Tiny Wars – Fantasy Skirmish

Here’s a little side project I worked on while thinking long and hard about the rules for Deathzap. One of the issues during lockdown is finding the space to play bigger games, especially while sharing the house with the parents in law, I’m currently hashing out Deathzap on a 2×2 but it could really use a 4×4 or larger. Unfortunately the dining room table is often in use with regular people’s hobbies. So I’ve been thinking about the smallest game possible, the sort of thing you could play out on the arm of the sofa.

It all started with one of these poundland lego base boards I’ve had knocking around since the super hero project.

I knew this would be a great place to start since it was small and defininitely wouldn’t end up warping. I covered it with a mix of filler and no more nails I’ve had knocking around in a tub for a while. A couple of happy accidents emerged as it seems some parts of my mix had set leading to some larger rocks turning up.

I skipped ahead a bit here because I got excited, but once I’ve covered it in sand and painted it I put down flock and tufts. The tufts are key here, because what you might not have noticed is they turn the board into 5×5 grid. The grid is so I can avoid fiddly measuring.

Here it is with some miniatures from Irregular Miniatures 15mm fantasy range.

Here are my current warbands, the Warrior Women which I painted up as African style tribeswomen, potentially because the wife and I had recently watched Black Panther.

My second warband are some Elves. Irregular’s definitely have a more woodelf style so I painted them appropriately.

I’ve also had these small buildings knocking around for a while. They’re simply made by smearing Milliput over wooden blocks and then drawing in the texture with an old biro pen. They just so happened to fit the grid perfectly.

A clash errupts in the village, who will come out on top?

Rules wise I’ve been thinking of adapting Song of Blades and Heroes or adapting my previously seen Fantasy Bash rules. In any case I can at least add 10 figures to the painted tally for the year! 473 painted now. There seems to be a good chance I’ll hit 1000 by the end of the year.