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From Workshop to WARLORD: Chatting to John Stallard
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Dec 4, 2023
This week we chat to the man behind Warlord Games, John Stallard! How do you start your own miniatures company (spoilers work at Games Workshop). We chat about the origins of Warlord Games, their first set of miniatures right up to the the newest releases, things learned along the way, historical wargaming, and some brilliant questions from our patrons. Buy talking miniatires: https://amzn.to/3sTRtq1 Join our Patreon: https://patreon.com/thepaintingphase Merch: https://thepaintingphase.creator-spring.com Streaming: https://www.twitch.tv/thepaintingphase01 Help Support the channel with our affiliate links: UK & EU: https://affiliates.waylandgames.co.uk/idevaffiliate.php?id=1214 UK: https://elementgames.co.uk/?d=10835 EUROPE: https://taschengelddieb.de/?affiliate=tpp US: use code paintingphase to get 10% off at https://www.goblinshut.com/ Gaahleri airbrush: https://www.gaahleri.com/?ref=Thepaintingphase We Print Miniatures: https://weprintminiatures.com/thepaintingphase THEPAINTINGPHASE for 10% off Follow us: https://www.instagram.com/thepaintingphase/
View Video Transcript
0:00
hi I am pachy hello I'm Patrick and today we are not joined by Jeff but we
0:05
are joined by a returning guest which is John stalard thank you again for coming back on to the show our crazy show where
0:11
we mostly talk nonsense but we get the opportunity to talk to greats in the industry like yourself I can I can bring
0:16
some more nonsense to the show brilliant that's all we ask thank you for returning anyway uh
0:22
the last time we had you on was to talk to you and Robin about talking Miniatures which is a great book and and
0:29
very appropriate for this time of year for presents oh I was going to put that in at the end sorry start and the end just
0:36
to remind them just in case we'll we'll stick a link down in the description yeah absolutely boys so we we obviously
0:43
used your premises last time because you're very kindly offering out because we're in between premises where we now got our confus setes and stuff um had a
0:51
good chat about the book but we touched on War Games a bit so I think today we're mostly going to focus on that we
0:57
have a whole bunch of Patron questions as well we ask our Pat those are great all those questions last they are they they do ask some good ones some weird
1:04
ones there be there'll be some cheese ones really again I'm sure they will and maybe Garand or bar
1:09
related so is it Garand or Garand I always say Garand I someone said you
1:15
pronounced it correctly in the last video one thing right then so yeah John
1:21
pronounced Garin correctly I probably said it wrong many times cuz I'm a a fool but uh yeah so warlord games we we
1:29
kind of touched on it it briefly but that was your is your child that you you
1:34
left workshop and went off to to create that I mean how how does one go about just like being in a business being
1:40
employed to suddenly not being employed and going I'm just going to make my own Miniatures company what what how where
1:47
did you begin I mean I'd love to do that but I don't have the uh business acum men clearly like you do well you don't
1:54
until you do okay um uh it is scary particularly when
1:59
you leave something somewhere as marvelous at Games Workshop who look after you very well on the whole and had
2:04
a lovely over 20 years there uh but Games Workshop are excellent teachers
2:09
they instruct you in all manner of stuff particularly in the in how to run a profitable business so even though you
2:16
might be in sales or you might perhaps not the studio but in the factory and everywhere else they will take you
2:22
through profit and loss yeah and and what margin is not just the price of everything is how much things cost to
2:29
make M and all the other stuff that goes into why the pricing is how it
2:34
is uh um so they're very good at educating you about business yeah so uh
2:41
I'll forever thank them for that so when I did leave 16 years ago now as of last
2:47
week uh happy birthday thank you even though we're very nervous about
2:52
everything I needed to been nervous thinking back on it now CU I had been well schooled in what to expect and what
2:59
not to expect yeah now one of the things I talk about Games Workshop endlessly still is about how remarkable how
3:08
remarkable their growth has been over 40 years because they had absolutely nobody
3:13
to follow they made it all up as they went along there was no master plan Steve and the Y got together and they
3:19
did their Dungeons and Dragons and all that but remember they were selling go and chess sets and all manner of other
3:26
stuff which we call peripheral or you know and there stores were selling Ouija boards for God's sake Kites and and
3:33
water pistols yes but you know utter Madness anything that you could sell the old games workshops were selling them in
3:40
those very those first six stores so completely unfocused um and yet Games
3:45
Workshop now God bless them 2,800 staff a turnover of God knows what and a
3:52
prophet of God knows what uh and they've all they they built their own story so
3:57
they followed nobody CU if 35 years ago say when they're starting to come
4:03
to Warhammer and Citadel Miniatures and that sort of stuff if you gone to the bank maner and say could I have a
4:08
million pounds please we'd like to make a box set of goblins in plastic he'd think you're mad um just no you'd ever
4:16
done that before think what would you do with a box head of 24 goblins you go well I'll play little games with them
4:22
really ouch you go sorry we're not giving you a million pounds for that and and who could blame them because it
4:29
doesn't sound like a very likely thing and then by the time I was on board about 1982 joining a very young Citadel
4:37
Miniatures uh after doing my degree in Psychology which I didn't do very well with um I've start to get the fear then
4:44
wasted education there um when I got there um it was the start of computer gaming
4:52
of course and uh by the 80s everybody was playing simple computer games then by the '90s
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uh all the joural all the journalists out there they'd written Games Workshop off you know think you guys are dead and
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they used to come and do a piece about Games Workshop and say aren't you worried that everybody's going to just do computers I go well no we all play
5:09
computer games we all do and then we do this as well because this is more fun
5:15
and after you spent you know 20 hours painting up your Marine chapter or regiment you got something that's there
5:20
forever yeah 20 hours of pressing buttons frantically what have you got nothing you got sore eyes and not much
5:29
tell about it but 20 hour solid painter you got something wonderful which if you wanted to you could sell for more money
5:35
if that's what you you know it's an investment I always say always used to when I used to talk to the retail store
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boys talking about why it's so important is the is the time and energy you
5:46
expend if I lent you my uh my uh shoot them up game from uh you know Vietnam
5:53
game and I said right can I have it back next Friday you see oh yeah but then you kept it another three weeks I go well it
5:58
doesn't really matter yeah yeah but if you didn't return my blood angels when I say I'd be around your house you would
6:04
you got exactly that is fighting talk you know and because of the investment you
6:10
put in there you know and uh anyway I'm slightly going off piece but welcome to the
6:15
show with uh with gangs workshops uh Direction uh I thought right what am I going to do I thought well after 20
6:22
years I should really do something different to model soldiers and try something else but within
6:29
not very long I drawn back into the gravitational pole that is Nottingham and uh like so many people in nottingam
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set up my own business for instance and uh uh before I left Workshop I uh me and
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Paul Sawyer in fact my partner in crime we had uh designed a set of Imperial
6:48
Roman legionaries which here yes and we sort of sketched them out uh on a on a sprew how we'd make them in fact Tim
6:55
Adcock helped us do that and how they'd all fit in and we said how would we make it how we sell them who would sculpt
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them you know and uh but I was not allowed to do historical gaming at yes at Workshop unfortunately a few other
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privileged people were allowed to have their own historical companies no names no Pat Dr yeah we know who you are we
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know who you are but I wasn't allowed to for some reason which I always thought a little unfair so when I got let go uh I
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thought right I'm got to make some Romans then so I phoned up good old Bob naith one of the best sculptors still
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around absolutely who knows his onions on historicals as well I said B could you help us he said Hoots M I'd love to
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and so me and went to to see him his like is in the room and uh and uh and so
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yeah he did the concepts and everything else and it happens that Paul Sawyer ex- white DWF editor uh he um he's got great
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passion for the Roman army so I enjoyed the Roman army type stuff but I didn't
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understand it very well but Paul did he knew it upside down inside out so so we did a box of Romans to see what would
7:59
happen and uh just as we were getting ready to go to market the Perry twins uh God
8:05
bless them suddenly came out with an American Civil War regiment in 28 mil in plastic which they've been doing in
8:12
secret because so they said oh sorry we've made these that's right as long as it's not
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Romans so they got to Market first with their 20 about six weeks before we did but that was exciting you know they they
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they they got the ACW out and then we came out with our Romans and uh and as were a big hit now at the time I
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thought I can't pretend I had this great vision for warlord games that that be not entirely true I thought we could do
8:38
all right but I didn't want a factory at the time cuz they're very difficult things to run and uh and and I hadn't
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run a factory so I thought maybe I could just do a mail order operation and sell
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Plastics through the internet as was as coming common 16 years ago but very
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quickly people started saying we love your Romans have you you got any archers I said well no we haven't got any archers but we will do some in a year or
9:03
two I go yeah but I need archers now so I thought you're all right so we get Bob could you make us some Eastern archers
9:09
please oh yeah in metal well then I had no Factory of course so then my old mate EP Anthony edworth um who used to cast
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for the Perry twins uh he said I can do the MS for you so so then we started then people said we need some Slingers
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all right we'll do some Slingers then of course it's well we need some Kelts so well that's the next one we're working on but to afford to make the Kelts
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what we had to do was get some more money yeah so we did it by going back to our plastic uh injection molding friends
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uh renedra uh and we got them to do a tiny small frame of uh of heads and
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Greaves and batter Shields so we can make veteran legionaries ah so then we
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could add that in as a small cost a few thousand so that gave us a second box plastic or it was still plastic yeah so
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rather than investing 10 of thousands of pound so this probably cost me £30,000
10:02
to get this to Market uh we were able to put had another box set out for about 5,000 pounds then quite cleverly we went
10:09
back again I say cleverly Paul came up with it not me uh and we had different Shields made again and different heads
10:15
to make petorian guard so then we had three boxes of of Romans which gives you shelf space yeah so we could then get
10:21
them into trade and and a whole R and A Range now so before long we was so then we did the Kelts and uh in plastic
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something to fight against and made some metal variants for them for Germans with huge clubs and then some put in the
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romair the uh fals for the Das so we can make Das out of them then different
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heads again in metal for making ancient Britains rather than GS so you could broadening the range within the the
10:49
finance that we had to do it yeah um because it's expensive business setting up I see I see that with you in ponics
10:55
actually because you got like the Han varians you got the British so you know couple of head swaps in there couple
11:00
head swaps and it's it's it's the way to get a range started you know um and I'm glad we did it's a uh and we learn as we
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go um when I say Games Workshop uh taught us well we also were able to
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avoid some of the mistakes that we made at Games Workshop now they don't make many mistakes I have to say but there
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were a few things that we might have got wrong over the years well let's not do that yeah so quite useful it's like
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you've almost got that gift of foresight now hindsight which Workshop have that's
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why I respect them so much yeah yeah I suppose if you're running a anything you've never done it before and it's
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never happened before you got nothing to compare it to like you said so it is just a finger in the air job hope it
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works well so that's really good um nice to hear Bob being thrown around again his his name Love Bob we've had him on a
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couple of times yeah yes he's great value he's actually hums and sings whilst he's sculpting dve mad heard this
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from multiple sources does little Highland ditties
12:01
used to drive Paul mad mad as well no it's good because I was going to
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ask why Romans but eloquently explained yeah so we we stayed in Nottingham
12:13
because that's where we were based and uh that's why there probably nine other companies now in in the lead belt round
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not of which you probably interviewed half of them by now or more and uh we could pull in the skills
