RIP Irregular Miniatures

A little tribute to one of my favourite wargaming companies.

Simple Toy Soldier… Fantasy Battles?

So after my successful return to my own Simple Toy Soldier system, I wondered how far that core mechanic could be stretched. So sensibly I went for what I thought would be the most difficult to adapt a 20th Century skirmish system to… fantasy battles (having said that Warlords of Erewhon is a thing). I […]

15mm Planetary Guard

A Quick Look at my 15mm Planetary Guard force for whichever sci-fi game you prefer in this scale.

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 […]

A Look at Some 15mm Irregular Sci-Fi Minis

A battle was fought shortly after where I worked out quite a few kinks in the rules I wrote. Much fun was had too. Two things that came out of this little playtest that I really enjoyed were somewhat unexpected. First was the lack of unit coherency. I mean I’m not exactly a fan of […]

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 […]

Irregular Space

Sometimes projects come out of nowhere. I think this one in particular has existed in the forbidden section of my brain for quite some time, and as I seem to be amassing projects right now I thought ‘why not?’ The project in question is to produce a set of rules specifically for Irregular Miniatures 15mm […]

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 […]

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). […]

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 […]

S.S.U.S.R – Story Battle Report: The Family VS The Greys

The cave was dark and wet, but it was the safest place that could be found. Mother eyed her children. They weren’t strong enough, weren’t ready for the coming fight, but she had no choice, the space men were closing in on them, and the Family had to take its stand. Mother looked to the […]

A Game in a Matchbox Part 2: Rules

While continuing to ponder my Matchbox game with my spare grey matter while at work today, I imagined a game with a single stat. Since there won’t be much room for stats! And along the lines of SKIRMASH I want that stat to be balanced whether it’s low or high. Keeping things simple and using […]

A Game in a Matchbox

I spied a really great challenge on the Man of Tin’s blog, that he and The Duchy Tragardland have been working on, the idea of getting an entire Wargame in a matchbox! http://tradgardland.blogspot.com/2024/11/no-time-for-swanning-around.html?m=1 https://manoftinblogtwo.wordpress.com/2024/11/16/wargame-in-a-wee-matchbox-challenge-accepted-1/ I’m always inspired by this kind of restricted wargame. Whether that’s fitting an entire ruleset on one page of A4, or […]

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 […]

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” […]

Mechanics Lab: The Amalgamation

Non descriptive titles maybe unhelpful, but I couldn’t think of what to call this post. It’s my attempt at combing the Simple Toy Soldier Game and my Universal Skirmish Rules into some sort of Chimera. Warning! This post is really rambling and only half makes sense, but this is the creative rules writing process in […]

Revisiting The Super Simple Skirmish Game – Dragon Temple vs Invaders

I realised I hadn’t played with the latest version of my Super Simple Skirmish rules since I posted about it last time and made adjustments. A bit mad considering that was almost two years ago: https://deathzap.co.uk/2022/09/24/revisiting-old-rules-super-simple-universal-skirmish-rules/ My warbands were as follows: The Dragon Temple had: A Hero (Monster M16), a Dragon (Monster M24), two Flamers […]

Ain’t no Party like a Partisan Party!

It’s been a slowish week but I have set about building my Partisan force. Here’s everything I was able to get out of the Wargames Atlantic box, all 32 figures. I’ve grouped them into two 10 man Rifle squads and two 5 man Assault squads. You can probably guess what the Rifle squads have (9 […]

Bolt Action 3

Looking forward to the new edition of Bolt Action I’ve spent a while thinking about what army to go for. The sensible choices would be Russia or Italy since I’ve already got those armies and have barely plumbed the depths of them. But of course being a wargamer that was infected by Games Workshop’s brain […]

A Saturday Morning Cartoon SKIRMASH

Cue the power metal intro as colourful heroes and villains dart across your 14” CRT TV screens. Three Dice of Power have fallen from the gods above! Heroes and villains rush into the bleak valley to claim them. Vlad the Vampire darts forward, screeching like an animal, heading for the central Dice. Polar the Bear […]

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 […]