Back In My Day....

MichaelStockin

MichaelStockin

Lord
When I bought WFB 3rd and raided both Games Workshop, Beatties and other model shops I made my armies from:

Citadel. Grenadier. Ral Patha. RAFM. and Alternative Armies.


Assuming you were around playing back in the 80's as a spotty youth, what models were you using?
 
tricky cause alot of my figures were kinda hand-me-downs or spares etc.. thus I got alot of Fantasy regiment and AHQ Skaven pre-painted but... mostly Citadel with some grenadier (now with em4) when it came to 40K. cause for WFB I pretty much only had Skaven (with a hand full of some others) so.. not many others I could get which did Rat men at the time. the fact there was only really a couple of places which stocked anything locally was another thing.
 
Yup, all of the above! Our local game store only started out with Ral Partha stock, but over time had more GW boxes. The highlight would be visits to bigger towns which had dedicated model shops selling racks of Citadel and other manufacturers. Picked up a few blisters at Virgin back when they selling minis and RPGs too…
 
Citadel and Scotia Grendel with the odd other random "cool" miniature who's manufacturers are lost to time (well my mind at least).
 
It was nearly all Citadel apart from a bit of Asgard from back when they had a shop. When the Virgin Megastore in Nottingham got a games department in the late 80s it started doing some Grenadier figs, so I picked up one or two, but they were mostly thin and spindly compared to the modern chunky slottabased stuff that was on sale in GW at that point. I've still got their Nyarlathotep model though, that made a great GM controlled random encounter beastie in Rogue Trader games for years.
 
whatever i could get my hands on. i occasionally placed a mail order from the other manufacturers advertising in white dwarf, when i could persuade an adult to write a cheque on my behalf.
 
Our local hobby shop (where I went to find BBC computer games on tape) had the blue carded pre-slotta Citadel range (an early purchase was a lion for some reason) but when we discovered Virgin Records in Edinburgh. That introduced me to the slotta stuff (which somehow hadn't made it out to my home town) and also Grenadier - I was quite taken by some of their undead- but soon enough I was exclusively focused on Citadel.
 
We were very lucky here where I grew up in SW London, there was a great independent shop called Games Unlimited, that sold lots of Roleplay and miniature stuff. They were pretty good at stocking most things, but Citadel and Marauder were streets ahead of Ral Partha and Grenadier then in my opinion (c. 1985-mid 90s)
 
I don't count as I got into warhammer in the 90s, but I did play Hero Quest in primary school so I was aware of the 'hobby' in the 80s so 'technically' I count I guess. All I had access to at the time was mostly Citadel, if you dug deep in the boxes in my local you might find some Ral Partha or Grenadier blisters but that was rare.
It wasn't even a dedicated hobby store, it was the upstairs store room of a sports shop, tiny little place, 8 people in there would be a breach of some health and safety rules these days and it was full of blister packs. Blisters on the walls, blisters in boxes, boxes of blisters piled up in the staff toilet.
For 11 year old me it was a magical experience the first time I went in. I remember that more than my first official GW experience.

Guess I've got a thing for grotty little shops that could game end me by falling boxes of lead treasures.
 
I mainly played in GW stores (late 90s) so was pretty much required to have all citadel armies at that point (although I smuggled a couple of Harlequin minis in). So that's why I enjoy mixing my citadel minis with non-citadel minis now!
 
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