12:26
of of sculptors and mold makers and painters and all that so yeah so we now
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at warlord we're probably 250 yards from G Workshop in their Shadow literally and
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uh uh we got 93 people now working for us and quite a few of them are ex Workshop yeah yeah which is nice popped
12:45
over for the open day and yeah you were yeah recognized most of the staff yeah which was great like you got
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cursed in working in the painting stud like I used to sit there you this is great she done some wonderful painting
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for us recently yeah APC Warriors is that right so um obviously ancients good
13:06
A lot of people like that one of the things I've always seen from being a war game is that there's a couple of periods
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that seem to be quite popular World War II is quite a big big thing nepo onics
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ancients yes um and I guess I can't think of anything else than like there
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are those those are the three biggies in the old days in the 1960s and70s when Brigadier young and people like that and
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um Don Featherstone were wargaming the other big period was what they used to call horse of musket which is Tri corns
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really s Years War that sort of stuff which is not big anymore it's it's not a big period malban Seven Years War Wass
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the Spanish succession whatever you call them all the different names for them but everybody wore a trior and great it
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does look very nice but the uniforms are so similar you probably you could get away with making one model and people
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paint it red or green or blue or white for various austrians or yeah stuff like that but it's uh well so I've always
14:02
wondered and I don't know if it's like because you you talked to the Paris and stuff it always seemed to be like you never really got in each other's way
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with Rangers cuz they kept like yeah they did do some World War II stuff but it was a very was Americans Africa core
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eth Army that they did obviously you have done ancients they've not touched any of that they've gone into uh sort of
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I suppose Middle Ages War the Roses kind of era mostly the ponics for their
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plastic ranges there were two things that went on there was one a sort of a natural thing that Michael and Allen have got perod they're just obsessed
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with yeah yeah uh and and just want to have a go at it um and some which are a bit wacky uh uh Car Wars Caris wars's
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marvelous Madness of the peris build it and they will come great beautiful models and uh but you know in the nicest
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possible way who cares who wins yeah you know nobody understands the wars if unless you're from Spain yeah uh and
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they just don't know want but they they they they've got the character they've just done plastic French uh Prussian
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Anglo Prussian Franco Prussian yes yeah beautiful models in plastic and uh again
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that's that's not a popular period but the per will make it popular by making marvelous models for it and educating
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people about it I discovered there's there was a British commander who served I don't know which side I I him the French um I found a gravestone picture I
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can't find it now and his name was Colonel Christopher Peach and I need to find more history on this guy
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he sounds awesome that's fantastic served in the Franco Prussian War um which is great
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yeah but um yeah so I mean they've kept a certain periods which is great and you've obviously moved ancients that's
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grown really well gone into the B action side of stuff so you really hit like the World War II Market really well but then
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we also we've done things like move scales as well yes so American Civil War was not a great period for me uh I used
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to play it when I was young with AIX model but then we suddenly came out with epic American Civil War which just something
16:02
that struck me as something that needed to be done yeah so so so late into the game 16 years on from the Paris we've
16:09
done American Civil War but it won't affect them because it's an epics game you know so and then yeah you moved into
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um s waterx yeah I need to do more of the Epic stuff because it does look really
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good it's just time to paint all that stuff maybe I just leave it all the color Plastics well you can play good
16:26
games like that with just red and blue I mean I've seen quite a few people play that and it looks great you get the feel
16:32
for it yeah yeah I recently got hero Quest and me and my son have been playing that cuz I years ago when we
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first got it 1989 I painted some of the stuff my brothers painted some of the stuff not very well years later you get
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the set you're like these are it's either plastic or half painted or just really badly painted and it looks awful
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when you set up on the table whereas now I just got nice colored plastic we can play games they're kind of tokens really
16:57
they're not the the same quality they used to be from a plastic point of view they're quite rubbery it seems are they
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yeah which is it's fine it means they don't get broken they just bend um but yeah the the classic scenery is all sort
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of um plastic now as opposed to having the cardboard bits which I kind of miss a little bit how many store managers did
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we get at Games Workshop through hero Quest so many people came dozens of them
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it was it was a real Bridge product to get people into fantasy gaming and into into Warhammer I always wondered for a
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long time um I I think they've tried to do it again with some products but that was 1989 that came out and that was
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certainly a thing that got me into Fantasy war gameing but there' been nothing like that for such a long period
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of time it was like big box set small skirmish games but quite rules intensive and a lot of investment in time whereas
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a request was fold it out put some figures on the table move move through some rooms and stuff like that so it's
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quite entry level was quite easy to get into there was Battle Masters as well yes that was kind of a similar area
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wasn't it yeah never got that always wanted that that was quite good that was quite Innovative but uh running the
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retail chain at the time I know how many hundreds of thousands of people we got through our doors through through that
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and a lot of Games Workshop management say no that wasn't true I think I know it's true I was there could see it you
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know I see the kids coming in bringing in their models and uh it was a terribly important part of workshop's History
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yeah I'm very smart of them too I mean they they they made it you know they they they they played for it yeah cuz it
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was Milton and Bradley that made it yeah yeah but uh Workshop were behind it
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amazing time CU I was surprised when I saw um like the heroquest boxes and it
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not being branded as GW and everyone talking about Games Workshop releasing the first one I guess they just bought
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the rights to know probably nowadays it's probably nothing to do with the Games Workshop but the original one
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absolutely was the new ones owned by a company called Avalon Hill oh well there you go yeah so have on Hill yeah owned
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by Hasbro apparently oh right okay yeah they get everywhere so with with
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Warlords like you have a huge catalog of games now uh ranging from I guess
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various points in history and then going into your sci-fi bits and Bobs as well with conflict and then and Judge Dread
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um was there a conscious decision I I presume so I guess to but to what an extent to cover all all of those and and
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did you decide what you were going to do first versus what would be sort of filled in later well we started with uh
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we started with hail Caesar as as you know and uh uh but uh we started with
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ancient Plastics but with no rule book uh at all for a long time okay uh and then Rick came swung by and very kindly
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him and Jervis in fact who wrote it uh uh we um were offered powder for a curry
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and a pound we took that offer good off best deal we've had thanks Rick and Jervis
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I'll give you that pound one day what was the what was the pound for just to show how professional we
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were yeah it back in the day um somebody sold Rover for a quid or or a f yeah
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there's normally a pound involved yeah like money has to exchange so so uh so that gave us black powder which was a
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marvelous game and uh uh but we had no models for that so it was weird we went the wrong way around anyway but then
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Rick quite quickly wrot wrote ha Caesar for us which gave us the and then of course we started to bring out more and
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more napoleonics for to help fill out black powder yeah um and uh and then uh
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yeah then we came across we were offered the Judge Dread license uh well we went to see the Judge Dread line we got that
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and we did quite well with that is nice and the deal is that once a year we have to do one of the other 200 ad games
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which this time will be ABC Warriors coming out this week next week and U
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giant robots for those who don't know what it is good fun could be used in any any manner of Science Fiction games I'm
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told nice but they are great models in themselves and it's it's a it's it's a great fun game uh then of course Rick
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had anaris which he wrote was something he had always wanted to write a bit more of a real science fiction game shall we say
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than others um and that's being run now by our our friends down at skyrex we
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just got a bit overwhelmed with too many games to run yeah uh cuz a big selection
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of games is is very exciting yeah but trying to keep them all going all those plates spinning yeah if you don't spin
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that plate it will fall and people get crossed with you they say well you haven't done anything for cruel sees John I go well no because I've got all
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this stuff and of course they're merciless because they want so for cross Seas I don't care about Bol action I don't play it and from their point of
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view they're completely right of course so so saying again skyre are bringing out more stuff for crues which is nice
22:02
they can concentrate on a couple of games and if I remember right that's the game you wanted to make yes oh the the
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submarine h00 SC just the right scale for vospers
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and ebots and PT boats and uh yes it took me four years to get that out because they my evil Studio kept moving
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it to the back of the list say oh we'll do it next year next year cuz nobody wants it I said well they don't want want it cuz they don't know they want it
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bring it out and it'll be great and it did do well you had a tactic didn't you didn't you put a sprew on a yes yes
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games illustr which next door but one that was one of our best moves actually yeah that's you reminded me when we came
22:43
out with the Romans because we had no idea whether anybody would want 28 mm plastic Romans
22:50
the nice guys at R edra did us one Roman model on a frame on his own just a
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single Roman legionary with a separate arm and a shield so we worked out a deal with them and bought 20,000 of those and
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we put it on the front cover of War Games Illustrated and for the first time ever the magazine sold out completely oh
23:08
wow absolutely overnight were people buying more to get an extra model you know mad one yeah but if you're in the
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magazine trade you get your returns are huge a lot gets just made into roads
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around the world you just pulped so then so then we did an English Civil War set
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which is my other passion is English Civil War uh and uh we made a single musketeer
