BOYL 2017 (Part 2) - Saturday Gaming

Very possibly you'll already seen some of the excellent BOYL 2017 coverage elsewhere on the net (try Crucium Giger or Dear Tony Blair or Shadowkings), but it only seems right and proper that I give an overview of my weekend. After a Friday of fun at Warhammer World, I arrived with Erasmus Papafakis ready for gaming.

 

Olivia

First order of the day was to see how Olivia had cast. Who's Olivia? Olivia is the commemorative event figure, sculpted by John Pickford for the event, and cast by Foundry. I took on the task of organising the sculpting and liaising with John.

The green of Olivia with some scale references.

We also had input from Will Beck to design us a backpack for sculpting reference for the rear of the figure.

And finally my copy of the figure. She's limited to 161 castings, given away free to event attendees. I believe around 120 were given to attendees over the weekend, with the spares being given to the USA and French attendees for their respective Oldhammer events.

I'm sure you'll agree that John made a fantastic job of the figure, and she's a great memento of the event. Why Olivia? We had a working title of Olivia Neutron-Bomb for the sculpt, and it kind of stuck!

 

Gaming Fun

I had four game planned for Saturday - an Eternal Champion mega fight, Giant Slaying, Jetbike racing in Helsreach, and Grox Herding.

Eternal Champion Battle

Colin aka Whiskey Priest ran a fantastic Warhammer 3rd ed game using the Eternal Champions characters from Michael Moorcock's books. My Hawkmoon rubbed shoulders with Elric, Corum, Jerry Cornelius and others against the ravening hordes of dangerous gods, using (I believe) stats from a Citadel Journal.



Asslessman and Bulldog Lopez are actually looking at the incarnations of the Champion Eternal. Not a tree.

Hawkmoon, Elric and Corum wade across the river.

A horde of barbarians waits on the other side.



Warriors of Chaos!

The Eternal Champions find it harder going than expected.

Oladahnn provides ranged support.

At the summit of a nearby mountain, a sorcerer and his Champion await the Champions Eternal.

Elric reaches the summit via an air elemental. But he falls.

Hawkmoon in turn battles the Chaos Champion. And falls.

Erekose fights entities summoned by the sorcerer.

Before destroying the fell totem.

Colin ran an excellent game, full of peril. It turns out that Eternal Champions aren't that tough after all, as only Erekose and Rackhir survived the encounter. Also, firing a flame lance too early is a silly rookie's mistake!

Jetbike Racing

In anticipation of the experience of racing jetbikes through the town of Helsreach, I'd painted up a jetbike specifically for the game:

More, better pics and a full overview of the figure in a future blogpost.

The game turned out to be enormously popular, with at least 15 and very possibly more players. Antipixi wanted to play so I loaned him my jetbike to use. I didn't take any in-game shots, but I understand it was a slick, quick and well devised game, and Antipixi managed to triumph with first place!

My jetbiker jostling amongst the pack (it was the smallest jetbike in the game!)

Giant Killing

Whilst the jetbike racing took the attention of a significant number of attendees, I took the opportunity to play in the first round of the all-comers' Giant Killing Championship. Again, this was being run by Whiskey Priest - the basic premise being that the overall winner was the dwarf who inflicted the most number of wounds (or kills) on one of three giants in the fabulous arena.

I'd prepped a dwarf for the game - this rather jolly Norse dwarf.

Again, more pics etc in a future blogpost.

My rather hamfisted attempts to take down a giant resulted in one wound being caused, before spending the next 4 turns trying to wriggle free from the sack the giant had stuffed my dwarf into! I suspect he ended up being a tasty snack after the game!

Again, a really great fast-paced game, lasting no more than 30 minutes.

Grox Herding

The final game of the day was my own Grox Herding game. I'd devised a randomised, card-based system which dictated the level of control (or otherwise) a herdsman could exert on his grox herd. The first herd into the corral was the winner.

The key game mechanic was the ability to influence other players' 'herding rolls' (usually to make them more difficult), because everyone likes the ability to screw another player over!

Aiden and Curtis kindly lent us a corner of the Helsreach table to use for the Grox Herding, so we had a fantastic backdrop, as well as other gaming going on around us.

The herding area.



Plenty of space to allow the grox herds to manoeuvre.

This may look sedate, but there was lots of hilarity as players screwed each other over, or delighted in failed herding tests.

Michael's herd, led by the claret-robed herdman, spent a significant amount of time wandering around this corner of the board.

Curis' brilliant cowboy herder equipped with all the requisite equipment.

After much taunting and bravado, cheetor's herdsman (an official of the Administratum, Agricultural Division) successfully enticed his herd of baby groxen into the corral to emerge the victor.

I'll leave it to others to evaluate the success or otherwise of the game - there are certainly a few tweaks I want to make before the next run-out. It hit the spot from my perspective as everyone seemed to understand the mechanics after just one turn, and we'd completed in just about an hour - which is ideal for an end-of-the-day game I think.

Tune in later for the third and final instalment!