could enter Golden Demon, but what they
don't realize is the sheer amount of hundreds and hundreds
of hours that go into painting a single miniature to that
quality. And people mistake the quality
as being something which is sort of like an inbuilt talent rather
than just a result of a process which takes hundreds and
hundreds and hundreds of hours. You're so like finessing,
finessing things on a very small scale.
And so I, I think most people have the ability, if they were
sort of like had training and support to kind of compete very
competently at Golden Demon level.
But most people just don't really want to spend several 100
hours painting a single miniature and then doing that
sort of like for 10 minutes and then also spending hundreds of
hours on a display base. You know, at that point, you
think, what do I get out of it? It requires a lot of a lot of
discipline and a lot of a lot of commitment, really.
So I won't bring my Dwarf command group down to Golem
Demon then. So if they, if they had like an
old hammer category, I think that'd be wonderful.
If they had like the old, you know, like you could be Goblin
green bases. They're going to be, you know,
90s miniatures. They did that in Australia.
I entered one time in Sydney. It was on behalf of a friend of
mine. He had a one of the old original
Jazz Goodwin Inquisitor models and he wanted me to put that on
a nice civic base and entered into that competition.
And there was just one specifically for, I don't know
what it was called now. I think it was called Old Hammer
or something like that, where it was just models made within a
certain time frame. Yeah, I think.
I have seen that around actually, yeah.
Yeah, it's really cool. I thought it was really nice.
I thought they'd bring that back.
I think a really nice a nice way to show their in respect to the
older, you know, original painters and the original sort
of style from where it sort of started.
Even if it was like guys coming back to, you know, if you ever
saw the Earl, the very, very first golden demons they ever
brought out, I think it was like 90, so 19199189 or something
like that. Yeah.
Incredible amount of conversions and painting and it was just
just wild as this. There was no restrictions.
There was nothing sort of conformed to anything.
It was just like just all these ideas of all this great stuff.
And if they had something like that, I'd be really, really
impressed if they could do that. But.
I remember a really early gold demon entry I saw in White
Dwarf, which is Marnius Calgar. But then the person's got a
tarantula skin, a real world tarantula skin that he's just
got Marnius Calvin sitting there.
And it's just very odd just seeing a sort of like a bit of a
modern real world animal next to a miniature.
You've got the person at the time thought that's cool,
spiders are cool, Space Marines are cool.
Just stick them all together. Off we go.
Yeah, it's. Funny, isn't it?
Yeah, It's a good time, mate. It's a good time.
Now in your, I think on your bio, I think on Instagram you
talk about some companies you painted for, is that right?
You did some painting work for certain companies.
Yeah, I've, I've tried my hand at studio painting for what's
the first company. I, I started doing that for the
first professionally done miniatures work was for War
Games Foundry and I, I, I tried getting in there when I was like
16 years old. They, so I put it in a magazine
article. They, they, they used to own War
Games Illustrated and sort of like run that as a, they're sort
of like essentially we love. I'll start again.
I'll start again there. War Games Illustrated sort of
like used to be the sort of like the, it wasn't an in house
publication of War Games Foundry.
It was they, they just had a sort of like they, they put a
lot of advertising money in and they had an advert for painters
on the Backpage. And I tried getting in when I
was 16 to sort of like be the person that painted the
miniatures for the the magazine and for the catalogues and
stuff. And I didn't get in straight
away, but I ended up painting some Boatian Greeks as a, as a
test piece and sending them off and they didn't like them very
much. And they've got the miniatures
back. But I, I, I did paint some of
their Amazonians that have appeared and their orcs and
their dwarves and their elves, and they're not very good at
crediting me in the book. Actually, I found out I've been
miscredited quite a lot as Steve Dallamore.
But then sort of like when he's such a no Kev Dallamore, who is
it? One of the Dallamore.
Kev Dallamore is, yeah, the the famous painter for, I think for
foundry and a lot of other companies.
But yeah, he's the main man. I've been credited as Kev
Dallamore quite a lot actually, which I'm like I was happy to
take at the time. I'm like, great if people,
that's good. And then I've painted for the
Avatars of War boxes and they did the hard plastic sprue
dwarves and I've painted for Mantic Games that did quite a
lot for them. And then I ended up working for
them actually as a graphic designer for a couple of years
as well. And then when I was at Games
Workshop, I painted some of the new releases they had for Forge
World where they're putting out the Mark 4 upgrade kits.
So I did some of the nice Salamanders for them.
