For the past year Britons have been told to stay home and save lives but while tabletop gamers have been stuck at home they have been busy fighting bloodthirsty wars from the safety of their bedroom or garden shed. Sales at Games Workshop, which sells fantasy miniatures and toy soldiers, soared by a quarter at the end of last year as fans escaped the grim reality of 2020 by losing themselves in its games, including its bestselling space fantasy game Warhammer 40,000 – or 40K as it is usually known. Given the human misery created by the pandemic the appeal of “the grim darkness of the 41st millennium” where “there is only war” can be hard to see. But Warhammer counts its fans in millions. Its Warhammer community webpage has 4.7 million users, its YouTube page has 400,000 followers and there are 280,000 on Instagram. Nonetheless Kevin Rountree, Games Workshop’s chief executive, said there had been a “step change” in demand over recent months for the figures and weaponry players used to build their armies. The company sold nearly £187m of games, figurines and paints in the six months to the end of November, up £38m on the year before, and profits were up more than 50% to £92m. Rountree described it as a “cracking performance”. The devotion felt by Games Workshop’s fanbase is likened to the cult following enjoyed by the likes of Lego, which has also enjoyed a sales boost as children and adults look for ways to entertain themselves at home during lockdowns. Games Workshop, however, is seen to attract an older, more male following – with deep pockets. Intricate models can cost about £100 while tiny pots of paint, with names such as “plaguebearer flesh”, can cost more than a tenner. Over the past five years the Nottingham-based company has become a stock market sensation as investors woke up to the might of the Warhammer games franchise. Five years ago the shares were worth about £5, but today they change hands for more than £100 as the growing army of hobbyists pick up their paintbrushes. The company is now valued at £3.6bn – or £1bn more than Marks & Spencer. Games Workshop shuns publicity but on its website 50-year-old Rountree, who has worked for with the company for more than 20 years, says its mission is simple: “We make the best fantasy miniatures in the world and sell them globally at a profit. We intend to do this forever.” The company was started more than 40 years ago by three school friends: John Peake, Ian Livingstone and Steve Jackson. The gaming fanatics shared a flat in west London where they started out selling handmade, classic wooden games before going on to open stores. After a management buyout in the 1990s the company listed on the stock exchange in 1994. The business is also clear, that despite running 529 stores, it is first and foremost a manufacturer. The shops, it says, are a recruiting ground for people with “our particular hobby gene”. Its factory in Lenton, Nottingham, pumps out tens of million of miniatures a year with the stores, which are often run by a single employee, used to show customers “how to engage with our hobby of collecting, painting and playing with our miniatures and games”. Games Workshop’s success during the pandemic, despite the turmoil caused by on-and-off store closures, has seen it repay the taxpayer support extended in the early days of the crisis. With its shops closed for long periods the company’s online sales were up 87%. “People have a lot more time on their hands and these models take a lot to time to do well,” says GlobalData retail analyst Zoe Mills, who points to high levels of engagement on Warhammer’s social media channels where fans share pictures of their painted miniatures. “In many ways Games Workshop is unique; there isn’t really another brand out there that offers the same sort of experience.” The huge lifestyle changes brought about by the pandemic have seen lots of Britons take up new and old hobbies, from baking to crafting to learning a language. “Warhammer is ultimately just another sort of hobby, although some people might see it as a more serious thing than that,” said Mills. “People are spending more time away from their phones and because are we not going into offices some people have got some extra time in the evenings that they don’t necessarily want to spend in front of the television.” Game makers rake in £3.6bn With the nation on lockdown for much of the last year the games sector received a pandemic boost as bored Britain stumped up a record £4bn-plus to keep entertained. The amount spent on digital gaming, from casual mobile phone gamers to hardcore players, hit £3.6bn last year. More than the amount spent by the record number of subscribers to services such as Netflix and Amazon, and triple the size of the UK music streaming market. Many gamers had also been conserving their cash for the arrival of new consoles from Sony and Xbox, which launched late last year and helped the spend on physical video games surge to £600m. By far and away the biggest selling game of last year was FIFA 21, at 2.2m copies, well ahead of second-placed Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War, which sold at 1.4m, according to the Entertainment Retailers Association. The other titles in the top five were by Grand Theft Auto V, FIFA 20 and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare. Beyond the predominantly male-skewed list of the biggest titles there was also big demand for family fare, with cutesy Animal Crossing: New Horizons, where players become animal villagers to make an island paradise, proving a surprise hit. It ended the year as the UK’s sixth biggest-selling game. Sales of board games and jigsaw puzzles have also soared as traditional pursuits made a comeback to while away hours stuck at home. Early in the pandemic, the best-selling game was Monopoly Classic with Cluedo, Scrabble and card games UNO and Dobble also in the top 10, according to market research firm NPD.