when are enough rules enough? Part 3 – activations and Morale

In the continuing quest for simple but satisfying wargame rules, I’ve thought up the following for turn sequence, activations and morale and they’re all here together because I’ve integrated them. ACTIVATIONS During a player’s turn they can activate each of their units once. To activate a unit they roll a 2D6, if the unit is: […]

When are enough rules enough? Part 2 – Shooting and melee

After some comment reading and further playtesting, I’ve settled on the following rules for both shooting and melee in this much simplified version of Deathzap, the idea is to be able to take into account the various Sci-fi troop types without getting bogged down: SHOOTING WEAPON RANGE SHOTS Rifle 24” 1 Repeater 12” 2 Medium […]

When are enough rules enough? Shooting

With recent hype around possible changes to Warhammer 40k with 10th edition on the horizon I’ve been thinking a lot about Deathzap. Namely, what do I want from it as a ruleset? The early forms of it were simple and streamlined rulesets primarily designed for quick and deadly games, mostly to inspire me to write […]

Mechanics Lab – Super Simple Universal Skirmish Rules: Groblins vs Elves

Often a throwaway line in a ruleset can have massive ramifications, or in other words – no ruleset has throwaway lines! While setting up for playtesting I read the deployment rules: Five shrines are placed before the game. Place a single shrine in the centre of the playing area. Player’s then place two shrines each […]

Mechanics Lab – Super Simple Skirmish Rules

Tinkering with rules is what I do. I suppose its part of the hobby you really can take with you, in a boring or slow moment at work when you haven’t got anyone to talk to you can theorise about combat systems, probabilities and hopefully think up new and unique mechanics. Having played a good […]

The Forest vs The Bobbies

Our forces are as follows: The Bobbies: 1 Inspector – Gunslinger, 15 Might 1 Detective – Gunner, 15 Might 1 Headsman – Berserker, 15 Might 1 Sarge – Soldier, 15 Might 2 Bobbies with Rifles – Soldier, 10 Might 2 Bobbies – Warrior, 10 Might The Forest – 1 Witan – Monster, 32 Might 4 […]

SUPER SIMPLE SKIRMISH RULES REVISITED AND The Clockwork Empire vs The Family

In the interest of spending less money on this hobby, I often find myself returning to old projects. This week I looked back at my Monochrome minis and the Super Simple Skirmish game, to see if I could simplify it further and add even more strategic depth. I think I’ve managed that. WARBANDS, FIGHTERS AND […]

Cheap And Plastic Fantasy Figures

Wargamers really are spoilt for choice these days. It wasn’t that long ago that the only easily available fantasy figures in plastic were sold by Games Workshop. Now however there’s Mantic’s Kings of War line, North Star’s Frostgrave and Oathmark (that they make with Osprey), Fireforge Games’ Forgotten Worlds and Warlord Games’ Warlords of Erewhon […]

MECHANICS LAB: SNOWBALL SKIRMISHES

First let’s get the necessary admin out of the way: Hobby Spend: £152.88 I’ve been buying up a lot of plastic figures from Oathmark, Frostgrave and Fireforge Games for a fantasy skirmish project. Painted: £303.50 My aim for lent is £0 spent on hobby, but we’ll see how that goes. I haven’t fully taken stock […]

real violence, digital violence, movie violence and PLASTIC VIOLENCE

Wargamers on the whole appear to be an intelligent and sensitive bunch. News of the Russian invasion of Ukraine seems to have sent a bit of a shockwave through our niche community with many bloggers expressing feelings of guilt, distaste, even a little shame. I myself have been turned off exploring my own Global War […]

mechanics lab: polygonal dice

It’s been an odd week, one of those weeks where I experience a bit of creativity overload, many new ventures, many new projects, almost none of them the Global Warfare rules I’m supposed to be working on. One such venture this week was a simple skirmish system using polygonal dice to do all of the […]

Mechanics Lab: Global Warfare

I am at heart a skirmish wargamer. I blame Mordheim battle reports in White Dwarf that I read as a kid and probably Games Workshop in general, since I suppose all of their games even Apocalypse are skirmish games in the classic wargaming definition of skirmish (1 figure = 1 man). Having never played a […]

