BOYL 2014 - day one (Friday)

Well, I guess it's officially "Day minus one", being the Friday. Whatever - dice have been cast, beautifully painted miniatures long out of production have been shuffled around enormous tables, and plenty of decent chaps in their thirties and forties have chatted beer, their first car, and the intricacies of a hobby that no-one else cares too much about. A huge amount of fun has already been had. Oh, and the Mighty Dark-Winged Avenging Lord of Chaos himself has given me a personal tour of the new Foundry facilities while the almost biblical storm pelted down. More on that later.

First, here is a stream of pictures from the opening stages of the Siege of Avalone, in which the good people of that enlightened city try to get safely behind the walls with enough food to withstand the inevitable blockade.

Look at all those Mighty Fortress pieces!!!!!!

More Mighty Fortress!!!

I killed one of those centaurs with a lucky cannon shot

The tour was cool and prompted by me admiring the display case of Bryan's old painted models which included some gems that have appeared on other blogs already, particularly Realm of Chaos 80s and Eldritch Epistles. I got to see the hundreds of feet of molds (seventeen tons of them, apparently!), some neatly arranged into sections like "Seven Years War", "Samurai", etc. Others just row upon row upon row...... The casting room was interesting to an engineer-by-training like myself and the vulcanisers for the molds themselves were glorious affairs made from lorry jacks and hot plates!

I had an interesting chat with Bryan about exactly which figures he has the rights to produce and might be able to locate, but I want to double check I understood correctly before saying anything here. There might be a fair bit more in the way of "lost" figures like the ex-Citadel mercenaries reappearing in time, however! If it hasn't been tidied away in preparation for a battlefields tour group that are using part of the venue tomorrow, I might also get to rummage through a bag of "fifty or so unreleased models from that era" that Bryan just had lying around. I hope it's not been put somewhere safe!

More photos, battle reports, and name-dropping to come.
Rab