Upir the Leech & Bring Out Your Lead 2025

Bring Out Your Lead (BOYL) was held at Wargames Foundry in Newark near Nottingham last weekend. For those of you who don't know, this is an annual Oldhammer event featuring classic Citadel miniatures and a range of games large and small. This year you would have seen games of Rogue Trader and 2nd edition, classic Warhammer scenarios like McDeath and the Vengeance of the Lichemaster, plus Space Crusade, Heroquest, Necromunda, Man O War and more. There's even space for non-GW games as long as the vibe is right. For my part I pitched my Paul Muller cultists against Mat's Rogue Trader mutants in a game of Stargrave.

Traditionally there is a limited edition event miniature available to attendees. As a general rule, this has a nod to an old-school theme, and is often sculpted by a legendary sculptor. This year, we were lucky enough to have Paul Muller sculpt us Upir, the Underhive Leech:

The figure is a homage to an unpublished Tony Ackland illustration (shared on his Facebook page) that is likely to have been drawn for the short-lived Confrontation games system. 

Paul played to his strengths by sculpting a truly horrific and terrifying bat-eared monster with sharp claws and teeth! It's a figure that can easily be used in Confrontation or Necromunda as a scenario big boss, or as a Rogue Trader vampire.

Paul's original green

400 copies were cast and given out to BOYL attendees over the course of the three days of the event.

The keen eyed among you may have noticed that I've been steadily building a Paul Muller-themed cult over the last few months. This is no coincidence! I managed to persuade the casters to give me an early copy just before BOYL, and was able to paint up Upir and field him in my Stargrave game - see if you can spot Upir in action!

The model itself is a joy to paint - you can really go to town with all that anatomy on show. I kept the paintjob fairly simple and largely monochrome. The skin was all done with drybrushing, washes and a few highlights added at the end with a brush.

I think he looks pretty good alongside his underlings. What do you reckon?

So that's BOYL done and dusted for another year. I had a great time catching up with people, meeting new folks and playing some fun games (including my first ever game of Space Crusade). Can't wait until next year.