The Vanguardians VS The Darkanites

SKIRMASHED SET UP The game is played on a 2’x2’ board for 1-5 figures aside, and a 4’x2’ board for 6-10. Deploy forces within 3” of opposite edges (long edges on a 4’x2’). All dice are D10s (unless stated otherwise). Figures have six stats, ‘Manoeuvre’, ‘Firepower’, ‘Boom’, ‘Fight’, ‘Hack’, and ‘Stamina’. Stats can be any […]

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 […]

SKIRMASH Battle Report: Dice of the gods!

Same stats as before: Dice of power have once again fallen from the gods. The great beings however want their dice back, and one of the five dice (randomly picked) will vanish back to the heavens at the end of each round. A side gains 1 point per die they have a figure within 3” […]

Identifying ‘Penny Dreadfuls’

My hyper focus over the past few days is tracing the origins of my cheap Deathzap army men of choice or Penny Dreadfuls as the Man of Tin calls them. I’ve given them code names for ease of identification if you want to help me out in the comments. A somewhat simple example is below: […]

Holiday Hobby Update

It’s been holiday time on the Isle of Man, lots of fun has been had spending time with the parents, little hobby progress though as I’m sure you can imagine. The Isle of Man is a pretty cool place and seeing lots of dioramas involving Vikings has wetted my appetite for some Dark Age skirmishing, […]

Still Death Duelling and Reflecting on My Hobby Spend

It was a busy weekend so there was a lack of hobby progress, however I have still been duelling, refining rules, speeding things up, buying miniatures and painting them. The figures bought are mostly from the weird and wonderful areas of Irregular’s 28mm range – zombies, futuristic cops, ninjas and aliens. But a duel with […]

Getting Stranger

That strange creativity flow hasn’t yet slowed down it seems as over the last week I’ve been adding even more odd creations to my collection. Starting with some town guards, they were your garden variety plastic knight figures in rough 54mm scale, with head replacements and added cocktail sticks. One guys weapon was replaced with […]

Reducing my hobby debt

As previously mentioned I’m tracking my hobby spending this year and the value of finished models and trying to make the latter exceed the former. I think rather than talking about piles of shame a hobby debt or deficit is a little healthier. I shouldn’t feel guilty for buying things I want, but keeping an […]

Some Most Irregular Warbands

I’ve been itching for a number of reasons, (the main one I’ll talk about later) the other reason is to do with my Universal Skirmish rules. I keep rewriting them, writing entirely new skirmish rule sets and trying out all sorts of odd mechanics, but I haven’t got anything solid enough yet for a good […]

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 […]

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 […]

Monochrome Minis and Universal Skirmish Rules

I’ve attempted painting ‘monochrome’ miniatures this week. This is mainly down to my desire to speed paint things, to try out oil washes and just tackle a new challenge. Monochrome miniature painting is a style that I have seen some attempt in the past, even Games Workshop, however I don’t think they do it right: […]

Bronepehota (Armoured Infantry)

A strange Russian package arrived the other day, a solid block of polystyrene wrapped in tape. My wife wondered if it was a bomb. I had to explain that I had just ordered some Russian toys. She responded “Of course you have.” Inside was a sort of starter set for Bronepehota (Armoured Infantry), a Russian […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

The Simple Toy Soldier Game V2 and Irregular Miniature’s 28mm Sci Fi Range

I think I’ve finally cracked it! The Simple Toy Soldier Game that is. Ever since the core idea of the game popped into my head a few years ago I’ve been constantly fiddling and tweaking with it, and I could get close to it working, but I was never quite there. Now finally I think […]

A Little Gaming Board

A little project I wanted to get done in the weekend just gone was a small gaming board for my anime-ish miniature skirmish game. I have somewhat of an obsession for playing games in smaller spaces and so I took a one foot square cork tile as the base. I cut the corners off of […]

How many projects is too many?

How long is a piece of string? How much more space is there on my hobby table? How many more draws do I have to store all my crap? To answer all those questions and possibly answer the question to why am I here, what is my purpose in life? Here are five gas mask […]

Quarantine Painting Projects

So over the last week I’ve been picking up those abandoned painting projects and either finishing them off or starting a few for the first time. I’ve painted three warbands for Darkfell. Zombie pirates and their controlling Voodoo Priests… Some Landschneckts… And some bizarre animal based knights. All minis are from Irregular and have their […]

A smattering of projects…

So the Mrs and I after off to Disney World in Florida as of Saturday. I’ll be missing my usual hobby fix, but thought I’d post up what’s currently on the painting table. Firstly I picked up this set a long time ago and only just got round to finishing painting them – the Erin […]

Weirwood Crones

Here’s my latest unit all ready to go! The Weirwood Crones (Sisters of The Thorn) add some speed and magic to my growing force. I’m also continually aware that this blog is supposed to be about cheap gaming, but the majority of units in the force have been salvaged from the bits box and the […]

The Blanchitsu Is Strong With This One

For those of you that the word ‘Blanchitsu’ is new here’s a little explanation… ‘Blanchitsu’ is a miniature modelling and painting style inspired by the artwork of John Blanche a long time concept artist for Games Workshop. You could describe his style as Marmite you either love it or hate it, and I love it […]