Mechanics Lab: Horror Skirmishing

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 […]

Screw Yourself

Note: Screwing Yourself is my own term for playing a solo game with your screw based armies. The table is ready, the armies lined up, I’m full of piss and vinegar. Let’s go! But I’ve got no rules… nothing, nowt, zilch… no problem, let’s make ‘em up as we go! First problem is stats. I […]

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 […]

Deathmelt

Odd little projects are always a good idea, because good ideas come from experimentation, experimentation that may not have been done otherwise. My Melt madness of late has been one such project, and it’s really helped me with a problem I’ve had for a long time with Deathzap. Two things I’ve loved about playing my […]

Melt28

I’ve been ruminating on something over the past few weeks, a little project I’m calling ‘Melt28’. The goal of Melt28 is simple really, fast paced and bloody firefights with a little bit of tactical nuance, and using that bad bag of army men and crap you’ll find in your local discount shop. The sorts of […]

The Skirmish At Anvar And Tweaking Deathzap 2

Anvar was little more than an outpost, its walls were old and crumbling, peppered with holes from generations of rifle and repeater fire. Supremacy of Kannis forces held a tenuous grip on the entire sector, employing mercenary Pirates and Ascended rather than their superior Davians and Second Ascended. Supremacy Generals, now utilising portal generators were […]

So What Makes a Game ‘Fun’ Then?

With my recent return to my Ghost Legions setting, of course I drew up a new set of rules. Which I posted here. They’re an okay set, make sense, play relatively quickly, and can give you some difficult choices to make… but are they fun? Maybe… I guess fun is in the brain of the […]

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 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 […]

A Big Havok Battle

I set up both of my entire collections of Karn and Nexus and pitched them against each other, not worrying about points, but just to play the game. There were a few special rules I wanted to play with, and as far as Havok 2.0 is concerned, I’ve backtracked a lot of my changes largely […]

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 […]

Melee Combat in the Crusage

In prepping for another big battle I felt my melee combat rules could do with a tweak. Here’s where they currently stand: Select a target figure in base contact with the attacking figure. Roll the attacking figure’s MA die, and your opponent rolls the target figure’s DF die. The lower roller loses a number of […]

Crusage

Continuing my fantasy crusade project I’m now calling ‘Crusage’, that’s Crus-age, the age of crusading. I’ve had my Pegasus Cavalry and Rocket Battery on the painting table, and managed to get the Battery finished this morning: It’s already been pressed into service and proved rather effective at dispatching the forces of evil (you can see […]

Monsters, Mutants and Mayhem

Back on the Crusading front, I’ve been working away at some new figures and ideas. With the number of dragons I’ve somehow accumulated, I thought it’d be a good idea to mount a bad guy on one. I gave him an overly sized masking tape axe, the sign of a true bad guy. Textured and […]

The Big Battle

So I finally managed to get my new armies to the table and let them have a go at each other! The ‘Good Guys’ were as follows: That’s 5 Templars, 5 Handgunners, 5 Grenadiers, 5 Shining Templars, 2 Nephilim and a Warpriest. The ‘Bad Guys’: 5 Devildogs, 10 Wraiths, 5 Hellknights, 5 Sauracens, a Golem, […]

A Necromancer and a Golem

I must be tapping into something here, it is odd for a wargamer as stricken with butterfly-ism as badly as I am to find as much continued focus on a single project as this. Although truth be told, my childhood collection of Britain’s ‘Knights of the Sword’ bought from Kettering’s town market may have something […]

Good vs Evil

Progress has been slow again this last week, mostly due to me coming down with man flu. However I have finished a surprising amount off considering how bad I’ve felt. I spoke last time about expanding my forces and expand I did! Working first on my evil forces, as stated before I rebased and touched […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]