All sorts of shit at BOYL.

This will be my last post about BOYL. A mishmash of all the other cool stuff that happened over the weekend that only comprised of a few photo's here and there. Basically, the stuff that I didn't have enough photo's of to do a full post on. Also, my brain is having trouble differentiating what happened on which of the two days, so this is also a convenient way of not hurting my head trying to remember when it happened. Win, win!


First up was Kev Adams, who I had a nice, but brief, chat with. We talked about how he became the goto guy at GW for doing all thing Goblin & Orc/Ork related. He explained to me that it was due to all of the other genres, bar dwarves and greenskins, had already been claimed by other sculptors. Given the choice between the two he chose the latter, because he loves the them :)

I asked him for a few little tips on GS'ing too, coz I'm a massive noob with the stuff. Watching him work was really impressive as well, he made it look so easy. Makes sense considering how long he's been at it for, but it was the first time I'd ever seen a professional sculptor at work before, so I was mightily impressed. I think he finished up making the head on my mini in about 20 mins.

This SM was one of the many and varied mini's on the Helsreach table. I'd forgotten to include him in my last post, but he looks too damn good to leave him out. I'm not sure if Curtis or Aidan painted him up, but either way, he rocks!

This little tentacled dude was scratch built, completely out of GS! I have no idea of the guys name who made him as I only chatted with him briefly, and my memory is like a sieve when it comes to names. He had a box full of really well painted mini's as well, quite a few of his own creation! If you know who made this guy just let me know in the comments and I'll definitely credit his work.

Then it was the Helsreach Jetbike race. What a crazy, fun game to be able to take part in. The rules were simple enough to understand quickly, but had just enough complexity to make the game "make sense" thematically.

Chris won the game with maths and his charming demeanour. H also won this titchy small resin trophy too :)

Here's the Mayor of Helsreach in his normal garb:

And here he is after his disguise had been removed....by gunshot.

A game I saw over the course of the weekend. I think it involved rival chaos warbands trying to summit the pyramid to release a daemon? I have no idea really, but that's what I kinda think it was all about :)

The Giant slaying game, run by Colin, was an awesome game. It was a little brief for the participants, due to the high death rate of the Dwarves :) But it didn't really matter though, coz you could just wait a few minutes till the next slaughter fight took place. Seeing the grin widening on Colin's face every time a dwarf breathed his last kinda makes me think he created this game as a way of torturing the poor little bastards :D

Curtis made a dwarven protester mini for the game too. He carried a flag, proclaiming his allegiance to DETOG. Translated it reads: Dwarves for the Ethical Treatment of Giants.

The painting competition had some really amazing entrants. Aidans' Harlequins were bloody incredible, so I took a few pics. He won two prizes I think?

This was a mini that I came across on the Chaos pyramid table. It had been converted from a Marauder Minotaur with the axe wielding arm being replaced with a Citadel scorpion pincer. The head was a press molded copy of a Pink Horror. Tasty :)

This was a Chaos Goblin owned by the same guy of the mini pictured above.

Then came the all in game that Colin & I had loosely planned a few months earlier to the BOYL. It organically turned into a "run what you got" battle over the course of about 15 minutes. None of us had made an army list or priced anything prior to playing. We just laid down the mini's that we wanted, eyeballed the opposing force composition and let rip, it was a blast! This game worked so well because we all had the same mindset i.e. The rules were a guide, not something we chained ourselves too. We adlibbed the game as needed, and because of this, we finished a ten player (Aidan not in the group photo) battle in under 2 hours! Kick arse!

I sat and spoke with Tony Ackland for about half an hour. And after a month has passed, I can't remember a bloody word of what we discussed.. He was a friendly guy though.....trust me. He allowed me to take a few photos of his artwork too, so here, have a look.

And lastly, I managed to get my photo taken with Rick Priestley. Nothing that comes after this will ever come close to bettering this moment......except maybe group sex? But meeting Rick in person is definitely up there on my list of "bloody amazing experiences" anyway :)

Ok, so that's a wrap. No more BOYL posts from here on in, I've run out of photos and words.

I had a blast the whole time I was over in the UK. Everyone made me feel really welcome and were really fun to be around. When the time came for me to say goodbye I left with a heavy heart, knowing that I won't be seeing my friends again for at least a couple more years.

Cheers :)