And also when Games Workshop put out things, they have a certain
amount of overspill from the the army painters in the heavy metal
team. And they sort of just sort of
like go around the company saying we've got, you know, more
product coming out than we can sort of like afford to paint
stuff, you know, sort of like who, who, who's a good painter.
And so I ended up doing some of the Space Marines for them as
well, actually, which was quite good fun.
But it was, it was, it was difficult.
It was, it was, you do sort of like your 8 hours on the day job
doing the graphic design at the time for the White Dwarf
magazine. And then you'd go home and you
kind of go, all right, I've got to go and do 8 hours now of
painting for this. And then you'd like finally get
to bed about 3:00 in the morning and then get up for, you know,
the next day. And so it's, it's, it's quite
good fun. And I was sort of like, very
motivated by the idea that I, I'd be painting a beast like
part of the new Games Workshop release.
But it was very, very, it didn't let you do very much else in
your life really at the time. Yeah, I bet mate, that's, that's
a pretty heavy schedule 16, but it would have been fun at the
time anyway. It would have been fun to be
part of that. So that's great.
OK mate. Look, we're going to, we're
going to go away for just a moment for a quick advert.
And then when we come back, we're going to talk about on
Toss Games and the Rock Noughts Revolution Kickstarter you've
got at the moment. It's a very exciting start.
So we'll be back in just a moment.
A question of the month for August 2024 is what miniature
would you like to own? Above all else, for me it's got
to be the Great Unclean One from the Citadel combat cards of the
late 80s and early 90s, a great looking miniature which by all
accounts weighs about as much as a small cannonball.
I'd love to own it, I'd love to paint it, but I imagine they're
very hard and very expensive to come by these days.
Anyway, tell us about the ultimate miniature you would
like to own by going to bedroombattlefields.com/voicemail.
And I need those in by Thursday the 29th of August.
That's bedroombattlefields.com/voicemail.
And now, back to the show. I feel a bit sad I didn't have a
a nice studio behind me with all of my favorite things on the
wall. Like if if I was at home.
I've got I've got a load of 1990s super robotic warriors
power like bootleg action figures on display in a row.
I've got all five different colours and on the plain hotel.
I'm afraid so. Well, that that sounds very,
very Japanesey. Those kind of robots.
Do you have you been to Japan before?
Are you into this sort of the Gundam Gumpler thing?
I, I've got, I bought my first Gundam two years ago.
I got a ZAR 22 and I'm, I'm, I'm wanting to sort of like indulge
that side. I've never been to Japan.
I'd love to visit. But what I'm very much into at
the moment are the Hong Kong action figures, which are
bootlegs of the popular brands at the time where they're sort
of trying to work out right, what's this year's big seller?
And then they put out a sort of a fake version of it, which is
legally defensible. So it's the Super robotic
warriors and the Super robotic ranges that I've been kind of
like obsessing over for years now, which are not Power
Rangers, but they sort of like have big lighter things.
They also came packaged with laser Pogs, which was fantastic.
You, if you remember Pogs at all, you know, they still like
thought, right? Power Rangers are big, Pogs are
big. Let's just mash the two toys
together and sort of it was great.
It's great. But I can't show you them.
I can just show you a small TV and an en suite bathroom so.
That's fine, mate. Yeah, you'll love it.
You'll love Japan. If you love big stompy robots,
then you you're in the in the home and heartland of all that
kind of stuff here in Japan, that's for sure.
So mate, look, let's go. Let's have a look at your
Kickstarter. Now.
These are like big stompy robots, but very on a much
smaller scale. I find they're nice and chunky
and I love, I love the designs of your, of your miniatures that
you've designed. Now, are you the actual
designer, Chris? Do you do?
You right? Yep, right.
OK. So you design them, you
obviously produce them and paint them.
So that's excellence. And then you then publicize them
through through Kickstarter, which is going really well at
the moment. This is your second Kickstarter
from memory, is that right? Yeah, yeah, I did a initial set
of I did just a little five man squad back in 2022 to test the
water with and it went absolute bananas.
And so I thought actually I'm going to follow this up with
some more miniatures. And it's taken it's about 11
months of work to from the initial sketch of this bike to
the release where all the miniatures are painted and
available for pre-order now. And I shouldn't sort of like,
and then I'm thinking if this one goes well, I'm going to do
some more options. I might do some exo suits, I
might do some trikes. I want to do some more infantry.
I'd love to start doing some characters.