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model of a musketeer and we put that on the front of War G Illustrated and they sold all those out again so so uh and
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it's great for them so then we put a frame of those motor torpedo boats on and all Gamers all over the world it
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doesn't matter who you are you get a frame or something you don't you think what's this you think but you're going
23:51
to clip it together I'll just I'll just stick the mask on I'll stick the guns on but that's it yeah oh I'll just spray it
23:58
was quite good actually you know before you know it you think why am I doing motor torpedo posts this is mad I'm not
24:04
interested in them at all but you give them to your brother if you're not interested or your mate you you can't put them in the bin because that's a a
24:10
mortal sin y it's a crime against humanity oh against God mortal sin putting models in the bin
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there's always somebody you can give them to yes absolutely yeah you've got more money than sense if you're putting
24:22
anything in the bin it's wicked it's evil evil so uh so yeah so it's trying
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to maintain the ra ranges is quite important I mean when you look at Workshop really they they make two great
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games yeah and have done for a long time that's necromunda and war cry throw that
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out there and and they revisit others temporarily and uh 40K 40K occasionally
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Warhammer come back to and and give it a bit of a spin on the on on the disc and uh and it suits them very nicely I'm not
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saying I'm going down to two games that's not what I'm saying but there is a finite amount of games that you can set ibly look after yeah and sometimes
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you want to look after too many yeah yeah suppose yeah from your point of view you've got like all those itches to
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scratch and you're just like yeah I've got this got that got that where I suppose Workshop it is a self-contained
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universe that's swords and shields or gun laser guns in space and you can just
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worry about those two and add some little peripherals whereas there's so many different War zones eras timelines
25:25
fantasy they're almost all interesting yeah absolutely I I find almost none of it not
25:31
interesting Toy Soldiers yeah it's all interesting with like you
25:39
say so many plates to spin you want to look after people um so say so for your
25:44
bolt action players or what have you or like you say your your your motor torpedo
25:49
boats cuz predominantly with like with the historical stuff um would you ever
25:56
get to a stage where you're like well we've we've kind of like made models of everything now like I I would be the
26:03
first to raise my hand and go I I know very little about you know that was a good question World War II bits and Bobs
26:10
but could you be like well we've made that Jeep and we've done that plane and then we've done this like would you
26:15
would it get to one stage where you're just like sorry guys like we've literally made all of it we've made
26:22
history we've won history well it's taken us 16 years to get French infantry out for World War II and latest French
26:29
and I mean let's face it there were a lot of them in World War II and so and they go very well that's nice but it's
26:35
taken us a long time to get round to them but then there'd be things like fins to do Finnish smaller countries but
26:42
who punch above their weight yeah and then there's uh Paul's always up for doing more Germans you can't help him
26:48
he's once before those we nearly got some more Germans so we do some Stalingrad perod Germans with captured
26:54
PPS machine guns and things like that no no let's get the French out first we go yet another German set no matter
27:01
how well they sell um so I think what we'd do though eventually is we' do the Games Workshop thing of different
27:08
iterations as we over the 16 years we've retired our first Germans which we bought out probably 13 years ago in the
27:16
end they showed their age so we dropped them and the same with our first British so those molds have gone now yeah we
27:21
won't be bringing those back cuz we thought we were being clever by allowing everybody to put whatever weapons into
27:27
the arms so you the arms on then you had to try and fit a weapon in there and try and get them tucked into the shoulder
27:32
and it doesn't work it just looks fine it just doesn't work it looks like carrying sticks yeah was award so we had
27:39
to mold all the weapons into the arms and people much prefer that yeah so you
27:45
learn as you go yeah it looks like a Ukrainian extra trying to hold a machine gun doesn't it like really badly acted
27:51
like oh this is how you hold guns is it exactly doesn't doesn't fit properly that's right and uh so yeah there's time
27:58
to redo all of them eventually you know and so uh uh most of them are great but
28:03
I say that when I was I remember looking at Ali Morrison's hob Oriental hob
28:10
goblins can you remember those models from years and I saw them when I was working in mail order at Citadel I
28:17
thought models can never get better than that and and that's I just thought that's it that's the best models ever
28:24
likely to be made and I'm sure now Ally would himself say well they're not the best models I can make but uh but
28:31
they're bloody good for the time but uh but things just move on and you find another way of doing things and yeah oh
28:37
and I have favorites and then you I mean I I love the more time sisters of Sigma and then I got set opened it we did a
28:44
video um and I'm just like they are dated I mean they're nice and how is it
28:49
how because I I when we're in the pub I talk about this m it's Pub talk is how
28:55
can models date yeah cuz when you say Ali Morrison's H Goblins the best in the world everyone oh yes those are
29:01
marvelous and now you think and you look at historicals no names no pack drills but I look at some
29:07
other companies and my early models I say well those are a bit dated and what is it that's dated I see I wonder if
29:14
it's like because the old days I say the old days and people still do it now it's
29:19
because it's hand sculpted you can only to a certain degree you can only get to a certain scale in realism I mean the Perry's kind of blew that the water a
29:25
bit with the Lord of the Rings range cuz a lot things were a little bit more like the hands were smaller the weapons were
29:31
slighter things were more in proportion but certainly the old Workshop stuff was quite I mean I forget my matriarch my
29:37
sister Sigma matriarch and sticking next to a plastic one that I've made the face is huge it's like this four heads in the
29:43
in the face so the head's big everything's like more Amplified yeah it was all about the balance because because Brian largely and under his Tage
29:52
it was when you're looking at something from quite a while away you had to have the weapons heroic so shoes double anded
29:58
Choppers so you had to have big hands to get around it so bunch of banana hands and then you had to have big feet to
30:03
balance it you so then big feet and then a big head to identify obviously as a whatever it was so there was a not a
30:11
caricature but uh close to but uh yeah uh so and you're right then in in
30:17
historicals you can get away with a better proportion model yeah but even then um if I
30:25
compare I still prefer our our weapon to be just a little touch over scale to
30:31
look chunky yeah cuz you when you carry a rifle they're bloody heavy yeah they just are and a little bit of chunkiness
30:38
so they don't break as well when you're on the tabletop you're breaking uh the M1 carbines are the worse for those
30:44
really fiddly little nozzles yeah barrels they break unless you thicken them up a bit and uh well that makes
30:51
sense as well cuz I mean I remember we had some plastic Tom Kings come through the studio and they they were quite nice
30:58
scar because the skeletons everything's smaller because certainly the older skeletons you couldn't fit a human
31:04
around that CU that's supposed to go inside the human's body yet it's bigger than the human I don't understand how this how does that work be on the inside
31:12
how does how does meat and then like skin go on there um and they did the Tom Kings they're quite slly quite nice but
31:18
the spear shafts were like really thin and we paint a load of stuff them they're like you have to snap all the
31:23
spears off because we've had to re because they'll just break and they can't we can't cast them so I'm going to have to make some new ones now cuz it
31:29
was all the plastic tomb King stuff so I had to snap off all these these 40 Spearman snap off all the hands and then
31:35
just glue on a new hand cu the shaft of the spear was bigger because although it
31:41
wasn't realistic know yeah it wasn't realistic but it made sense for a pain in
31:46
durability um which is right but I suppose like with technology as well improves like 3D sculpting makes things
31:54
the analogy that I would go down is want to look at being like visual effects in movies like um you know when Jurassic
32:02
Park came out 20 something years ago or whatever it was and everyone was like oh
32:08
my God like visual effects is here dinosaurs are amazing brilliant and then
32:13
you look at it now and whilst it's still very good I think I think yeah no I think that's a very good point and and
32:18
CU like you say like technology everything you can't get in the way of progress you know the first Avatar film
32:24
came out and it's like oh my God like blue people but they're real yeah is insane and then you look at it now and
32:29
you can I remember watching it in the cinema thinking that looks real yeah and then and then you look at it compared to
32:35
the second one and you're like okay no I can see where some of the textures are a bit flat or this that and the other um
32:42
yeah just more time more practice modern sculpting is so much better than it used
32:48
to be there's so many people out there now who can sculpt beautifully yeah it's kind of leveled the playing field a bit
32:54
of you know yeah before it was a few fantastic designers who dominated but
33:00
now there's a lot of the youngsters in there now who can do as good a job there there's so much Choice as well cuz I mean we've recently been passed on a 3D
33:07
printer and there's just so many sculptures out there that just do all these stdl files you can download and
33:12
I've just been like looking through all these different artists like that's an amazing I like that I want to get those I like those and some of them I guess
33:19
there's almost like a style with some of them they they all look like they could be from the same range and same company but they're all very different sculptors
33:25
and artists so there is like a that's a fantasy Style that seems to be quite popular and there's a bunch of people that do Star Wars ones so you can have
33:31
like remnants from like the later books where they're all a bit sort of there's a scout trooper who got a stormtrooper
33:38
helmet and then a sha Trooper leg piece and stuff and like a taken stolen like Rebel gun I like I like that that was
33:44
quite ragtag I still think there's a shame that Workshop never took a license for Star Wars I would have loved them to
33:50
have done that Bob was saying they did a or was it Gary saying that they did a stor Trooper Bob did a stormtrooper yeah
33:57
Bob was one at home yeah nice is that the is that the Stormtrooper is that the original I think there are probably five
34:02
of them that I heard of I've got one of them in my cabin at home see he did the first one like in an afternoon or
34:08
something yeah it looks like it's been done in an afternoon Bob but it's very nice it's very good really Bob and but
34:15
it's nice it captures it very well that's what Bob is brilliant at do is capturing the the look of something the
34:21
feel of it that was his genius he can do detail but he doesn't need to do it
34:27
that's uh again that's what some figure designers are just marvelous at the human form
34:32
Perri's are yeah superb cuz they know CU they don't know their enactment they know how heavy a br gun is they know how
34:38
heavy a sword is and a longbow how you they've done all that but they don't obsess with the detail on the guns yeah
34:45
you know they they stop at a certain stage or no point in putting a cocking handle on it or whatever they think because they people fill in I know
34:52
there's a cocking handle there but it looks like a brain Gunner and that's what they do brilliantly that's their
34:57
that's their genius yeah I do I do love uh I mean like with the warlord Plastics cuz I'm a big fan of napoleonics you
35:04
know I'm I'm taking things from warlord games Paris victorx combine them all together because the great thing now is
35:10
there's so before there was one set of British for um what napoleonics words coming out
35:18
word Amnesia one set British for napoleonics which were the peris one set of French there wasn't much and then vix
35:23
trick BR some out and they were quite chunky and characterful character character full oh my God what's going on
35:29
I need another tea um that's what I need um but it was it was quite hard to do
35:35
like like kit bash and because I'm a big kit bash fan but now there's so much Choice the Victor ones were I think were
35:40
beautiful are beautiful uh but I might remark overly complex if you're trying to do whole divisions gluing so many
35:47
muskets together and so many heads you think it's beautiful for a battalion yeah maybe a brigade and then after that
35:53
I Tire think no I just want six battalions please right get done I think Perry's adapted that a bit with some of
35:59
the I think it's the prussians and the austrians where they're all you know got them at March and you guys done that as well which I really like cuz like
36:06
there's at the time I had no Portuguese I'd no Spanish I had no lancers and now
36:11
I can just get a box of Portuguese well is great I look at the victorx Polish Lancers that I I that came out last year
36:17
and I think it's probably the best set of toy soldiers around I particularly love the horses they're truly amazing uh
36:24
beautiful horses and uh exquisite Exquisite models I bought a regim of those I've not I need to have a look at
36:30
those I got your vist laners um for the games night cuz we went on there to play sharp we did a game of sharp and I was
36:38
channeling my inner sharp so I was not going historically accurate um I was
36:43
copying what the units look like in in the TV shows and all the way when the first few shows came out there was a
36:50
bunch of and they referred to as drons a couple of times but they're all in blue and they had the the sort of Lancer hat
36:57
thank you can never pronounce um and I was like who are these guys cuz and I look through and
37:02
there's like all the drons are like green and they got like helmets and stuff and I who are these supposed to be and it wasn't until I saw your set when
37:08
the open day and I was like I think they meant to be a Polish like horse is what they meant to be yeah I think I think I
37:13
think that's what they were so I built up a set and I was able to do my Ukrainian extras on Horseback which was amazing uh so it was all Ukrainian
