Back to ... something different?

First introduced to The Hobbit in my final year at junior school (1973 - so aged 10), I was transfixed.

Myself and my brother (4 years younger) quickly began creating paper dwarves, elves, men and goblins, cutting them out and having them mounted on tabs (who'd have thought this would become a wargaming 'thing' all these years later?). We played with them on the rug on our bedroom floor.

Fast forward, through many years of playing with fantasy figures, and then the serious business of roleplay games in the late 70s, early 80s, and so on... Not an unfamiliar story, I'm sure.

Amongst all the current world turmoil and turbulence, I've been feeling a bit disillusioned with historical gaming, for some reason. I've been thinking it's all a bit dark somehow to be playing at war, and having model humans killing each other on our tabletops.

As I completed the unit of successor phalangites shown in my previous post, I just felt washed out with it all.

In an idle moment at the weekend, I opened a box... a box or two in fact... of figures that hadn't seen the light of day for decades.
And somehow my heart leapt.

A big decision is called for.

Perhaps it's the promise that the impending publication of the Oathmark rules brings.

Whatever has got in to me, I've decided...
After decades of involvement in the historical hobby, I have decided to sell it all off, and concentrate on fantasy wargaming, set in my version of Middle Earth. Not the spikey, massive-weaponed fantasy world that many seem to portray, but a sort of magical dark aged world, akin to that spawned in my imagination by The Hobbit.

Here are some of the fantasy figures I discovered as I opened those magical boxes on my coffee table...

Everything else must go.

Every historical figure you see on this blog is now for sale.

It's a new game of toy soldiers, and one with which somehow, morally I feel more comfortable. It's like coming home... full circle.