But my dream is to be producer, sort of like a whole workable
range, so that people could just paint an army of these and
nothing but these that would look incredibly coherent and
everything would be interchangeable and pluggable
together. Well, that that was that was
exactly what I was going to suggest.
I'm actually going to wait until you have the entire range
complete and then I'll go in big on one of the Kickstarters to
get an entire army because I'm starting from scratch.
So I'm not one of those guys who has like Paul, who has some
medal, the metal models and he has your Kickstarter as well to
make a squad. But I want everything from your
from your, your staff, your designs.
I think that the the designs that you have match my image of
what the 2nd edition squats should have been.
There are two unreleased models on the Dark Millennium inside
cover on the in the front and the back, I think, and they were
two unreleased Perry sculpts of what the squats were going to
look like. I think they were actually.
Perry, I think they were done by Gary Morley, actually.
Oh, were they? Really I.
Think, yeah, it's difficult to get information on, but I'm, I'm
happy to be wrong. But they they've got his classic
large hands and they're very much similar to the metal Blood
Bowl team that we've done in the early 90s as well.
Actually, now you mention it, yeah, I think you might be
right, Chris. I'll have to message him and ask
him if that's the case. I mean, I love, I love that
design. So those design aesthetics are
just being ported straight into your Rock Naughty Revolution
series of models here. Now, obviously this Kickstarter
focuses on the bikers, which are just brilliant.
So yeah, I mean, I've got nothing to fault them against.
I mean even even their cast and resin, I think the resin's a
really nice quality. I've seen what Paul has here.
The models I've seen, you know, first hand, they're really.
I've seen this entire army on the, the battle report you put
up last night. Actually, I was sort of like, I
was constantly at and taking a look at the because because the
bunkers that you're using and the sort of the fortifications
are all the stuff that I've designed as well.
So the whole thing felt like, wow, OK, I did that.
Wow. All right, that's.
If you want to do space cactuses, you you, then I've,
I've just put out some sort of like little space cactuses as
well. Actually, they're on the they're
on the 3D cults at the moment. Oh, you're a very talented man,
Chris. I didn't realize you did.
I didn't realize you did those because yeah, I love those.
They were kindly sent to me by Carnifex, my good friend in
Australia, to help us out with some terrain.
Because I didn't actually have any terrain.
And I thought, and I really want to make terrain, you know,
obviously. But the time it takes and I, I,
I really haven't found the time to do it.
So he sent me those things and I just said, OK, that's it.
I'm going to get them out, put them on the bases.
I'm going to spray them black and I'm going to just get the
airbrush out and just go for it. And I did it and I did it in a
day, knocked them all out. They look fantastic.
I've got lots of people asking about it.
Even today someone asked me about it on the video.
So I'm going to find out exactly where I can get the link to
those, where they can purchase them or print them or whatever.
And I'll start, I'll start doing that.
I should maybe just do a video just on the terrain itself and.
And the rocks, are the rocks fires from Con FX as well or
have you done those yourself? Because those are absolutely
spot on in terms of kind of giving the board a lot of
interest, but also having a lot of vertical height and not
actually, you know, they're perfect if you're wanting to put
like Knights on the table or dreadnoughts as well.
They're just sort of like they, they look great in photographs.
And then when you're doing the army show, you just throw them
all behind the army as well to sort of like block off the
spaces. They're great.
Are those yours or? Yeah, they're just handmade out
of like Styrofoam, basically. Yeah, they were just real.
Well, that's that, that sort of builder's Styrofoam.
It's like insulation Styrofoam. Not the not the really horrible
white large chunky ones. Some more of a condensed one.
Yeah, yeah, it was good. I should really do videos on
that. It's just, again, finding the
time, Chris, to do all those kind of things.
But yeah, I really enjoyed that. And it's really simple.
It's not that hard. Even the even the, the, what's
the names, the the cactus plants.
I did a video on that. I did a did a how I did mine.
And obviously other people do their own own way and their own
style, but it's good to see that sort of cord on.
I think it's had a little time there where everyone's making
those things and everyone had to make the cactus lant because it
was kind of the iconic thing they had to have on the table.
And then I saw your 3D rinted ones and they look really good
too O. I did actually watch your video.
I watched your video about the making cactus ones.
And then Thomas Grove had given Leonard to like put together a
set as well. And so I bought a set of
polystyrene balls and polystyrene eggs earlier in the
year to do exactly that. And I found because I, I, I
wanted to go back to feeling like I was eight years old again
and sort of like looking through the pages of White Dwarf.
But I, I found that when I had them in photographs, they tended
to descale miniatures put next to them.
