Are Army Men Cursed?

Not sure if you’ve noticed, probably because you’re not the sort of weirdo that checks your local plastic tat shops for changes in big bags of crappy army men… but there’s been a degradation. Some might say this doesn’t matter… that I’m overthinking… but maybe it’s a hint at the entire collapse of western civilisation? […]

Space Pirates

The generation ships of the Solar Raiders and the Heavens Peace Accord pushed the entire Xolar System in one direction when it came to the design of their ships – the bigger, the better. Invasions were executed by large and almost entirely self sustaining ships. However once Selenoid raids had reached their peak, that dogma […]

Knockoff Xenomorphs

A while back I bought a bag of Dinosaur Skeletons: And then didn’t do anything with them. I had initially planned to include them in my Crusage project, however my focus shifted elsewhere. But while digging through my hobby room, looking for useful figures for my Big Deathzap project I stumbled across them again. I […]

Big Deathzap

I had the sudden urge to paint some cheap army men this weekend. The fruits of my labour were two squads for some skirmishing in the Deathzap universe. These figures are much bigger than usual Deathzap figures and rather than being 20-30mms tall clock in at 54mm. The first squad represent the Jendari Defence Army, […]

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 […]

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 […]

A Tanky Week

This week I finished a few tanks I’ve had taking up an unnecessarily large amount of space on my fold up hobby desk. The first two were a Turan 2 and Csaba (technically not a tank) from Mad Bob Miniatures for my burgeoning Hungarian Army for Bolt Action. The kits were extremely easy to build […]

The Best MDF Terrain?

MDF terrain is everywhere, and there are huge numbers of kits available all at various price points and complexities. But I’m a simple man, who enjoys simple things, and since my gaming spans multiple scales and genres, I’m always itching for something generic. Sure I could collect an authentic 40k battlefield but it would do […]

Speed Painting Pretty Much Anything

After weeks of Havok (I’m waiting for some tanks to arrive), and after playing with those AI generated rules, I was in the mood to not be so sensible. My heart is always with silly little skirmish games, and Ghost Legions is a project that I frequently stop and start without really scratching the itch. […]

Havok Tanks?: The Sturnhammer

I was rather shocked to find this on Amazon for £20. Thinking getting some tanks together for Havok as going to cost me an arm and a leg may not quite be true! The Sturnhammer is a really great kit, the parts don’t come in a sprue, however they are all decently clean of mould […]

Kitbashing Wargames Atlantic Figures and my Havok WIP

My January hyperfocus continues in earnest with more unit for my Havok forces. This time around I nabbed a box of Bulldogs and Space Nam. For my Nexus force I’ve put together 3 new units. From the standard Havok roster I put together some Tribunes: The Bulldogs box gives you steam punk colonial era British […]

The Karn Empire

I’ve been getting the ball rolling on my Havok project already. My first port of call was a box of Eisenkern Stormtroopers from Wargames Atlantic. The figures are really good, and I’ve already built and painted a box before, so I know what I’m up to. The challenge here however, was finding rough equivalents to […]

Perpetually Painting Partisans

Phew! It’s been a longish stretch of painting Partisans this week (and picking up penguins*). It’s not that the Partisans took a long time in the grand scheme of things, a full platoon in a week isn’t exactly tough. However, they did take long as far as Bolt Action painting is concerned. My Russians and […]

The Sweetest Wargame

Inspired by a fellow instagrammer Hyvemynd I’ve been thinking about extremely small scale wargaming. Hyvemynd created Roman Legions by using 1mm thick card cut into 4mm squares. Painting was the main issue and they couldn’t figure out a way to paint the card to look convincingly like groups of Romans. To be the sort of […]

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 […]

Painting Space Marines Very Quickly

I had some kind of sick desire to paint Space Marines this weekend (please forgive me), especially as they were Loyalist ones too… Anyway, I didn’t have any, but thankfully I do have the kind of friend that offered to give me a bunch. I came away with two captains, five assault intercessors and a […]

More SKIRMASH Warriors

The wife and I have been away this weekend at a Youth Work conference in Birmingham, so I haven’t managed much hobby, however before leaving I did manage to paint up some new Irregular Miniatures for SKIRMASH. Although they are still awaiting their matt varnish. I’ve got a second Troll from their 15mm fantasy range […]

Christmas Wargaming?

Inspired by the Man of Tin’s snowball fights, and various imagi-nations games, for the longest time I’ve been looking out for suitable snowmen. Snowmen to play out the Arctic Civil War. Here’s a snowball post from the Man of Tin: https://manoftinblog.wordpress.com/2019/10/29/packing-sugar-at-freddie-snowball-fight-wide-games-scenario/ I finally found some snowy conscripts on Amazon which seemed suitable. They really are […]

Is the Contrast method an Option?

After being out of action with Covid, I was reading to get hobbying again. I’d really wanted to paint my Bobbies for my Super Simple Universal Skirmish Game: All the figures are from Irregular Miniature’s Very British Civil War range. These same figures have appeared before in monochrome, doing battle with tree folk: https://deathzap.co.uk/2022/03/23/the-forest-vs-the-bobbies/ Not […]

The Khydran Enclaves

I was pondering how humanity would be able to fight the Selenoids, given the Selenoids can teleport themselves at will, appear and disappear in such a way that typical human warfare with frontlines would be a nonsense. Scanners would be a requirement, to detect atmospheric changes, to predict a Selenoid raiding parties appearance before they […]

The Jendari Defence Army

To counter the Selenoids on Jendar, House Baronor and the Jendari Collective put the Second Global War on hold and formed the Jendari Defence Army. The JDA had been formed prior to the Selenoid War, to counter the possible invasion of Jendar by the ALL or the newly formed Supremacy of Kannis (SoK). The JDA […]

Hail The Gunlord!

I initially set out to make myself a Gunbeast, a unit commonly seen before supporting my Selenoids: Basically you get a quadrupedal dinosaur toy, chop its head off and shove a bunch of cocktail sticks and kebab skewers into its neck hole. Gunbeasts provide the support fire for the Selenoids. But in my current Selenoid […]

The Selenoids

From the former Allegiance of Gnossos Science General Von Dan Ericken, translated from Proto-Gnossian religious or mythological texts: Alas we have been cursed with the great undoing. Our strands are becoming untwisted. Our children are our ancestors. The great undiscovery of the star demons was our end. They hunted us from the plains of Guri […]

One Box Wargame Challenge Progress

So I got working on my Afghans this weekend, making two warbands of 10 figures each, leaving me enough for two more warbands. Wargames Atlantic figures really are incredible value. The kit is great, and you really could knock out a huge Afghan Tribal army for colonial era gaming for very little money (just over […]