Irecall the three of us sat down on the steps as we waited in the lunch queue, talking excitedly about rules and games. I was invited round to take part in a battle at the post office in Bracebridge where Richard’s family lived and where his father was postmaster. The house was a turn-of-the-century terrace affair. Richard’s bedroom window looked directly over the street. Buses would stop right in front of our wargame. Top-deck passengers gawped at the sight of two lads pushing hundreds of Airfix American Civil War figures over a piece of eight-by-four chipboard.
Richard Halliwell and I would go on to become lifelong friends and collaborators, starting with teenage wargaming projects and, later, as fellow designers at Games Workshop. I don’t remember who won that first game played out with Donald Featherstone’s rules and unpainted plastic figures glued onto strips of thin card, but I bet it wasn’t me. I soon came to know that Hal – as Richard became
