Throwback – Lead Belt Nottingham 2010 – Day 2

For the first full day in Nottingham we had the two newcomers on the miniature market on our schedule, Warlord Games and Mantic Games.

Warlord was already in the Lenton Business Centre where they sit until today. But back in the day, as a young and small company, they only rented single offices that were spread across the centre and not the whole wing and own brick & mortar store like today.

The range was already quite broad in terms of historical coverage, but far from the variety of plastic kits as today. The Early Imperial Romans and some Black Powder kits were already available and the first German soldiers for Bolt Action.

It was very interesting to see behind the scenes and get a tour of the production. This was the first time, we had seen spin casting of metal miniatures upclose (I had seen partial production 1999 with the in-store casts at Warhammer World) and commented. Including manufacturing of the mould with masters, casting itself and later order picking.

It was great browsing through the warehouse and for me picking up a special, a Wehrmacht-Vampire for my pulp-world war 2 army.

John Stallard (Founder of Warlord Games) and Paul Sawyer (Co-Founder) were busy that day, so we had a second meeting for the next day. But our time was well used, with the tour through the production and warehouse. And I'd say it was the base for the long relationship that works till today and one of the reasons, why I covered so many Bolt Action kits on here and in the past.

While we were at Warlords, Lukas and Andre stayed at Warhammer World for another round. We picked them up, had a quick lunch and headed over to Mantic Towers, for our next meeting in the early afternoon.

Similar to Warlord, Mantic was much smaller back in the day. Renting two apartment studios quite central at what they called "Mantic Towers", we met up with Ronnie Renton (Founder of Mantic Games and ex-Games Workshop) and Alessio Cavatore (Riverhorse Games, freelance rules writer and another former GW studio employee) to give Kings of War a try. I brought along the German White Dwarf #29 (UK #221, May 1998), as it covered Ronnie participating in a very memorable battle report of 48.000 points. He was quite entertain for the throwback (quote: "Oh boy, that was more than 10 years, some barber decissions and two kids ago").

Alessio recently left Games Workshop around 2010. He worked on the Lord of the Rings ruleset and was approached by Mantic to develop a mass-combat system, that would be more capable of competitive gaming and support the new range of fantasy miniatures. So Kings of War was created, covering multi-bases and a fast pace for a game of this size. It was very enjoyable and as Ronnie explained to us later, was the first demo given in this new rule set.

While in the studio, we had the opportunity to see some 3-ups, as well as units in preparation (in this case the orks, including the very early mock-up of the boar riders). But the really great undead core units were already in preparation.

As Ronnie was former director of Games Workshop UK and had quite the dwarf army, it was no surprise to find some interesting models on his desk, like the old bugmans cart. It was a great afternoon that lasted into the evening, we had some beverages and curry together, and talked about our first impressions of Kings of War.

Our way back wasn't that far, only half a kilometer. We were tempted to go for some more drinks at the canal, but tomorrow was another day.