Welcome.
Hi, I'm Olaf/Ollaimh, the designer in Chief at Green Man Miniatures, and this blog is an off-campus place for me to put my games and miniatures musings.
To start with, a little bit about me, and why my musings might be of interest.
I was born in Northern Ireland at the height of the Troubles. To make matters worse, my parents were an Irish Catholic and an English Protestant, so i was socially caught up in the middle of it all. My father was, at the time and for many years to follow, a model railway enthusiast, and a child of the "Airfix Generation," so I've been building and painting models since before I had the co-ordination to do them justice. My first painted model was a 1:2 Scottish Terrier, which basically got slathered in multiple colours of runny tempera. It was a mess, basically, but we'd 2 of them, so my father had one that was painted up properly.
Building in miniature always fascinated me. While most kids would have been playing outside (despite the weather, this was still a common occurrence in NI, although you could be sure that, when i did, I'd come in soaked), my focus was always on miniatures. I had the same SF/F market as most western kids in the 1980s - Star Wars, Transformers, Go-Bots, Masters of the Universe, Thundercats, etc. - but what grabbed me most in toys was construction and cross-compatibility of accessories.
I bought, and built, a lot of Lego, Zoids, and Legions of Power, but my big passion was Action Man: Action Force, a European take on G.I. Joe that eventually merged with such and became such. To most kids of my generation, Action Force/G.I. Joe are military figures, literally toy soldiers. What fascinated me, though, was the way they merged the real, with the SAS being amongst the original line up, with science fiction, said SAS having colleagues who worked in space, and ENEMY having Muton, an android and Kraken, a lizardman.
On top of all that, Action Force figures were much more poseable than most, and ever increasingly so, and, for the most part, accessories could be swapped around: rifles from 1979 would fit the hands of models from 1989, and while backpacks post 1984 weren't backwards compatible, the old was were fairly future proofed.
What really made them stand out for me, though, pun intended, was that they had bases and pegs to stand the figures on uneven surfaces. Far more than i ever played with them was the time I'd spend setting them up in dioramas. Dioramas needed scenic elements, and, while the scale was drastically different, years of building models and such meant i could scale up.
At some point in the mid 1980s, Fighting Fantasy books finally made it to Northern Ireland. I was instantly hooked, even more so when I found Action Force and Transformers ones. These books provided a system that stories could be told in, a system that could use miniatures, such as my toys. From there, it was a slippery slope, as i descended into years, now decades, of non-stop tabletop gaming.
By the mid '90s, it had become hard to find other players, as my school friends had outgrown toys and models. I, however, had found Games Workshop, and knew that i was far from the only person "too old for toys and games" who still enjoyed building, painting and playing with miniatures. This was a dark time for me, so knowing that my hobby was a global one was very important.
Thankfully, this was also Games Workshop's "red period," when its popularity, availability and market exploded. A gaming club started up in a nearby town. A gaming club, where class, colour, creed and career were unimportant. Through the club, friendships would form that, at the time, were unthinkable in the area. Soldiers, RUC officers and such would invite over hard-line Republicans. Members of the Ancient Order of Hibernians would share drinks with members of the Loyal Orange and Masonic Lodges. This unprecedented unifying, through a shared interest in building, painting and playing with 1:58 scale and smaller models, was something of a formative moment for me.
I'll get distracted, I'll meander off on weird tangents, etc., but this blog will give me an outlet for the background chatter that normally is restricted to the poor unfortunates with whom i game.
Most of the gaming elements will be focused on Games Workshop's Warhammer 40,000, mostly because it was the first tabletop skirmish game i seriously played, and one that I've been playing, without interruption, since it's first edition. That isn't to say that it's the only game i play - far from it - but, with nearly 32 years of constant existence, during which the game and setting have changed drastically, it's like Pandora's Box, with so many possibilities.
To start with, a little bit about me, and why my musings might be of interest.
I was born in Northern Ireland at the height of the Troubles. To make matters worse, my parents were an Irish Catholic and an English Protestant, so i was socially caught up in the middle of it all. My father was, at the time and for many years to follow, a model railway enthusiast, and a child of the "Airfix Generation," so I've been building and painting models since before I had the co-ordination to do them justice. My first painted model was a 1:2 Scottish Terrier, which basically got slathered in multiple colours of runny tempera. It was a mess, basically, but we'd 2 of them, so my father had one that was painted up properly.
Building in miniature always fascinated me. While most kids would have been playing outside (despite the weather, this was still a common occurrence in NI, although you could be sure that, when i did, I'd come in soaked), my focus was always on miniatures. I had the same SF/F market as most western kids in the 1980s - Star Wars, Transformers, Go-Bots, Masters of the Universe, Thundercats, etc. - but what grabbed me most in toys was construction and cross-compatibility of accessories.
I bought, and built, a lot of Lego, Zoids, and Legions of Power, but my big passion was Action Man: Action Force, a European take on G.I. Joe that eventually merged with such and became such. To most kids of my generation, Action Force/G.I. Joe are military figures, literally toy soldiers. What fascinated me, though, was the way they merged the real, with the SAS being amongst the original line up, with science fiction, said SAS having colleagues who worked in space, and ENEMY having Muton, an android and Kraken, a lizardman.
On top of all that, Action Force figures were much more poseable than most, and ever increasingly so, and, for the most part, accessories could be swapped around: rifles from 1979 would fit the hands of models from 1989, and while backpacks post 1984 weren't backwards compatible, the old was were fairly future proofed.
What really made them stand out for me, though, pun intended, was that they had bases and pegs to stand the figures on uneven surfaces. Far more than i ever played with them was the time I'd spend setting them up in dioramas. Dioramas needed scenic elements, and, while the scale was drastically different, years of building models and such meant i could scale up.
At some point in the mid 1980s, Fighting Fantasy books finally made it to Northern Ireland. I was instantly hooked, even more so when I found Action Force and Transformers ones. These books provided a system that stories could be told in, a system that could use miniatures, such as my toys. From there, it was a slippery slope, as i descended into years, now decades, of non-stop tabletop gaming.
By the mid '90s, it had become hard to find other players, as my school friends had outgrown toys and models. I, however, had found Games Workshop, and knew that i was far from the only person "too old for toys and games" who still enjoyed building, painting and playing with miniatures. This was a dark time for me, so knowing that my hobby was a global one was very important.
Thankfully, this was also Games Workshop's "red period," when its popularity, availability and market exploded. A gaming club started up in a nearby town. A gaming club, where class, colour, creed and career were unimportant. Through the club, friendships would form that, at the time, were unthinkable in the area. Soldiers, RUC officers and such would invite over hard-line Republicans. Members of the Ancient Order of Hibernians would share drinks with members of the Loyal Orange and Masonic Lodges. This unprecedented unifying, through a shared interest in building, painting and playing with 1:58 scale and smaller models, was something of a formative moment for me.
I'll get distracted, I'll meander off on weird tangents, etc., but this blog will give me an outlet for the background chatter that normally is restricted to the poor unfortunates with whom i game.
Most of the gaming elements will be focused on Games Workshop's Warhammer 40,000, mostly because it was the first tabletop skirmish game i seriously played, and one that I've been playing, without interruption, since it's first edition. That isn't to say that it's the only game i play - far from it - but, with nearly 32 years of constant existence, during which the game and setting have changed drastically, it's like Pandora's Box, with so many possibilities.
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