Lead and Steel 2026 - Painting Competition

I took a few photos of the Lead and Steel painting competition early in the day. That did mean that I didn't catch all the entries as some arrived later, and I didn't take any sensible notes about who won what, either.

This unit entry of a pirate crew is a mix of manufacturers. I can identify the Foundry fish-men, but who made the frog man and the human?

My photo doesn't do justice to this undead Blood Bowl team's colour scheme.

I love this sort of desaturated look on these ork boys, but I've never been able to work out the art of getting this sort of look.

A good pun name for a Blood Bowl team is essential.

Another great frogman, and the colours were really vibrant.

I believe this Technobarbarian was one of the previous year's show miniatures.

Another lovely desaturated paint scheme. Does anyone know who this Nurgle inspired miniature is made by?

A nod from Lord of the Rings with this Radagast.

This old goblin boss really evokes his era. Not only is it beautifully painted, but the details on the base manage to add to the whole impression without drowning out the miniature.

An excellent weird lil guy.

A classic Ghazghkull, painted up really nicely.

This is an Ontos space dwarf biker, painted in a slightly more modern scheme than the box art ones.

A really clean old school Evil Sun Ork Warbike.

An ?Alpha Legion? Rhino with all the weathering...

I think this big lad is a Warmachine sculpt?

Lead and Steel 2026 - Event Report

 

Saturday was "Lead and Steel 2026", a small Oldhammer focused convention in Sheffield. It's held in the hall of a social club, and had a good mix of vendors, participation games, demos, and people playing their own games. The event was free and came with a pretty substantial goodie bag.

I've split out the painting competition, the bits and bobs I picked up and a demo game I had for separate posts so this doesn't run too long.

As I walked through the door, I was immediately directed to the "Oldhammer Pick N Mix" - a fund-raiser for Cancer Research UK. You could pick up five models for £5. I had failed to bring any cash, but a friend who will stay anonymous so other people don't hit them up for money chipped in for the bits I was after. I've since been told this effort raised £741 for charity, which is excellent going.

I went around early on and took a few photographs of some of the games going on. This is Far Corfe, a huge participation game which uses original Necromunda rules as the basis for its rules. You could make a gang and turn up on the day. It was a big, chaotic event with loads of random things happening. It looked like everyone involved was having a blast.

The Warmachine demo table that was at Chillcon also made a return appearance. It's not quite Oldhammer, but its rules haven't changed much since it started, so it gets an honorary mention. I meant to get a demo of this and failed to manage my time properly. I really must not mess this up a third time if I see this demo table again!

One of the games where some folk were just playing each other was a game of Warhammer 40,000 3rd edition. Seeing the old models, books and cards gave me a major shot of nostalgia.

Also being played was a game of Warhammer Fantasy. I'm pretty sure it was somewhere between fourth and sixth edition, but I didn't want to interrupt to ask.

Meanwhile, on the participation side of things, someone had brought along Man O' War along with a few squadrons that people could play with. I'd absolutely intended to give this a go, as I hadn't played since my childhood, but time got away from me. I did walk past someone trying to explain the wind direction rules at one point.

Also available for participation was this game of the original Adeptus Titanicus. This is way before my time, but it looked really nice.

All in all, this was probably my favourite wargaming event I've been to in years. It was very relaxed, with a good mix of playing and shopping. There was a nice goodie bag, the charity pick n mix was amazing, the vendors were all small indie folk who are great, and there were several games I'd be up for trying next year now I know what to expect. I believe it's happening again in 2027, and its probably my top priority for planning events next year.

Cleanliness is next to...

 

Sunday is a travel day for me, so I just had Saturday to put some time into hobbying. And it turned out that what that really turned into was a big ol' tidy. It seems the reason I've not been hobbying is that I'd let the hobby room get into a bit of a state so it wasn't easy to pick up and do a little.

Some of my club mentioned spending 45 minutes each morning doing a little painting, and that's something I might try after I spend the Easter weekend setting up so that's possible. Pictured, by the way, is my new Infinity mat that I picked up from Deep Cut Studios, via Wayland Games. It took a little while to get in, but I got it and a nice carry bag for it that made me do a little happy dance around the room when I put it all away.

I did get a little hobby done, in that I washed a few resin bits and pieces I had lying around. The idea had been to get some of them undercoated once they'd dried, but it was really windy where we live, so that ended up not happening just yet.

Here we have a bit of Rubble City from Fenris Games, and a critter and some scenery from Mammoth Miniatures. The Fenris Games piece I bought to use to put models on for miniature photography, while the Mammoth Games models were bought at a little show as a nice easy project.

Then, the smaller pieces. On the right, a Krakon Games miniature from the same show as the Mammoth Miniatures pieces. On the right, three Guinea Pig Witches from Bad Squiddo Games. As a note, Pathfinder 2nd edition has rules for both a Witch class and an ancestry called Awakened Animal, so they could be a legitimate player character with no homebrewing at all. It's very tempting...

