Naturally, the unremarked-upon Naismith quote is followed by a lengthy discussion of the Fighting Fantasy plastic range, a set of 54mm miniatures which was a complete flop and merits attention only as a point of historical curiosity as Citadel’s first plastic range – their contribution seems to have consisted of Citadel learning what not to do. I was intrigued enough by the premise to fund it and you can find my name in the back in the list of supporters, which feels like a disclosure I should make at the start of a review like this. From the launch of Dungeons and Dragons from the back of a van, to creating the Fighting Fantasy series, co-founders Ian Livingstone and Steve Jackson tell their remarkable story for the first time. 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. Se echa de menos que no se detallen más los orígenes y la historia de algunos de los títulos esenciales de la compañía.

It's a wonderfully nostalgic piece of work, part memoir, part full-colour scrapbook, told with infectious enthusiasm and delivered with the pacing you would expect from an international best-selling author. The first is to discuss what is in this book, what’s said and what story it’s telling, and the second is to discuss what isn’t said and what story it doesn’t tell. 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. Great run through of a company close to my heart, mostly covering a time period before I was a gamer myself, and told with some excellent humour from life starting to build the brand we know today. For fans of the "good old days" of GW, role-playing, war-gaming, and board games, this book is a treat; written by two of the three GW founders, Ian Livingstone and Steve Jackson, we're given an inside (if not overly detailed) look at GW's humble beginning as a board game distributor, to the fateful meeting with Gary Gygax, to the development of the Warhammer games.A great collection of stories about the different trials and tribulations that a group of friends went through as they struggled to grow their new business, and on more than one occasion, struggled to get a roof over their head not just for the business, but for themselves as well! 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. To an extent it’s understandable that this period of control slowly unraveling isn’t the key focus, but you do wish there was a bit more here; 1987 is the last year for which there’s any real detail given, but it would be nice to have a bit more on these latter stages, and especially the release of Rogue Trader which gets the most passing of mentions. 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.

You haven’t given any thought to finding anyone who could succeed him, and he knows that too, and your plan for how to keep him on side when he resigns the third time is to promise you’ll let him run the company, which is what he wanted to begin with. This third song is the same as the first, but the reward for Bryan is even more dramatic; he first becomes part of a joint operating board, then group managing director.This is also a business environment alien to the modern age with no e-mail or IMs; for most of the time Ansell in Nottingham is going to be running things independently from Livingstone and Jackson in London and so by necessity he is going to be out of sight – and probably out of mind – for long stretches. In the end they go with Ansell who wants it so badly and who does seem to have a bit of a talent for making money and so now he’s the group managing director. Dice Men is the fascinating, never-before-told story of an iconic company which changed the world of tabletop gaming for ever. Probably so too would its founders, Ian Livingstone and Steve Jackson (and the oft-forgotten John Peake, though he plays a fifth-Beatle role in this story, departing the stage very early).