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 […]

Playtesting WOTH

It’s been a busy week with the build up to Christmas alongside various Church activities, so hobby time has been sparse, however I have managed to think about a game involving my Hominids from last post I’m calling WOTH, which stands for War Of The Hominids. I started out with something rather odd, a take […]

Daring to go Dice-less?

In play-testing Gaol28 version 2, I noticed the game was playable via text. We had a chessboard and so could easily communicate movement and attacks, and so a game could be played over several messages. A player could even play the game with a chess set, you only need to know which of the three […]

Working on Gaol28

So I’ve had a brain worm for sometime in regard to Gaol28. I’ve worked on an advanced version and recently I put together Gaol72, but nothing I tried scratched the itch the original rules gave me. It seemed no matter what I tried it broke some of the speed, simplicity and nuances of the original. […]

Deathzap: Crunchy

Or Crunchzap. I had the desire in the past week to get rules writing again, and to go for something crunchier than I normally do. While I’ve got several hundred versions of Deathzap they always seem to play like a WW2 game with add ons. I’ve always gone for the fastest and leanest approach to […]

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 […]

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 […]

Commanding Ghosts

So after my previous post on ghost combat, I thought long and hard about how you’d go about commanding them. Thinking the game could be grid based to avoid lots of complicated rules regarding ‘units’ I came up with the following (still in rough note form): Roll 1D6 per leader figure you have in play. […]

Mechanics Lab: Ludonarrative Dissonance And Scary Things

As you can imagine I’m still thinking about scary games, and in thinking about them I’ve come across a few bits and pieces to steer me in the right direction (maybe). ‘Ludonarrative Dissonance’ if you haven’t heard the term before is when the game, the ‘Ludo’ and the story of the game, the ‘narrative’ don’t […]

Pointing Up Deathzap

Points systems are contentious things, broken at worst (see Warhammer 40,000) and a necessary evil at best. The goal of any points system is to have a game that is balanced, so both players in any given game can feel like they have an equal chance of winning. The only real alternative is very specific […]

1-Page Game Jam Ideas

So while scrolling through Instagram I saw the following posted by 28Mag. I immediately jumped on the idea and began trawling through my brain for any ideas. I’ve written a fair few 1 Page games in my time. My Simple Toy Soldier Game has done fairly well, gaining a decent amount of hits for me […]

Safety in Numbers: A long winded justification for unit coherency in my own science fiction setting

I may have mentioned before that unit coherency in wargame rules is a bug bear of mine. It’s simply because rules like this don’t make any real world sense not for modern to future combat anyway. Unit coherency if applied in the real world would simply maximise the number of casualties your own forces would […]

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 […]

The Deadwars Die

In the interest of somewhat stat-less wargaming I had the idea of condensing my page of rules for Deadwars down into a single die: The rules themselves are simple enough that it wasn’t too difficult, and I even included optional random movement. So if you want to move a figure roll the die and consult […]

Mechanics Lab: Advanced Gaol28

I’ve been having a lot of fun lately mashing plastic kits together and thinking about rules for my very rules light skirmish game Gaol28. Some commenters on Instagram asked about a more advanced version which presented a good number of challenges, challenges I could think about for hours and hours. I suppose the biggest issue […]

Bigshot – An Attempt at Fast Play Blackpowder

So as a follow up to my Blackpowder Skirmish rules Deathshot I’m attempting to put together some bigger scale Blackpowder rules I’m calling Bigshot. I’m initially using simple wooden blocks, although the humble block does have a certain appeal, not only in aesthetics, as I can repurpose these units as Moderns, Pike and Shot, Medieval, […]

When are enough rules enough? Part 4 – The Big Battle

So my quest for bigger, quicker and simpler games of Deathzap is somewhat over. I compiled my previous posts into a ruleset and played a big game: three platoons of infantry and a tank on each side, a total of 151 minis in play! I did make one pretty huge change to the rules before […]

when are enough rules enough? Part 3 – activations and Morale

In the continuing quest for simple but satisfying wargame rules, I’ve thought up the following for turn sequence, activations and morale and they’re all here together because I’ve integrated them. ACTIVATIONS During a player’s turn they can activate each of their units once. To activate a unit they roll a 2D6, if the unit is: […]

When are enough rules enough? Part 2 – Shooting and melee

After some comment reading and further playtesting, I’ve settled on the following rules for both shooting and melee in this much simplified version of Deathzap, the idea is to be able to take into account the various Sci-fi troop types without getting bogged down: SHOOTING WEAPON RANGE SHOTS Rifle 24” 1 Repeater 12” 2 Medium […]

When are enough rules enough? Shooting

With recent hype around possible changes to Warhammer 40k with 10th edition on the horizon I’ve been thinking a lot about Deathzap. Namely, what do I want from it as a ruleset? The early forms of it were simple and streamlined rulesets primarily designed for quick and deadly games, mostly to inspire me to write […]

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 […]

Mechanics Lab: Global Warfare

I am at heart a skirmish wargamer. I blame Mordheim battle reports in White Dwarf that I read as a kid and probably Games Workshop in general, since I suppose all of their games even Apocalypse are skirmish games in the classic wargaming definition of skirmish (1 figure = 1 man). Having never played a […]

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 […]