Miniatures devotees are loyal to their hobby and buy quantities of figures, but this segment of gaming has a smaller fan base than computer or board wargames. The miniatures are almost universally made of metal.

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So what would possess two (mostly) sane people to create a new company manufacturing plastic historical miniatures—and to kick off their line with figures based on warfare of the Ancient World, rather than more popular fields like World War II?

John Stallard and Paul Sawyer, founders of Warlord Games, recently answered those and other questions in an exclusive interview with ArmchairGeneral.com. Their comments were collaborative and so frequently appear in third person below.

ARMCHAIR GENERAL.COM: Tell me about your backgrounds in the hobby game industry. I understand both of you worked for Games Workshop at one time or another?

Between the two of us we have 40 years experience at Games Workshop and many more as gamers. John joined Citadel Miniatures over 25 years ago, straight out of college.

John worked in sales, ultimately opening dozens of stores in the UK that stocked only Games Workshop products, where newcomers to the hobby could learn the games in store before buying anything at all. He also ran the American GW business before returning to Nottingham.

Paul saw working for a game company as a natural progression of his graphic design career, but his career path was to take him a different direction altogether. Having dabbled in such diverse departments as mail order and casting, he cut his teeth on producing the Citadel Journal, a slightly irreverent periodical that allowed emerging talent, painters, rules writers and customers to show the Games Workshop community what they could do.

He’s best known for his spell as White Dwarf editor, where he added a touch (some would say more) of cheekiness and laddishness that seems to be fondly remembered among many of Warlord’s fans. He was nicknamed "Fat Bloke," from a popular comedy series of the time, and he played up his love of a bacon butties (that’s bacon sandwiches to most other folk).

What all those years at GW meant was that we learned about quality. We know about sculpting, painting, writing and what it takes to print good-looking product, and we learnt that only the highest level of customer service will do, at all levels. We still cheer GW on as they continue their drive to be the best in the world at fantasy gaming.

ACG: Why historicals? Why Romans and Celts in particular?

The first part of the question can be answered easily but in two parts. We both share a passion for history—or more accurately military history. Whilst we’d worked with GW’s futuristic and fantasy worlds for most of our working lives, we both yearned to work with historicals. Secondly, we know that, despite it being fashionable for the naysayers to intimate otherwise, Games Workshop produce the finest miniatures and provide the hobby with a great influx of new gamers. They’re the biggest and the best, so why would we want to fight them on their own ground—fantasy and science fiction? No, historicals is where our hearts are and that’s where we’re cutting our teeth.

When we left GW we were both keen to carry on in the wargaming business, and it wasn’t a hard decision to make to set up on our own and make the world’s finest historical models. What could possibly go wrong?

We chose Romans because both of us are big Roman fans, and secondly, we thought that the Roman war machine was the closest thing commercially to Space Marines! Everyone loves a Roman!

So we formed a limited company and thought about a name. Paul came up with Warlord—short and to the point. It is also the name of a boys’ comic that was obligatory reading for British boys in the 1970s, set in World War II where all foreigners are clearly evil (except Americans who were our gallant allies) and heroic Tommy Atkins defeated the beastly Hun every week. It was all good stuff then. Not sure we would get away with it now, mind …

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