Night of the Living Lead 2024: an Oldhammer horror story

How's everyone been? I've been a long time silent on this blog, still getting some hobby stuff done but until recently mostly been drowning in work. Anyway, a bit of an Oldhammer horror story for you...

Couple of weeks ago, I head down to the Foundry for the annual "Night of the Living Lead" Little Albion game. The scenario is based on the theme of Gathering Winter Fuel... or rather stopping peasants from gathering it for free. I've taken a High Elf warband along - Kieran the Prudent and his Forestry Commission - to support Lord Watalouse in his objective of bringing fiscal responsibility in the realm. (Many thanks to Tom Reynolds for the photos of my warband in action!)

Fun times with great people, as always.

A few days later, I'm heading back to Orkney. It's been a long train ride up from England to Scotland, and then the Scotrail to Aberdeen. But finally I'm on the ferry home.

I reach into my backpack... and realise I've left my minis on the train.

I'd had to lay the backback down, so I took the box of minis out to keep it from being tipped on its side, and just sat it down on the luggage rack next to my backpack. I'd grabbed the backpack in Aberdeen, but forgot the minis. Shit shit shit shit.

My mind's whirring, and I ring Aberdeen lost property. I try and give the dimensions of the box. They rush out to check the luggage rack as the train's about to head back to Edinburgh. Nope, they couldn't see it, but they didn't have long to look. Try again when it gets to Edinburgh. Edinburgh's system is much more beauraucratic, I have to fill in a form. That just generates an email saying that nothing of that description has been handed in. My heart is sinking at this stage.

But still, I don't want to give up hope. So the next day I phone Aberdeen again. I describe my box (small, cardboard). The lady on the other end says, could you say something more to identify it... well, I explain, there's a bag of dice sitting on a layer of tissue, and beneath that that layer of tissue there are 15 painted toy soldiers. There's a pause and I realise she's actually got the box there and is opening it up. I hear a bit of a chuckle on the other end. "Yes, we have your lost property here." Apparently they'd gone up and down between Edinburgh and Aberdeen about four times, just sitting on the luggage rack until the end of the day when the cleaners found the box up there and handed it in.

And so this Tuesday I was finally passing through Aberdeen station again and go go to lost property and reclaim the box.

14 High Elves and a temple dog, back home again. A happy ending!

Looking back on Orctober: a goblin playground scene

My review of the year past has almost caught up with the present. I just have one more completed project I thought it would be nice to share here: my contribution to Orctober. Funnily enough I've never managed to paint anything up for Orctober before... and this year was no exception, as it didn't get finished until November.

A couple of rather old Citadel fiend factory miniatures that I inherited, paired with a more recent purchase from the Foundry:

FF65 Goblin Children crying to their FF64 Goblin Mother about having been thrown off the seesaw by Warmonger Orclings! Blue sky and clouds in the background courtesy of a painting by my son James.

I've been chatting with Warlord Paul and we're thinking of having a game (probably next Night of the Living Lead) where goblins are the good guys for a change- or at least the ones we're trying to defend. He writes: "The goblins of Little Albion are having a hard time right now. Their princess has been abducted by Lord Kraust and they are being used and abused by him as he expands his power..." A good opportunity to bring out all the weird and wonderful goblin civilian and character models... but that's for next year!

In the meantime, have a wonderful Christmas Day, and I hope Father Christmas brings you lots of presents!

The Brotherhood of Public Sanitation

After the years of plague, as death washed over the land, a new threat even more virulent arose among the survivors. The Cult of the New Colossus had arisen to prey on the hopes of the people. It must be stopped.

Only the most devoted to the cause of wiping out this strange new movement could be trusted to deal with the horror. What was needed was a brotherhood: a brotherhood against all cults. Those initiated must be ever-zealous in their devotion to hunting down and wiping out new religious sects as they arose. Unflinching in the face of religious fanaticism. There was to be no corner of the land where dogmatism could take root. The purifying fire of the brotherhood would render all cultish dogmas anathema.

This was the promise of the brotherhood. After the plague, an assembly of the children of reason, determined to fight the new plague. Their faces covered, as they had been since the plague began, to show their unwavering commitment to the cause.

