As many of you know, or those that have read my bio, I once worked for Games Workshop. I started out as a Mail Order Troll, moving up to the design studio and ended up working under Paul ‘Fat Bloke’ Sawyer on White Dwarf Magazine; achieving a dream I had ever since picking up White Dwarf 98 when I was wee nipper.

My time at Games Workshop had its share of triumphs and failures, but I look at it as a golden era of gaming for me. I got to live the dream, got to talk about the hobby and did my upmost to take away the mysteries of the hobby element of said hobby. I employed an every mans approach to toy solider painting and terrain building. I reasoned if I, the least skilled of them all, could paint toy soldiers and build terrain, then anyone can. Inspire via the joy the hobby and games gave me.

Sadly, like all good things my time came to an end. Before this end though I had moved to the USA and was picked up by the Games Workshop US, which lead to work on the website and eventually on White Dwarf USA. This lead to my doom, and boy, was it mighty.

After three months of working on the magazine I was let go from the US version for daring to put my family, who were all sick and I collapsed from exhaustion looking after them, before the company interests – ie flubbing a deadline. If you worked for Games Workshop during that time, you knew your employment was largely on the whims of your manager mood, and my manager, the Editor of White Dwarf US was certainly a rare one.

Up to that moment I had always joked they would have to carry me out of Games Workshop feet first, implying I will leave the company I loved when I died; well I was carried out feet first, on the back of stretcher as my body shut down and I blacked out… Not good.

This certainly wasn’t the best days for me. This event kicked off a spiral that took me away from gaming and really messed with my headspace. The thing that gave me joy since I was a child, now gave me pain instead and I drifted away from the scene. I had lost a part of me.

Fast forward almost two decades.

Then a strange thing started to happen. I started to be contacted by the kids, now grown adults, who read my work in White Dwarf, thanking me for getting them into the hobby, for sharing the joy I had. Because of me they had become life time war gamers (my apologies). My articles made a huge difference and that has helped me reconcile my feelings about Games Workshop and war gaming in general.

Sadly, I am at the point I can’t paint a toy soldier, I never was that good to begin with, and my eyes are just the worse now, but it does feel good knowing I made a bit of a difference lifting fellow gamers up. Thank you to everyone who contacted me, who found me at a convention and said a kind word about my Games Workshop past, it all helped.

This illustration, Clash of Worlds, my latest cartoon, links together my past and present in a humorous play on Let’s Hunt Monstsa! Mr. Button jumping between realms. The choice of a Space Marine, in Ultramarine colors just felt right, being one of the few Adeptus Astartes who might not shoot the unknown on sight, and it all came together in my own unique drawing style. I know it isn’t that grimdark, even with a servo skull thrown in, but it makes me smile.

Thank you all for your support. I am here in this good place because of you, and that makes you all mighty Stonkers!

Adventures ahead!