“Oh good, great. I didn’t think you were here, or I thought I’d missed you. Quick, come over here. Come and look at this!” That was the unexpectedly enthusiastic greeting I was met with when I bumped into Paul Sully at the recent Partizan Wargames Show in Newark. Paul, the proprietor of Tumbling Dice, is a normally sedate fellow, but on this occasion, he appeared to be a bundle of excitement as he drew me away from my videography duties in the Demo Zone and towards the Tumbling Dice trade stand. After a few moments rooting around in his belongings behind his stand he produced a small cardboard box. I watched with interest as he lifted the lid whilst telling me “until I saw your article in the latest issue of Wargames Illustrated I hadn’t looked in this box for thirty-odd years. I forgot I had it, but your article reminded me”. As he spoke Paul lifted up a wonderful model, instantly recognisable as a John Blanche fantasy chariot, pulled by a couple of mutant horses and crewed by a band of equality fantastical figurines. I examined the model in more detail as Paul went on to explain how he had acquired it from Mr Blanche back in the late 1970s while working with Citadel founder Bryan Ansell at Asgard Miniatures, who acted as something of a middleman. John was a cash-strapped taxidermist’s assistant in Nottingham at the time and an exchange of coin for bizarre beast-pulled chariot was made. The aforementioned “article in the last issue of Wargames illustrated” was, in case you missed it, a piece we ran about some figures we had recently uncovered after they were given to Wi by the late Duncan Macfarlane. These were a collection of treasures painted by Games Workshop’s Art Director John Blanche. Paul’s chariot was certainly a creaking piece of Blanche art and very in keeping with those figures we had featured in the magazine. Paul went on to show me a barbarian figure that had been sculpted and painted by another early citadel artist, Nick Bibby. “It was his D&D character,” explained Paul and the barbarian is a great bit of sculpting, especially considering it was whittled out of Milliput in 1979. Nick has since gone on to be a renowned sculptor or fine art wildlife bronzes (often life-size), although his work also shows signs of his early influences in the form of Dragons and other mythological beasts. Ex Citadel sculpter Nick Bibby at work on a lifesize Kodiak Brown Bear for Bwon University Rhode Island Nick Bibby’s Firedrake Dragon It’s always a special pleasure when an article we publish in Wargames Illustrated influences our readers. It's often that
