Fifteen Years: A History of Warlord Games

Warlord Games turns 15 this month, and for this momentous occasion I sat down with the company’s two illustrious founders – John Stallard and Paul Sawyer – to discuss the challenges, highlights, and history of Warlord so far, from its founding in the dim and distant past of 2007, to the present and beyond!

October 2007 saw the birth of Warlord Games, with John and Paul as the proud fathers – but who kicked it all off? Where did the name come from?

John – The idea for Warlord Games came from myself, at the time when Paul and I were let go from Games Workshop. As neither of us were finding the kind of work we wanted to do, I said to Paul “we could do some 28mm plastic Romans”, which I’d been keen to do previously but hadn’t been allowed to – I even had a sprue design sketched out! We decided to go for it, and geared up to produce the first plastic 28mm historical miniatures – but the Perry twins just beat us by a month with their American Civil War plastics. Paul came up with the ‘Warlord’ name, which is reminiscent of 1970s British military comics, and really just ‘does what it says on the tin’. One of my ideas was ‘Dauntless’ – how different it could have been!

Paul – The name of the company was something I came up with. We’d thrown a few ideas around but Warlord Games grabbed us both – it was the name of a comic we both grew up reading avidly and the word ‘Warlord’ gave the feeling of a leader, a big character. The logo design had a very retro look and purposely so – it resonates soundly with those fantastic old comics of our childhood.

With the wheels in motion and the plastic Romans out into the world, the future was looking bright for Warlord Games, but there were definitely challenges along the way!

John  – The biggest challenge was definitely working with Paul! No, I’m joking! But really, it was dealing with the tension of going through the six-month process of designing and producing a set of plastic miniatures (which neither of us had any experience with!) and holding our nerve throughout that period.

Paul – Not having a cast of thousands behind us was definitely a challenge. Games Workshop was a big beast (and still is) whereas Warlord Games was just the two of us – we’d have to do everything ourselves which came as something of a culture shock. If it were not for the many friends and family members who helped us out in those early days it would have been even tougher. A massive thanks to all those who gave us a hand in those formative months!

In late 2008, Warlord acquired Bolt Action, entering the world of WW2 wargaming. Things would never be the same again…

Paul – I knew Paul Hicks and Simon Bargery prior to starting Warlord Games as World War II is my great passion and Paul’s sculpts were some of the best on the market at the time. When Warlord started to make a name for itself Paul and Simon mentioned they might be open to selling the business (nothing to do with pressure for their other halves to get rid of all the boxes, castings, etc cluttering up every room in their respective homes!). Although we’d started out with Plastic Romans and Celts along with their accompanying metal ranges we knew World War II was the most popular wargaming period and that 28mm was, as John would say, ‘God’s own scale’.

That gave us a good range of miniatures but we knew that wasn’t enough and a great game was needed to make it really sell. Another former Games Workshop inmate, Alessio Cavatore was the one person we wanted to write the game for us – he’d not done too badly with Warhammer after all! John had a few ideas for how he wanted the game to play, all of which I heartily agreed with. The only criteria I really wanted to have was a move away from “I-go-you-go” and a more random activation. I’m not sure if it was John or Alessio who came up with the dice idea but it was genius nonetheless and gives the unpredictability I wanted in the game and a move away from one player twiddling their thumbs while the other moved.

With the launch of Bolt Action, the company went from strength to strength and it was all starting to get a bit serious.

John – I realised Warlord was really taking off and getting serious when Bolt Action came along. Previously we had Black Powder and Hail Caesar, written by the wonderful Rick Priestley, which are both fantastic books and are now in their second editions, but we didn’t really have the same ‘presence’ in the marketplace until Bolt Action came out.

Paul – The sea change in the business was when the Bolt Action game and books were released with our mates at Osprey Publishing. A great World War II game with lovely 28mm miniatures is really the ‘Holy Grail’ of wargaming, as Alessio described it when we first started to discuss it. World War II is so ingrained in popular culture that you didn’t need to be a massive history buff to be able to get into it and you ‘need’ fewer figures than you would for massed battle games which again makes it easier to start out with. Oh, and tanks – it has tanks! I say ‘need’ because we all want to keep adding more and more to our favourite armies, don’t we – an army is never really ‘finished’ as John often says!

In those 15 long years, there must have been one single moment that stands out as the most significant:

John – The most significant single moment in Warlord’s history… I suppose for me it’d have to be the first set, the Romans, getting them out and selling them around the world. It proved there was an appetite for plastic 28mm historical figures – to that point it’d all been metal, and people had told us that people wouldn’t buy plastic historical models. I’d been told the same thing at Games Workshop, that people wouldn’t buy plastic fantasy models, nobody likes plastic, and Games Workshop obviously proved them wrong there as well! Just having the discipline and bravery to stick to our guns with the plastics I think was ‘the’ significant moment.

Last but not least… what do the next 15 years hold?

John– More of the same for the next 15 years – getting Warlord products into loads more stores worldwide, supporting even more tournaments, going to as many shows as possible, that sort of thing. Additionally, we’ll look at covering more ‘obscure’ armies for Bolt Action, as well as developing Konflikt ’47 which we’ve just acquired, and no doubt a continuing expansion of the Epic Battles range, given how successful it’s been!

Paul – Building on our success, learning from our experiences and getting our games and miniatures into more gamers’ hands is the dull answer. New versions of our games as well as adding more great games and ranges to our portfolio is highly likely – our recent acquisition of Konflikt ’47 is certainly something we’re very excited about. The success of John’s Epic system brainwave is certainly going to see us doing more periods of history in that scale and style – we’re already well advanced on the next one (although that’s hush-hush for now)! As with Bolt Action, who knows what other ranges or companies we might be able to pick up? We’re always interested in looking at new investments…

And there you have it, from the Big Bosses themselves! Thank you to all of our customers and friends for being part of the Warlord Games story – here’s to the next 15 years!