Next in my series of posts catching up on the passing year, we move to Bring Out Your Lead 2021 - a quieter affair than usual, as it was delayed to the autumn, but that's not necessarily a bad thing as it made it a more relaxed occasion altogether.

Many of you will be aware of Steve Beales'/Thansants mastery of the Old World Army Challenge, painting an enormous, mindbending, literary Chaos army - the Cult of the New Colossus. I did what any right-thinking person would do, faced with clear evidence of someone's far greater talent and work ethic: I sought to destroy it. Luckily, I was not alone - Steve had managed to inspire envy and disgust all across the Oldhammer world, and so the stage was set for an epic struggle at Bring Out Your Lead, as we all gathered our forces to stop the Cult of the New Colossus before they performed whatever horrific ritual Steve's fevered and well-read imagination could think up. Expressing the true warmth and mutual respect that is the hallmark of our Oldhammer community, the battle royale was quickly christened "Kill Beales".

I wanted to gather a new force with the specific goal of destroying this disgusting cult. An anti-cult cult assembly if you will. The key themes I decided on were:
1) that the army would be entirely masked or otherwise have covered faces - a tradition of hygiene that began during the plague and has persisted as the mark of true faith among those fighting the moral plague that is Steve Beales Chaos.
2) that the army would display an unhealthy fascination with the purifying force of death as the only thing that can subdue chaos.
3) that the army would epitomise the principle expressed by Nietzsche but which - let's be honest - we all know from the opening of Baldur's Gate: "He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster... When you gaze long into the abyss, the abyss also gazes into you..."

The first unit to be painted were the Brothers Spiritual - Fenris Miniatures Plague Cultists with CP Miniatures Night Terrors. With this unit, I really wanted to lean into the plague mask theme, but also give a sense of the brotherhood evolving into horrors themselves...

The next unit were the Brothers Militant - pretty straightforward Witch Hunters really, mostly from White Knight's Miniature Imperium, with a couple from Perfect Six Miniatures.

At this stage we needed some muscle to try and tackle some of the larger horrors of the Cult of the New Colossus - and so I painted up Brother Pyramidhead, an Ogre from Dark Art Studios.

Also with some of the larger and more damage-resistant targets in mind, I decided that adding a mortar would be a good idea: enter the Brothers Fulminant - evil hooded minions from Pulp Miniatures tending to an OOP undead cannon from Fenryll miniatures.

And finally, some old lead: rank upon rank of the Brothers of the Flensing Shame (i.e. Citadel's Regiment of Renown Knights of the Cleansing Flame) - though to fit them with my brotherhood, and to compensate for a lack of the complete command set, I added a C03 series Cleric Bishop to lead the unit, and an Oakbound Mari Lwyd style figure to serve as a suitably creepy substitute for a standard.

How did they fare at BOYL? Not surprisingly, even as one small part of the forces amassed against the Cult of the New Collosus, we made little inroads to stopping their foul and perverse rituals. We were just too slow in disrupting their ceremony...

The brotherhood did slightly better on a trollhunting mission the next day (winning by errrr... abducting the troll's children while directing the rest of the trolls into battle against the other forces... but that slightly shady moral tale is for another day!)

Summer 2021 - a retrospective

Though the time has already flown, I wanted to take a moment to record the strange summer of this year that is very nearly over. A summer when we finally got to see one another for the first time in too long.

My 2021 gaming finally began on a beautiful early summer's day in a woodland outside Nailsworth. I had arrived at The Woods in the Woods - a chance to finally play a campaign of Geoff Solomon-Sims' fine diceless skirmish game The Woods.

I brought with me my Myeri warband - over the course of the day we scouted out the edges of our realm. Unwanted Huldraugur guests sought to seize a monument on our borders and had to be repelled.

We tried to avoid being seen by Bucca spies - having to finally kill their leader before he took back the secret of our location.

And we found ourselves shot at by Gnawlocks erecting their own totems in contested territory.

The day finally ended with a grand battle involving all of the forces trying to seize fae to obtain their secrets.