37:21
extras that were used in the filming cuz they did it in the the Crimea didn't they somewhere around there oh that's where they filmed it didn't go to
37:28
no that's why all all the South essics look rather rather dur and
37:33
Slavic rather not not the cheerful Country Bumpkin from Herford apart from the odd one that which is obviously the
37:39
speaking guy he doesn't look anything like him he's you know and they're all
37:44
rather moros looking yeah guys thinking what are we doing here we're being paid
37:50
so just like yeah to your front got to fall down and die okay I'll fall down and die I can do that yeah thank thank Lord for warlord games in their polish F
37:58
wow we we're here to serve so was am I correct in thinking there was a few uh comments on the video where
38:05
people were like no you've used the V these aren't Draco these are I'm like yeah but we're basing off the TV show
38:11
you're missing the point here sharp sh a documentary yeah so
38:17
someone goes actually and then you go well actually Double Down actually
38:23
double down on the actually it's not historically ACC I know yeah it was design that way yeah I know the Perry
38:29
hate sharp we oh they hate they hate seen Bean with a passion do they oh no great oh we we can never have them on
38:36
now oh oh that's it that's it they're done yeah de to sorry Alan Michael you're not allowed on or you just you'd
38:43
spend the entire like hour and a half just arguing about sha so I they're in the the kitchen at the moment yeah we
38:49
have to do that have to argue just all the points of it yeah um a guy called Simon who used to do reenactments uh
38:54
with the B fits we are with and Dave Andrews um he passed on three mugs Earth Earth
39:01
and wear mugs and he was like did you know these are the mugs that sharp and harp drun out of in the episode of
39:06
Sharp's regimen and I've got three of them I'll make them drink their tea not tell them until the very end and say
39:12
those mugs are from sharp get yeah they might watch this one you've let them
39:17
know damn I'll edit it out like it
39:25
nice so I mean you know so much going off and and ABC Warriors are coming out soon um what what are your plans going
39:32
forward for your Rangers and stuff for the next 16 years uh we tend to plan for
39:38
three years ahead so if if Paul soy were here now he would be able to provide me with three years largely uh of of the
39:45
main stuff and then so every month we have a plastic release of some sort
39:51
something in plastic either a completely new plastic box set or for instance we
39:57
had the Italians uh the normal Italian infantry then 6 weeks later we had the
40:02
um baglieri the light infantry with and then we had the mountain troops the alpini which is another change slight
40:09
change in for for weaponry and hats yeah say trying to that's again maximizing
40:15
the use you can get out of your Plastics that huge investment going in uh so that's three lots of Italians for
40:21
instance so um we then bring out obviously resin a metal Port um and uh
40:32
uh and so we all we have releases every single week so at least 50 weeks a year
40:38
we've got release releases there a lot of releases always do I think we put out more than any other company that's amazing if I'm honest yeah I don't think
40:44
anybody else puts out a release every single week uh and we're trying to have two good two two reasonable size hits in
40:51
a month and four main games four main things yeah is what we try and go for
40:57
for so uh ABC Warriors is um is one of the things for next for next year yeah
41:03
uh then we'll have three other big games coming out uh which you'll get behind
41:08
and uh so you're always busy always tooling always busy tooling one of the things coming up next I can tell you is
41:16
uh uh it doesn't sound very exciting but every time I look in our top 100 things we sold for the last six years and it's
41:24
beyond my explanation is the opal Blitz German truck it's a nice truck it's a
41:29
nice truck but there's loads of other cool stuff and it's always number 30 opal Blitz you know another 4,000 of
41:36
those sold I think who's buying all the opal blitzes and why you know
41:42
Madness is um so finally we've got a a Bedford three or four ton Bedford Lorry
41:49
for the Brits coming out amazing with crew in there as well all sitting in the back uh so I saw that the other day
41:55
that's looking great and everybody loves a Betty so at last the Brits can have their transport as well even I've heard
42:01
of that one so well the uh the April Blitz is I've always loved the German vehicles I never remember the name one I
42:09
always wanted when I was a kid because I used to have this war Games book my dad had it was lots of air fix photography black and white photography lots of air
42:15
fix figures lots of setups and there was a tracked troop transport and I think it
42:20
it transports the um at8 but it's got like loads of like seatin sections in it
42:26
so it's like I think a half track said seven know yeah I I just love the look
42:32
of that it's so weird is it is weird but it's Wacky Races the Italians had the
42:37
same vehicle but the just with the wheel on the other side so you just swap over for Italian that's amazing I love it a
42:42
lot of people know that I do want to know that um but yeah I I was took my
42:48
lad to um partisan had a nice look round and he saw in this cabinet I can't remember the company now but there was a
42:54
load of like World War II vehicles and there was um IET and he was like Oh Daddy can I get that cuz he likes his cars and I was like it's a big kit mate
43:02
it'll take a while to build and you're only six and you're probably going to smash it to Pieces I'm not putting that effort in and I I was like looking at
43:08
the boxes and I was like oh I can't really get no no no I want that one I was like no someone's painted that you can't have that you can't actually have
43:14
the one in the cabinet like I want that one that's not how it works so I managed to get a corgi uh Bedford instead so he
43:22
was happy with that oh very good work fine but that that's the thing I've
43:27
always been impressed with um warlord is that openness to show what you're working on so like the open day we were
43:33
allowed to go through look at the cabinets and see the the guys working and stuff yeah the open days are cool we had about 260 people amazing turn up for
43:41
that and uh so police chase going on outside apparently shotting them for
43:46
you and uh what was interesting about the open day is uh we we've had them for a number of years and we sort of do a
43:53
little bit of a follow-up sometimes say what did you enjoy your customer survey and and uh I'd like to say they all said
43:59
listen to John stalard and Paul Sawyer talk about new releases it was great to hear them and it's never that yeah what
44:05
they want to what they just say watching Pete Healey casting metal and flicking it around while he's making the thing
44:12
and watching normally Rachel Green making the resins and making the resins and bring them out the mold that's what
44:18
everybody wants to see yeah it's the magic behind isn't it so I I was going to um ask ask questions about the um the
44:27
tour because we got to go on it uh on the open day and it was amazing and the
44:32
whole time I was there because I I guess like Games Workshop is shrouded in secrecy oh God generally um and you
44:40
don't know any of the inner workings and and and all that sort of stuff so the entire time I was walking around I was
44:46
like oh here's a studio here's a cabinet of unreleased models here are the people that paint them uh now I'm seeing resin
44:53
and then the warlord resin and then the metal casting and this ask all the questions and um I was just like the
45:00
whole time I was like I feel like I shouldn't be here I feel like this I was waiting to be escorted off the I feel
45:05
like this shouldn't be allowed we really had kieren I kieren's off screen right now he's just shaer at the moment but it
45:12
was F I like is he here to like throw us out because we shouldn't be here yeah we like like to be as open as as
45:18
sensible great we do we do like it and uh and uh do you find that um has an
45:23
effect at all and cuz I know when I was in retail and like releasing too much information about products there was
45:28
this danger that was like if we tell them what is coming out they might not
45:34
spend money on stuff now and just hold it for the future but with the way they been Workshop works now is they kind of
45:40
give you at least a month or so of like pre-orders and I don't think it's had that much of a detal effect I didn't
45:46
know if that was I can't prove it it's it sounds credible yeah but I never
45:52
used to think it really meant a plate of beans really I think you if you tell
45:57
something that's coming people will get excited yeah arguably um you know and if you don't tell them they're suddenly
46:02
surprised but they can still be excited yeah so I don't know I think the jewry's out on that yeah I mean for me
46:08
personally if I if I see something I know it's not out yet so I'm a big fan of war cry uh it's great game system and
46:14
there's a load of stuff that's now out at the time I didn't get it but I've got it now um but before that I was like a I
46:21
can't get that for a month I'll get some Els so because I want to scratch that itch and get something well might not
46:27
been in Workshop it might have been in another company or whatever but I remember at Workshop we the argument would be uh um you're you're uh they
46:36
might not be going to another model company to to spend 20 whatever but
46:42
you're fighting against McDonald's and Coca-Cola and they and their disposable income they might just go to the cinema
46:47
instead that s that would be and it's reasonable thing to say yeah but uh but
46:53
I'd also think that people go to the cinema and do hmer re it's entirely normal thing to do yeah um if we try
47:01
and uh the studio is reasonable at telling people what's coming out they can be a bit secretive and then I go out
47:07
and tell everybody everything so then they scold me when I go home why you say that for would say I
47:14
couldn't say it does that make that job real really hard for marketing members
47:19
exactly note oh no John's done it again quick put statement out
47:27
there's always going to be cool stuff coming out I mean it's just uh and one thing gets another bringing
47:34
out the French infantry means uh we'll no doubt do French Cavalry as oh we we already got some French Cavalry the
47:40
Belgian Cavalry we've already got French Cavalry but it means we'll have to do uh yeah U wacky do half tracks that the
47:46
French had we'll do those in resin and uh you know and uh uh no out more and more stuff uh French motorbikes they
47:53
used an awful lot of motorbikes amazing uh so uh uh then we'll have to do some French
47:59
Foreign Legion would be quite nice for North Africa yeah that would be cool and uh that's a period that's always
48:05
fascinating me I used to have yeah the desert stuff like fighting against the beduins and like having the like sand
48:11
for kind of thing eics made yeah they made two sets of of French Foreign
48:17
Legion they made one in them about 1965 which weren't very good models but then
48:22
1975 they're about they remade them uh and they were really quite nice much much slightly bigger I think they might
48:29
be the ones that had it's a funny old thing that uh why the French Foreign Legion and beduins would appeal to
48:34
British kids in the 1960s and 70s and 80s it's a bit odd really yeah I mean there was not many movies fight yeah and
48:40
and I don't if I look back now the only movie I remember ever seeing the French forign Legion him was the start of the
48:46
Mummy oh which is great yeah yeah which is great I like more of that please and it just stopped it was always Bo before
48:52
is what it was the guys who were working ethics would have been bought up on a diet of Bo with um PC Ren was it who
48:58
wrote it and and there two or three films made of Bo of the French Foreign Legion it was quite a thing in the 50s
49:04
and 60s but not for kids type thing though so I think they were making what they excited them in the when they were
49:11
youngsters I think to do with the uniforms because I've always been drawn by pretty uniforms and I like the idea of like these like white uniforms with a
49:16
blue sash or like the big overcoats with the white key and the little bit coming down the back and then fighting against
49:22
like guys on camels yes wed in robes yeah that was it was interesting I never
49:29
really had a you know like I I I enjoyed both sides I never had a like oh these
49:34
are the good is these are the bad is just like they're cool they're cool yeah that's another one of who cares who wins
49:40
yeah yeah who cares who wins that sounds like a good motto yeah it's like a a more a more apathetic version of the
49:49
SAS who cares who cares he wins no they're both fantastic stereotypes they're both Fant the drills and well
49:56
armed ones on the the more atic Wild Ones it's great it's good good mixup is there a period you
50:01
want to explore that you've not had a chance to do yet so many so many um I would love to do
50:09
um what used to be called Pony Wars type stuff American West okay yeah I think
50:14
that would be I've got some ideas for it which I think would be quite Innovative I think I think they would be and I
50:21
think it's one of those if you build it they will come uh I I was a child of the 60s so John Weighing on every day so it
50:28
might be not the case anymore but uh but I think it would be interesting because
50:34
there's so much more understood about the Native American tactics and dress
50:40
and reasons for fighting and why they fought how they fought and everything else that we could really turn into
50:46
really interesting articles whereas before it was just hostiles running around in a yeah in a slightly
50:53
undignified Manner and the goodies with the Cavalry well obviously that's not the case yeah so having the two of them
51:00
looked at yeah would be more interesting yeah no cuz I I used I had the log for
51:06
with the the um for Apache yes I think it was yeah because the Indians and you
51:11
had the um I don't know what they were supposed to be just a selection of cowboys in like carriages and stuff like
51:16
that um I think there was like some us Cavalry in there as well I think if it was airfix there would be yeah it was a
51:22
good set and they probably been scattered to the winds and stuff but um I I naive as a child obviously watch
51:29
these things and it was always portrayed like these guys are the goodest these guys are the badest then you get old and you're like it's a little bit more gray than that um but what I didn't realize
51:36
was then you had like the Seven Years War the Indian War and they be like oh these are working with these guys and those are working with those guys and
51:42
different tribes what were different this is interesting I like this so then if I want to be British I get these tribes and if I want to be French I get
51:48
these tribes um so I was very very keen by that so so that's something I'd like to do um uh what else I'd like to do um
51:58
uh so so many uh uh a few more ancient periods we'd
52:05
like to hit ancients AIT a bit more uh is there arrang in the Ancients you're not really had do you do Greeks and
52:11
macedonians we do Greeks and macedonians yeah and uh macedonians very very nice range of macedonians um I'm a if anything I'm a
52:19
Roman fan the period that doesn't interest me very much uh though I'll get howled down for it is the called the
52:25
dark what would you call call the Dark Ages cuz everybody looks the bloody say to me I couldn't tell the difference
52:31
between a Saxon and a viking if you walked up to me in a bar i' I have no idea I was watching the uh uh one of the
52:38
burner comml adapted TV shows it's called now uh Last Kings yes or the last
52:44
Kingdom um and sometimes I'm just like which one's a wi again they're Vikings cuz they got more war paint on their
52:49
face I think and they're wearing red and I bet the TV show like sh like how do you make the Vikings look different from
52:55
the Saxons give red clothes and give them war paint yeah I would do it but it's hard cuz they're all chil route
53:01
oval Shields but I presume in 1100 whenever they were knocking around they must have known which each side looked
53:07
like I presume they knew well think so battle you know but uh but we just don't
53:15
know do we we just don't know I was always a fan of like uniforms and then I started doing some War the Ros stuff for
53:20
the Paris and Dave Andrews and like paint up some random uh households trying to get the right terminology very
53:26
good oh yes yeah can you do like Lord AB Aban is and I was like okay what what colors are these oh they're like half
53:32
green and white and they got a little cow on it and like what a cow what's this about but to me that like ruined my
53:39
perspective of like but I want the Reds versus the blues oh you don't get that you get reds and blues and whites and
53:46
blues and blacks and creams against Reds and whites and reds and blues I'm like
53:51
ah who's who who knows who's fighting who so it was very confusing but then when you go to like fighting Europe you
53:57
get like a big red cross or a white cross something that question yeah no I'm uniformity was important to me as a
54:03
kid when I was playing with soldiers or I wanted people in uniforms to make it easy I think but then you get older you
54:09
just like it's cool just get to scratch some itches and do some good stuff that's good is um is there am I am I
54:17
correct in thinking that World War II is the like most modern historical era that
54:22
you do not quite but you're CL career we did career 19 right okay that's gone quite well that's
54:29
that's been that's been good yeah yeah but that's that's as modern as we get his career yes did you find that so Pat
54:35
see do you find that you've used a lot of the existing World War II stuff in ker like there's not that much there's
54:41
not but if you're a real rivet counter you'll find there is okay so the British have got a bazooka but it's the super
54:47
bazooka so it's much bigger than the old the old ones from 1945 it went up about an inch in size so
54:54
it's a uh there are there are differences but uh there's a lot of the vehicles you can still use Shermans and
55:00
jeeps and trucks and all that stuff it's uh uh most of the Weaponry didn't change
55:06
yeah lot of Browning automatic rifles you think there' be a fair few to get ones you could buy online
55:14
deactivated if only I could find one for under £2,000 I would buy one please drop in
55:19
the comments where you know that's that's the real reason you come back on um have you I I guess I don't know if it
55:26
if it borderlines into like an Ethics question or not but um would you ever consider going closer to present day
55:33
like would you ever do the forlands or something like that or is that a bit too like I I don't know what the correct
55:39
phrase is like close to home or well it's a excellent question and uh
55:45
um I think we we would absolutely like when I was when I was young when we were
55:51
18 and 19 and 20 first wargaming we did we used to fight quite a lot of what we
55:56
used to call Modern yeah that was the generic term piking shot then modern yeah now of course 2023 calling a you
56:05
know Centurion tank or a chief tank modern well it's 50 years old it's no longer modern at all quite everybody
56:12
with SLR rifles you know which went out in the folklands by everybody loved them
56:18
from the bad guys they didn't like them no no but solders friend an an SLR if
56:24
you're hit by one of those you don't get up and uh but uh I would like to do
56:29
a a modern set of rules for bolt action but it would probably be one book to
56:35
rule them all so you could do AR Arab Israeli and uh my favorite passion is
56:41
the Indian Pakistan war of 1967 that's just because I'm obtuse but you get the
56:46
first uh funly enough uh first fan rifles were being used and uh by the
56:53
Indian troops and the first collection of costs were coming in and all that sort of stuff but you got the oldd
56:59
helicopter um and jets you got saber Jets and uh Hawker Hunter Jets you
57:05
really old stuff but BR guns and Sten guns and and the Pakistani troops are in
57:11
American kit and the Indians in British kit oh W but then you get giras as well
57:16
yeah scary a mock sort of like British versus American kind of is it is and patent tanks against uin now patent
57:23
tanks were had all sorts of things like special range finders and everything else the centurions didn't but the
57:30
centurions whack them around every time it's it's the better Cruise always about training yeah but uh so I find that so
57:37
I'd love so then there might be four or five supplements yeah for doing Arab Israel a small one you know then
57:44
Iranians Iraqis particularly gory War Italy but all wars gory yeah well I I
57:50
think about it quite often and I think what do I think about it then I I I know that an awful lot of my mates been in
57:56
the armed forces you know they they've served and they've done their time and if it's all right for them then it's
58:01
probably all right for me to game it is is the way I see it yeah you know and uh and you find someone like Brigadier
58:08
young who wrote charge the one of the early War Games books you know he went on he went on desert island disc to say
58:15
he thoroughly enjoyed World War II it's of
58:21
you he said I guess his is maybe he enjoyed his time though I don't know well he was cross Americans dropped the
58:26
atom bomb because it shortened the war before he could get out there properly into the Pacific oh okay he was a man of
58:33
his time I should say eccentric fellow but uh but yeah no an awful I mean a lot
58:40
of the old rules writers they've been in the Army you Don Featherstone I think he was in Churchill I think he was yeah was
58:48
it Charles Grant one of the two one of those two was in church was during World War III and he had no problem writing up rules for yeah Panther tanks and tigers
58:55
and things so uh that's that's what I think yeah yeah I mean my dad was around during the
59:02
fulkin ER and stuff like I didn't go to the Falcons I think he had just moved into the uh the Armed Forces or at least
59:08
I mean it's a tank division as well so not quite sure not many out there yeah they'll be much use on that sent some
59:14
scorpions over yeah some scorpions over yeah he used to do some of the Armored Cars I think Drive scorpions Chie tanks
59:20
it was the ninth 12th Roy Lancer so Cavalry related but he's never been bothered by
59:26
painting up modern day warfare games and stuff like that and he's a big fan of like computer games so he will just sit
59:31
and play like any kind of cold water era which was his era the Cold War was his era so he's happy to play like Cold War
59:37
era games and stuff it just doesn't bother him well I think that gives you a pass if he's not worried about it yeah exactly yeah yeah because I um I guess
59:46
yeah I haven't necessarily yeah I haven't really played historical wargaming and I guess it is like you
59:54
recreate like it is historic IAL it has happened yeah um and I guess yes well
1:00:00
it's if anybody does get a bit odd about it which I find it I think you've really
1:00:05
not not watched a war film in your life when you decided to pay you know10 pounds to watch two hours of Saving
1:00:11
Private Ryan and get a thrill of watching that you know or you've never read a book about sharp or never read a
1:00:17
book about these things never seen a play about history what's wrong with you
1:00:22
you know um you you go to the cinema to be entertained by battle yeah that's a very good point you know and I'm sure
1:00:30
most War gamers are rather more learned about the Battle and understand more of it than just for entertainment if you know what I mean I think that's the key
1:00:36
is is the Learned sign of it so like I don't you know I wouldn't want to be at the Battle of water to other than an
1:00:42
observer just to see history in the making I wouldn't want to be in the line getting musket balls thrown at me that's
1:00:48
that's the last thing I'd want um cuz that hurts apparently um but you know to
1:00:54
see like a re at of it the thing that you've grown up with the thing you've read about the thing you like painting and just seen I mean I've not seen the
1:01:01
Napoleon film yet I hope there's some scenes of waterl that would be really good if there are oh fantastic chatting
1:01:07
about it a little bit the car way over I've heard some mixed reports it's a good film i' heard other great film to
1:01:12
watch good right does it is it in the same vein as like Kingdom of Heaven Gladiator so it's a bit of action bit
1:01:17
more of a love affair yes I've heard that yeah if it was called letters to Josephine I think that might have summed
1:01:23
up better as a film so enjoyable film but I had to put my War Games hat under my seat when I went in I think don't
1:01:29
don't put War Games hat on otherwise you'll be impossible yeah sharp you don't do that it's all a good Yarn yeah so good
1:01:38
yeah worth a watch them it's well worth a watch I like seeing like British and squares repelling well if you like
1:01:43
British and squares you'll like waterl yes that'll be good good I love it and
1:01:52
I'm going British and squares I'm like okay uh form yes it's it's the correct form motion to
1:01:58
a p Cavalry CH Patrick um it's it's one thing I need to do and I mentioned I was
1:02:04
going to do it for salute coming up and uh someone that's one of the organizers of salute said you need to do it I've
1:02:09
not started it yet but a diarama I'd love to do as like an entry for salute is to do at least a corner of like a
1:02:16
British square with a load of French it's funny you should say that what I want to do for when in our ancient game
1:02:23
we've got the testudo you know the Roman turtle and we've made overlapping Shields it looks great now really it was
1:02:29
only used at sieges yeah but if you being surrounded by horse archers being peppered with them you might form us a
1:02:35
turtle to keep the buggers at Bay um and so we put these down we got an actual
1:02:41
physical model to put it down it looks great yeah um and what I'd like to do uh
1:02:46
when you're in napoleonics at the moment you kind of rearrange the models to go into a square but sometimes you've got
1:02:53
six stands which don't quite go into a square for so it looks a bit untidy yeah so what I'd like to have is what what
1:02:59
they used to call a rallying Square so it's really just a cluster of men around the two standards or the one standard
1:03:06
kind of all facing out back to back and call it a hasty square or a rallying square and just say that's them that
1:03:12
they're back to back you can't quite get to them you know but it's a hasty square and I'd like to do that in resin a
1:03:17
oneoff piece so it's all like molded around I think that look really good and just I've seen the testudo and it's like
1:03:23
it's like a solid thing with like a bit that goes on the top doesn't it so a rallying Square I'd like to do I think that'd be quite fun to to put on
1:03:29
the table top I like that smart yeah definitely some I'm going to look at doing because there's plenty of plastics
1:03:36
now from warlord and other everybody else yeah to to do that so I just need
1:03:42
more I suppose that's what convert for more more dead horses need more dead horses uh sorry horse lovers it's a fact
1:03:51
there was a lot of dead horses God cuz it's hard to to to make
1:03:56
cuz their legs all stick out in place I suppose you could do it but like you want them like like kind of like drape
1:04:02
down a bit and stuff and then you get resin horses and a really powerful heat gun we've got dead horses good I get you
1:04:09
a bag of dead horses please get me a bag of dead horses I need make not to that I'm going to I'm going to take that
1:04:16
sentence completely out of context and just have it as like my ringtone or something I can get you a bik of dead
1:04:22
horses you we can throw the cow in as well as
1:04:27
yes yeah need cow dead cows no no but you could use them for anything oh okay fair yeah no you sadly see them always
1:04:33
in in the Normandy yeah pictures cows on their side and they were bloat up with gas of course po thing so we made some
1:04:40
of those for the Normandy batt feel a bit gruesome really yeah but that's War
1:04:45
yeah it is yeah no yeah so before we move on to our patreon questions because our lovely patrons have uh given us a
1:04:51
whole s of questions to ask you John S S of question is anything you want cover before we move on to that no it's been
1:04:58
lovely coming here I love your new offices by the way yes they're very Posh yeah it's it's nice we we have plans for
1:05:05
for other Corners uh and more I need some cabinets to put toys into that's that's how our missing thing at the
1:05:11
moment well it's surprisingly tidy for two or three men who should know better
1:05:17
pretty pretty tidy well the bits that are on camera are tidy yeah uh there's a corner over there that's currently a bit
1:05:24
of a Dumping Ground a lot worse than this yeah well done guys yeah lovely uh excellent so uh yes
1:05:32
we do have some questions from our patrons oh have you got them I've got them I mean we take turns we've got Chris Tomic who's saying does warlord
1:05:38
ever get influenced by Community feedback home brw or complaints when it comes to their games or do you try to
1:05:44
limit your exposure to the unwashed masses oh no stick out tongue Emoji I I
1:05:51
I know people always say we always read everything from from our castles and we do with we' got four guys in customer
1:05:56
service um to um uh who who have won the last five years prizes for best customer
1:06:02
service from War Games Illustrated amazing magazine so how much you have to pay them for that not very much five
1:06:08
years in a row which is which is the prize the prize I cover most that we want best Miniatures range and things
1:06:13
like that and that's all lovely but best customer service is the one that that pleases me most means you're doing it
1:06:19
right so they do they act within you within 24 hours they read everything that comes in and if it's if there
1:06:25
anything wrong they do put it up the chain very quickly and um
1:06:32
and unless it's mad something will be done you know occasionally you get the guys who write in in green ink um you
1:06:39
know enraged by you having done something um there is no reasoning with
1:06:45
some people but in general we will always be the bigger man and say well we're sorry if we' got that wrong and
1:06:51
try and put it WR so yeah we we we love the customer feedback which is also why we have the open days and people say I
1:06:57
think that stinks you okay yeah tell us why it stinks then yeah that was good
1:07:03
yeah I it is good to listen sometimes there is like just loud noises other
1:07:08
times there is some sense you're like uh yeah it makes sense I can see where you're coming from Matt doc paints what was it like working with the BBC for the
1:07:15
Doctor Who range uh urban legends says it was a bit of a nightmare yeah well another great
1:07:21
question uh a a huge do to hoan and uh I
1:07:27