And so I thought I'll try and sculpt some instead, which sort
of like things that you can just dry brush and just slap a wash
onto. And also they're a little bit
more transportable. If you are enjoying this podcast
and the content on the Chronicle Man Games YouTube channel then
please consider supporting me on Patreon.
Becoming a Storm Boy allows you access to behind the scene news,
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Yeah, so I was going to say also, Doctor Spork is another
fantastic 40K second edition terrain modeller in 3D like
yourself. He's done amazing bunker like
the ones straight from White Dwarf.
And yeah, it's really good to see.
It's really good to see that these nostalgic projects coming
out as STL files and people can print them out and paint them up
and put them on the table tops. It's really cool.
It's really accessible now. So I think I really like that
aspect to it because not everyone has the time or skill
to build all this stuff. So if they have an alternative
out there like those, then it's something that they can get it.
They get the aesthetic feel of the 90s and with very little
time and fuss. But mate, let's have a look at
your Kickstarter because it's now got 77 backers.
It's the time I'm reading this and seven days to go.
So I'll make sure this this interview with you, Chris goes
out before it ends. You have a chance to get on
there and grab their rock naughty bikers.
Now, not only are the bikers there, there are three
different, well, there's 33 bikers listed in this beautiful
photograph you did of your painted samples with a kind of
like a veteran Sergeant type dude with wings on the side of
his helmet, which I love, and two regular Rocknort bikers.
But also you have the original Kickstarter models available too
as an add on as well. So yeah, I've started calling
that squad the Bedrock Squad, which I thought was very flat
because I love that. Yeah, it's called the Dead Rock
of the Army, but it's also rock for Rocknort as well.
That's so like the day I thought that I'm like brilliant,
brilliant, you know? Yeah, I love those figures,
mate. Honestly, they're just amazing.
And and also I've seen a glimpse of another bedrock infra squad
ready to reinforce your collection with five new sculpts
of a a beautiful a female dwarf. Well squat this time or rock
naughty holding a what looks like a plasma pistol or a a bolt
pistol and a power. Axe, it's got like 2 barrels
because I it's a hangover from the initial weapons I designed,
where I wanted to make the weapons also look not like
standard space weapons, but make them look like they were dwarven
weapons. And one of the ideas I hit on
was having everything having two barrels, so the weapons had
quite a lot of height. And then a couple of months
later, Forge World brought out a set of their Necromunder Squats
where they'd gone to the same sort of like design cue as well.
So I felt like I was onto the right path.
But the original sidearm that the Rocknotes had was A2
barrelled weapon. But then I found that when
people were holding it in front of their bodies, then it would
cover up a lot of their face too much.
And then you'd end up just having it looked like sort of
like toddlers holding large cardboard boxes rather than
towards holding guns. And so I saw I slimmed it back
and gave the weapon just a single barrel and put a sick
clip on there. But yeah, I found that I had to
do more infantry weapons, more infantry options in this squad
because people were in the first kick start, were buying multiple
squads. And this one guy got in contact
saying, oh, I've just come back from a kill team event and my
entire army was nothing but your miniatures.
And I bought 4 squads of the miniatures and I converted them
all. So all of the rock things looked
different. They all had different hairs.
And I thought this is going great.
You know the idea that people just want to do armies of these.
I thought, right, I'd better sort of like make sure that
people can have options for choosing more than one squad.
So I had to do another infantry squad on the side as well as the
bikers so that people can start start rounding this out.
And after I'm getting off this podcast, I've got this lovely
shot. I set it up last week and it's
going to take a lot of editing just to get it on.
I'll put on the Kickstarter of all four of the squads that I've
painted together on the terrain just so that people can start
seeing that rather than just a squad they can add to an army.
This is the sort of like hopefully can build into an army
all of its own as well, which is that's my dream really.
But I've got to this like start off.
You always want to start off with the characters and you want
to start off with the sort of the really exciting huge
artillery and the kind of, I don't know, large artillery
trains and all of whistles and bells where you've got to build
the army with the sort of the foundation in place of having
nice standard infantry squads. And then I haven't even done any
characters unless you count the sort of like the squad leaders
yet. And I'm leaving those till a bit
later when I can sort of like I've got a strong foundation of
what kind of things they might have as war gear.
You know, because the regular helmet, the sort of like the
Sutton who helmet with the nose bar and the sort of the large
eye lens, it looks great. But then we've got the Sergeant
level one way. It's got the wings coming out
the back. And I'm thinking right, how can
I make that slightly more ornate for the for So like, you know,
mid level characters, you know, does it have jewels on it?
