Super Speed Painting

I’ve been watching a lot of miniature painters and wargamers on YouTube do 24 hour challenges where they attempted to get an entire army done in well 24 hours. the thing I found strange is often they painted their figures in basically the same way they always had but attempted to do it faster. Now […]

The Return of My Anime-ish Rules

I cleaned up my hobby desk earlier this week. With so much more extra space I’ve managed to fit in a small gaming area right next to my painting station. So figures once dry can be pushed right into the action! The space itself could probably just about house a 2’x2’ board, but for now […]

Zombie Goofy and Dark Disney

The wife and I occasionally go to Disney World in Florida. This is entirely my fault. I had enough money once to plan a big holiday. There were suggestions of Tokyo, New York, but with all the various anxieties I have and knowing my wife was a Disney fan I suggested heading to the safe […]

Easy Foam Tile Terrain

Terrain building a what really got me into the wargaming hobby many moons ago, and after a short hiatus to play video games as a teenager terrain was what brought be back in my early 20s. Terrain can be frustrating though. Shop bought items can be rather pricey and home made stuff can be just […]

Growing Neo-Arcane

I’ve been busy this week planning and painting my forces for Neo-Arcane and I think I’ve also come up with a fairly innovative points and activation system. First up I’ve added there Ghosts to my undead force I’ve now named the ‘Necrypt’. The corporation I’m now just calling ‘Core’ has gained a Sniper, Cyborg and […]

Neo-Arcane: The Battle Begins

I’ve made some progress with all my recent figure cleanup jobs/ purchases, and I’m ready to get this old project of mine back up and running. I formerly called this game the New Earth Engine, but now I’m calling it Neo-Arcane. I’m imagining a world of Tolkien and Warhammer-esque fantasy where a strange invasion from […]

Mechanics Lab: A Diceless and Statless Game?

A long time ago on a blog far far away I wrote a post about solo gaming and the issues of playing non-solo games (Warhammer 40k for example) solo. The main issue I have with solo gaming is not playing the game itself, I’m fairly happy to take on both sides, but it is the […]

The New Earth Engine

The following is a post from my old blog pictures and all. It’s a game I’ve often thought about revamping and I’ve recently been either stripping and fixing some of the same figures from this post or rebuying them. So you’ll probably see more stuff along these lines in the future. I’ve been rethinking the […]

A 6mm Distraction

Occasionally I find things in the drawer of abandoned minis. In the week just passed I found some 6mm infantry from Scotia Grendel and some sci fi tanks from Irregular. I think the trick I’ve learned is to paint less and paint more starkly. Don’t do too many highlights, keep your scheme simple and striking. […]

#NewYearNewArmy

Games Workshop have been pushing #newyearnewarmy on Instagram, and I’ve been complying with my latest effort in 40k. Of course though, because it’s me and because I hate building kits where I have to follow instructions my effort this year is going to be a Slann army. Slann are the lizardmen or Seraphon (if you […]

Playtesting Darkfell

As mentioned in a previous version post I’ve been playing a lot of Darkfell and rather enjoying it. The basic rules are still the same as seen here. Although now I’ve added 15 separate character classes, 5 Magic Users, 5 Ranged Weapon Specialists and 5 Melee Specialists, each with 10 different traits that your character […]

Fantasy Rule Hunting Part 1: Warlords

I’ve got a large collection of fantasy miniatures mostly consisting of several different armies I have previously built for Age of Sigmar. They tend not to see the table all that often, and so I’ve been on the hunt for a good generic fantasy ruleset that lets you build your units however you want and […]

Horrified – The Miniatures

I’ve always been a fan of the old Universal Horror films and the Hammer Horror films too, basically anything spooky that doesn’t include jump scares. When I saw the Horrified Board Game on the shelves in a local toy shop over Christmas I knew I had to buy it, especially since it included seven figures. […]

Minifig Madness and Ranting About GW Figures

I’ve always admired minifigs (not the Lego kind, although I am partial to those too), I’ve admired their wargaming prestige for being some of the oldest sci fi and fantasy figures around. I’ve only just recently bought some though, it was probably the price that put me off for so long and I’m sad I […]

New Years Brawl

So I’ve managed to build a roster of 16 fighters for my zero player duelling game. Here’s the previous post if your unsure what I’m on about: https://thedeathzap.wordpress.com/2020/12/24/zero-player-duel-wargame-rules/ Funnily enough there are only 15 possible combinations of 3 whole numbers between 1 and 5 that total 7: 115,151,511 124,142,241,214,412,421 133,313,331 223,232,322 So I had to […]

Comfortable Christmas Wargaming

I played a comfortable game this morning using these rules at the end of this article by Stuart Asquith: https://lonewarriorswa.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/Comfortable-War-Gaming.pdf The figures I used were some Italeri Celts and Celt Cavalry representing the Crumpet Barbarians and some Italeri 95th Rilfes and French Dragoons representing the forces of Roulade. The Roulade Army had to make it […]

Zero Player Duel Wargame Rules?

There’s a strange desire that a as I have to play a zero player game. Not a solo game but a game that plays itself against itself. I also have a strange desire to play a duel game. A game that only has a single figure on a side. So I thought why not combine […]

Painting Darkfell

So I won’t bore you with all the details. Prime it black, spray grey from above, basically base coat it, make wood and dirt brown, outer walls were mostly left grey, I did some interiors in a light blue, green or dark red. Then the entire thing got a black wash and then a bone […]

Building Darkfell

What got me into wargaming was undoubtedly terrain. When I was a kid I remember hording polystyrene and painting it up as a lizard man temple. As a teenager what brought me back into the wargaming fold was watching terrain building tutorials on YouTube. I just love building things. I love creating worlds. I’ve also […]

Baba Nurgle

I wanted a new Daemon Prince for my Death Guard army after seeing how effective they can be in my last game of 40k (long time ago now). Despite having a drawer full of official Daemon Prince models I set out to essential scratch build one with my bits box and a small baby doll. […]

Mechanics Lab: Knight Fight

As the sun slowly rose over the grassy plain, two bands of armoured warriors readied themselves to draw blood, to feel steel bite through armour and flesh, and to fall into eternal obscurity or taste the immortal glory of legendary victory. Also there were paint pots nearby and some unfinished Death Guard models that I […]

Alternative Armies Corporate Ashigaru and Post Apocalyptic Warriors

I’ve been feverishly painting and rules writing again. When I started counting how many miniatures I had painted this year I didn’t expect to go over 1000! But thinking about it I probably also should have kept count of how many rule sets I was going to write too. Needless to say I’ve now lost […]

Rawl Plug Ancients

Something on the stranger end of the spectrum here, but something I think has legs. This week I’ve been turning those Rawl Plugs you see in various shapes, colours and sizes into something you can game with. As they do come in a number of shapes and sizes the particular one I’ve been using is […]

Mechanics Lab: Deathzap Examples

Based on the last post, I thought it would be a good idea to post some examples of how shooting works in my latest version of Deathzap as the rules as written can seem far more complicated than they really are. Example 1: A squad of Reddinists open fire on some Allegiance Riflemen. The Reddinists […]

Mechanics Lab: Deathzap and the D6 Round 2

I’m calling what you see below Deathzap Version Plasmashok. This is because the key dice mechanic is stolen from a much older game unsurprisingly called Plasmashok I wrote back in university. What I like most about the mechanic is that shooting and combat both ‘feel’ right, are fun to resolve and leave room for the […]