The Warhammer figures I got today, what they mean to me and there connection in my mind to Video Games.

One of the reasons I collect so many video games is because it takes me back to a certain time frame, a certain period of my life a period in which things were easier, things made more sense and less was expected of you. I guess this makes them a bit of a safety blanket. The same is also true of comics, Horror films and Wrestling. Thats not to say that they are the only things which connect me to my younger self in fact today I went and got a Wimpy's hamburger meal and a large Banana milk shake with my fiancée because I hadn't had a Wimpys in so long I just wanted to. On the way home I went in to a charity shop and saw this Citadel case with a £25 price tag on it. I looked at it opened it, considered it and thought that I didn't really want to spend that much on it (not that I didn't think it wasn't worth that much I just didn't want to spend that at this point in time). I turned and started to walk towards the shops door when I heard the Manageress say to the lady on the till that she was going to mark that big black box down latter that afternoon, so I turned around and asked her what she was going to mark it down to. When she said £15 I instantly said, if you do it now then I will buy it. So this is how I ended up buying it.

For me Games Workshop and Citadel miniatures connect to video games, not because they are both a form of gaming, or because they are both about taking part in another world. Yes they both might be a form of escapism but I connect them together because of school activity day. You see back in my Comprehensive school days once a year we would get to do something ''fun'' once a day. Now schools idea of fun and my idea of fun did not always equal the same thing, you see yes we could go swimming or go to the Cinema and I did the first year, but the problem is that you were there doing these things with the same collection of pricks you had to put up with for every darn school day.
Not only that but you often had to get your parents to pay for these trips, so you had to get your parents to pay for you to go to the cinema , to be surrounded by lots of kids, some of them you liked, some of them you didn't care about and some of them you hated with a passion when you could instead just go with your friends at the weekend and not have to put up with the idiots.  My second year of Comprehensive I decided just to claim that I had a bad stomach and just not bother with the whole thing, to stay off school. There was only one stay in school no money needed option and that was to sit in the hall and watch Videos, one after another all day in silence, videos which would be picked by a teacher and would most likely be some old PG family stuff that you would usually only watch at that age if you were laid on the TV ill and didn't have the will power to change the channel.

When it came to the third year though well a group of us approached a Teacher a mathematics teacher who happened to hold a Doctorate in Physics and who also happened to be a brilliant guy. We asked him if we could possibly use one of the big labs and play Warhammer and Warhammer 4000 games and also if we could set up some of the lab TV's on wheels with our consoles brought in from home. He agreed to let us use a lab and to remain in the lab and work on his paperwork so that we were supervised and the school couldn't complain. So we pushed tables together and had giant multi person battles, while also having street fighter 2 winner stays on tournaments, and bouts of Bomberman and NBA Jam. This didn't cost us a penny and was much more fun than any organised trip. Some might say we could have done this at someone's house but this was much cooler because no one would have a table as big as the one we made by pushing lab tables together or let this many kids in there house. This became an option every year for the rest of the time I was at school and this was the choice I made every year. There were some epic multi way Warhammer battles some with friends who have now moved far away and who I no longer get to see, with multiple armies of figures we had all collected painted and poured all of our time and effort in to.These figures remind me of these times in the exact same way the games do. Even if I never ever play with them, I am going to glue them together, paint them and form my own army again, I already have a few others I have picked up from here and there. I will enjoy getting my troops ready again for the battle that will never be, and with every glued arm and every stroke of the brush I will be saluting my friends from the past and all of the time we spent togther