Dice Men: The Origin Story of Games Workshop

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The 103 third parties who use cookies on this service do so for their purposes of displaying and measuring personalized ads, generating audience insights, and developing and improving products. That inflection point comes in the form of Citadel Miniatures, and its physical manifestation is in the person of Bryan Ansell. Beautifully illustrated and with plenty of voices in addition to the author's, this is a must for any fan of role-playing games and the FF books.

We began thinking of ways to be more hands-off in the day-to-day running of our company but without giving up control,” says Livingstone, clearly anticipating the best of both worlds, but the agreement that puts Ansell in charge also includes handing him a majority of the company within four years, so the “without giving up control” part doesn’t last long. My thanks to to Ian and Steve for sharing their memories; I’m now eagerly awaiting the followup just announced covering the Fighting Fantasy years. This third party is Asgard Miniatures, Bryan Ansell’s original company, an established manufacturer based in Nottingham – and that location foreshadows events to come.Some of that just isn’t in the scope of this book; Livingstone’s last link with GW is severed in 1991, before even the second edition of 40k, let alone such far-off ventures as GW becoming truly multinational or the Lord of the Rings licence or Age of Sigmar or any of that. The book has many pictures and artworks, but I was really hoping to know more about Warhammer 40k, how they came up with this universe, etc. Pure nostalgia, although I suspect that if you aren't "of a certain age" where the names and games and atmosphere of this book are directly relevant to your life then you will find this less than exciting. Initially, it was a distributor for the role-playing games from the US, principally Dungeons and Dragons and Runequest.

I don’t think this will have particularly wide appeal, but then I’m also not sure it was really intended to. Other sections are like this too; often critical early figures appear in the narrative, disappear, re-appear, and then are finally introduced properly in a later chapter which deals with the particular subject they’re most relevant to.There are lots of pictures and topics covered such as Citadel Miniatures and the start of Warhammer which I’ve never read before. Make your own decision but I think there are a lot of people who are going to enjoy this, overall I did. The thing that jumps off the page with every mention of his name is his single-mindedness and clarity of vision.

They’re not of the right social class for it, but the phrase that keeps coming back to me to describe the two remaining Dice Men is “gentleman amateurs. All this is hinted at, but it goes largely unexplored – it comes up whenever Ansell’s latest resignation is mentioned, because it’s what every one of those resignation power plays is about, but Livingstone just kind of shrugs it off. It’s a nice touch, and it highlights just how many people’s contributions served to make something special out of humble beginnings. That first iteration of GW is very different to the company it would later become, but the seeds of it all are sown during a whirlwind decade that established Livingstone and Jackson as the foremost names in British tabletop fantasy thanks to their canny decision making, incredible work ethic, and commitment to pursuing opportunities wherever they might lead.

Nevertheless, the book still gives an impression of faint surprise at how things went, as if events just overtook Livingstone and Jackson and the company was swept out from under their feet.