Oh Yeah Baby, it's BOYL2017!

Bring Out Your Lead 2017, a festival of lead, beer, fun, friends & Jungle Meat (the traditional kebab of BOYL, partaken of true veterans of the event).

Nothing I can say can do justice to the sheer pleasure of being at the event but I will say many thanks go out to:

• the Foundry & the Ansells for hosting
• Gaj for his organisation & quality thoroughly enthusiastic co-generalship (I have never known anyone to be as vigorously positive when rolling dice)
• Geoff, Harry and Chris for the amazing Heldenhofen table that I had much fun on
• All my opponents over the weekend (there were many and I didn't catch all of the names so I am so very sorry if I miss your name off the mumblings amongst the photo's below, please point out my rudeness in the comments at the end and I'll edit you in!)

Enough of my drivel, here's the good stuff with the odd snippet of wordage amongst them where appropriate.

Here's Heldenhofen, stunning huh?

And here's the Rogue Trader sandbox - Helsreach, zany as heck and stunning to boot.

My first game of the weekend was against Richard Legg, a thoroughly decent chap. This was his Orcs and Goblins painted as part of my "I'm a Dad with no time or I'm a slow painter" challenge.

Two Large units of Orcs formed the bulk of the Orc Hoard.

The Orc General mounted on a boar

Gobbo Stikkas

Gobbo Spears alongside a Goblin Shamen

Arnulf's Rangers (painted the week before BOYL) form up to pepper the foe with crossbow bolts.

Helga prepares to blow the Orcs away as a legend has a sit in the background

Bron's Boar Spears and the Gate Smashers form up whilst the Legend looks on

Members of the Raven Watch take skirmishing position on the flank

Most of the Dwarfs move forward into defensive positions whilst others open fire, removing several Arrer Boyz. Note the Orc General making a flanking manoeuvre.

The Greenskins move forward

The Goblin Shamen uses "Flight" to move behind the Dwarf lines where he would wind blast Helga the Howler for the remainder of the game.

Battle is met as the Orc Arrer Boyz charge Bron's Boar Spears. The Rangers re-arrange themselves to accept the Goblin charge. Note the lack of Orc General on the flank. The Raven Watch got lucky with crossbow bolts and felled the beast.

Bron's Boar Spears skewer many Orc Arrer Boyz for no loss.

The Raven Watch flee the Orc Boyz charge.

The Goblin Spears chased Arnulf's Rangers from the field and then headed for Helga. The Boar Spears have repeatedly pushedback the Orc Arrer Boyz who refused to break. The Gobbo Stikkas and Orc Boyz close in on the Gate Smashers

The Orc Boyz and the Gate Smashers square off

The Orc Boyz taunt the Dwarfs, holding off the charge for the Gobbo Stikkas support.

Not waiting around the Gate Smashers move forward forcing the Orc's hand.

With the Boar Spears on the way back the Orcs charge. The Gate Smashers receive the charge and win the round but the Orcs refuse to break.

The Orcs are hit by Bron's Boar Spears in the flank and stand no chance in the ensuing slaughter (Hammerers are awesome). With the loss of the Orc Boyz Richard conceded the day. A victory to my fledgling Dwarf Army but more importantly a great game, a fantastic opponent and challenge for next year (more of that in a later post).

My Skaven run rampant in Heldenhofen. My first taste of Mordheim and I liked it!

OK, at this point I should apologise for a lack of photo's of my next game but I forgot until we had started playing and by that point I wasn't feeling like taking photographic evidence of what was happening. Saturday afternoon I played a joint game with Gaj against my Brother (Erny) and Justin Coutange (yet another totally nice guy and a friend made over the weekend). Each of us used 1000pts - my Dwarf's and Gaj's Empire Vs Chris and Justin's Wood Elves. The pansy pointy ears had a mostly skirmishing army that was impossible to get anywhere near. They stayed out of range of my crossbows and moved back if I moved forward allowing them to still fire but not me. I accept these are tactics for Wood Elves, but it wasn't fun. I'm used to losing but this left me feeling unable to put up a competitive fight. Ducks in a gallery. An exercise in futility. Moan over.

Sunday was another team up, it's here that I must apologise again as I did not make a note of the name of my team mate nor that of Erny's joint Warlord. Guys, if you let em know and I'll correct it on here.

Here's the pics, Dwarves Vs Orcs & Goblins that we didn't finish so not sure what the outcome would of been.

And then it was over and we all started to drift off back to all the deep dark places we crawled out from.

Thanks once again to all who attended and I chatted to (Nigel Stillman, who's a thoroughly nice chap, autographed my copy of Warhammer Armies) you all made it one heck of a weekend and I look forward to number 6 next year.