A Simple Toy Soldier Game Battle Report

I have a go at one of the oldest rulesets I ever wrote, the very first version of The Simple Toy Soldier Game, not previously featured on the blog.

One Hobby Goal Down – Bolt Action Japanese

A little post about my Japanese force for Bolt Action.

So what did I get up to in 2025?

It always fun to look back over the blog and reminisce about projects past. Sometimes I’ve forgotten about projects entirely, sometimes looking back over the blog reignites the embers of a formerly dead project. In January I hit the ground running with Havok: Havok was a game from my childhood, dead now, but once put […]

Painting Blackshirts for Bolt Action

A quick guide to speed painting Italian Blackshirts for Bolt Action.

Tamiya 1/35 Figures and WW2 Skirmishes

A Rambling Look Through My Hobby Drawers

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

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 […]

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 […]

Perpetually Painting Partisans Part 2

First part here… from 6 Months ago… https://deathzap.co.uk/2024/12/20/perpetually-painting-partisans/ I had been rather silly, having finished the toughest bit of any Bolt Action force – painting the bulk of the infantry. I seemingly forgot I had made any progress with my Partisans, and as yet they have not made it to the table (very silly me). […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

Perpetually Painting Partisans

Phew! It’s been a longish stretch of painting Partisans this week (and picking up penguins*). It’s not that the Partisans took a long time in the grand scheme of things, a full platoon in a week isn’t exactly tough. However, they did take long as far as Bolt Action painting is concerned. My Russians and […]

The Sweetest Wargame

Inspired by a fellow instagrammer Hyvemynd I’ve been thinking about extremely small scale wargaming. Hyvemynd created Roman Legions by using 1mm thick card cut into 4mm squares. Painting was the main issue and they couldn’t figure out a way to paint the card to look convincingly like groups of Romans. To be the sort of […]

Even More SKIRMASHers and Zero Player Duelling

Over the past week I’ve added three more warriors to my SKIRMASH collection. An Orc Champion, an Assyrian Officer and a Goblin Shaman. I’ve had these guys for ages so it’s good to finally press them into action, and to have a fun little game like SKIRMASH I can throw odd figures into. Here are […]

Some Really Great ‘Penny Dreadfuls’

While stalking the dark alleys of Amazon I noticed a discrepancy: The figures outside the bag are different from those within the bag. The ones outside are decent, but I do have a lot of them already. The ones in the bag really piqued my interest because I spotted a figure closer to the original […]

One Box Wargame Challenge Progress

So I got working on my Afghans this weekend, making two warbands of 10 figures each, leaving me enough for two more warbands. Wargames Atlantic figures really are incredible value. The kit is great, and you really could knock out a huge Afghan Tribal army for colonial era gaming for very little money (just over […]

The One Box Wargame Challenge

Malev Minis recently started a challenge to create an entire wargame from a single box of miniatures. His own creation ‘Convict Combat’ is a death match style game using a box of Wargames Atlantic’s Cannon Fodder. https://youtu.be/yG8IhzpMk8Y?feature=shared I thought for a while about the challenge and wanted to go with something a little outside the […]