The setting was beautiful, the terrain flowing seamlessly into the woods beyond. I even saw a stinkhorn mushroom!

I returned home rested and refreshed. We'd been looking after my mother ever since my father died last winter. She'd been suffering from long COVID, and I wanted to get back to meet with the occupational therapist who was coming to the house to advise on how we could support her recovery. The signs were encouraging and my mother, though still very tired, was making good progress. June passed and I was full of optimism. Little did I know that within weeks, my mother too would be dead.

My next gathering for gaming, then, was in the shadow of her funeral. Bring Out Your Lead had been postponed, but resourceful gamers still hatch plans to use the accomodation they had already booked in Newark. The result was three games in three days in three counties.

First, to Nottingham and Warhammer World (my first ever visit there, in fact), to play a mini-campaign of Realms of Chaos with the insanely creative Curtis Fell.

Then on Saturday to Derbyshire for the 'main event' at Bonsall Village Hall, organised by John Ratcliffe. This was the latest installment of our Adventures in Little Albion campaign, Ye Olde High Speed 2
John wrote up the background as follows:

Baron De Pfeffel (the corrupt and narcissistic ruler of southern Little Albion) and his evil Tilean advisor ‘Dominico the Rat’ have a plan to build a new high speed cart track through the ancient woodlands of central Little Albion. De Pfeffel is selling the cart track on the basis that it will cut 5 minutes off the four day journey from the fetid, southern swamplands of Hacked-Knee Marshes to the frigid, northern moors of Mankburgh.

Why anyone would want to make this journey, in either direction, is a complete mystery.

All the foulmouthed, unwashed, cruel and spiteful creatures of Little Albion adore De Pfeffel and have flocked to his banner... As the Goblin Warlord Snagsnaffl put it: "Ee shayrz ahr valyoos, innit."

I gathered together the treehuggers in my collection - elves and halflings - and placed them under the command of the inestimable Professor Tiggywingle.

You can read more about the sacrifice the creatures of the woodland and their allies made to stop Ye Olde High Speed 2 over at Fimm McCool's (i.e. Geoff's) blog... But as you can see, the battle - and especially Curtis' Tree Crushing Machine - were quite a sight to behold!

And finally on Sunday to Lincolnshire and to Foston Village Hall (many thanks to Tom Reynolds for organising!) for another game of "The Woods" - a 3 way skirmish, struggling to desecrate tombs while Geoff's Fae attempted to consecrate the land themselves, and goblins under the command of Jerome Franklin-Ryan simply tried (successfully) to trip us all up.

After all of which I needed to go back to Liverpool, to the family home, to try and reckon with the loss of my mother. As Matthew Street and myself wait in Grantham station (which contains, it should be said, a very fine micropub) ready to go our separate ways, we find the trains massively delayed. Someone had thrown themselves on the line somewhere to the south. We sat and waited and drank and spoke with the lad behind the bar about life and death and the things you wish you'd had a chance to say to people now gone.

Why do I mix up all this chat about gaming with the pain of grief? Not to try and spoil the pleasure of the games - that was very real. Nor to trivialise the loss, which still cuts deep. But that is just how life is. Darkness and light whisper sweet nothings to one another, and neither seem in any hurry to let us in on their secrets.

Well, mostly, I just wanted to write something like this: people sometimes say that playing games is all about escapism, and there's obviously truth in that. But I don't think that's all there is to it. The creativity, the laughter, the absolute joy of spending time with friends - that's not escapism. Escapism implies trying to get away from 'real life' for a brief spell; but that creativity, friendship, and joy brings you back to what real life is like, or at least what it can be like. These moments are not some mere escape, they are life at its brightest. And I am thankful to you all for making them happen.

The Bold Thady Quill vs Bungus Ness - a St Patrick's Day retrospective

To celebrate St Patrick's day, I thought I'd go straight for the stereotypes, and dug out the Talisman Leprechaun from the shoebox where he's been stored recently.

In fact, he forms part of what is almost certainly my favourite little warband, painted for a game at the Foundry back in 2017.

