Toy soldiers

They spend their spare time painting and playing with orcs, elves and dreadnoughts. Jack McKeown meets the grown men who can’t get enough of fantasy war games

Outside the Games Workshop in Dundee city centre the sun is beating down and pedestrians hurry past, oblivious to the drama unfolding indoors.

Here, in the cool interior, all eyes are fixed on the shop’s two giant boards. On one, gamers are in the middle of an intense battle. Breaths are held. Victories and defeats are celebrated and lamented. Kenny Loggins’ hit song Danger Zone from Top Gun plays in the background.

At the next table a much quieter group sits, shoulders hunched, painting their models with slow and painstaking attention to detail.

Among them is Lewis Whyte from Broughty Ferry. The 20-year old works at Marks & Spencer in Dundee and is about to start the second year of his biological chemistry course at Dundee University.

When he’s not working or studying, his life revolves around Warhammer 40,000, a strategy battle game set many centuries in the future. He’s been playing it for a year and it consumes every spare moment.

“I would say I spend at least two or three hours a day on it, playing games or painting my models,” he says.

“That doesn’t count battle reports I read in bed or games I watch online.”

If this strikes you as a rather solitary pursuit, don’t be taken in by the stereotypical view of the “geeky” gamer.

Lewis is also a member of Dundee Wargames Club, which meets every Thursday night at No. 1 Bar, and does all the things regular grown-ups get up to.

“We play games, have a few drinks and talk,” he says.

There are three main games in the Games Workshop stable: Warhammer 40,000, which is set in the distant future and involves weaponry straight from the sci-fi genre; Warhammer: Age of Sigmar, a fantasy game involving orcs, elves, dwarves, dragons and magic; and The Hobbit, which offers a similar experience but with characters and units drawn from Tolkien’s masterpiece.

Each piece in the game has a particular points value, he explains. A basic orc might be between four and seven points, while a powerful character like an Imperial Knight is worth 400 points.

Games are played to a particular points value. “A small game would be 500 points and take 30-45 minutes to play,” Lewis says. “Most games are around 1,500-2,000 points and take a couple of hours.

“Sometimes there are apocalypse games, which are 10,000 points and played on a board that’s around 18ft long. They can go on all day.”

Players pick their own armies and can choose to have a small amount of very powerful units or a much larger number of weaker units that aim to overwhelm the enemy.

Lewis’s Warhammer 40,000 collection stretches to around 170 models and has a value of £1,100.

Models are made of plastic or resin and come unassembled and plain. Painting them is something that’s taken very seriously – the Games Workshop’s magazine, White Dwarf, has sections devoted to the best models.

“Painting is my favourite part of it,” Lewis says. “I would say around 80% of my time is spent painting and 20% playing. I have a rule that if it’s not painted, I won’t play with it so that keeps me motivated.”

Warhammer has swept almost all other hobbies from Lewis’s life. “I used to be a video gamer but I hardly play at all now. Videogames and Netflix have to fit in around war gaming.”

And he insists it’s the relationships that keep him coming back for more: “There’s a social contract between the players. If I play video games online with headphones on, the people you’re playing are swearing at you and insulting you.

“With war gaming, there’s a mutual respect. In fact, some competitions award points for sportsmanship and being nice to your fellow players.

“If you do well at a videogame you might unlock an achievement but that’s not something physical. With this hobby I have an entire display cabinet full of models.”