Does it have inlaid not work patterns on it?
Does it have rebreathers on it? Does it have more ornate horns
on it? That that's exciting, you know,
But I don't know. Watch this.
Watch this space, you know. Yeah, look, I'm really excited
for it, Chris, Honestly, I, I, as soon as I saw your models, I
thought, yeah, that's it. You just nail you nail the
aesthetic that I want to see in the squad army and yeah, to to
see this expand now. That's why I really wanted to
get you on because I thought, wow, you've got another
Kickstarter and more models coming out.
I'm really excited to see how this evolves and yeah, no, I'm
really impressed with it mate, really impressed.
I especially love the wings on the helmets.
I think that was a really nice little touch there to signify
your little group leaders or your hearth guard models and
that kind of thing. But yeah, I'm really looking
forward to seeing the Living Ancestor, the Warlord and the
EXO armour guys when you eventually get around to
designing those. I have my first prototype back
of the EXO suit actually. Yeah, it's coming out really
nicely at the moment, but it's just a question of how I scale
it nicely. I've got to work out.
I've painted it, it looks wonderful.
It's got a nice large banner, it's got weapon options on both
hands. And I'm thinking I can do like
different poses where one striding forward to the left,
one striding forward to the right, but the regular rock not
troop is quite as stocky bulky guy.
And working out how much more bulky a person in the kind of
the heaviest form of armour would be and then still look
right is the thing I'm just trying to nail at this point in
the project. Because at the moment what you
tend to find is that models in sort of like a Games Workshop
Terminator is a very bulky set of armour.
But does it actually look like, if I sort of like undress that
Terminator, would it have a person in of the same size as a
regular Space Marine? And that's just the element of
design I'm trying to nail at the moment.
And we'll see how it goes. I'm very excited.
We'll do it. Yeah, for sure.
Absolutely. And yeah, I mean, like I said,
I'm just excited to see what the next designs will be.
You do have a a Facebook page now.
Ninja Bread. Is that sort of your online
handle name, isn't it? Ninja Bread.
Well, yeah, I that's what my personal blog is.
I when I was setting up on Toss Games as a company, I thought
maybe I'll call it Ninja Bread. Like my old, I used to run a web
comic there which had a kind of like a collective print edition.
And then I have a blog on the side and I thought maybe I'll
call it Ninja Bread. But then I thought.
I. Might move past that phase of my
life because I came up with that when I was 16 years old and
working in a bakery. And what we used to do was at
the end of the day, if we had any gingerbread men that were
left unsold, we'd sort of like get the kind of the molten
chocolate out and we'd dip them in until the entire gingerbread
man was covered in chocolate apart from a small rectangle
over the eyes. Like he was a shinobi ninja.
And they were called ninja bred men.
And I thought, you know, that it was great fun, but it doesn't
actually tell you anything about the company.
And I think there are so many companies out there which have
Ninja in their title that, you know, I might sort of just keep
that as a sort of a, the name of my personal blog.
And so I set up the company, formerly a company's house.
It's Ontos games. ONTOS, which is simpler to say
on the phone and also isn't the name of a, an old like
PlayStation one computer game which bombed as well.
Actually, you know, the old Ninja bread man game.
No. OK.
Right. OK.
That's something new I didn't know about.
Cool, mate. I think that's good.
Yeah. Because I think it's.
Yeah, maybe just has more clarity to what it is because I
know you go under different names.
So Ontos Games is is the name of the company and Gingerbread is
just, yeah, your old former online handle that's associated
with Ontos Games. But.
Like like my old e-mail address used to be spicy beef at Hotmail
and sort of, you know, like that was always like my forum name
for ages. And I'm, I'm glad I moved past
that. You got to sort like, and then
and then before that, I sort of I, I was calling myself, you
know, Lord cheese grater and all of these names and you look back
and you're like, I enjoy it and it means a lot to me.
But does everybody else sit there and think, Oh, it's
cringe? You know, we had had a used to
work with a guy who his professional e-mail address was
Greg Master G at and and, and I was just sort of like we were
just burst out giggling and it sort of undermined any sort of
like serious professional point he wanted to make.
Yeah, totally get it, mate. Totally get it.
Yeah, I actually made my own Gmail account under my own name
because I didn't want to send other, my other things like
Chronic Man podcast, youknow@gmail.com.
I mean, you know, that doesn't sound very professional if
you're, if you're doing it for work and that kind of thing.
