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:

Stargrave Campaign: The Unreal Engine

You'll have read about the creation of my Stargrave crew over the last 6 weeks or so, and it was really great to meet up with a bunch of great friends last weekend to play our Stargrave campaign: Unreal Engine. We were hosted by Underworld Gaming in Dublin, and 10 of us (including: Mr Saturday, Asslessman, Alex from Leadballoony, cheetor, Curis and others) travelled variously from the UK, France, Finland and of course Ireland to play on some great tables, each set up for a specific Stargrave scenario or custom scenario.

Some of the crews that took part

Hunting for Loot & Bounty - A Stargrave Pathfinder

The final member of my Cold Trader's Stargrave crew is a Pathfinder. I'm a big fan of ranger-types in any warband - there's something about the kind of character that wears a long coat or cloak and carries a bow or long rifle that really appeals to me. I'm not sure how effective a Pathfinder will be in Stargrave, but I couldn't resist including the archetype.

Stargrave Q-Bots (AKA Skullz Servitors)

Everybody knows that robot characters are cool, and that if you have opportunity, you should include them in a starship crew. I wasn't quite sure how best to include some robots in my Cold Trader Stargrave crew, as nothing really seemed to fit the bill stylistically. I happened on the Q-Bot soldier type from the Quarantine 37 supplement and decided that 40k servitors would be a fun way to represent them. I dug out a couple of the early 2000s servitors, but it was nagging me that they didn't have any detail that could be easily passed off as the one-shot flamer or grenade launcher. And then I remembered my Skullz servitors...

Alien Treasures & Secret Data - Stargrave Loot Tokens

As mentioned in my previous post, I'm currently prepping a crew for Stargrave. Most of the scenarios in the game are loot-grabs, so every game needs a selection of suitable loot counters. Loot comes in two different types: physical (crates, ammo, valuable items etc) and data (floppy discs and memory sticks).

For my data loot tokens I bought a bunch of little doodads from a bits reseller. I think they might be some kind of mine from a Space Marine kit, but I figured they'd do as little data caches.

Cold Trader Void Troopers

I've been steadily working away at a project that I've wanted to do for some time - creating a crew to accompany my Necromunda Cold Trader. I always wanted to create more than a 4-strong group. Not only is this now possible in the Necromunda rules, but they're the perfect premise for a Stargrave crew. Happily, I have a weekend of Stargrave gaming coming up next month, so that was the perfect motivation to work on some new figures to accompany my Cold Trader.

I wanted the additional figures for the crew to give the feel of professional no-nonsense criminals. These aren't gutter scum or lawless pirates. This is an efficient and meticulously-planned smuggling operation that requires a skilled workforce. The first group of figures are exactly that - disciplined and well-trained, if perhaps a little morally suspect!

A Stargrave Crew (Expanded from the Five Parsecs From Home Crew) - The Squat

If you've been keeping an eye on the blog over the last month or so, you'll know that I've put together a 6-strong Five Parsecs From Home crew. I've also been using them to spark other sub-projects, with a 10-strong Stargrave crew foremost in my mind. The final addition to this project is my last Stargrave crew member in the form of a classic Bob Olley squat. 

The Cosmic Amphibians - Space Slann

Technically this post is made up of a couple of spin-off projects from a spin-off project. I painted up the unreleased space slann to bulk up my Five Parsecs from Home crew into a Stargrave crew. Then the Colony 87 figure and terrain pieces just followed suit!

Five Parsecs From Home #6 - Psyker

 

The rag-tag crew of the battered merchant cruiser Psephonie.

The final(ish) chapter of this Five Parsecs from Home crew is the leader. I had originally intended the leader to be an Inquisitor, but I pulled out one of the brilliant Marauder Confrontation psykers and couldn't lose the thought of having a faintly ludicrous big-headed leader with a flamboyant fur-trimmed cloak!

Five Parsecs From Home Crew #5 - Mercenary

 

Every crew should have a militaristic heavy. You know, they might be the silent hard-as-nails mercenary with loads of gear from a crack commando unit, or the over-confident arrogant muscle-head with an over-fondness for loud ballistic weapons. Someone who can bring some decent firepower to the party if it all starts to get a bit tasty!

