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!

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.

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!

RIP Jim Irvine

My father died on 7 November. He deteriorated quickly after contracting COVID. The blow has been enormous and I don't think we've fully come to terms with it. I am now back at my childhood home looking after my mother as she recovers from COVID.

One of the things that lays me low when I go around the house is seeing projects that he'd started but won't finish, various things in different stages of planning, preparation, or anticipation. This is a silly thing to get upset about in a way: what's life without something to look forward to? I'm glad he had things he was looking forward to and planning right until the end. But every day I go past the table where he had been re-basing some of his old airfix napoleonics just days before he got sick, unable to pack up the stuff, unable to process it.

Gaming was a hobby my dad and I had in parallel. We had other interests in common that we enjoyed together - in particular, we shared a love of music, and I have many happy memories of traditional music sessions together, time spent in his company drinking a few pints and singing away. But funnily enough, though we both were interested in gaming, that wasn't really something that we ever did together. We would chat about it on the phone, check in on one another's projects and work in progress. He had a long running Friday RPG session that had become almost a religious obligation. He had had a Napoleonic army (British) since long before I was born and every now and again would open up the box files where it was kept, make some additions and update his records. Just a month or so ago he had painted up some Scots Greys. He had got out some of the many reference books he owned and was planning on painting more in the months ahead.

The army itself had lived in box files for many years, but he had only recently set most of it up on shelves. It's a magnificent enough sight.

One of the peculiarities of our never having played wargames together all that much is that he actually had a Warhammer Fantasy Battle army he'd painted up around the time I first got into the hobby - a rather striking Brettonian army based on the figures in the 5th edition box. (My mate Paul had used the Lizardmen and sold him the Brets)

I especially like the spearmen that he converted by giving some of the monopose plastic archers toothpicks.

He enjoyed collecting the army and encouraging me in my hobby - even painting up Prince Imrik on a Dragon as a birthday present for me.

But he was content to just share the interest with me, very rarely taking up invitations to join in battles. I think he would have loved some of the oldhammer stuff - in fact, it was him who stumbled on some of the oldhammer stuff on the internet and pointed me towards it - but he was happy enough for us to game in separate worlds. This might strike some as obtuse, but as I say, we had other things we did together, and I guess the games were his own place of retreat.

The one exception to this was a wonderful year when I was in 6th form, and his RPG group decided to have a Necromunda campaign. Peering through the crowded underhive to try and pick out one of his House Cawdor gang - the heavy MacDuff, or Wee Eck who rose up through the ranks from a juve to a hardened ganger - will long live in my memory.

Going through his collection of books and his leadpile (much of which he inherited from friends who had passed away), I can't help but think of the games that won't be played now. Perhaps I should focus on what gave him pleasure: look forward to the next game, role up the next character, enjoy planning future projects. But what can I say? I miss him terribly.

Games Day 1999

Matthew Street's photos of Games Day & Golden Demon 1989 came up on my facebook feed today - why not check out his pics from the day over on his blog because, to give fair warning, it's going to be more interesting and nostalgic than this post! But if, like me, you're triggered by accounts of a certain Michael Thomas in a certain Liverpool game against Arsenal, you might want to give it a miss.

Anyway, it nudged me into thinking about the one time I attended Games Day & Golden Demon, back in 1999, 10 years after young Street's adventure. Memory is a fragile beast, and what's kind of disturbing is that I remember very little about the day. I went with GW Southport, who hired a coach down to take us down to the NIA in Birmingham, and I remember people passing copies of FHM and Loaded around the coach, this being still the era of the lads mag. I also have a very vivid recollection of arriving back home bursting for a pee, trying to subtly relieve myself behind Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs offices, only for a movement-triggered light to turn on and expose me to the world.

But of the event itself, I have very little recollection. Luckily, I have a few artefacts of the day. Apparently I got the programme signed by everybody, including by the looks of it the staff of the National Indoor Arena itself.

The mega display for that year was "The Vengence of the Vampire", of which I have absolutely no recollection. (No photos in the programme to jog my memory.)

One thing I do recall is that they'd brought one of plastic injection moulding machines, and were churning out Mordheim accessories sprues, Mordheim being GW's forthcoming release.

I think I queued to go around 4 or 5 times so as to pick up multiple sprues, and they've proved extremely useful for conversions over the years. (The above is a photo of the complete sprue from the Lost Miniatures wiki, the sprues I picked up at Games Day are mostly gaps now.)

Freebies were, I guess, one of the best things about the day (after the ticket I wouldn't have had enough cash to actually buy anything at Games Day) and have the benefit that they give me some clue of actually being there. I think on entrance they gave out these pretty cool Gorkamorka "teef" to wear around your neck

(also Ork-themed, GW Southport gave us t-shirts of an Ork shouting out "NORF NORF NORF!" to indicate our regional affiliation and no doubt to help their security to profile potential shoplifters, but I no longer have that, it was neat but I don't think the printing survived more than a couple of washes)

And one final memento of the day: just dug this out of my pile of gaming stuff and I'm really glad I still have it - I queued up for the Black Library desk where the artists were doing speed drawings, and Kev Walker sketched me this skeleton with an extraordinarily big gun for an "Undead in Necromunda" project as I working on.