thought wouldn't it be good if we could get the license cuz you know and Paul was a big fan too so we went suited and
1:07:34
booted down to London and for a meeting with the BBC and they were unbelievably
1:07:39
easy to deal with to begin with uh uh we went in it was all lovely we all had a cup of tea and we said may we have a
1:07:45
license they said certainly and we said oh we thought we'd have to jump through a million Hoops for it and there was a
1:07:51
down payment yeah they wanted some money up front just to show you're not Trump yeah but it wasn't ridiculous amount you
1:07:57
know it was a and then they wanted a royalty obviously on net receipts and uh
1:08:03
and so we got a good deal on it and of course because you're making things with with a with an IP it is it actually is
1:08:10
Tom Baker you can charge sufficient money to be able to make money and pay a royalty um and we just had some fun
1:08:20
obviously dealing they had to sign the model off yeah so when you were dealing with actors of course occasionally uh
1:08:28
they might not quite agree that your model looks like them oh yes we've heard a little bit about this there's a lot of that with the Lord of the Rings which is
1:08:35
most entertaining I'm sure that one's been done to death but it was very good Gary moley was on and he was telling us he would have told some good stories he
1:08:41
good laugh Gary um the only one uh I think I can tell you about was uh
1:08:48
um yes the the one that gave us the most trouble was uh the delightful Bernard
1:08:53
cribbons who's no longer with us at oh yes if you remember he played the Grandad with a red maroon bar he was a
1:09:01
par which he was in real life I think which is that was his touch to the character and he said I think you make
1:09:08
me look rather old and fat and we sort of had to say earned mate you're old
1:09:14
friend you're a bit old and fat you know but I and I think he took it very well I'm sure we were a little more
1:09:19
diplomatic than that but he said all right then so got that one through but a great model so so uh it
1:09:27
was good fun um again when talking about the fishos and people writing in um how
1:09:33
wonderful figure painter she she had to go through all her Tom Baker changed his
1:09:39
bloody scarf many times or I don't know about many times I might have exagger a few times so had a different scarf
1:09:46
pattern for different series oh yeah you can't just paint it any old color you know oh I did not know this exactly well
1:09:52
she didn't know that until she painted it and suddenly who think you'll find that's from series 12 instead of series
1:09:58
16 you fools what are you thinking of quick repaint of thing so she so I think she
1:10:05
did two or three different Tom Bakers yeah to get his scarves correct and of course you did get it correct cuz it is
1:10:11
important yeah you I mean it's joking apart it's got to be right otherwise it's not Tom Baker is it I never knew
1:10:16
this Star Wars Darth V I didn't know he had a different outfit in each movie yes the control box are in a different place
1:10:22
the style of like the gorget thing for a model of it it's got to be right
1:10:28
yeah helmets change a little bit all that kind of just keep the same uniform I don't understand why you changing it that's
1:10:35
bles yeah yeah absolutely uh a friend of the channel uh Ruby says uh what has
1:10:40
been your favorite model range to make and why um we already know what it was like when you first started out but do
1:10:46
you have a favorite favorite model range my favorite model at the moment is the one
1:10:52
that uh the lovely mighty voch polish designer made at the start of this month
1:10:57
of Napoleon uh wearing his coronation um his robes when he crowned
1:11:05
himself in nraam cuz he's such a he crowned himself yes CU he's such a um
1:11:12
shrinking violet a modest chap so uh we had the idea of doing Napoleon then we thought because the Napoleon film was
1:11:18
coming out so we thought well let's have him in his robes and looking marvelous and his Eagle staff and then um and
1:11:24
there's a very famous painting of him by uh David and he looks quite Angel like
1:11:30
and we're on this man and then VOC said I've got this idea John I've seen this
1:11:35
on Instagram it's amazing I've got I don't tell Paul because it's mad I said well tell me he said well I want to do
1:11:43
the painter as well and the easel of I want the man be painting the man I said that's so mad it's brilliant I said yes
1:11:49
you go and do it don't tell Paul tell him I said you could do it and so he's got this David artist painting him and
1:11:56
then when I was showing it to one of our Lads saying how cool is that he just said and I thought I know what you're going to say why don't we have a picture
1:12:03
of the picture that you could put on the EAS so we do a color picture as well so now it's just fun fun and fun yeah yeah
1:12:10
painted beautifully uh in the studio a fantastic paint job and uh that's my
1:12:16
favorite model for for a long time yeah I saw it pop up in on my phone I was like oh I like that am I steal this idea
1:12:24
it's a smart we got a painting competition going for that one so
1:12:29
fantastic right who we got here we got we've got some mad questions one's about fights in car Parks uh it's just there
1:12:37
seems to be a thing when people leave they're accused of fighting car Parks think had that one last time we did yes he did yeah yeah Tim puzzle care do you
1:12:44
do you still have your absolutely fantastic 90s Empire Army um when was the last time you played a GW
1:12:51
game I still have the Fantastic n '90s Empire I'm in my gaming room in the
1:12:56
cabinets I was I was showing it off to three young Lads came up to to play bolt action over the weekend and I was
1:13:03
showing them that they're say whoa what's that I it's an Empire Army from the '90s and it's it's beautiful I say
1:13:09
beautiful because I didn't paint it um and uh they very kindly when I left
1:13:14
Workshop they made a model of me inside the steam tank so this is my my guy with a pistol and the steam tank fairly
1:13:21
obviously me which is nice the Empire arm is still there and I I salute it every week uh last Games Workshop game I
1:13:29
played oh it was a long it would be a long time ago now probably probably 16 years I would have thought but uh I keep
1:13:36
looking at the stuff thinking how marvelous it all is um but
1:13:41
uh yeah i' certainly would if offord I'd play a game with I Warhammer is get in
1:13:47
intriguing me now that Warhammer is coming back out yeah so I might might use again yeah course yes the lawyers
1:13:54
aren't going to come and stop me using my Empire Army if if I wanted to and you can close the door on them
1:13:59
yeah there's a second part to this as well which is also are there any uh more Korean models in the pipeline for B
1:14:06
action are buy any and all of them says Tim uh we just know I heard it said
1:14:13
yesterday what was it we're making some uh let's get it right recoiless
1:14:18
rocket team for the British army for the Koreans and which apparently we used the recoiless rifle which I didn't know we
1:14:24
did but I just heard that yesterday so certainly one of those and and some more
1:14:31
heavy weapons for the Koreans I don't know if it's South Koreans or North Koreans but that's what I heard just
1:14:37
yesterday so yes is the answer yes they are Tim uh mael uh the past week I
1:14:43
ordered the first time a miniature from warlord games and was blown away by the Mythic Americas range uh and I'm
1:14:50
surprised I've never heard about the range before how do you approach getting the word out about your different menages lines I assume the elephant in
1:14:56
the room sucks up a lot of oxygen not sure what the elephant in the
1:15:03
room is but uh but yeah um how how do you go about spreading the word of like
1:15:08
I suppose it's magazines in the inter interviews like this it's one of them so
1:15:14
well sir or Madam you you're helping us do that the the Mythic America stuff is is is quite fantastic some of the ideas
1:15:21
in there the ASCS and Incas and the creature are um truly wonderful and they've got
1:15:27
some fantastic paint jobs and uh and some of the giant quatt type creatures
1:15:33
are really terrifying they're really well well rendered um yeah I think it's people
1:15:39
like yourself uh um helping us out here and uh we feature in the in the war
1:15:45
games magazines uh and podcasts and all this sort of stuff yeah I know you've done
1:15:50
the uh the the well you've been on Jordan sorcery a few times years he's a great great site as well uh this looks
1:15:57
like a long one but I'll give it a go Richard mcferson uh hi John going to start with an apology that I can't get
1:16:02
your B a uh so sorry about that CU he got his biscuits apparently and he feels
1:16:08
bad for not getting your B so unless he thought he meant bar just like a bar of chocolate or something uh as a her
1:16:17
herodan uh and a local interest the regiment will there be any and will there be anything more to do with the
1:16:22
SAS in uh Northwest Europe European theater of World War II probably is but being out at the Bol action Loop for a
1:16:28
while also uh plastic SAS when uh sincerely Rich so yeah will you do any
1:16:36
more SAS we can't not our last the three special models we did before the uh
1:16:42
Napoleon fig were all SAS but they were all desert and so we
1:16:49
need to revisit uh SAS Europe one of them that we have possibly is uh that's
1:16:55
go is it lson who was one of the Danish SAS guys I think he might have got a VC
1:17:01
certainly got some medals bit of a Nutter sadly died uh taking apart the
1:17:06
Germans so I think his name was Andy lson he's certainly on our list of SAS
1:17:11
fantastic Northwest Europe to do so yes good so did you want to jump in with
1:17:17
some as well so I was Carri absolutely fine uh Alex knot which were the first war games rule sets that grabbed your
1:17:23
attention and made you want to look at War games as more than a hobby it would be the airfix ancient
1:17:29
wargaming book um a very slim little volume from the very late probably 1971 thereabouts
1:17:38
very slim volume got it from the library he showed you how to play with uh airfix
1:17:45
Romans and airfix ancient Britains in plastic oh and by using a matchbox as a
1:17:51
howder you could put it on the back of a Britain's elephant and have a carag Ian war elephant how cool is that so that
1:17:58
got me into that and then um and with those elephants you ones you bought from like toy shops like
1:18:04
enter sets things like that so that got me that was my first set and then it would have been charged by Brigadier
1:18:11
young um uh which is all Tri corny which was very hearty shall we say and in it
1:18:17
he said in World War II my men never ran away so so I don't have morale rules my
1:18:24
men fight they die I was going to ask it's been on on the tip of me tongue for ages cuz I I remember in like Workshop
1:18:30
it must have been you like me say about I was like I need to know what book this is cuz that's amazing no morale checks
1:18:35
cuz my men don't run away that's weird absolute genius rule
1:18:41
Set uh that's that one Ben ripping hey I just go back to Brigadier y oh yes please do just a story because he set up
1:18:48
the seal Mark Society so I did get to meet him a few times amazing but he famously said I could never I could
1:18:53
never shoot a German if you didn't have a helmet on as soon as they took the helmets off he said I
1:18:59
couldn't shoot them no matter of you know even if they're armed yeah but if they had a helmet on or a hat he could
1:19:04
shoot them that's mric fellow looks more Sinister maybe I
1:19:09
don't know maybe it's the star helmet just does it for him hates it uh Ben ripping customer service from warlord
1:19:15
has been fantastic whenever I've ordered from them how do you go about training staff to ensure the customers H feel
1:19:22
satisfied and how much of that came from your experience at Games Workshop all of it came from my experience at Games
1:19:27
Workshop makes sense go back to that Aras at that Brian anel and his wife Diane um
1:19:34
they thrashed into you very early on about customer service and Games
1:19:39
Workshop was all about being fantastic quality product and customer service which is why I believe they can justify
1:19:46
their prices personally because it's of such a quality and it's not like they selling loaves of bread if you don't
1:19:52
need it to survive but would like it if you can and would we all like it to be cheaper yes yes please but they don't
1:20:00
have to but uh no my my my for Lads uh absolutely came from Brian anel and Dian
1:20:06
beating it into me that people have options you know and they don't want to buy your stuff if you're not on the ball
1:20:12
yeah yeah I mean I always remember from my experience of being in Reta and stuff like it was always class is like one of
1:20:18
the best customer servic we were fantastic on the street you guys were you guys rocked you were 25 years ahead of your time yeah in
1:20:27
customer service I mean I you know I look back now at the stuff that we did in retail and even like with the web
1:20:33
guys as well because there customer service team that have to deal with a lot of the Fallout of whatever happens they're just really good they're on it
1:20:40
and I I went to shops and I was like why is no one else doing this does it annoy you now if you go to the store don't
1:20:46
look out yeah I mean you know I can go to like the customer service department stand there and I could be there for 10 minutes waiting I'm like I would never
1:20:53
let that happen when so anyone's at my desk looking to do return you you deal it straight away and you gave him the
1:20:59
best experience except that one guy that shouted out us cuz his Xbox wasn't working I was like if you can get find
1:21:05
one it's yours for free couldn't find one surprisingly uh idiot then he blamed
1:21:11
his wife and stormed [Music] off you got him they sound like a nice person oh yeah was indeed um have you oh
1:21:20
this is from Keith have you added anything to your memorabilia collection lately not a b we can tell you that but
1:21:26
not a B I tried very hard the other day I I uh my brother lives down in London
1:21:32
has got nothing else to do with his life so I happen to find um sou bees had five
1:21:37
no seven different lots of things they were selling uh and I identified them and I pointed out to my brother said
1:21:43
over this weekend while I'm doing something else could you bid on bid on all of these and we got out bid on every
1:21:49
single one nothing the the the holding price was nowhere near what happened so
1:21:55
there was going to be four French borns why not bit random Christmas presents
1:22:01
all around um uh a CH mail visor from the in the first world war tanks the British
1:22:08
tankers used to have this weird leather face mask with ch mail dangling down it
1:22:13
to protect them from the Sparks when the bullets hit they would spark on the inside yeah and bolts and things would
1:22:19
come through so there's one of those that got withdrawn from sail at the last minute that would have been really cool oh uh then there was a two French
1:22:27
Napoleonic uniforms oh wow for £600 I me that's giving it away tunic and
1:22:34
trousers oh my gosh water period that's giving away then a Grenadier chaval sword for
1:22:41
700 I mean beautiful heavy Cav saber then there was uh finally there's um Al
1:22:48
luga a Colt 45 and an mg34
1:22:54
were all pretty good yeah um and all of them went for almost double the price in the end yeah so the answer is no but I
1:23:01
tried you tried yeah that's the important part I tried oh wow yeah I mean I know lugers uh are well sought
1:23:08