They're wondering who the hell is that, you know?
So totally get that. Totally get it, mate.
So yeah, look, I hope that people, when they listen to
this, go and at least check out the Kickstarter, see what you've
got on offer. You know, obviously postage will
be quite reasonable given that they're all risen.
Well, for people in Japan and for people in Australia, I'm not
sure where the bulk of your listening base star.
I have spent a lot of time organising import and export to
go from a either from the UK distribution hub, from an
American distribution hub, from an Australian distribution hub
and from a mainland Europe distribution hub so that you can
and sort of like not get a custom sting at the end.
And so this is different to the web store which are always
posted out from the UK address and then sort of like people are
responsible from customs. But I've spent a lot of time
thinking, right, if people do want these miniatures, I want to
make sure that they understand that postage is sort of like
what you see is what you get, rather than having a sort of
like a huge parcel of 200 lbs hit you with a huge import fee.
So I, I shipped this to sort like partner organizations in
the US, in Australia, in mainland Europe, so that you can
sort of like reasonably expect sort of like VAT and customs
from that point onwards. I spent a lot of time doing
that. And you know, like if I got to
spend that time painting more bikes, I would have.
But I think it's always very important with these
kickstarters to work out, right. I want this to be pain free from
the the backup point of view, the people that want the
miniatures and I don't want them to suddenly have a parcel where
and turn up with a 30 LB customs bill on.
Yeah, no, that's, that's barely insaneable, Christian.
That's, that's great. You did your due diligence on
that, mate. So people appreciate that, I'm
sure, because that's one of the things about Kickstarter that
puts people off. It's like, OK, I'm paying this
much, but then the shipping and the import duty fees and what
have you, depending on what country you're living in.
So that's really good to know for people that they, they can
see that and they can learn that.
So that's good. Yeah.
Now, well, now you're going to bring out your lead.
Obviously it starts today, today being Friday the 2nd of August.
Are you actually down some of your products make for people to
have a look at on the day. I haven't actually.
I I'm going down simply as a punter.
I did think about bringing down the squad to entrance to the
painting contest, but then I decided against it.
I'm just going down. I'm taking down my copy of Space
Crusade and I'm seeing if I can sort of like wake up three
players to sort of fight against my Chaos Dreadnoughts.
And so I'll have that on display.
But I, I, I bring out your leads.
Not really a trade show and I don't have the ability to give
people their miniatures ahead of the end of the Kickstarter yet,
but I will be doing a trade show at the Border River War Game
show in Gateshead on September 6th.
And then hopefully I'll be doing the Middlesbrough trade show and
some Sunderland trade shows and if those go well then I'll start
looking at doing the bigger ones like Salute and UK Games Expo,
right? Maybe it's Jen Conindy this
weekend as well actually, which, you know, I'd love to do
something like that. But that's got to be something
I've got to, I've got to do a lot of working out how I sort of
like do an international trade show.
I've never done something like that before.
Well, you've already got the person there set up to, you
know, carry your products as like a sort of a, you know,
halfway man or hub or something like that to get your products
in there. So that's half the battle.
You can send it all in in advance and even get someone
else to represent you there on the day.
I mean, I've, I've known, I know that one of my patrons, Elliot,
he's doing something for another company, UK based company, I
forget the name of the the company, sorry, and the game.
But yeah, he's representing him and his products, showing off
all the models, doing demos and that kind of thing.
So yeah, you can get, you can find someone who really likes
your products to go there on the day and just represent you on
your behalf and show off all the wonderful rock Nords, mate.
That's the way to do it. We'll have to find some avatars
in other countries that I can remotely remotely possessed with
my enthusiasm for space. I'm happy to do it for you in
Japan, mate. I don't know who's going what
kind of what kind of well, I can showdown this.
I can put them in the store and I actually asked Paul to do
that. Just put them in the store in
our the, the, the place where we play.
We are thinking about doing like a second edition kind of games
day. We've done a lot of here for
Warhammer Renaissance, but there are some guys interested in
playing second edition. I know there are quite a few
about maybe six or seven or eight people now who play,
who've got armies and that kind of thing.
So who knows, it might have those set up somewhere, you
know, as part of the Rocknorts Revolution corner, so people can
check out some. Well, it's good because I
always, I'm always interested in people designing miniatures now
based on the oldest aesthetics. Yeah, because obviously the
influence of 3DS3D design and printing is massive now it's
it's revolutionized the entire industry.
