At BOYL (Bring out Your Lead) it’s become a community tradition to create one-off figures to celebrate the three-day extravaganza of Oldhammery painting and gaming.  Here are three from 2017 painted up just in time to pick up 2018’s without any leadguilt.

Left to right: Helsreach Mayor, Grox Egg and Olivia Neutronbomb.

I really like event-exclusive miniatures as they’re tethered to a set of memories of friends, games, meals out, heavy drinking, stupid decisions and hangovers.  Lemme explain why these three minis came to be.

Olivia Neutronbomb

Olivia was the 2017 event’s commemorative figure, sculpted by John Pickford.  She’s a 28mm metal incarnation of the classic 1987 Rogue Trader illustration by Martin McKenna.

I painted Olivia to slot into my Rogue Trader Godbreak 84th Imperial Army.  Her animal-print trousers were repainted a few times as I wrestled with various animals’ colours clashing with the Godbreak’s grey-green and black.  Then I realised I needn’t be constrained by real animals in the distant alien future of Warhammer 40,000!  Hence the “Greyscale Giraffe” was born in my imagination.  (Geeez Curis, all that creative potential and possibility and all you come up with is a desaturated giraffe.)

Olivia leading the Godbreak 84th, showing her head for strategy.

Other people who’ve painted their Olivias are: asslessman, axiom, Dr Mathias, Grove,  Orlygg and Suber.  Check ’em out!

Grox Egg

Grox are the cattle of 41st Millennium.  They appeared as an illustration in the 1987 Rogue Trader rulebook, though they’ve never had a miniature incarnation.

That was until axiom commissioned John Pickford to sculpt this cheeky little hatching Grox.  Why?  Cos axiom was running a Grox-herding participation game and going several egg-stra miles to realise the world of grimdark ranching.

Mungo Beefhead lassoing a hatching Grox.  Find out more about this Space Cowboy here.

I painted the egg with green spots – obviously channelling Yoshi from Super Mario.  The shell fragments are cut-up plastic carton lid glued onto the base after drybrushing.  I planned on making a small nest diorama with several unhatched eggs (my sculpting ability just able to cope with unhatched eggs), but I ended up doing something more ambitious…

Mayor of Helsreach

Curtis at Ramshackle Games sculpted this miniature to celebrate his massive participation game at BOYL 2017, set in Helsreach – the iconic Rogue Trader townscape.  This miniature is really characterful and fun to paint, and on finishing it I immediately went and jumped some other Ramshackle bits to the front of the painting queue.  The game is running again at BOYL 2018, and I recommend stopping by to drink in all those square feet of his miniatures and terrain Curtis, Aidan and Danny have put together.

The Mayor touring the Cullentown Grox Incubation Facility.  His Techpriest tour guide is regarded as the Helsreach’s leading “egghead”.

The Grox incubation chamber is a cut-down cryo-stasis piece from Games Workshop’s Sector Imperialis Objectives. The transparent “glass” component needed great care to resize – the plastic is so brittle any stress on it will cause massive white cracks to shoot through the whole thing.  There were a few near-misses and lots of eggs-pletives.

BOYL 2018

This year’s BOYL is almost upon us – Friday 3rd August to Sunday 5th August at Wargames Foundry, Nottingham, England.  It’s my favourite three days in the gaming calendar.  Hopefully see you there!  Check out the site at for full details on  games and location: https://bringoutyourlead.co.uk/.

The Rogue Trader Lizard is an obscure collector’s piece.  Designed to take the plastic RTB01 Space Marines, this miniature was only available through Mail Order for a brief time in 1988.  I nabbed one for a bargain years ago, but never had the willpower or funds to collect enough to make a full squad (as, enviably, Ed Gladdis has managed).  Then axiom had a game planned and an opportunity arose.  Presenting Mungo Beefhead and his trusty steed Drayne.

Yes, he’s called Drayne.  Drayne the Lizard.

axiom’s game was grox-herding.  Grox are the Warhammer 40,000 equivalent of cattle, and as a participant I’d have to bring a figure to round up herds of this dino-livestock.  Lacking any sort of subtlety I deployed every cowboy cliché I could.  But in space.  Space Cowboy.  Like that Jamiroquai song.

The rider was originally Johnny Cuba from the Citadel Miniatures Judge Dredd range.  I’ve had the figure knocking around for years in my bitz box as I’ve been buying up power boards.  But with his cowboy hat and his lunging skysurfer legs, he needed only minimal further conversion.

Johnny Cuba as he appeared in 1985’s 2000AD Prog 427.

Citadel’s JD13 Skysurfer range.  Image thanks to Source of Legends

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I swapped his bare feet for boots from an Imperial Army jetbike rider, and then after some experimenting I added a lasso made from brass rod (for the top section where robustness is important) and lead solder (where the ability to bend it made modelling easy).

An early experiment with an entirely solder lasso.

Painting-wise I went for garish primary colours because the concept and source miniatures were inherently goofy.  I intended to paint Mungo in a palette evocative of Bravestar (who is cool) but ended up channelling Sheriff Woody from Toy Story (who is not cool).

On the day of gaming itself Mungo Beefhead rounded up his herd and led them to the pen at the speed of cheeba, but was pipped to the post by sho3box thanks to a series of poor tactical decisions (read: me nobbing over the wrong people with special play cards) and being nobbed over by people’s special play cards.  Great fun.  Thanks to axiom for putting together a very fun gaming experience.

Photo courtesy of Jean-Baptiste of Lead Plague.

I have absolutely no future plans for this figure.  I will not make a squad of them.  He will not build into an army.  Though, very generously, axiom did give out grox hatchling miniatures to all participants, so I can revisit the theme at a future date.

Check out axiom’s post about how he made the herds themselves and modelled the grox pen.