It's things like that that make it worth getting caught exposing yourself outside the tax office.

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times; or, Dave's Big Birthday Bash

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times...

ok, bit too dramatic maybe. But picture the scene. No, not the jolly scene pictured above. A different scene the night before. It's 3am on a Friday night and I'm painting bases goblin green. Hundreds of bases.

I'm on my way down to Snicket's (or Dave's, to use his real name) 40th birthday bash at the Foundry. It's a massive game of Empire vs Orcs and like the eejit I am, having neither army, I volunteer a 3000 point Empire army to be painted from scratch. A project that seemed a good idea months away from the game gradually turns into a nightmare as the deadline looms. Months turn to weeks. Weeks turn to days. Thursday night I stay up in my office painting, trying to finish the promised units. It's the day before the game, I'm already sleep deprived and still nothing's based.

And so then on Friday night I'm en route to Newark. I've now taken the train as far South as I could, so I can get to Newark in time for the game, and so I'm sitting at a wonky table in the shittiest accommodation in Newcastle. The place stinks of weed and there a bottle of Buckfast Tonic Wine ("Bucky" as it's affectionately known) by the entrance of the building. Realising I don't have a pot for water to wash my brushes in, I seriously consider using the bottle, before thinking NO, for fucks sake, that would be mad and unhygeinic, we're in a time of coronavirus after all. Instead, I use the cap off a can of air freshener I find around the place.

Outside someone starts screaming "I JUST WANT TO GO HOME". I drop the brush and run out, thinking someone's being raped or somehow held in this shithole against their will, but the poor lass seems to be freaking out due to some combination of drink or drugs. Anyway, I wait outside the building until she's in a taxi.

At 4am I am back in the room and gluing flock onto bases. This is the second night I'm going without sleep, and at this stage I'm seriously considering my life choices.

ok I realise this is more of a tripadivsor review than a battle report but what I'm trying to capture for posterity is that feeling of a hobby that's turned into a source of misery, just sitting cold and fed up, wanting to go home and sleep. And the question that I kept asking myself: how can you turn something that's supposed to be your means of relaxation into a source of stress?

Saturday, I get to the Foundry and have probably the most fun I've had so far this year.


So was it worth it? Well, the answer has to be a resounding YES... up to a point. Was great to have a weekend with so many of the people that I've made friends with through the Oldhammer movement. Two days gaming, a curry and some beers, what more can you ask for? The battle itself was an awesome sight, and while we could maybe have got through a couple more turns (I have some thoughts about the nuts and bolts of how to make big games of this type work), it was definitely good fun.

Here's my battle line, with my steam tank and my crazy wizard and his familiar advancing...


Here's my halflings running away after their soup got upended...


But although I should have the satisfaction of a completed 3000 point army, the truth is much of the army itself is a bit so-so, inevitable after having rushed it... all that work and then the feeling that a lot of it would need redone or at the very least more time to finish it properly is a bit of a sinking feeling.

And I'm left wondering, why do I find ways of making my hobby into a chore? To be honest, blogging can have that effect too, having to find the energy to type stuff. No wonder the blog descends into silence punctuated by an annual apology for not having blogged.

But then the game finishes and you want to do it all over again.

Just next time, not leaving it until 4am in a shithole in Newcastle to stick flock on a 3000 point army.

A Ratling Sniper and his mate

In which a pair of forgotten figures bring back memories of my short and ill-fated career as a writer of wargames rules...


Something a bit different today. Found this Ratling Sniper and Necromunda Goliath leader. I'd made a start on these when I was first into wargaming back in the 90s, but not finished them, so got out the paints and washes and reconditioned them. Whiskey Priest has been keen to bring us OGRE gamers into the 41st millennium and although I haven't had a chance to play Necromunda or RT or anything else with them yet, I'm keen, so I thought I'd have a rummage around for any figures that would serve as the start of a warband.

I have a bit of history with Ratling Snipers.

When I was a teenager I fancied myself as a bit of a games designer, and loved nothing better than to write all kinds of rules and scenarios - including all kinds of stuff for Necromunda - and shove them on the internet. So even though by 1999 I was drifting out of the hobby so as to devote more of my desperate energies towards wooing the lasses, I was still chuffed as anything to get an e-mail from GW saying that they were starting a new magazine to support Necromunda, and would I be happy for them to include some of the stuff I'd written? I replied that I was more than happy for them to use anything I'd put on the net - some of the scenarios I'd written were pretty cool, I thought, and I'd come up with a pretty nifty system for Undead gangs in Necromunda that I was very proud of. So I waited to see what they decided to publish.

When I finally did get a copy of Gang War Issue 5, I have to admit I was somewhat disappointed. The thing they'd decided to include was a throwaway set of houserules I'd written for Ratling Snipers in Necromunda simply so my mate could include one in his Orlock gang because he played Imperial Guard and liked the models. The rules weren't exactly watertight and not everyone liked them. I remember being on the receiving end of a certain amount of nerdrage.

So ended my very short career as a writer of wargames rules!

Anyway, for those with a bit of historical curiosity, here are the rules:


And if you don't like them in English, here's a Czech translation: