A Rambling Look Through My Hobby Drawers

A rambling look through my hobby drawers full of past and present wargaming projects…

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 […]

Mantaurs vs Pirates

In the mad world of finding things to replace the heads of army men with, at some point I landed on the idea of just smaller army men. I previously showed off my initial Mantaur: The problem I found in the lab, was what with each further iteration of the Mantaur, their cognitive abilities decreased […]

Odd Gangs 2: Eclectic Boogaloo

Things very quickly got out of hand. Much superglue has been consumed, much stuff thrown at walls to see what sticks. The Cubeheads were something I knew would work, as I’ve seen similar things before: A hobbyist called ‘Ben Has Hobbies’ has a game based entirely around the cube headed concept. https://youtu.be/Z8aqkhYBqg0?si=UPjRFZZqcNIYjGPR Chucking the pink […]

Battle of the Crooked Wastes

Kassira’s Legions march towards one of the Underworld’s great pillars in an attempt to destroy death itself. The Death’s amass an equivalent defensive force! This was really an exercise in seeing how quickly a big battle like this could be resolved utilising Featherstone’s Chimera. I don’t think I’d want to play battles much larger than […]

Grim Grinning Ghosts

With the lurgie going strong this week I mostly moved between a succession of naps and occasional snacking. However I did make some progress on the Ghost Legions front. Instead of going for my usual fluorescent ghost approach seen previously: I went down a more grimdark alley, inspired mostly by my small skirmish warbands seen […]

Featherstone’s Chimera in Action!

My bank holiday weekend of hobbying was hampered somewhat by a rather nasty cold. I managed very little in terms of painting or playing, but I did do a lot of napping. But desperate to do something, I dosed myself up on cold and flu capsules and hit the table with some Italeri figures. Roughly […]

Featherstone’s Chimera

I’ve been thinking Ghost Legions again, and in that regard something quick and easy. I still want to be able to grab a box of Italeri figures and have the rules to pitch it against any other box. Sort of like what Games Workshop do with their Combat Patrol and Spearhead games. For those not […]

Faithzap

This past week I’ve been away at a Church Camp with my Church’s Youth Group, so as you can imagine there’s been a lack of hobbying. Corralling teenagers takes up a lot of time. I did have pondering time though, and with the religious atmosphere, I’ve been considering how religion functions in my own Deathzap […]

Age of Sig-nah

Maybe the best Warhammer products are the dead ones. Mordheim still goes strong, Epic and Warmaster have their communities as do Gorka Morka and Inquisitor. The recent fall out from the failure of the latest edition of Horus Heresy suggests that when Warhammer start tinkering with their products, often times it’s not for the better. […]

Warhammer… the best of times and the worst of times…

Midwinter Minis uploaded two videos recently that got me thinking… why haven’t I painted any Warhammer figures recently? The Positive Video The Negative Video I didn’t want to be a negative nelly… but I have to say his negative video definitely rang more true for me than his positive one, and that’s probably reflected somewhat […]

The Future of Warfare?

After reading a very interesting post from the Man of Tin, and an equally interesting comments section, I was pondering what the actual future of warfare might look like. Article and comments here: https://manoftinblog.wordpress.com/2025/06/07/close-little-space-wars-in-54mm-or-h-g-wells-little-wars-redesigned/#comments As stated in the comments of the above article, most sci-fi wargames are WW2+, maybe because a lot of rules writers […]

S.S.U.S.R: Problem Solved?

Something had been niggling me for quite some time regarding my Super Simple Universal Skirmish Rules and that was the activation sequence. The sequence as it stood, was as follows: The player that deployed second is the activate player and can pick any of their fighters to activate. Once that fighter has activated: A player […]

Boglanders

I mentioned these guys on my previous post. The Boglanders are a miniatures range by Ramshackle Games and I love them. They’re ‘goblins’ in a pretty loose sense of the term, and the goal of the range is to have them fit into almost any setting, although if you do consult the Boglanders Source Book […]

One Army For Every Game?

One of my favourite YouTubers is Trent from Miscast, and a while back he had the idea of creating a single army to play every game. The idea seemed completely mad to me. How could you possibly create an army to cover all sci-fi, fantasy and historical settings? Although if the aim of this blog […]

Dragon Warriors (A Pitch Meeting)

I recently snapped up some dragons. 36 in all for £10. It was a bit of an impulse buy, but possibly the beginning of a bigger project. I do t want to get off of the Deathzap train just yet, I should ride that one until the end of the line since I’m really enjoying […]

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 […]

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 […]