Two books covering tabletop game design, publishing, art, miniature painting, sculpting & casting, and some of the operational aspects of running Games Workshop.

Talking Miniatures is a pair of glossy 500 page A4 softcover books about the early days of Games Workshop/Citadel Miniatures compiled by former White Dwarf magazine editor Robin Dews and former sales director John Stallard. It is a collection of chummy conversations between old colleagues waxing lyrical about their formative years at the company interspersed with artwork, miniatures and printed material from the '80s and '90s.

I picked up my copy because I had some gift cards on their way to expiry.

Book cover with miniature
Talking Miniatures

☠ Contributors & Contents

As categorised by the authors:

There are 17 interviews in total.

☠ Are These Books For You?

Talking Miniatures probably appeals most to wargamers of a certain age who want a nostalgia hit. The unscripted nature of the interviews means they occasionally retread the same ground or go off on a tangent or stop abruptly because a dog needs walked. There is some overlap with the Filmdeg Miniatures video interviews both in material and participants. If you enjoy those and want more I think you are the target reader.

I found the books most enjoyable to read as a series of magazine interviews over a period of weeks.

These books are for those who need to know who wore Catachan boots, why STCs were added to WH40K, how Marauder Miniatures came about, how to get to Stirland from Nottingham, Andy Chambers' three rules of battle report photography, the importance of point systems, why Warhammer was originally called Rune Hammer, how many bloodied fingers it took to stop handing out real swords at Golden Demon, and who named miniatures after actors from the 1960's Batman TV show.

There are a few videos of the authors publicising the books on the Talking Miniatures website.