Ally is well known on Twitter as @BalooGames and is, nowadays, a fan of TooFatLardies games.
But that wasn’t always the case!
No, our friendly bear of a guest today indeed started with contests of large scale toy soldiers with his father on the carpet and in the garden, and those games were of a historical bent.
But, as he grew older and headed off to school, his first experience of ‘proper’ wargaming came about courtesy of the leviathan that is Games Workshop in the form of 40K, Warhammer Fantasy Battles, Epic and Man’o’War.
It was a visit to the Partizan show a few years ago that became his Damascene moment, as he was persuaded to participate in the Siege of Portsmouth game staged by Mark Backhouse and Sidney Roundwood – using 2mm miniatures, a far cry from his heroic scale Space Marines and Orcs!
So our guest has been on an interesting and convoluted journey into the hobby, which for him is as much about collecting and painting as it is about playing the games, when Chain of Command and Sharp Practice feature high on the list of likely choices, alongside his beloved Old/Middle-hammer games with greenskins.
A former soldier who served a tour in Afghanistan and now a police officer, Ally is very open about his experiences and the mental health issues surrounding them, for which the many aspects of the hobby provide an effective salve.
So sit back and enjoy my chat with this charming, witty and talented stalwart of the hobby.
Henry
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