Mission Accomplished – 1000pts of Soviets

I can’t quite believe this is done! The Bolt Action Soviet starter army I grabbed a long time ago was sat in its box on my shelf of shame seeming like an insurmountable task. But I stuck to that simple and quick scheme I explained last time, and before long I was ploughing through all […]

Painting 1000 points of Bolt Action Soviets in a week and an End of January Update

Since I’m not buying very much these days I’ve been trying to get stuff I already have lying around painted. One such project is my Soviet Bolt Action army. They’re my first army and I picked them up a while ago, it burned out for me a bit in the assembly stage. I just don’t […]

How do you fight a global war?

That’s a genuine question by the way. As I embark on the Second Global War where House Baronor fight the Jendari Collective for planetary control, I’m not entirely sure how to fight that war. What at least has made sense to me so far is to play a risk like game, the pieces being representative […]

The Mid-January Productivity Update

So as promised, I think bi-monthly I’ll be letting you know what I’ve painted, and what I’ve bought. As of January 15th I’ve painted… For 40k – 30 Kabalite Warriors, 5 Scourges and an Archon for my 3rd edition Dark Eldar army. I was particularly happy with the Archon. For Void – the contents of […]

Rescue the Boss – A Simple Toy Soldier and Deathzap Battle Report (Sort of)

So analysis paralysis made me hold off on playing out this scenario for a while. I want something that plays well and is exciting, but I’m frankly lacking in experience when it comes to designing wargaming scenarios, but the table and terrain was sat waiting for a game so I just went for it. It […]

Evil Astrorangers vs The Skelebots – A Simple Toy Soldier Battle Report

Since everyone’s angry with Games Workshop and many have complaints about the rules getting even more bloated and complicated, why not play something simple just for fun? The Evil Astrorangers will all activate with D10s and roll D10s in melee combat, I’ll allow the champion to add 1 to his melee rolls too since he’s […]

Fences, a Detention Block and a Conlang

I needed terrain to play the follow on scenario from my last battle report, namely a prison of some description and suitable fences. The detention block was easy enough to build, it’s just an old box I had lying around that I super glued a bunch of spare bases too and then painted: It was […]

Capture the Wautomata – A Simple Toy Soldier and Deathzap Battle Report

Based on ManofTin’s few broken down wagon battle reports I was inspired to try something similar. With the advent of The Second Gobal War on Jendar with The Jendari Collective once again facing off against House Baronor, both powers had to pull back from their various expansions and focus solely on the conflict at home. […]

A scary idea for 2022

In 2020 I decided to keep tally of how many figures I had bought and subsequently painted all in the hopes that I’d paint more than I had bought, turns out I managed it and painted over 1200 figures. In 2021 I just kept a simple diary of blog posts and then recapped the year […]

Mortan’s Men vs The Void – A Playtest Battle Report

After the last battle report I was asked by Hexeres if smaller elite forces have an advantage in games of Deathzap since you get 3 victory points per destroyed unit. So a force with fewer better units will give away less points. So today amidst a headache and flu like symptoms (but not Covid as […]

A Deathzap Boxing Day Battle Report

I played a little 500 point game today on the same battlefield as my last post. In this instance it was Mortan’s Men facing off against the League of Zandor. This will be a rules rather than story battle report. I’ll try to explain in some detail what is going on. Mortan’s Men had: A […]

Leaving it up to Chance – Deathshot Battle Report

Captain Vinko spat on the ground in disgust as he saw the Royalists approaching. “We won the war men!” He shouted, “Now let’s win the battle!” The Yellow Hats cheered their new officer. While not as well trained as his regulars Vinko knew the militia would fight just as hard since this now was their […]

So what did I do in 2021?

One of the weird things about having a hobby blog is being able to look back over the year and see pretty much exactly what I’ve been up to in the year just gone. JANUARY I started the year with my 0 player duelling project. It was a fun distraction and got me revamping old […]