after certainly after watching banded brothers that one character who desperate to get
1:23:13
Luger the the pistols yeah yeah yeah I've always lik the look of the MP 40 I've always like that yeah um don't know
1:23:20
why I don't know if it's a very good gun or not I just always like the look of it yeah good looking thing uh Phil salt love the warlord stuff
1:23:27
there's such a huge range now how do you forward plan release with a historical range ranges uh where you're unlike to
1:23:33
find new things is that a challenge well I guess we've talked about that where you just redo stuff you've done great
1:23:39
yeah probably hope you don't mind I think we' probably covered that at uh yeah but there's always stuff we can go back and do um you know even when we
1:23:46
think there's a complete range go back and perhaps do another character figures you know everybody would like another
1:23:52
sergeant in a different pose perhaps weapons something like that you can add
1:23:57
to the range and something really cool yeah and also like I guess those diarama pieces di pieces is it Corporal Sergeant
1:24:04
art that gets the eagle the um yeah yeah so stuff like that I'm
1:24:10
always always a fan because that would be great when I do my diarama maybe not that moment in time but uh Subway Justice uh a Chum of hours
1:24:18
uh Richard hi Richard uh question for John what's the future of conflict 47 hold any tidbits you can reveal about
1:24:25
the most grand of weird World War II games well thanks for the question um
1:24:31
we've we putting a team together to to to give it the Justice that's due to it it's uh it's been around for a number of
1:24:38
years and it was run by a team called Clockwork Goblin who did some brilliant work in getting it to the stage it got
1:24:43
to but they all had real jobs I think one of them was a major in the Army so they couldn't give it all the love that
1:24:49
it needed so we've now got the license for it o uh so we can now take it on
1:24:55
ourselves and push it in a slightly different direction um but still
1:25:00
following the Great Notion of these Rifts appearing in the skies after the atomic bombs were dropped and weirdness
1:25:07
going on in the in in in all sorts of magics and strangeness and
1:25:13
mutations and I think we're going to make it a bit darker good um because um
1:25:18
I think it needs to be dark uh you know it's another two years of the second world war God how dark must that be yeah
1:25:25
Bleak it's going to be Bleak um and then we're going to go hard on character models because that's one thing we
1:25:31
didn't get many character models and and having things like regiments of renown is really cool having a major whoever he
1:25:39
is and his followers or I think I think that gives a bit more character to it because it I want to Chuck into that as
1:25:44
well because it's made up would you go into the Realms of like not even characters from history but like
1:25:49
fictional characters from that time would you potentially like incorporate them say maybe like Indiana
1:25:55
I think we could do anything you're right we got we got a new writer which more to reveal later perhaps uh and he
1:26:02
or she has got a brief to take it anywhere they like and uh I'd rather let
1:26:08
them have a long piece of rope to go and do it rather than me tell them what I want I want I want the writer to really
1:26:14
take it and and take it to Wild places and the wild of the better I think as a
1:26:19
fan of Wolfenstein pseudo science Nazis is just great when you just get weird you're a fan of the Nazis there no I
1:26:26
said as a fan of Wolfenstein the computer game uh pseudo science Nazis
1:26:31
killing them is great sorry I you this is the internet John someone
1:26:37
will clip that and go what that was the intention P's going to make a short and
1:26:43
put on YouTube he likes the na around you say again just like Indiana James I love
1:26:49
Nazis dead that's the best kind of Nazi is a Dead Nazi um so I don't I was
1:26:56
trying to work out if there's a quicker way of saying this but some uh Mike has gone I bought some spqr I always want to
1:27:02
say sparker which is the Rome stuff isn't it the Senate of Rome I brought
1:27:07
some SP spqr Germania units uh from the clearance sale does clearance mean the
1:27:13
uh range is being discontinued sorry I'm struggling to read today and talk apparently um I'm really enjoying the
1:27:19
Skirmish range I understand the business side of it um if it's not doing that well um that'll be cut just a heads up
1:27:25
if I need to buy more um it will be being we never get
1:27:32
rid of any system because I said because that I don't want that reputation of
1:27:37
that company gets rids of things because that's that's not good uh but have we
1:27:42
got any plans for anything in the next year no I like I like the idea of skirmish
1:27:48
gaming ancients um War bands is great yeah I like War Bandy games so perhaps pick up some more for a while yeah nice
1:27:56
good answer uh plops of corn he going for a cheese based question uh which
1:28:01
cheese would you choose as your warlord and which as your
1:28:07
infantry about patrons or idiots I would
1:28:12
say very serious question P serious um
1:28:17
well recently I I've found a the most Fant is Philadelphia light
1:28:23
cheese mhm but with a in a bowl and just mix in uh Thai sweet chili sauce and
1:28:30
swirl the two together and just have it on crackers utterly Divine M sound nice
1:28:35
is that your infantry or just your commander that's Commander that's the commander okay yeah nice nice see see my
1:28:43
my commando would be mature cheddar okay because it's mature it's been around for
1:28:48
a while you know it knows what it's doing it's in command not not one with holes in him no that wouldn't be oh yeah
1:28:54
and then eam for uh for my infantry cuz they just get shot bit yeah no e Dam's got the blat farmer oh yeah he's got the
1:29:02
wa plus one plus one safe brilliant yeah that I'm channeling my inner British
1:29:07
napoleonics my my leader would be mild cheddar because he's quite mild mannered and very polite easy on the eyes and
1:29:14
then my actual infantry will just be stilting because they stink and he was going to want to fight a bunch of stinking like Stilton guys no you're
1:29:21
right stay well away from them boys uh Steve Paxton's got two questions greedy
1:29:26
uh first question what was the most painful decision you had to make in your time at Games Workshop and second
1:29:32
question is only pushed to do epic battles in medieval or Ancient Ancient periods so any tough decisions at GW
1:29:40
yeah it uh toughest was yeah toughest was
1:29:47
um when we went to a show and half a dozen of my staff took
1:29:54
money which they shouldn't have taken and I had to get rid of all six of them oh and it was so painful and it wasn't a
1:30:02
lot wasn't a lot of between them it was quite a lot of money but they were young and dumb and um and one after the other
1:30:09
I had to have them called in and said did you take this money and to be fair all six of them said yes I did which in
1:30:16
the end was incredibly honest they could have said no and denied everything but they said yeah I did and I saidwell why
1:30:22
why did you do it' and they'd work themselves up into this stupid thing they said well everybody
1:30:29
steals don't they I said no the second one was it's insured isn't it I said no
1:30:35
no of course it's not and then and and that that's what they thought victimless crime that everybody did it and it was
1:30:42
insured anyway and that's what they worked out the day before so all six of them having to get rid of them and I you
1:30:47
know I occasionally see them around still now and uh you know and I I sort of don't blame them at the time because
1:30:53
it's just a dumb thing they did and but had to say goodbye yeah I mean and it was it was rotten yeah yeah I don't
1:31:00
think they're bad people no I think they made a bad decision yeah yeah but but yeah that was
1:31:06
a wretched day I can imagine yeah yeah and second question on a lighter note
1:31:11
any uh epic battles for medieval ancient periods in the plans might be oh good
1:31:17
who wants to know uh uh Steve wants to know uh Fernando so uh did the growth of
1:31:25
tabletop RPGs and Warhammer in general affect posit positively the historical
1:31:31
market and brought in younger players I've started the hobby as a kid painting historical models then in my 20s made
1:31:37
the transition to Warhammer now in my 30s I'm waiting on more on my first child and can find myself more drawn to
1:31:43
the historical ranges um I've heard mentioned before that this is somewhat of a common Journey so maybe the next
1:31:48
step will be trains I think you kind of answered your own question there Fernando but did you find
1:31:55
well I think um that seems to be the certainly my journey is I was a
1:32:00
historical game and then got into fantasy for a long time and then come out the other end into historicals again
1:32:06
um there's no doubt in my mind that an awful lot of people who play the bolt action and certainly a lot who are going
1:32:12
to play conflict 47 will be 40K players yeah and they'll think right I've done
1:32:18
my 40K I'm going to I've got most of my Army I'm going to try something different now it doesn't mean they're
1:32:24
going to drop Warhammer and why would they but it means they've found another
1:32:29
Outlet of for their interest cuz if you're a bloke you can't help know a little bit about World War II you know
1:32:35
what tiger tank is you just do it's in your DNA I don't know how we know but everybody said a tiger T and then you
1:32:42
see one on the table oh that's a tiger you say to him that's a tiger oh most deadly tank in the world they yeah sort
1:32:48
of recognize it but more importantly is 23 quid not 58 quid so well yeah I think
1:32:54
that's Evolution as well though John is like you know like certain like animals know when there's something bad and just
1:33:00
like humans know tiger tanks are bad so they just know the silhouette of it without even knowing about it in the DNA
1:33:07
yeah so yeah now I think it goes full circle and uh I hope that people will be able to do fantasy and science fiction
1:33:13
and historical at the same time I think they they can live together well if like conflict will be a bridge as well you
1:33:19
move from 40K like you say you go to conflict 47 then eventually you're like well I've got loads of British got loads of Germans and got similar tanks but
1:33:25
some of these got lasers on it but oh you know what I might I might start like doing some World War II stuff yeah it's
1:33:30
partly is being designed as a bridge that's good uh Matt Irish where do you see the
1:33:36
evolution of miniature wargame going next interesting I don't think we have a
1:33:43
change that's one for the pub uh and a bloody great question I wish I knew yeah
1:33:48
um what do I think well
1:33:53
what do I think I wargaming was going to the war band
1:34:01
everyone was downsizing and everything was just going to war bands with a little bit of our laziness that we have
1:34:08
and just you know um and and I think it's coming back out because we also did Saga for instance we did ourselves don't
1:34:14
I'm not having to pop at anybody that's what we did too but I think wargaming is getting
1:34:21
weirdly it's getting bigger again that's why we went to Epic so people suddenly have if you buy the Epic American Civil
1:34:26
War Game you get 2,200 Miniatures which is huge and loads of cannons and everything so that's going for the large
1:34:33
game again yeah yeah um so we're hoping that it's going to get
1:34:39
uh big battles out there it's uh to inspire people what's been wonderful for
1:34:45
everybody is people like Army painter and workshop bringing out all these marvelous paints you just wash over and
1:34:52
they look great you think wow it's all done dries within 3 minutes four minutes and it's dry and you can just do the
1:34:58
next thing yeah Bish bash BOS and uh don't lovely even the terrain material
1:35:03
you just paint over and just give you it's it's chw and cheese to what it used to be painting you know painting was an
1:35:09
old Shore now you know any of us can bash something out it looks pretty good barrier for entry is certainly lower I
1:35:16
think isn't it Patron one of our patrons I do onetoone sessions where I just whatever
1:35:22
they want teach them how to paint talk through things and one of them was a session on painting stuff and he wanted to know a bit more about the contrast
1:35:27
paint speed paints um and I had a sprew of the war games Atlantic press
1:35:32
reservist it has like six on it and I just sprayed it white before just to show the different effects of colors I was like you know what I've got one left
1:35:39
I'll just show how to paint a model just with contrast paints because the reserves tend to have like light gray and some of them can have like blue
1:35:45
tunic if you wanted to I just went all over with like a light gray how long do it take to paint that it it literally
1:35:50
took me like 10 minutes to do one figure um and if I was doing it on the sprew r all six it probably would have taken me
1:35:56
about like 20 minutes to do all of them because you just like slap on the gray all over slap on the brown for the
1:36:01
musket and he was like that looks great I was like as it dries it'll pull away a bit more from the edges so you get highlight so you get base coat shade and
1:36:08
a highlight you wait till you see a varnish as well yes and it was it was blown away by the effect um and and I
1:36:16
even looked at like why why am I make building them all putting them on bases I can just cuz they're in the March pose
1:36:23
I could just literally just clean like whatever mold lines I can see and just do a whole bunch of these on the spru that's my next plan for for those so do
1:36:30
the same with the uh the warlord stuff because that they obviously have like a little sprew with them all on and I can
1:36:36
just easily paint them CU sometimes you do get the the kits where like the par sometimes of the arms separately you
1:36:41
have to add them on but when they're in March pose they got one arm down by the side so easy love that uh Ross what do
1:36:50
you what do you oh my days what do you enjoy about historical gaming that you don't get in fantasy and Sci-Fi
1:36:58
games uh research I guess it's researching it uh the nerd in every all
1:37:04
of us as as as Gamers finding out what Russian grenadiers wore that time what
1:37:10
what period what shade green is roughly um and finding out as much as I dare
1:37:16
without being mad about the Russian infantry of say of 1812 uh so y researching it looking at
1:37:23
paintings uh reading up about them their tactics how do they differ uh you find that the
1:37:30
Russians didn't they could form a square but generally they just pressed in on each other like penguins and just faced
1:37:36
outwards so they just clumped together and said come on then they look hard so don't even bother
1:37:43
forming yeah come on then I think that's the great thing because with like let's say warmer 40K you don't get that you
1:37:50
kind of there's a bit of History there's like this is what ult Meine looks like depending on which company it is this is what it looks like but I've had that
1:37:56
when I was doing the um the French cuz I've not really done much naponic French Duncan used to do loads I I just kept to
1:38:02
the British and I was getting all these this stuff done for chosen men for uh games night and I was like I know
1:38:08
nothing about the French I don't even know the companies work so got a couple of ospray books and started painting some up and I was like why are these
1:38:13
ones in white I don't understand and then just like looking I was like they look quite pretty all those have pink I'll give them some pink fac and oh they
