LEAD & STEEL 2026
As part of my work with History and Games Lab, I helped run a game table at Salute this year. I’ll talk about that in a future post, but the key point is that I decided, as soon as I knew that I was going to be working Salute, to go to Lead and Steel, an Oldhammer event in Sheffield. This was a little out of the way for me, but the journey was definitely worth it.
I went up on the Friday, settled into my hotel, then headed into the city centre to meet up with some other attendees and one of the organisers for some drinks. It was lovely to catch up, and I didn’t stay out too late. Despite struggling to sleep — which happens to me a lot when I’m travelling — I was up bright and early and headed out to the venue. I was early enough that I could help set up a bit, which was nice.
The venue just starting to fill up. Not all the games are going, but you can see many of the vendors.
The game I was planning to play in was Far Corfe Bugs!, a big multiplayer Necromunda game (well, let’s call it Necromundish) set in the city of Far Corfe. I had put together a “bug cult” — a sort of more-or-less Genestealer Cult — for the event over the previous month.
Some of the bugs posing for a group photo.
The game itself was chaotic and hilarious. I think I was a little bit anxious and maybe irritable — a consequence of not sleeping much — but hopefully I wasn’t too annoying. I didn’t win, but I didn’t completely embarrass myself, and I got to see a lot of fantastic conversions and paint jobs. Games like this really invite people to create amazing groups of models.
How it started.
How it’s going.
I also did some shopping, picking up models from Big Mr Tong, MEP Miniatures, Four A Miniatures, and more. I was tempted by some of the other vendors, including Mammoth Miniatures, Ontos Games, and Diehard Miniatures, but those might be for another time. I also got a big pile of amazing freebies and picked up some criminal bargains on old Citadel lead at the Oldhammer pick ‘n’ mix. I could have happily spent ten times as much, but I restrained myself.
Hanging out with the organisers and seeing things behind the scenes made the whole event even more fun, and it reminded me of what I love about BOYL — although BOYL has expanded to a pretty big event, and although Lead and Steel seems to be getting bigger every year, these are fundamentally community events, staged by hobbyists because they think it’ll be fun. People put on games because they want to share games they love, people buy models from companies they might not otherwise have heard of, and people go to the pub afterward (although I took off early because I had a train to catch).
For about a year, a friend and I have been telling ourselves that we want to do a little Oldhammer event here in Cambridge, or maybe some combination of Oldhammer and indie-mini stuff. What, exactly, I don’t know, and more importantly I don’t know in what time I would arrange it. But for me, community events like this one are just so inspirational; I leave BOYL full of excitement about making models and playing games, and I left Lead and Steel feeling the same way.