Mail Order Trolls

Buying Citadel miniatures before the internet.

Back in the day you could order every individual metal miniature, component or plastic sprue via Games Workshop's mail order operation. This was a great but flawed service.

Lacking a local games store I relied on postal forms and my dad's willingness to exchange pocket money for a cheque. Pocket money was a limited resource, Citadel miniatures were expensive, and carriage each way had to be taken into consideration. Typically, you filled in a form with all the part number, quantities, with limited space for a description. I would intensively study the catalogues or the back of White Dwarf issues to make the most of my pounds. Some of the component numbers lacked granularity so there was a bit of pot-luck involved.

Pretty much every order was delivered wrong in some, usually minor, way. Frequently the promised plastic components that were supposed to come with the metal miniatures were missing. If the order was egregiously wrong I would complain and the employees were always helpful, but often it wasn't worth it and I made do with what arrived, supplemented by the bits box.

Anyway, that's how I ended up with a Chaos Space Marine Terminator with Lightning Claws.