W.B. Yeats described Leprechauns and their kind as "sluttish, slouching, jeering, mischievous phantoms" (probably meaning sluttish in the earlier sense of slovenly, unless there's a side to them that I hadn't realised). Rather than the usual sword-swinging hero, I thought it would be fun to summon a warband of fairies and creatures of the woods, fighting mostly with their wits and frustrating their opponents with mischief.

Painting him in the sterotypical green (rather than going for a red jacket as per Yeats' account), I dubbed my leprechaun hero "the Bold Thady Quill" after one of my favourite Cork folk songs, and played him as an Illusionist. He's backed up with some slightly more thuggish (if still diminutive) myconids from Hasslefree. Hasslefree also sent me a "tooth fairy" miniature as a free gift and I thought that would work very nicely as a companion. Finally, rounding the group out, a sprite from the Wood Elf Glade Guard plastic sprues.

One spring morning, The Bold Thady Quill and his companions set out to teach the one-eyed warlord Bungus Ness a lesson. Why? Because Bungus Ness (in fact, a Fimir painted by Orlygg) couldn't take a joke. And there's nothing worse than someone who can't take a joke. Bungus Ness terrorised the nearby villagers with his annual demand that they provide him with a bride. One year, tricked into receiving a pig slathered in make up in place of one of the daughters of the valley, Bungus Ness could not see the funny side and set out on a path of destruction.

While battle raged, The Bold Thady Quill sneaked. (This, and the other two photos of the game, are by Tom Reynolds.)

Rather than fight Bungus Ness' henchmen, he misdirected them with illusory buildings and terrified them with visions of terrifying undead creatures. (The model here is a Kelpie from Oakbound.)

Bungus Ness himself was tormented by the buzzing of the sprite, distracting him so that he was unprepared for the final attack.

With Bungus Ness gone, the villagefolk could throw off the shackles of their oppressor once and for all.

To all in Little Albion who can't take a joke: beware!

Straw Bear and Molly Dancing Boggarts - Happy Plough Monday!

Throughout Little Albion, the plague leaves humans cowering in their houses. Meanwhile, the boggarts come out to dance and play. In their wake lumbers the Straw Bear, the spirit of new growth...

Pains within and pains without
If the devil's in, I'll fetch him out
Rise up and fight again...
- Plough Monday mummers play, as remembered in Sybil Marshall's Fenland Chronicle

Back when I lived in East Anglia, this was my favourite time of the year. In parts of the fens, the celebration of Plough Monday - a last gasp of mischief and drunken high spirits before the start of the new agricultural year - lives on, or at least has been revived. And the boldest expression of Plough Monday's spirit of misrule is the Straw Bear who roamed the streets of Whittlesey and Ramsey.

The venerable bear even makes an appearance in Frazer's tour de force of anthropology The Golden Bough: he writes that "we may confidently assume that the Straw-bear who makes his appearance at Whittlesey... represents indeed the corn-spirit. What could be more appropriate than for that beneficent being to manifest himself from house to house... after a magical ceremony had been performed to quicken the growth of the corn?"

This was always the time of year when we'd set out to follow the bear... At Ramsey in recent years the local schoolchildren danced through the streets with a Straw Bear in their midst

while at Whittlesey the Straw Bear made his appearance in a riotous festival of folk dancing and pub crawling the following weekend.

This year, sadly, I'm too far away to be caught up in the path of the bear. And besides, the bear itself will have to hibernate through COVID-19. But when I saw that Crooked Dice made a mummer's procession complete with Straw Bear I was compelled to purchase this great lumbering beast and bring him to life in Little Albion. But what's a Straw Bear without the surrounding chaos? Who will follow the Straw Bear through the streets spreading mischief? Once again, Geoff Solomon-Sims comes to the rescue, with his OOP Oakbound Miniatures Boggarts, dressed in suitable Molly Dancing Attire.

Happy Plough Monday! Happy New Year!

The Knowe: a cautionary tale for archaeologists

Why had he listened? Why had he followed? The dwarf had spoken to him of an ancient tomb, three days to the north... unknown, undiscovered... only uncovered by a sudden storm. Hidden until the sea peeled back its layers. Unplundered...

