Space Pirates

The generation ships of the Solar Raiders and the Heavens Peace Accord pushed the entire Xolar System in one direction when it came to the design of their ships – the bigger, the better. Invasions were executed by large and almost entirely self sustaining ships. However once Selenoid raids had reached their peak, that dogma […]

Knockoff Xenomorphs

A while back I bought a bag of Dinosaur Skeletons: And then didn’t do anything with them. I had initially planned to include them in my Crusage project, however my focus shifted elsewhere. But while digging through my hobby room, looking for useful figures for my Big Deathzap project I stumbled across them again. I […]

Big Deathzap

I had the sudden urge to paint some cheap army men this weekend. The fruits of my labour were two squads for some skirmishing in the Deathzap universe. These figures are much bigger than usual Deathzap figures and rather than being 20-30mms tall clock in at 54mm. The first squad represent the Jendari Defence Army, […]

One Big Worm

At the height of my Havok hyperfocus, after getting at decently sized Nexus and Karn force together I turned my attention to the Pteravore. As any Havok fan is aware, the Pteravore unfortunately only had three units released before the game died, Razors, Screamers and Hell Hounds. I managed all three utilising Wargames Atlantic’s Harvesters […]

Painting Camouflage?

I’ve finally, actually painted some camouflage in the way you’d expect, basecoating, shading and then highlighting each colour, and I think the results are pretty good: While I do rather like this result, it can be time consuming, and it’s not how I’ve approached camouflage in the past. My usual method has been to basecoat, […]

Witch Hunters

After my last post, getting into the lore of my Super Simple Universal Skirmish System Universe (S.S.U.S.S.U) I received a package from Irregular Miniatures containing my next warband – The Witch Hunters. While the Dragon Temple remain as the last human empire, remnants of other empires still exist. One such remnant are the roving bands […]

The S.S.U.S.R Universe

The goal of my Super Simple Universal Skirmish Rules was as the title suggests, to create a game that allowed me to grab any models and pit them against each other in a non-taxing sort of way. Of course, as always being the hobby butterfly, even though I already had many figures to utilise I […]

A bit of a Hobby Update

With quite a few things on the go I haven’t made much progress in any single direction, so instead of showing off one project, here’s a few… First up are a couple of 15mm Trolls from Irregular Miniatures I’m using as 28mm Orcs. They’ve been on my desk for some time, and after falling back […]

A Tanky Week

This week I finished a few tanks I’ve had taking up an unnecessarily large amount of space on my fold up hobby desk. The first two were a Turan 2 and Csaba (technically not a tank) from Mad Bob Miniatures for my burgeoning Hungarian Army for Bolt Action. The kits were extremely easy to build […]

S.S.U.S.R – Story Battle Report: The Family VS The Greys

The cave was dark and wet, but it was the safest place that could be found. Mother eyed her children. They weren’t strong enough, weren’t ready for the coming fight, but she had no choice, the space men were closing in on them, and the Family had to take its stand. Mother looked to the […]

So What Makes a Game ‘Fun’ Then?

With my recent return to my Ghost Legions setting, of course I drew up a new set of rules. Which I posted here. They’re an okay set, make sense, play relatively quickly, and can give you some difficult choices to make… but are they fun? Maybe… I guess fun is in the brain of the […]

Ghost Legions Battle Report: WW1 Germans vs Medieval Knights

Here’s a somewhat shorter and maybe less detailed battle report, of a recent game I had using the rules I posted last time. The game sparked something, an entire mental debate around what makes a game ‘fun’… which if my thought properly coagulate, will make up my next post. Not much to report game wise, […]

Ghost Legions – The Rules So Far

If you’ve been following along, this should make sense. The game so far should let you pitch any group of historical figures against any other. The points costs are listed at the end, and I usually play around 150 points. From here I’m going to need to figure out my lore, and think about possible […]

Ghost Legions Playtesting: WW1 Germans vs Goths

This may not make too much sense just yet, as I’ve not posted the rules in full, however I’m still very much playtesting this thing, and trying to get the points costs balanced. Here are my very basic points calculations: Armour Save (light) 5+ = 6pts Armour Save (medium) 4+ = 9pts Armour Save (heavy) […]

Mechanics Lab: New Ghost Legions

This isn’t your average milk toast wargaming, this is your fully caffeinated, balls to the wall sort of wargaming. There’s only one rule: There are no rules! That’s because we’re going to figure out the rules as we go. So I’ve got a pile of dice, a notepad, a tape measure and some minis on […]

The Best MDF Terrain?

MDF terrain is everywhere, and there are huge numbers of kits available all at various price points and complexities. But I’m a simple man, who enjoys simple things, and since my gaming spans multiple scales and genres, I’m always itching for something generic. Sure I could collect an authentic 40k battlefield but it would do […]

A Public Service Announcement Regarding the Instructions For The Wolverine Tank

It’s great that smaller companies are now producing hard plastic vehicles for sci-fi settings. The Wolverine Tank from Archon Studio is fantastic. It’s a brilliantly kit, highly detailed and chunky. However there is an issue with the instructions that can make your life building one an absolute nightmare (I guess mileage on your nightmares may […]

So Can AI Write Wargame Rules? The Battle Report

So let’s actually try to play this thing (the rules are on my previous AI post here). After reading through them a few times I realised a lot of the issues could be solved by playing with single figure units like a small scale skirmish game, rather than the squad based game I had initially […]

Speed Painting Pretty Much Anything

After weeks of Havok (I’m waiting for some tanks to arrive), and after playing with those AI generated rules, I was in the mood to not be so sensible. My heart is always with silly little skirmish games, and Ghost Legions is a project that I frequently stop and start without really scratching the itch. […]

Can AI Write Wargames Rules?

A friend and I were playing with Chat GPT, and wondered if it could effectively write a set of rules, and I was especially interested to see if it would produce any new or interesting game mechanics. I suppose I was also wondering how long it was going to be before all Warhammer Rulebooks and […]

A Big Havok Battle

I set up both of my entire collections of Karn and Nexus and pitched them against each other, not worrying about points, but just to play the game. There were a few special rules I wanted to play with, and as far as Havok 2.0 is concerned, I’ve backtracked a lot of my changes largely […]

Borkian Mercenaries and Reaver Captains

Continuing on, with my ever expanding Havok collection… I’m pretty happy that I’ve managed to fill a few slots from the original Havok line up that I thought I’d struggle to recreate. First up are my Borkian Mercenaries: They’re very different from the originals: I’ve gone less flying psycho in fishnets and more Laserburn – […]

Havok Tanks?: The Sturnhammer

I was rather shocked to find this on Amazon for £20. Thinking getting some tanks together for Havok as going to cost me an arm and a leg may not quite be true! The Sturnhammer is a really great kit, the parts don’t come in a sprue, however they are all decently clean of mould […]

Havok Reinforcements Completed

As shown off in my last post, here are my finished Havok reinforcements, for the Nexus: It’s been an interesting project recreating these figures using Wargames Atlantic’s fantastic range of plastic figures, and then painting them has also presented its own challenges, in trying to mimic a more modern pre-painted style (toysoldier2000?). The Storm Troopers […]

Kitbashing Wargames Atlantic Figures and my Havok WIP

My January hyperfocus continues in earnest with more unit for my Havok forces. This time around I nabbed a box of Bulldogs and Space Nam. For my Nexus force I’ve put together 3 new units. From the standard Havok roster I put together some Tribunes: The Bulldogs box gives you steam punk colonial era British […]