The All New Ten Commandments of BOYL 2020

Wow. It's been more than a year since I last posted.

It's not that I don't enjoy the blogging side of the hobby...it's just that often I am chosing between one or the other. Should I paint my minis? Or should I write about it?

Anyway. In the weeks and weeks after Bring Out Your Lead the group is saturated with BOYL posts. "This is my BOYL tell me yours" written by people better at writing than me; people better at hobbying than me and of course people that haven't swallowed a wasp.

I wanted to save this for a time when no-one was thinking about BOYL. Not my review of this year past but my recommendations to get the best out of 2020. Don't take it too seriously. Life and (more importantly) hobby time are short.

BOYL 2019. That was a fairly O.K. weekend wasn’t it?

Most of you influential bloggers missed it, but I ran (in the broadest sense of the word) a Warmaster game on Saturday. Turn 2 and I get asked a rules question. Phil digs me in the ribs, and in his best Sean Bean Blades accent quietly says: 

“Ha ha, good luck mate. You’ll have to answer this one in front of the bloke who bloody wrote the rules.”

Yep. Rick Priestley, Nigel Stillman and John Blanche are standing next to me.

“Roll a D6. 1 to 3 is no. 4 to 6 is yes”

Someone interupts my conversation with Rick P to get him to sign something for not me.

It’s been a while since I threw down in the Oldhammer Blogosphere. Some know and some do not that I had a protracted period out of work, partly through choice and partly through circumstance. And partly more through mental health necessity. I’m not fixed. But I’m functioning like someone who is. So that’s a positive thing innit. 

But since the Oldhammer miniatures dead pool became a thing, have a bang on me. I’m a bit fragile. 

Instead of reviewing this year’s BOYL, I felt perhaps I should preview BOYL 2020. Whiskey Priest has already given you a guide to getting to BOYL (and it’s not a map). Lopez has explained what happens to your sense of self worth if you go to work instead. So, for what it's worth, here are my 10 commandments for making BOYL 2020 even better than this spankingly good year. 1. THOU SHALT WEAR THINE OWN FACE

The days after BOYL are often filled with posts in the Oldhammer groups with “Oh my God I can’t believe you were there…I didn’t know…” and “Oh no I wish we’d have met up…” 

Some have suggested name tags, perhaps even light-heartedly, but name tags are not the answer (although feel free to wear one). There’s a couple of things we can do to ensure we can meet the people we want to meet and the people that want to meet us can meet us. 

The main one, is WEAR YOUR OWN FACE.  

I get it. You love Peter Griffin, or Roy Batty, Homer Simpson, Trap-jaw or Optimus Prime.  

But of course it’s hard to recognise and meet someone when they have a false name and postman pat as their profile picture. 

For just three days in August, how hard would it be to have a profile picture on Facebook or on the Forum or even on your Blog that looks like you? You can go back to your picture of Chunk from the Goonies on Monday morning. You really can.  

You were smart enough to set up your low DPi avatar of Hans Gruber falling off Nakatomi plaza in the first place, therefore you are smart enough to be able to change it twice in 5 days. BOYL isn’t a paedophile conference or a terrorism seminar that you need to keep on the down low on the dark web.  

You are not Qanon.  

The best way to be able to find your chums that you’ve never met in the physical world is if you look like your profile picture and so do they.  

Hey – why not go the whole hog and change your profile pic every day in the actual clothes you are wearing. Tech is an amazing thing. 

Another thing we can do is set up a BOYL Facebook venue/event every year and you can check into it each day you are there so others know. No more “I had no idea so and so was at BOYL”.  

Stuntcat (aka Paul McW) can attest to the great things that Facebook profile stalking can do for your BOYL enjoyment (virtual boomfist sent to you bro). Let’s make it easier for everyone in 2020.

Trap-Jaw wears his own face in his Oldhammer Facebook profile pic

2 THOU SHALT NOT SPEND 40 PERCENT OF BOYL AT WALLEYWORLD 

You can argue that you are free to make your own choices of course, but that’s not really the point of Commandments is it? If you were smart enough to know that murder is wrong then you wouldn’t need religion in the first place would you? 

People travel half-way around the world to get to BOYL. 

And when I say that, I mean that metaphorically. We all make a certain amount of sacrifice(s) to get to BOYL. Whether that be spending all our leisure time painting; leaving our nearest and dearest for the weekend; travelling long distance (be that flying from Phoenix, cycling past gibbets from Newcastle or walking from Peterborough); taking unpaid leave from work or just neglecting real life. 

