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 […]

Revisiting Old Rules: Super Simple Universal Skirmish Rules

Sometimes revisiting older versions of your own rules is a lot of fun, almost like playing a game written by someone else. This time round I took an early version of my simple skirmish rules for a spin, putting my Zombie Family against the Windblade Elves. The rules are as follows: WARBANDS, FIGHTERS AND STATS […]

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 […]

DEATH DUELS

SET UP Fighters have four stats Power (P), Toughness (T), Agility (A) and Special (S), a fighters stats can be any number between 2 and 9 as long as the total of a fighter’s four stats equals 24. The game is played on a 1×8 grid. One fighter begins on the 4th space in, the […]

Harry the Executioner vs Ankh the Egyptian

So I’ve been zero player duelling again, and things have moved on somewhat since my last duelling post: https://thedeathzap.wordpress.com/2021/01/01/new-years-brawl/ Now each character has four stats Power, Toughness, Agility and Special and they roll for which move they want to perform during each ‘turn’ – Strike, Heavy Strike, Kick, Heavy Kick, Grapple or Special for the […]

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 […]

What’s on the desk? 21/05/22

I suppose I’ve never really done hobby updates, but in a relatively slow week I thought why not? The week has mostly been slow due to work being extremely tiring and me preaching this Sunday so a lot of my free time was preparing for that. I painted up my Alien Recon Mercenaries from Irregular […]

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 […]

Mechanics Lab – Super Simple Universal Skirmish Rules: Groblins vs Elves

Often a throwaway line in a ruleset can have massive ramifications, or in other words – no ruleset has throwaway lines! While setting up for playtesting I read the deployment rules: Five shrines are placed before the game. Place a single shrine in the centre of the playing area. Player’s then place two shrines each […]

Mechanics Lab – Super Simple Skirmish Rules

Tinkering with rules is what I do. I suppose its part of the hobby you really can take with you, in a boring or slow moment at work when you haven’t got anyone to talk to you can theorise about combat systems, probabilities and hopefully think up new and unique mechanics. Having played a good […]

The Forest vs The Bobbies

Our forces are as follows: The Bobbies: 1 Inspector – Gunslinger, 15 Might 1 Detective – Gunner, 15 Might 1 Headsman – Berserker, 15 Might 1 Sarge – Soldier, 15 Might 2 Bobbies with Rifles – Soldier, 10 Might 2 Bobbies – Warrior, 10 Might The Forest – 1 Witan – Monster, 32 Might 4 […]

SUPER SIMPLE SKIRMISH RULES REVISITED AND The Clockwork Empire vs The Family

In the interest of spending less money on this hobby, I often find myself returning to old projects. This week I looked back at my Monochrome minis and the Super Simple Skirmish game, to see if I could simplify it further and add even more strategic depth. I think I’ve managed that. WARBANDS, FIGHTERS AND […]

mechanics lab: polygonal dice

It’s been an odd week, one of those weeks where I experience a bit of creativity overload, many new ventures, many new projects, almost none of them the Global Warfare rules I’m supposed to be working on. One such venture this week was a simple skirmish system using polygonal dice to do all of the […]

So what did I do in 2021?

One of the weird things about having a hobby blog is being able to look back over the year and see pretty much exactly what I’ve been up to in the year just gone. JANUARY I started the year with my 0 player duelling project. It was a fun distraction and got me revamping old […]

Infinite Battles – Another Irregular Project

One thing I’ve always wanted to have is a generic system that could be used for anything – fantasy, historical, sci-fi, anything. The idea is to keep the rules interesting enough that they give a good game while also allowing you to stat your own units to fit any genre or period. I’m calling it […]

Even Superer Simpler Skirmish Rules! Now With Added Strategy!

A lot has happened to my Monochrome Minis game over the past two weeks. I think I’m now on the third iteration of the rules, I’m up to 8 painted warbands, my second gaming board and there’s a load of new terrain. As you can maybe tell from the image below I’ve upgraded to a […]

Steampunk Colonial Brits… for some reason…

Sometimes you don’t need a specific rule set in mind, or battle to aim towards, sometimes you can just build and army for the sake of it. To this end I put together some 1800s Sci-fi Brits. There may well be a future attempt at some rules writing, but for now, just seeing them sat […]

Different Kinds of Chrome

As mentioned in my previous post, I had some more figures coming my way from Irregular, figures which were going to be painted up in different kinds of monochrome. The first were my ‘Metal Men’, which included a Battle Robot from their 15mm sci-fi range I’ve dubbed Killborg and a Battle Robot from their 28mm […]

U-Skirm Battle Report: The Family vs The Scrots

Two forces line up on the dark plain hoping to gain territory, and shedding a little blood wouldn’t hurt. I had a simple scenario in mind. At the end of each turn a side gains 1 point per figure they have in the enemy deployment zone, plus they gain 1 point per kill. First side […]

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: […]

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 […]

A 6mm Distraction

Occasionally I find things in the drawer of abandoned minis. In the week just passed I found some 6mm infantry from Scotia Grendel and some sci fi tanks from Irregular. I think the trick I’ve learned is to paint less and paint more starkly. Don’t do too many highlights, keep your scheme simple and striking. […]

Playtesting Darkfell

As mentioned in a previous version post I’ve been playing a lot of Darkfell and rather enjoying it. The basic rules are still the same as seen here. Although now I’ve added 15 separate character classes, 5 Magic Users, 5 Ranged Weapon Specialists and 5 Melee Specialists, each with 10 different traits that your character […]

New Years Brawl

So I’ve managed to build a roster of 16 fighters for my zero player duelling game. Here’s the previous post if your unsure what I’m on about: https://thedeathzap.wordpress.com/2020/12/24/zero-player-duel-wargame-rules/ Funnily enough there are only 15 possible combinations of 3 whole numbers between 1 and 5 that total 7: 115,151,511 124,142,241,214,412,421 133,313,331 223,232,322 So I had to […]

Zero Player Duel Wargame Rules?

There’s a strange desire that a as I have to play a zero player game. Not a solo game but a game that plays itself against itself. I also have a strange desire to play a duel game. A game that only has a single figure on a side. So I thought why not combine […]