Dr. Matt Lee (mattl)

I figured I needed more tabletop wargaming content on my website, so here it is.

Like many people in the hobby, I rarely get time to play games. Most of my hobby time is divided between collecting and painting.

I started collecting Citadel Miniatures back in the early 1990s, with no real concept of what Warhammer Fantasy Battle or Warhammer 40,000 were. I was a kid with very little money and most of the miniatures I got back then were from occasional trips to Games Workshop in Plymouth and Torquay (RIP) and I'd pick up the occasional copy of White Dwarf.

I had a box of Space Marines, a box of Space Dwarfs and a few metal dwarf models for Warhammer Fantasy. I also had a box of plastic dwarfs but I vaguely remember accidentally stepping on a few of those and breaking them sometime around 1995.

I "played" a few games of Warhammer 40,000 2nd edition when that was a hot new thing. I say "played" because it was really just Games Workshop staff members telling me what I should do, when to roll, what the dice rolls meant, etc.

By the late 90s, I'd basically forgotten about Warhammer, put the models I had away and wouldn't look at them again for a few years. But I lived close to a Games Workshop store and would look in the window and see what was going on. Encouraged by a friend's mother I purchased some Games Workshop shares as there was much excitement about their new Lord of the Rings game. I'll admit I saw the first two movies, wasn't especially interested in the game or the films and rarely thought about wargaming.

Act 2

About 10 years later, in the late 2000s I was now living in the US, working in an office and would occasionally go to a nearby science fiction bookstore that had some Games Workshop products. I also listened to a lot of podcasts around this era.

I decided to give Warhammer another go and picked up a copy of Battle for Skull Pass, the starter set for 7th Edition Warhammer Fantasy Battles. Mostly because it had dwarfs in it, but also my friend and colleague Donald expressed some interest in playing too. Our boss John brought in a few Battle Masters miniatures and a few issues of White Dwarf and gave them to me. This was now the start of something.

Over the next few years I really poured a lot of my time, money and energy into miniature wargaming.

Warhammer Fantasy 8th Edition came out, and I remember nobody else showing up to the local game store to pick up a copy. Warhammer Fantasy was dying.

Along the way I heard about a new company in the UK called Mantic Games that was selling big boxes of elves and undead for not a lot of money. I ordered some.

Then Mantic started making dwarfs and I bought a lot of those. Over the next 8 or so years I was collecting a lot of Mantic models. Every time Mantic did a Kickstarter, I would sign up and a few months later a huge box of models would arrive. I was also really interested in what were now known as "Specialist Games" and had collected a few bits for some of those games too.

For a while it was awesome. For a while I was probably playing the most games of Kings of War of anyone on earth. Donald and I would play a lot after work but in the office. We wanted to use all our Battle for Skull Pass models in Kings of War, so I started politely emailing the CEO at Mantic and begging him to send us beta army lists and things.

Over time this became more of a working relationship. I began offering my knowledge of the internet and the web to Mantic, and was involved in various things for them over the next decade or so. In return they'd send me yet more plastic models. It was a great deal and a great time. In recent years they hired full time technical staff working on things like the excellent Mantic Companion and my involvement has stopped.

Some things changed, I had co-written and directed a monkey movie and I was moving from New England down to Austin, TX. I packed up all my miniatures and headed off to Austin to play with the miniatures and edit the monkey movie.

Austin was an interesting time. I was there for a year, almost exactly. Between Dragon's Lair in North Austin and the Games Workshop store in South Austin, I was pretty busy. By now Warhammer Fantasy had gone, replaced by Age of Sigmar, but I didn't care... I was playing Kings of War somewhat regularly. I was even making some progress editing my movie. Some of the pile of boxes of models I'd bought were being finally dusted off and glued together. All this while working from home in a new city, but it was not to last.

Reluctantly, I gave away virtually my entire collection of miniatures to various people. I started by showing up to Dragon's Lair and giving boxes of Mantic models to various people who played Kings of War there. I gave more stuff to people I knew from the local Games Workshop store too. In the end I kept very little... really just my original stuff from the early 90s.

Act 3

With a much lighter collection I arrived back in New England, and really had no interest in any kind of wargaming but I kept in touch with a few people from back then, and now lived in the neighborhood of the place I'd played Warhammer Fantasy. My local area eventually got an official Warhammer store as they're now known.

My interest was rekindled when the Indomitus set for Warhammer 40,000 was released during the pandemic. Like many people, the pandemic has not been an easy time, I've lost a lot of people who were close to me, been forced to move several times as a result and things have been largely pretty awful with some big highlights along the way.

I managed to pick up a copy of Indomitus, but had no interest in painting or playing with Space Marines or Necrons.

And then it happened.

Games Workshop announced that Squats/Space Dwarfs were back... in Necromunda.

Okay, Necromunda I could handle I guess... it was a Specialist Game and Games Workshop had started bringing those back again. I had already picked up Blood Bowl and a dwarf team for it, so it wouldn't hurt to pick up Necromunda and do the same, right?

Necromunda has a few squats and even some plastic infantry and vehicles these days, but the real turning point of late has been their reintroduction to Warhammer 40,000 as the Leagues of Votann. I have collected all of the plastic kits released for this new imagining of the space dwarfs, and in a rare moment for myself, they're even painted!

This pretty much brings me to 2025.

I have a lot of miniatures, including almost a fully painted army.

I don't play really any games of anything and my own health isn't doing great these days, but I still enjoy all the weird little aspects of wargaming. All the individuals, the history, the miniatures, the weird decisions and the birth of the modern miniature wargaming market where companies that aren't Games Workshop seem to do pretty well too.

These days I'm mostly a collector of old Citadel miniatures, an avid reader of forums, and looking forward to maybe playing with my space dwarfs someday, although many people are quick to tell me that Warhammer 40,000 is too complicated to really enjoy it and I should be playing Kill Team and Spearhead games instead of trying to collect big armies anymore.

I have a copy of Battle for Skull Pass in my office, alongside a number of other games I've picked up along the way like Dark Future too.

I have a reasonable sized force of painted models for the Middle Earth Strategy Battle Game which is the mouthful of words they use to describe that Lord of the Rings game I had no interest in at the time. I even played a proper game of it! I've still not seen more of the Lord of the Rings models and largely don't care much for the lore of the games, instead my love is for the miniatures and the lore of the companies and individuals that made them.

Someday I hope to be in a place where I can regularly play the games I want to play in the way I want to play them: huge multi based armies of Kings of War dwarfs, a game of Warhammer 40,000 that starts with a Battlefleet Gothic game, progresses through Inquisitor, a game of 40K and then maybe some Kill Team, Necromunda and Epic.

Until then, I'll carry on collecting and doing my own thing.