As Whiskey Priest said – tell your significant other(s) and get the dates in the diary now. BOYL 2020 is 31st July to the 2nd of August 2020. 

I’ll say that again for those that don’t get it. 

It’s Friday to Sunday.  

Three days. 

If you miss 35 to 40 percent of BOYL because you are faffing about in Warhammer World on the Friday you need to have a long hard look at yourself. 

Get a full length mirror. 

Stand in front of it and ask yourself: 

“Who the actual fuck am I?” 

It’s no secret that I’ve never been to Warhammer World. I’ll make it one day – but one thing is certain, it’ll be on one of the 362 days of the year that BOYL doesn’t fall on. 

Warhammer World is there on the Thursday and will still be there on the Monday after. Take an earlier or later flight / train. Take an extra day leave. Go sick.  

If all else fails walk out of your job on Wednesday and get a new one on Tuesday. 

In the Oldhammer community there’s plenty of moaning about the good old lead days and this and that. Again. Ask the mirror. “Who am I and what the actual fuck am I doing missing so much of BOYL?” 

You are voluntarily missing a large chunk of the festivities so that you can sit in the Warhammer World gaming hall crammed in next to loads of kids playing 18th edition 40k with unpainted, grey plastic models with most of the table taken up with an unpainted resin giant robot on one side of the table and a black-primed Forgeworld dropship that has inexplicably landed right next to it. 

You spend all year moaning about this stuff.  

“Wah, wah, wah, unpainted plastic, boo hoo hoo Age of Sigmar.” 

And yet you voluntarily spend your first day of BOYL in Age of Sigmar Walley World.  

Yes I called it Walley World. No I didn’t stutter. 

It’s just about forgivable if you have come from abroad and have never been there before and you really, really couldn’t get an extra day off for whatever reason.  

But if not. What are you doing that you couldn’t have done in better surroundings with better people and painted models? 

Sure, Saturday is the main day. I used to be a “Daytripper” too. There’s nothing wrong with not being able to stay over if one weekend day is all you’ve got. 

Just make sure you can look yourself in the eye during the post BOYL blues and say: “I got the most I possibly could from BOYL 2020”. 

Now check aunt Edna’s pulse and make sure you untie Dinky...

https://youtu.be/hTPTFrSA15s

3. THOU SHALT STAY IN NEWARK

All the cool people stay in Newark. 
I know because I'm one of them. Check ouot these pics and decide which person you'd rather be:

Left to Right: Not Cool. Cool.  

Left to Right: Not Awesome. Awesome.

Left to Right: Not Pretty. Pretty.

  *Please note that no Americans were harmed in the making of these photos.

It’s Sunday morning and I ask one of the Nottingham crew how Saturday night went.

“We ate a pizza and watched a fight”

Of course you did.

Sure I bet Nottingham has a lot more hotels and Air B’n’Bs, but it’s a 40-minute drive from Nottingham to Foundry. For perspective Newark North Gate is only half-an-hour further away from London King’s Cross time-wise. In other words – for an extra 25 to 30 minutes travel you could have some real nightlife and stay the whole weekend in London. Thus enjoying Britain’s sixth or seventh most violent city and experience and some proper British food cooked by proper French, Indian and Italian chefs. And maybe some actual genuine British inner city gangster crime. WTF is wrong with you?

Be honest. How much sight-seeing did you do in Nottingham? Why stay further away from Foundry than you need to?

You could even camp in the field next to Foundry.

The Newark apres-gaming scene might not be to everyone’s taste. Not everyone wants to watch several loud, bearded gamers drunkenly banging on tables like dwarfs in the first scene of The Hobbit while talking about dice. But the social side of BOYL is really fun and something I really enjoy. You don’t have to stay up until the early hours and wake up with a jungle kebab on your face, but having an ale or two in Newark on the Friday and Saturday is a great way of catching up with old friends and making new ones. Especially if you have been too busy rolling dice to interact with the real world for the day.

In 2020, make an effort to get out of your “my gang” comfort mentality. If you look around your night-time crew and it’s the same guys you hung out with last year – you’re doing something wrong.

If you look around your night-time crew and I’m in it then you just can’t run fast enough.  

I imagine Newark is rarely the place to be, so grant it its 2 nights in the sun.

