Cult Of Games XLBS: What Art Inspires Our Wargaming?
November 23, 2025 by crew
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Happy Sunday Backstagers, CoGs and OTTers!
happy sunday
Tube station scenarios?
Doctor Who and the Web of Fear – Patrick Troughton and a prototype version of UNIT against the Yeti.
An American Werewolf in London chasing someone through the station.
Maybe some UK based superheroes fighting the Mole Man while he’s on holiday – did Heroclix do Captain Britain?
Of course, the football hooligans could be having a ruck in there on their way to a match at Chelsea or West Ham.
Nice topic. I live the isandlwana painting even though it’s inaccurate it evokes a last stand very well and there’s so much going on. The little group of chaps fighting back to back staring out at the unseen enemy who are fast approaching. The Rorkes Drift painting shows Chaplin Smith handing out ammo not Dalton. Smith gets forgotten because he wasn’t in the film. Went around telling the men off for swearing.
The Airfix artist that James May interviewed was Roy Cross who did the aircraft, cars and ships, but he didn’t like doing figures, so Brian Knight did the boxes for the soldier sets.
The one that did it for me and always will is the old hammer art of the imperial guard marching in line with titans behind. I think it’s a necromunda regiment and was the box art for the original space marine era epic imperial guard box. Saw it one dreary day in Cardiff games workshop when it had just opened and that’s it I was hooked on a feeling. The old man o war art comes close but yes the art from.GW around this period, in my opinion, drew you in. The art for the alien RPG and games like twilight imperium or star wars is great and something special and warcradel do a great job but those golden GW years post heroquest and third edition warhammer 40,000 and Space Marine and titan legions – what memories are made of 👍
Good episode and a great topic, lovely GBs, well done all. You are absolutely right in that it is so often a piece of art that inspires us and helps to picture the world that our games inhabit. I’ll go for Angus McBride who I first saw in historical Osprey Men at Arms titles like Arthur and the Anglo Saxon Wars but also the amazing stuff he did for MERP, basically inventing what Middle Earth Orcs should look like and “heavily inspiring” any number of ranges over the years, right up to the new 10mm stuff from WA. You’ve already mentioned Adrian Smith who I’ll always have first in my list. I’m lucky enough to own some of the original concept and graphic novel work he did for Target. I guess we can trace some of his inspiration back to Frazetta so let’s go with him instead, instant world builder as his ‘Atlantis’ showed. Finally something more up to date and Jakub Rozalski, he of Scythe and werewolves fame. I’m definitely doing the retreat from Moscow like this!
Happy Sunday
02:30 “Help me Stepbrother”? oO Oh my!
08:55 IIRC the original Red Rocket gas station was not made by Modiphius but a different company and just “packed in”.
25:00 build a ruined London with a bazzillion tons of resin!
31:00 deep water toilets?
57:00 Hiding badgers in beards? Odd concept.
1:17:25 BOT WAR! BOT WAR! BOT WAR! BOT WAR! BOT WAR! BOT WAR! BOT WAR! @avernos so many mentions of bots and no war?! BOT WAR! BOT WAR! BOT WAR!
1:28:00 Very grounded indeed!
Did any art do anything for me? I feel if anything then it’s all the stuff in the 2nd editon Ork Kodex. That’s just what an orc is to me in a scifi setting. But also a lot of Ralph McQuarrie’s art has made me see things in different lights.
Now back to procrastination and not doing anything. There is just too much to do!
From a more modern historical perspective I have always found the work of Terence Cuneo inspiring, both in terms of painting and playing games around the subject matter. I have been very fortunate to have seen close up a number of his works in our Corps officers mess and also some of his railway ones at the National Railway Museum and his attention to detail is amazing. You can also while away an hour or two trying to find his mice but I’m not sure you could say that is inspiring in a burrows and badgers context.
The one thing that always surprises with his paintings is the sheer size and scale of them. You feel like you can walk into some of them.
Another recent discovery was the Waterloo painting in the rotunda next to the Lions mound at Waterloo that is so immersive. I don’t remember who painted it but it is well worth a visit if you’re ever going to see the battlefield.