Typical of the dwarf, of course, to see it as a chance to delve for riches... but then, why had he listened? What greed drew a scholar here? Not a greed for treasure, surely. But the need to be the first to see inside, to see the first beam of light touch the walls since the time of creation. To stand face to face with the knowledge of the ancients.

The three days journey? Oh, the dwarf lied about that. Six days hard slog it was, out past Murderoch Keep, keeping the Northernmost Isle on the horizon. Trudging along the coast in the bitterest winds. Until they reached the Bay of Skail. The site itself would have been easily missed among the boulders. If only it had been missed!

He stooped down to run a finger along the grooves carved into the stone... A burial place, surely. But for whom? Created by what force? Suddenly he heard the unmistakable sound of metal on stone. No! Surely the dwarf wouldn't be fool enough to desecrate a tomb with his pickaxe? But it was too late. A sudden shrieking sound overwhelmed the senses. Agony held them in its grip until he and the dwarf lay there lifeless. Two more bodies for the tomb.





This morning Harry Howells was asking on facebook for examples of Oldhammer "casualty" miniatures. I grabbed the two I have here - a Prince August cloaked casualty (an elf or ranger, perhaps?) and a classic Citadel wounded (or drunk?) dwarf. Reaching for an appropriate background, I decided to photograph them lying on the cover of this archaeology booklet as an experiment.

Then, in the spirit of "waste not want not", I figured I should write up a little melodrama to narrate the photos for our "Little Albion" campaign setting. We missed the last opportunity to game together (at the sadly furloughed Dawn of the Lead event), and the theme of that was going to be bungling archaeology, so I thought I'd keep on theme with this cautionary tale...

Night of the Living Lead Battle Report: Breakshit means Breakshit

(Being a battle report on the Halloween action at the Wargames Foundry. With the latest of Warlord Paul's Albion adventures coming up at the weekend, I realised that if I didn't post about the last one now, I never would. Problem is, a lot of my recollections of a most enjoyable day are a bit hazy. So this is an extremely partial reconstruction based mostly on the least blurry photos of my toy soldiers as they plod around the battlefield.)

What lurks under Albion's skin? Peel back Albion's flesh, cut through its muscle and sinew, and what horrors do you reveal? The embittered hatred of many centuries. The tarry black heart of greed. Swollen spleen of malice. Infected kidneys of evil. Cirrhotic Liver of... well, you get the picture. Lots of not nice stuff.

Lifetimes ago, a demon was vanquished. Or at least, so the people thought. In fact, it was merely buried. Or, more accurately, as the scribes tell us, "imprisoned beneath a henge of enchanted stones wrapped about with sealing spells and wards."

But now a new dawn approaches. The demon threatens to break free, from the bowels of the earth comes the insistent rumblings of the demon's desire to leave.


And today, the cultists gather around, an unholy alliance, calling the demon forth, urging him out. And so the prophecy has come to pass: "All must take sides for there can be no middle path, all must stand for or against the daemon called, BREAKSHIT!"


From the highlands come the clansmen, determined to bring sober reason to the proceedings and to stop Breakshit in its tracks. In their midst are the zombies of the Highland cult of Indyref, risen from their graves.

They take their place in the alliance moving toward the henge, determined to stop, or at least amend, the invocation of the ritual summoning Breakshit.

Yet the ancients, the walking dead of Albion, seek a return to the glory days of past ages and will fight to ensure the ritual is performed, believing that Breakshit will allow them to take back control.



Attempts to toss the caber into their number fail miserably.


And as the forces clash, even liquid courage is not enough to withstand the horror.


The cultists succeed in opening the protective seals and a roar swells from the ground: "BREAKSHIT MEANS BREAKSHIT!"


The surviving allies who had hoped that the power would remain captive make their way to the graveyard and enter the catacombs in the hope that if they can at least mount an appeal to stop a Hard Breakshit.


The highlanders bust their way past the venomous serpents who serve Breakshit...


And join a coalition who manage to make a few amendments...



This is fantasy, remember?