4. THE LORD ALMIGHTY GUIDES YOU VIA THE PUB

Rain is God’s way of telling you that you should be sheltering inside the pub.

Sunshine is God’s way of telling you that you should be in a pub garden.

1am last orders in the pub is God’s way of letting you know that it is time to go to bed in order to be functional for tomorrow’s gaming. It is not God’s way of telling you to head to the hotel bar until 4:30am with Geordie Mike.

Unless you can handle it obviously (winks at thansants).

Please note, other magical sky daddy-gods are available. May yours go with you.

5. THOU MUST APPRECIATE GEORDIE MIKE  

The mercurial Geordie Mike is now an integral part of BOYL. 

He first came into our lives so suddenly on Friday night in the Prince Rupert in August 2018 gibbering about gibbets, reminding us that cycling downhill is easier than cycling uphill and of course trying to find his hotel armed only with a wet scrap of paper with a map hastily scrawled onto it.

This year he arrived looking like the bearded Nicholas Clay riding back into Excalibur as the aged Lancelot. 

Just without the horse (and not dead).

Without social media presence and possibly without the internet – he manages to arrive at Foundry at exactly the right time each year, possibly by bicycle, possibly by hitch-hiking like a teenager in an early 80s horror movie. 

And he always seems to be booked into games.

He books a room in a guesthouse and then spends each night on the floor of the bar in someone else’s hotel.

What an absolute legend.

If you are not English and you want to speak to Geordie Mike (and no BOYL is complete without it) then you need to watch this tutorial.

https://youtu.be/phIR36Tmcrg

6. THOU SHALT NOT COVERT THY NEIGBOUR'S OXEN. OK, so this one is a real-life commandment for those of you that believe in that sort of thing.

It is also the only commandment that I follow without question.

I never, ever covet my neighbour’s oxen. And he has a bloody lovely one as well.

 It doesn’t matter how good your neighbours’ castrated bulls are. Don’t covet them.

Don’t do it.

7. THOU SHALT NOT PUT THE EXCLUSIVE MINI ON EBAY This should never really have to be said, but the BOYL miniature is put in your grubby little mitts for free. It really, really is not yours to put on Ebay for a profit.

No sir.

Unless you either publicly burn that money or film yourself giving the money to charity.

Although for technical reasons it is funny if every morning you ask Garth for a new miniature declaring that you need a new one because the other one “sold really quickly on Ebay”.

Aw, you should see his face.

8. THOU SHALT BE INCLUSIVE, SOCIABLE AND ENCOURAGE PARTICIPATION For tis another great mystery of BOYL that people travel for miles and miles to Foundry, over land, sea, desert, ocean, the West Midlands and mountains – only to spend the entire weekend playing against the same person that they usually play against. Be that friend, family member or pet.

Just as the wearing of one’s own face should be actively encouraged, so should inclusivity and participation.

I get that wargamers are not necessarily known for how superbly well socially adjusted we are, but we can be nice and ask someone who is watching our games if they’d like to know more, or even ask them if they’d like to join in.

I’m guilty of this myself – letting someone watch a game in silence for a long time without acknowledging they exist, even though my game was fully participation. 

My BOYL resolution next year is not to allow this to happen – and I’ll also remember a sign which says: “Participation Game – Please Ask If You’d Like to Join In. No knowledge of the rules needed”.

Shame on me. 

Be excellent to each other BOYLers.

9. THOU SHALT NOT SWALLOW A WASP Try to avoid doing this, neither you nor the wasp will appreciate it a great deal. 

And to make matters worse, rather than help you in any way, BOYLers will spend the rest of the weekend asking where they were when that bloke swallowed a wasp as if it was the Kennedy assassination.

Do not laugh uncontrollably with your mouth open in the marquee.

Do not stand near Matthew Street ever, as it is highly likely that he will have either a T-shirt, a fragrance or a drink that attracts wasps. And probably all three.

10. Thou Shalt Understand that BOYL 2020 Started at One Minute Past Midnight on Monday 5th August 2019.

The onset of post-BOYL blues (PBB) is best avoided by using the knowledge that on Monday 5th August at 00:01am you have less than 8,664 hours to realise your dream for BOYL 2020.

And counting.

It’s time for me to start building, painting, booking accommodation and finally designing some T-Shirts.

And Laser-Squad in ZX-Spectrum colours obviously.

As Geordie Mike would say…

Auf Wiedersehen Pet.