You just can't go to, you just can't go to Kickstarter without,
you know, finding 10 or more Kickstarter's now with 3D prints
of various different systems, you know, whether they're
historical, fantasy, sci-fi, whatever.
I launched Brocknort Revolution Kickstarter the same day that
Andrew May over at Meridian Miniatures launched a set of
space, space orcs, which are very 90s themes as well, which
are sculpted by Kev Adams world people.
And so we both both launched us on the same morning and we're
kind of giving each other mutual support as well.
So you just can't swing a cat for bumping into two or three
things. But I I like the I like the
style because the miniatures are very straightforward and
characterful and paintable and don't come in 36 parts each.
Yep. You know what, mate?
I've got some beautiful Gretchen from Nightmare Games.
You know Diego from Nightmare Games?
He did a Kickstarter some years ago.
That was the last one I think I did.
And they're the ones that. Popped up in the battle report
or. They're the ones, yeah.
People ask me. They were lovely, They were
lovely. Yeah, they're awesome, mate.
They're beautiful Warcast and beautiful metal.
I mean, I wish the rock Nords would cast in metal, but then
it'll cost quite a bit more, I think, to do that.
And the process behind it. I don't know much about it, but
yeah. Yeah, the cast are actually
offered to do them in metal, but the cost of metal is shot up so
much that it's cheaper to do them in resin.
And maybe have a bit of a personal preference there in
that the miniatures don't chip as easily if you're taking an
army of them down. But then he did, he was actually
trying to persuade me to do a set of the bikes in metal as
like a collector's edition. But the weight of bikes is sort
of like absolutely huge really when you're doing small vehicles
in metal. And then I, I'm not sure how
well metal kits stay together because metal bikes, I've got a,
I've got a squadron of metal bikes at home and they're,
they're just a running repair really.
Yeah, I know what you mean. I, I totally understand it.
I, I, I can get it from a, from a business point of view these
days that of course I love metal models and you know, I've got a
whole cabinet full of them. Luckily they can support the,
the, the shelves they're actually sitting on luckily
support like 10 KGS and over I think because they're quite
heavy. But you know, for
transportation, for storage, for obviously for a, for a seller
shipping all this stuff out. Yeah, I mean, resin is the way
to go. I mean, my friend Marcus, you
know, you might be familiar with wearable miniatures.
Oh yes, yes, he's done some really nice, he did a really
nice Wastacker Gutsmaker conversion a couple of weeks
ago, which is just sort of like absolutely spot on because he's
taking extra care to do like the mega armor of the rider as well,
which I'm just, I've got so excited by that.
I've got lots of pictures of that saved to my desktop.
Great, That's awesome. Yeah, he, he's done some awesome
spotlight models as well, which would, I think, I think Paul's
got the living Ancestor model from his range that he used in
our game in our battle report the other day.
So it's it's really great, great to see people like yourself and
Marcus and other people out there, you know, recreating
these old miniatures in a new format and you know, obviously
metal resin or whatever, or SSTLS people can print out and
still enjoy old style gaming with some new fresh looking
models on the table. So yeah, all, all yeah, sounds
great. Bring back that sort of it's not
just I wanted to go back to 1994, but I remember popping out
once to Manchester model shop and I had an Imperial Guard army
at the time. And then this new game called
Warzone would come out with this wolf being commandos in and they
just look like they're slots straight into my Warhammer army.
And I just bought them there and sort of like got ten of them and
had them with an assault cannon, which are counted as a heavy
bowl to it. I think it's an HMG actually.
And I like the idea that we're living in a fresh golden age of
miniatures where people have got their old armies, people have
got their existing collections, but they kind of think, right,
I'm just going to get a little bit of flavour in here, a bit of
Indycred. I want to get something a bit
fresh rather than having another army where you have that
monopose plastic. Gretchen, you've slotted in your
Diego sort of like fantastic set of nightmare miniatures,
Gretchen into it. You've got your Macrocosm dwarf
commissar slotted in and it sits alongside the old miniatures.
It's that that's the idea that it's a bit more pick and mix or
a bit more so like customizable. And that's that's very exciting
about this age of Kickstarters. Yes, absolutely.
Yeah. To get your project off the
ground, that is it. Macrocasm, Macrocasm, Macrocasm.
Yeah, They do some wonderful stuff too.
I think they're a Spanish company, aren't they?
I think it's Chris Nichols in the UK, but in this age of the
Internet, it's not acceptable to know within 30 seconds.
Well, it could be Spanish, yeah. OK, it could be could be a
different project that I'm thinking of, but they did some
space slam and what else was? That, oh, that was Redguard,
wasn't it? They did the baseline and the
space. Ocrans.
