Templars vs Sauracens

I’ve had a couple of bags of the ‘bad’ knights for a while. I’ve used up a few for Wartomata in Deathzap: But that uses up very few, and I hate seeing poor quality toy soldiers go to waist. I imagined a portal to Hell or a parallel dimension opening up during the Crusades. So […]

Cheap Box City in a Box

Terrain is a struggle for any wargamer, and especially for wargamers as eclectic as me. It’s not really possible to collect terrain for every era and fantasy world in every scale from 2mm to 54mm. My biggest issue is the space required, so I came up with a potentially useful solution. Children’s stacking boxes can […]

England Invaded

My attempts at sticking to a few things this year are once again frustrated. Maybe a better New Year’s resolution is to not restrict yourself to one or a few projects at all, but just let yourself go nuts. While putting some much needed washing in the machine, I saw a A5 rulebook jammed in […]

Still SKIRMASHing

I think it’s important to know with a project when you’re done. Sometimes a painting is finished before you choose to stop, and the paint you added after that point only served to make things worse. The same goes for miniature painting. Films and books can sometimes be over-written, too clever, too well structured that […]

SKIRMASH

I’ve been playing with SKIRMASH over the past few days and it’s been a lot of fun. My initial idea with SKIRMASH was a quick and easy skirmish game that balanced itself. Here are the original rules I posted in a single image: The way it works with SKIRMASH is the stats work like double […]

Deceptively Difficult Deployment Part 2

Many, many thanks are in order for all the brilliant comments on my last post about deploying apemen. I’ve broken things down into three rough sections, randomised deployment, card based and misc. Here goes: Randomised deployment: Place terrain. Pretend the board is a clock face, have players roll a d12 per figure to give each […]

Poundland Mugshots

With hobby motivation dwindling and an increase in nap frequency, I’m suspecting a bout of Covid is upon me. Unable to manage much on the hobby front I went rummaging through my draft posts. Amidst the random and abandoned posts I found an odd thing. A post with ‘mugshots’. Mugshots of my Poundland armymen. I’m […]

Deciphering Darkfell

All the feedback for WOTH was fantastic and I’m looking at doing a post soon trying all the different options and seeing the pros and cons. If you’re wondering what I’m on about, the post and comments are here: https://deathzap.co.uk/2024/01/10/deceptively-difficult-deployment/ So in taking a small break from WOTH to gather data, and to come back […]

Goodies vs Baddies: Darkfell The Wager Battle Report

I’m using the Darkfell: The Wager rules you can find here: https://deathzap.co.uk/2024/01/04/returning-to-darkfell/ I recommend you give them a read as this will be more on the technical side of a battle report, mostly just the mechanics and the dice rolls. Going this way, instead of going for the Mordheim vibe, I thought why not get […]

Deceptively Difficult Deployment

I’ve been working on my first version of WOTH (War of the Hominids), a simple game where you take 6 apemen and make them fight your opponent’s 6 apemen. It’s all lobbing rocks and ripping arms off. I’ve mostly cracked the core of the game, with a small niggle regarding ‘objectives’ (if apemen even have […]

Returning to Darkfell

Darkfell is my own Mordheim, with a sort of ‘anything goes’ vibe. Medieval armour, 20th century guns, magic, alchemy and cyborgs. I’ve posted a few times on Darkfell before, and much like Deathzap written several rule sets for the setting. The last rule set I put together I called ‘The Wager’, and you can find […]

Play testing Ghost Legions

Christmas has been extremely busy and I’ve had little to no time to get to the desk, however I have managed a lot of theorising and some play testing. It’s all very much in the early stages, but I’m figuring out a solid core system for expansion: SETUP The game is played on a 60x60cm […]

Plans for 2024

It’s been a fun year. Looking back through the blog is always interesting, so many projects discarded and forgotten, so many exciting ideas to rediscover. So what am I hoping for in 2024? A New Year’s resolution of mine is to play more games and to attempt to stay 5% more focused on current projects. […]

The Trouble With Tanks

I’m a big fan of Bolt Action, and aside from maybe Grimdark Future (and excluding Solo gaming) it’s likely the game I’ve played most. The issue with Bolt Action for me personally (as it’s not an issue with BA at all really) is that it slightly and only slightly takes up too much time. The […]

Defending Cabolt

I knew the next battle in my Deathzap campaign would be the siege of Cabolt the capital city of Caerdonia. This put things on hold for a while. The main struggle I’ve had with my global war is the lack of terrain options I have in my collection, currently everywhere looks the same in the […]

So how do ghosts work then?

Comments and questions posed previously on my Ghost Legions posts have lead my head down a rabbit hole over the past few days. It’s a rabbit hole I’ve gone down briefly before, but now I am exploring it somewhat further, hopefully to the underworld of answers itself. But before getting too esoteric, before I consult […]

Ghost Hunting

I’ve been making slow progress on my Ghost Legions project. Most of my free time last week was spent painting up my Army of Spartacus figures, and I went with highlighting skin in white and shading some parts to add variety. I don’t think I’ve lost the ‘ghost’ look, but I do think it’s a […]

Ghostly Painting and Ghostly Mulling

I was surprised at the challenges that arose when I set out to paint up a few boxes of 1/72 figures as ghosts. Getting those pesky little guys (1/72) onto the table has always been a challenge. 1/72 figures are as detailed as their 28mm brethren, just smaller. The nightmare of realistically painting a bunch […]

Ghosts Legions: The Revenge

Much like my recent post on Elemental Knights a frequent brain worm of mine is Ghost Legions. My attempt at fighting wars with ghosts in the afterlife, a good excuse to drag out any historical figures you have to hand and play a game with them. Similar to those you may have fought as a […]

Blast from the Past: A Dino-Wars Battle Report

It’s always good to play with a ruleset you haven’t looked at in a very long time. When you write your own rules, often times you end up with blind spots as you always know what you meant to write even if an objective observer wouldn’t read what you wrote in the same way. Time […]

‘Someone has to play the Nazis’?

You may have seen or heard of the recent controversy online regarding a video put out by a much loved, mostly Warhammer YouTuber Midwinter Minis: In the video he wonders why historical wargaming isn’t as popular as Warhammer, and considering WW2 is by far the most popular historical period, he wonders if it’s the presence […]

Weird and Wonderful Warbands

I’m still working on my one page skirmish rule set for the one page game jam, and a big part of that is playtesting, and so obviously I needed minis to playtest with. Sticking with the same ‘grimcandy’ style I’ve been figuring out of late I’ve been kitbashing various 28mm plastic kits together: A few […]

Miniature Painting Styles?

I occasionally like to get artsy fartsy on this blog. In this case I’d like to talk about miniature painting styles. This has been spurred on by my recent delving into Grimcandy/Grimbright painting, but also this YouTube video from Lenric’s Realm: So as Lenric points out most painting styles come under the heading of ‘realism’, […]

Big Simple Skirmishes

So based on yesterday’s post, here’s a revised version of the Simple rules I was using. I played around with them this morning. They seemed robust enough for a decently quick game without anything too strange happening. I really like how they mimic the terror of automatic weapons. Figures don’t fire in volleys like most […]

Army in an Afternoon

So like you (I’m sure) I’ve got piles and piles of figures. Which is fine, but it’s the unloved ones, the ones tucked away in bags and boxes not getting any attention which I don’t like. Back when I visited my parents on the Isle of Man I picked up a box of Italeri (former […]