A trip to Chillcon

 

This weekend I went to Chillcon. This is a convention in Sheffield which has been going a few years now. This was, I think, their first attempt at a two day convention. There was a slightly weird arrangement where you couldn't buy a ticket on the day until 11am, when doors for pre-ordered tickets opened at 10am. We somewhat dodged this as we were helping people set up from about 9am.

The show is held in a college, so there's plenty of space and toilets. Due to the nature of the available facilities, the show was spread throughout several rooms over three floors. There were seminars, a board game space, a quiet room, food trucks, a "tuck shop", a painting competition and a whole bunch of vendors. There weren't quite enough food trucks, but otherwise everything seemed quite well organised. I also missed the kit bashing and speed painting competition.

There was a cake shop who I am pretty sure are Cozzmic Cakes. They probably ended up being the people we spent the most money on over the whole weekend. They also had a small game where you could win cupcakes.

My abject failure was not getting any good photos of Four Score Woodwork's stand. He has an assortment of cool gaming accessories, but also stocks Bad Squiddo, TMS brushes and an assortment of small producers' things.

There were a few different demo games going on. I was happy to see Infinity getting shown off, and it seemed like the table was usually busy when I went past.

There was also a great demo table for the latest edition of Warmachine. Their core mechanics haven't changed all that much, it seems, and there's a good range of 3D prints and plastics coming out. I won't have the time to actually play this, but I remember getting a demo of an earlier edition back at Grumpy Old Wargames Con at Wayland many, many years ago, so I do want to see it succeed.

A new discovery for me was Greyhawk Miniatures. They're producing an assortment of fantasy miniatures at the moment, in both 28mm and 54mm scale. The ones that stood out to me most was an assortment of anthropmorphic fantasy medieval figures.

One of the things that stood out to me was that the sculptor hasn't just scaled a sculpt up and down to make the two variants. Once sculpted, he's altered the details to better suit the scale so that they don't look out of place, or have problems taking paint. This is a great sign of someone who really understands what they're doing. Definitely one to watch in the future!

Something that jumped out at me as I wandered past was Brickskrieg. A simple wargame using legally distinct building bricks compatible with Lego, it's very different to anything else I saw this weekend.

Finally, this lovely gaming table by Natural Twenty Tables really jumped out at me. Definitely one for when we've decided where too settle down. They seem to be doing all the sensible things folk have come up with over the years for a proper grown up gaming table.

It was definitely a Big Day. We got in, ordered a big bag of Chinese take out, and nearly dozed off watching home renovation shows. Sunday has been a restful, slow day to recover. I don't think I'd survive a two day event without a day off to recover these days. But generally, the vibes of the whole event were excellent and definitely one we'll be looking to go back to.

Blowing dust off the blog

 

Oh, it's, um, been a while since I posted here, isn't it?

So, it turns out I rather over-committed myself in February. As a result, I ended up either not doing very much blog-worthy, or simply not having the time to write it up.

I went to the "World Premiere" of a new set for the card game Flesh and Blood that I've been getting more into. It was excellent fun but I think I played more than 40 games of cards over the course of a long weekend. I definitely needed some time to recover after that.

I've played a couple of games of Infinity - one in person and one on TTS. I have another TTS game in the coming week for my club's current campaign. Meanwhile, assembling and painting models has taken a back seat while I do other things. I'll get back to it, but we're not quite there yet.

All in all, I'm not unhappy with how February and the first part of March went, but I wouldn't want to get that busy too often! I definitely needed a break after all the fun things.

Wildspire Miniatures

 

A few years ago, I backed a couple of Gamefound campaigns by a company called "Blacklist Games". I backed for three sets of miniatures - a horror set, and two sets of fantasy miniatures. Unfortunately, a series of delays occurred, costs increased over the pandemic, and Blacklist ended up out of money and unable to fulfil a large number of crowdfunding projects they'd organised. 

I was relatively sanguine about the incident - crowd-funding is always a risk, and many people are too used to treating it as a pre-order instead. Blacklist had cut their margins to the bone to produce huge numbers of cheap, board game quality miniatures for role-players, and when things changed, they weren't able to continue. A number of other backers definitely feel that Blacklist crossed the line from poor judgement to being mis-leading. I would not back another Blacklist project, and leave it at that.

However, in some good news, a US company called Wildspire Miniatures purchased the rights to the miniatures, and offered original backers an opportunity to buy the miniatures at cost. And so, several years later, I now have two of the three sets of minis I originally ordered (the horror set has been left to a later fulfilment).

This is what I got - for how much is kind of difficult to say. Do I count the money lost to Blacklist? The money I paid Wildspire? In any event, it's more miniatures than I needed. There are a mix of "hero" characters and monsters, with the smaller monsters having duplicates, usually four of each. I really don't like monopose models in RPGs where I can avoid it, so there were plenty to clear out.

So, I separated out three sets of "useful monster minis" and found an assortment of friends who wanted a set. This still leaves me with plenty of useful figures to paint for RPGs, but now my friends also have a slightly more achievable volume of cheap miniatures.

I also chose to get rid of some of the monsters. Some went to my friends, others got lumped into an eBay sale a while back. I got rid of Cthulu because there's rarely a need for him in a campaign, and he's too established in the pop culture to be of any use in horror games. I didn't love the poses on the troll, ogre or dire bear, so off they went.