Five Parsecs From Home Crew #4 - Hive Worlder

 

The Rogue Trader Adventurers range is a goldmine of fantastic characters, and I've been wanting to find a purpose for the Hive Worlder for some time. He's a fun mix of primitive and tech with his crossbow pistol and leather jacket rubbing nicely alongside his power armoured legs* and chainsword.

*Asslessman maintains that these have no power source so must result in him walking like he's wearing ski boots.

Five Parsecs From Home Crew #3 - Assassin

 

When I was planning my Five Parsecs crew I was thinking along the lines of a group of Inquisitorial operatives, so an assassin was an obvious inclusion. I'm fond of the diminutive female assassin from the RT adventurers range, so it was a good opportunity to paint her up.

Five Parsecs from Home Crew #1 - Jokaero

A few weeks ago my good friend cheetor mentioned the Modiphius Five Parsecs from Home rules as something we ought to explore for future gaming sessions. The game requires a 6-strong starship crew for narrative solo or co-op skirmish gaming. The crew is mainly humans but with the option to sprinkle in some robots and aliens. Over the next few days my response was pretty much as follows:

1. Grab some miscellaneous miniatures and start playing around with what looked like a fun crew.
2. Buy the Five Parsecs from Home book and do some detailed planning of a crew.
3. Realise I could easily add another 4 models to use the Parsecs crew as a Stargrave crew.
4. Start modelling and painting the 10-strong Parsecs+ crew.
5. Get excited about other linked sub-groups and opportunities to paint other models in my collection.

My initial assemblage of miniatures for Five Parsecs (note, not all of these models made the cut!)

Faith & Fury - Ministorum Band

For a whole host of reasons I'd never got round to painting up any Ministorum figures. A huge oversight really, and I would like to paint up some Adepta Sororitas squads at some future point. But for now I'm satisfying myself with a small group of high energy religious sorts with the aim of adding in a handful more to make a playable Inquisimunda / Necromunda / Stargrave group.

Olleystronauts Part 2 - Painting the Crew

In my last post I covered the building of my Stargrave crew based nearly entirely on Bob Olley's Iron Claw jump troopers. This post shows off the newly painted crew in their pristine Space Fleet (or possibly Star Trooper?) uniforms.

Pulling the Crew Together - A Rogue Trader in Stargrave

The best bit about Frostgrave was the way that it allowed players to delve into their collections, dust off old figures and breathe new life into them. Stargrave has that very same appeal for me, and whilst there are some lovely new figures I could use, it's also great to use the rules as a driver to form a new warband around existing figures.

Stargrave Bestiary: Mindgrippers / Necromunda Ripper Jacks

Continuing with entries from the Stargrave Creature List, I decided to paint up a small group of Mindgrippers. These are Necromunda ripper jacks that my good friend Asslessman sent me the other week - they are perfect for represending the "parasitic monstrosities [that] are only slightly bigger than a rat and resemble a manta ray with little spider legs."

The unwary travel the lost ways of the Underhive at their peril!

Stargrave Bestiary: Bileworms and Horat

As part of my ongoing prep for future Stargrave games, I've been looking at models needed to fill in the bestiary slots for Encounters. Some of the bestiary options will be filled from my existing collection (bounty hunters, repair bots and drones for example), where as others will be new paint jobs on figures I've been planning on getting round to (like the Warbot / Rogue Trader robot from last week). Some creatures necessitate some brand new models, so I've started looking around to see what might fit.

Stargrave Bestiary: Warbot / Rogue Trader Robot

Rogue Trader robots are such brilliantly fun models, with their eccentric configurations and wide variety of styles. The bubble-bodied Castellan with its 'Lost in Space' vibes is my favourite, and I've wanted to include one in my deep space salvage crew for a while. It matches the aesthetic of the LE01 power armour troopers brilliantly, with the rounded shapes and big 'R' (for robot?) that mimics the 'P' and 'A' on the troopers.

As the Stargrave bestiary necessitates a warbot (a large robot with multiple shooting attacks), I decided to kill two birds with one stone and paint up a RT robot for the salvage crew and act as a warbot should I roll one up on the Stargrave encounter chart.

The Castellan is a reassuring addition to the crew!