Age of Sigmar

There are some who say we have no right to feel let down.

I'm 38, I first encountered Warhammer when I was 11 , in Liverpool, where me and my sister lived in a cockroach infested basement that would flood with about 15 inches of water regularly, at the top of lime street where there use to be a row of Bed and Breakfasts.

I have very strong memories of the Postal Strike and the running battles up and down the street between police and strikers. Strong memories of going with my mum up past the bullring to the depot to get the family allowance and income support giros by hand.

We were walking back down through town and there was this shop with an amazing polystyrene castle in it.

My mum spent a far bit of money on a copy of White Dwarf for me.

As I sat waiting for adults to go to bed so I could hook my spectrum up to the black and white TV in the guest lounge, I would read that issue back to front and back again. I even wrote a text adventure based on one of the rpg scenarios in there, well, tried anyway, BASIC was basic.

At school the white kids would bully me for being dark and the black kids would bully me for being Scottish. I had one friend, a guy who I saw outside GW with *his* mum, who it turned out also had a Spectrum and a few issues of White Dwarf too, who introduced me to Iron Maiden and who had a Spectrum game called Tobruk!, and who lived in Toxteth. Toxteth still had not been rebuilt after '81. I was walking through a world utterly ruined. We moved from Liverpool to Port Glasgow , and the cycle began again, until I met some people who played 40k and Paranoia, one of whom introduced me to Marillion and Rush. The common ground was Warhammer.

All the friends I have today, the common ground was warhammer.

But I don't have a right to feel let down.

Games Workshop doesn't owe me anything, after all.

No one said that Warhammer would be forever.

We just pretended it was whilst we pretended we weren't going to die one day and filled our houses and lives with plastic and metal.

Every space between our wives and children, jobs and education filled with metal and plastic. Think of a day since you first discovered Warhammer where the plastic and metal didn't fill the spaces left over after real life was done.

We don't have any right to feel let down.

Just dance on into the past , play old editions, regress infinitely until there's nothing but Toxteth and cockroaches, bloody school shirts and a sister crying because she wanted to go home to Edinburgh. But we couldn't because Mum couldn't go back, because her brother got drunk at Christmas and destroyed the house, and you still have a lump on your skull now, at 38, from the bottle in your face.

I don't have any right to feel let down.

But I do.