The demon lord also went, as did the acid elemental. The female giant was actually a difficult call - in some ways, I do quite like the sculpt, but her being on a "huge" base rather than a "large" base really reduced her utility as the bigger giants in Pathfinder don't share her general vibe, and come it at much later levels meaning I'd use her less often. There were also a few little details that I just didn't love about the sculpt, so when looking at a whole table of minis, she ended up in the "sell" pile.

So, everything remaining is now put away in boxes for later. The time taken to sort these all out is why I am avoiding big "bargain" purchases now. I have stuff on my "to do" list right away that I want to be getting on with, and these have literally gotten in the way of that getting finished. That said, if I haven't started these by the end of the year, I may seriously consider passing the rest on as well. If I am interested in running in person RPGs in the future, I need to commit my time to actually painting some of models I plan on using in them. If I'm just sitting on things, dreaming of the future and not doing anything, I can keep dreaming about it without a pile of boxes in my house.

Infinity Game: White Company vs Next Wave - Superiority

 

As previously mentioned, after Christmas I managed to get in a game of Infinity at War Dollies Collective. My opponent is pretty new to Infinity, so we picked the Direct Action mission Superiority. I dug out my White Company because they're the prettiest models I have and I wanted to show off.

I ended up going second. My opponent was on Next Wave, so I hid my expensive pieces but left out a couple of defensive pieces like a Sierra Dronbot.

My opponent managed to score a console so I sent up a Peacemaker's peripheral to try and my way. While I managed to clear a mine and wound a Tekdraken, but wasn't able to capitalise on it. I realised at the end of the turn I'd simply not pushed up far enough and my opponent scored points for controlling more quadrants.

I sent the Beasthunter after Patroclus (played here by the WarCor model) and the Raindancer fireteam. Patroclus refused to die and the Beasthunter was swiftly dispatched.

On the right flank, I wasn't confident of clearing the Juggernaut, so I sent the Kunai Ninja to hold it up, and block it's ability to shoot models I needed to advance. I pushed my Nisse / Jujak fireteam up but was only managed to draw the quadrant scoring.

Third round, and Next Wave went on a big push and did a whole bunch of smushing White Company Troopers. I managed to throw smoke to cover an approach for Shona to hit the Juggernaut. My opponent got a quick lesson in "why you never get too close to Shona" as in one swing she forced seven armour saves, and took the Juggernaut off the table.

I managed to push my Jujaks up the table, having cleared an Ironside, and the engineer managed to push a button for a console. In the end, my Key Ops controlled a zone, but Next Wave controlled the other three, winning the game for my opponent with a score of 6-3.

All in all, it was good to get back to a game of Infinity. I did spend way too much time forgetting to focus on scoring objectives, but we both had a lot of fun. White Company are still a "sometimes" faction for me, but it was good to get them out for a little run.

Plans for 2026

 

And so, 2026 dawns with a dread inevitability. It is an unusual one for me, as it's dawning in a new city for the first time in a couple of decades. The move to Nottingham has hit my hobbying this year, as it takes time to put your life in boxes and and then take it all out again.

There's still plenty of settling in to the new place still to be done, so I'm expecting hobbying to continue to be slow for at least the first part of the year. I'll also be dipping into Flesh and Blood, LARPing, and selling excess possessions on eBay, all of which can be quite time consuming.

So, I'm planning on being quite restrained with my 2026 hobby goals. I want to check in around about the end of March to see how things are going. The main thing I want to get sorted is this Halfling Blood Bowl team project. I want to get some games in at Warhammer World now I'm in Nottingham, and this seems like a nice small and achievable project to make that happen.

Once I've gotten the paints out, I also want to really hit my Combined Army and Shasvastii pretty hard. I'm thinking of trying getting a batch of ten models together and putting some time into just getting some regularly used pieces done. For example, for Vanilla Combined, the Charontid, the Anathematic, Bit and KISS, two Daturazi and four Hungries will mean that a huge number of common list builds will become all or mostly painted.

This might prove to be too big an ask in terms of the size of the batch, but I want to give it a go before deciding if I go for smaller batches first or not. Ideally I want to have painted some of my Nomads by the end of the year, but right now I have a set scheme for my Combined Army and have a whole bunch assembled, undercoated and ready to go, so getting a bunch finished will be good for my soul.

Broadly, I'm trying to get in a game of Infinity a month. I do want to try and build a community in Nottingham, and there are a few folk who are interested. I'm booked in for a game later this month, and I'll try and keep that up.

My side hobby project is that I very much want to work through this year is getting a bunch of bits done from smaller hobby companies, especially for RPGs. Eventually I want to run an in person campaign with miniatures and so on, so building up a good variety of basics will really help build a good foundation for that.

All in all, this year isn't so much about setting goals "for the year", it's about getting started again, seeing how I'm going, and adjusting to match. Everything is far more of a new start than normal. I am much happier in Nottingham, but it is a different pace of life to London, and its an excellent opportunity for a bit of a reset. Making sure I don't fall back into old over-commitment habits is really important.