And that's the one. That's the one.
Yeah. Brilliant.
Yeah. The Ocrans are just amazing.
I mean, I'd, I'd love to have those for my walk.
Army. I think they're just, they're
just perfect, perfect aesthetics.
Yeah, yeah. His, his photography was
completely on point with the hills that he had as well.
And he's got some of the old fugu huts behind him as well.
I, I, I want to say to slam myself actually to have his
auxilia, because the painting on them was great.
They weren't just sort of fat little frogs or sort of stringy
crew. They were just the halfway in
between, which sort of like made them nice and leggy and sort of
alien and Mesoamerican. It was, it was, it was great.
Yeah, and hats off to Maxi who did all the painting for them.
He did an absolutely brilliant job on those.
Just. Yeah, he the like, I'm not a
Lisbon person, as most people would know.
I don't particularly like lizards in fantasy or space, but
those models are really, really nice.
They're really good. Yeah.
And I think that the paint jobs themselves that Maxi did just
knocked them out the park. Absolutely.
I'm glad I'm. Glad he didn't do space dwarf
bikers actually, because he did some little jump troopers and he
did. And I'm thinking, Oh, no,
everyone's going to be sort of a, you know, sort of tired of
space dwarf bikers this year and we're going to launch mine.
So, so, you know, this is space enough of us both to do bikers.
Macrocosm have done some bikers recently and they're they're
great. And there's that Spanish company
have done some bikers recently as well.
And I think hardcore have done some bikers as well.
So you, you spoil for choice really if you want space dwarf
bike, but get mine, but get mine.
But you know, other options are available.
For me personally, I think yeah, you're doing the best, you know,
squat aesthetical models out there at the moment.
And like I said Chris, I'm really looking forward to seeing
what comes in the future. You've got some exciting plans
in your head already. You've got a prototype there Is
it of the EXO Armour model you have?
Isn't it a nice EXO suit? Yeah, he's got a hammer in one
hand and he's got under slung. It's like Gatling cannon in the
other. And I just trying to work out
sort of like what are the weapon options I give him as well
really so that I can make it a whole squad's worth, you know?
Do we start doing like over shoulder missile launches?
Do we start doing kind of like loads of flame weapons?
Do we start doing sort of like axes instead of hammers for the
guns? I'm not sure.
It's, it's exciting times. It's world is my oyster.
Now finally, do you have like some kind of discord or
community group that you can interact with your fans to talk
about these ideas or your processes and that kind of thing
to get feedback? I've been taking a look at
trying to set up a discord. I've never quite worked out how
they are, so I'm lurking around in the Warhammer 40,000 second
edition discord. I used to say, I used to say
that Twitter was the best place to interact with me, but ever
since the Elon Musk take take over, I found that sort of like
it's only about 10% of the people on there than they used
to be actually. So yeah, I should, I should
really sort out a Discord. I know that you've got a very
successful one that sort of join.
Ours mate, I was going to say just join ours Chris, you can
you've got heaps of people there to interact with you straight
off the bat. I mean, I know, I know the the
40K second edition one is there as well.
I think I'm still a member of that one.
I don't really visit it very often.
It it seems to be very well. Last time I, last time I
visited, it wasn't that active, but our, our group is very, very
active. So please feel free to come in
and share as much as your stuff as you want all your painted
model, everything, everything. You know, it's, it's open for
everybody just to, yeah, like it's, there's no rules on, you
know, showing off your wares and, and trying to get sales.
We encourage that. So I'm always happy to have
creators on board to share their wonderful work and to, again,
just to give more exposure to what you're doing.
And so yeah, please do that mate.
I'll send you a link and please come and jump on board.
Consider myself invited. OK, Chris.
Well, it's been a pleasure talking to you.
I really appreciate your time today and again, have a
wonderful time at bringing out your lead.
And please say hello on my behalf and the Chronic
community, Chronic Man community, to all the people you
meet there on the weekend too. Well, thank you very much for
having me on and thank you for your kind of completely
inadvertent plugs for the terrain and you're completely
advertent plugs for this campaign.
So brilliant, no? Problem mate, I hope, yeah, like
I said, I think it's going to be very successful at the first one
and long may that continue. The more successful it gets,
well then the more projects you can start.
So that's excellent mate. So happy to happy to support you
doing that. OK mate.
So thanks again Chris and take care and I'll catch you again
next time mate. See you soon.
Bye, bye, bye.