1:38:20
the 33rd regiment okay okay I'll do those that looks fun and the start reading like oh they ran out of indigo
1:38:25
die for two years oh this is amazing and then you just get like little nit snit bits of like information and history and
1:38:31
I love that kind of stuff now is I will say though as I've got older I'm now 62 when I'm painting something I do think I
1:38:38
can't be asked to get all the pom pom colors correct I could go upstairs I could go upstairs and look it up but I'm
1:38:43
just going to do them lilac and yellow and I don't care they're mine if anybody wants term wrong I'll yeah give them a
1:38:49
good slapping afterwards but in the end I just don't care anymore cuz I'm too old for that it took me ages to find
1:38:54
that out I was like what what what what and whatever looks good as long as it's not ridiculous yeah do it yeah the
1:38:59
British was like oh if they're on this side they get green if they're on that side they get white if the middle it's white and red and sometimes I can't be
1:39:05
bothered with that uh CU it's what looks cool rule of coal sometimes rule of cool I'll go with that even for historical
1:39:11
gaming yeah absolutely yeah shakos and spru great name as one of the big war
1:39:16
games companies excluding those guys up the road uh warlord games have a reasonably open and transparent culture
1:39:22
on the outside happily shown lots of information including the excellent open days in studio tours kind of discussed that how do you continue to encourage
1:39:30
this as well as make sure you remains a thing in the future especially with the potential for publicly traded company
1:39:35
like horby having the option to take a controlling stake uh that was quite in depth it
1:39:44
is that's a a two-pipe problem that one um well so we got
1:39:51
a a plan for years yeah and um and we uh and we try and stick to that as best we
1:39:57
can we do try and be transparent on the open days as much as we dare we do have
1:40:05
some secrets of course which you do have to keep quiet and uh
1:40:10
um uh not many not many I'm you know I'm not because it's historical people can
1:40:18
go and do paner grenadiers whenever they like you know what I mean as if you had some sort of new space chapter you might
1:40:24
not want to say it looks like this yeah in two years time it will be coming out cuz other people might say well I can
1:40:31
make something look remarkably like that in the next two years and Gobble it all up you know before you get there that
1:40:37
that would be irritating yeah so uh but for us because it's mainly historical um
1:40:43
we don't have to be too too worried about it uh the deal with Hornby uh is
1:40:48
uh is they own 25% of warlord uh but not controlling share so at the moment on a
1:40:55
day-to-day basis we hear nothing from home they do their thing we do ours it's just it's you know um and we wish them
1:41:02
well and we chat chat cheerfully with them but uh as they're not part of our management team yeah it's just us yeah
1:41:09
up in Nottingham and then they're down in Margate yeah they just opened up their new
1:41:15
uh gaming modeling Center which is very nice looks really good any future for
1:41:21
homie to make skimmish and train games battle tra battle tra you never know
1:41:28
well they got eix as well part the AIX group so AIX uh
1:41:34
they're making some marvelous models at the moment they're making some tremendous stuff AIX I haven't looked at AIX since um I
1:41:43
was a kid well they're worth looking at again now and because they're they're
1:41:48
they they fell way behind the Japanese and Chinese people making all their
1:41:53
wonderful models the dragon dragon and hasagawa and Academy kits all those which knock them into a cocked hat but
1:41:59
the ones they're bringing back again now are equally good as the Chinese and Japanese on they're great I've seen a
1:42:05
few kids like some really like entry level sort of cars and planes for kids to build like they entry level stuff
1:42:10
they're snap together really amazing really simple you're just like that's great yeah um but yeah usually the
1:42:17
middle of little they sometimes have AIX kits you're like huh yeah what's that doing there no I mean you're old I'm
1:42:23
sure would like one of those snap together yeah any of those yeah he likes cars and they do a fair few of them so
1:42:28
he's I don't know what's going to happen in the future but he keeps asking me for an Audi for Christmas I was like what what's Santa going to get is like can I
1:42:33
get a green Audi I'm like where's this kid come from why' you want not only just one car but a specifically a green
1:42:41
Audi well you could always spray up even if you can't get a green one You' be able to respray it mask off all the bits
1:42:47
you be to do that easy easy you could do that good thinking yeah I didn't even think about that so it's good job John
1:42:54
yeah saving Christmas yeah exactly we've got two questions left if you got the time for it this one we've kind of
1:42:59
alluded to but he just asked for a particular point and you don't have to answer if you don't want to but Chris is
1:43:04
saying was anything from your time experienced at GW when you were setting up warlord where you went I'll never do
1:43:10
that uh and did you find you had to recant once the company started to grow oh oh what a marvelous question uh
1:43:19
I
1:43:24
one of them was um I'll always treasure the first sale I make I'll look at it on
1:43:30
the internet and you know take a picture of it and uh you take it I never did it
1:43:35
just got too busy I have no idea what the first thing I saw was no doubt it was a pox set of those it might not it
1:43:42
might have been an Archer or something but I thought I got to remember that to the day I die no you and and you make
1:43:49
yourself Dar things that you think you'll do yeah but there just life comes in the way so it's a really good question that was that that was one of
1:43:55
them yeah I'll never do that yeah I I when I started an Instagram account I was like I always remember my first
1:44:00
follower couldn't tell you who it was no not a clue it's probably my dad uh and last question how do you go
1:44:08
about creating a customer base as as a new player in an already niche
1:44:13
market that's from Richard great head Sor again one one more time uh I just
1:44:19
deleted it like ID how do we get new new customers yeah for for a niche hobby such a niche hobby right well when I set
1:44:26
up warlord 16 years ago when me and Paul sat down there and we came up with the name warlord which was an old British
1:44:31
comic for those who don't know particularly for you overseas guys a black and white British comic classic
1:44:37
stuff um and very boys own type thing and that's what we wanted the style of
1:44:43
the company to be so very quickly we had a chap chap called Andy hobday came and
1:44:49
did us a marvelous website which going back 16 years it sounded like a big dog
1:44:56
it barked really loud uh with not much behind it with one box set and a few
1:45:02
metal sets but it looked huge and it made us look great um so I very quickly
1:45:08
realized that people are going to go into two camps I personally think there
1:45:15
are maybe 250,000 historical War gamers in the world I worked that out over the
1:45:20
years through various things of which a third are in America a third are in the UK and a third the rest of the whole
1:45:27
world put together um and so by having this great website and with everybody
1:45:32
ordering stuff from on the new magical thing that within a week within a month
1:45:38
say every existing War gamer will have heard of
1:45:44
warlord and I'm not saying buying from us and also with that that uh that Roman
1:45:49
on the front of the magazine you know which puts it into every people will know what it is who we are and they will
1:45:55
either say I don't like that the X Games Workshop there will be not my cup of tea
1:46:02
don't like that or they'll say yeah I'll give that a go and they'll split into the two camps very very
1:46:09
quickly but um and I'm sure that does happen you know a lot of people don't like the style of our stuff they think
1:46:14
it's a bit cartoony ah it's action-packed and daa daa that's gain's Workshop that's rubbish that is I want
1:46:21
boring model not boring but different they're like it their own way and that's that's absolutely cool so so we knew
1:46:28
that straight away but to grow the company I knew that we would absolutely have to get lots of new people in so
1:46:35
that's when the marketing tricks are going on the front of the magazine So when you say we're going to do a 28 mil
1:46:41
plastic R A lot of people well I don't like bendy plastic the only ever had air fix before you know bendy plastic I
1:46:47
don't like but if you put one in their hand they go oh oh it's oh I see it's oh yeah and then when they put some and
1:46:54
they look at and think actually it paints really nicely and then you put an 1in model in any bloke's hand if it's
1:47:00
nice they always love it and it's just getting it into their hands is doing so so that was our trick is getting into
1:47:05
people's hands yeah and once you've done that then uh you can start recruiting
1:47:10
people and the best recruiting is recruiting people who do tabletop gaming which is Games Workshop uh and and other
1:47:17
companies as well uh but if if if we're in a retail store in America in Milwaukee and there's eight 40K tables
1:47:25
and we've got one bolt action table and then somebody's doing epic over here you get a degree of guys are going to come
1:47:30
over and say that looks cool yeah how much is that you say well it's only 100 bucks for this big box that's cheap I'll
1:47:37
give that a go and so that's what it is it's using finding uh Gamers who have got the gene for wanting to play
1:47:44
tabletop battles and then converting them over to us yeah yeah yeah at at an
1:47:49
acceptable price and effort so like again when we did bolt action the brief
1:47:55
for alesio who who wrote it yeah the brief was absolutely do rogue Trader do
1:48:00
what Rick did 30 years ago a book where you need 30 models three sections a
1:48:05
mortar a cannon and some sort of a tank and that's it against and that was the brief short and sharp one big plastic
1:48:13
box set to rule them all and then a tank and a gun and off you go yeah so entry point cheap that's that that's how we
1:48:20
got into it and so uh was there a last question about
1:48:26
um um I can't remember R Games Workshop book uh let's have a quick look let's
1:48:32
have a quick look CU I like a fool I went delet about talking Miniatures talking Miniatures oh yes sorry oh nice
1:48:39
well I've got one question before we talk about this amazing book that I've not heard of yet so we'll find out more about that um one of the questions i'
1:48:46
I've always meant to ask and never got around to doing it is down the line in the future and it may be a big hard no
1:48:52
do you for warlord games having in retail outlets like Workshop I absolutely think it's possible yes we've
1:48:58
got one as you know in Nottingham yeah uh but uh I can see very possible Partnerships with
1:49:05
other people to get some cracking retail stores out there uh uh now we do deal
1:49:11
with about 800 trade accounts out there in the world already but uh there are some cities with nobody there at all and
1:49:18
that's a shame you know you'd like to think somebody would open the store there uh so um no immediate plans but uh
1:49:27
we're supporting as many Traders as we can and we've got fantastic bunch of Spaniards came over from Madrid the
1:49:33
other day and and they're going to be opening a store in London it's great we bunch of crazy Spaniards an opening in
1:49:39
North London I thought good for you how cool is that some toys yeah so I think
1:49:44
well you can do it then instead as long as it's great and their quality is great yeah they're putting in 24 gaming tables
1:49:50
oh wow and they said but quality ones they said they understand yeah good it's good to you're inspired to play on a
1:49:57
profit table aren't you it inspires you I mean as as much as I like the flat green sort of grass of like the
1:50:03
polyarene hills they look cool and they really you know remind me of my my youth getting into the Hobby and it's like I
1:50:08
like that because it's nostalgic but there's nothing better than like a really detailed board with like Crags
1:50:14
and like little rivers and streams and bridges and stuff no there is like when you find a mate or friendly Uncle come
1:50:20
around and play on my table oh dad on your table and it's it is you don't
1:50:25
forget those games no absolutely not no aspirational so what's this book you uh you mentioned oh it's a thing of
1:50:33
beauty just available for Christmas as well £55 absolute bargain for volumes one and
1:50:40
two volumes one and two all about Games Workshop all the early days of Citadel 17 different sculptors and things I
1:50:47
think we've spoken about it before yeah but what a time to revisit it absolutely is it is it um somebody in uh I saw in
1:50:54
the comments in uh the first video that we did with with you guys uh that it had
1:51:00
sold out in America um and the Amazon one in America had yeah so we sent some
1:51:06
more out now oh perfect so it's back in still back in St in the US yeah it is there you go for Christmas just in
1:51:11
timeas yeah no it good no it was it was a pleasure having you on the first well was been at yours and you coming on to
1:51:18
the cameras um but it's been a absolute pleasure just talking more about games it's it's starting roots and where it is
1:51:25
now and where it's going so very exciting really well I thoroughly enjoy being interviewed by you two guys and uh
1:51:30
and what I loved about it also is that though it is the focus is on warlord that we've been able to go up and around
1:51:36
on a hound and back and all other places as well about paints and glues and and history cheese and gaming and philosophy
1:51:45
and morality and stuff and that's what's cool about gaming is that you know it's
1:51:51
like going on a long journey I I went to Ireland the other day with my mate Andy and we spoke for 4 days talking nonsense
1:51:57
about and ended up a long drive back a six-hour drive back to Nottingham and we we just didn't stop talking about
1:52:03
largely air fix it was 6 hours of talking about what was your favorite kit then well I thought that what should
1:52:09
they have made oh they never did Greeks no they didn't oh I don't love Greeks Zulus they never did Zulus oh yeah
1:52:15
wonder why they didn't yeah but it's a great hobby yeah it is it's been a it's been a pleasure having you on and thank
1:52:21
you to Kieran just patiently waiting in the corner nice and quietly there yeah yeah you wouldn't know who's there would
1:52:27
you no I he's it's actually no one there I'm just making someone up there's no one actually there just just the three
1:52:33
of us Karen doesn't exist oh that's mean thanks for doing all the techy bit
1:52:40
looks fantastic he's the master of the control I always say um they're like Davos yes yeah I think I think I look
1:52:46
like um one of the old school sort of like Football commentators with these silly headphones on you do but you
1:52:52
conned up like the emperor yes yeah I've got I don't know if I can lift this high enough oo camera changer oo yeah so
1:52:59
there we go it's great I love fun in games it means I don't have to edit as much after the uh the show's done
1:53:04
because I've been doing it whilst we've been shying yeah which is a great fun well thanks for thanks thanks for watching yeah and we'll see you again
1:53:10
soon byebye
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