Making Your Own Nurgle Dreadnought

Last week a friend and I finally got a game in of Grimdark Future. Wanting to try something different, I pulled out my Death Guard army. I’d long forgotten how much I loved this force, and after a cheeky victory, I was itching to add more. Key to my force were two Dreadnoughts, and I […]

Poundland Mugshots

With hobby motivation dwindling and an increase in nap frequency, I’m suspecting a bout of Covid is upon me. Unable to manage much on the hobby front I went rummaging through my draft posts. Amidst the random and abandoned posts I found an odd thing. A post with ‘mugshots’. Mugshots of my Poundland armymen. I’m […]

Plans for 2024

It’s been a fun year. Looking back through the blog is always interesting, so many projects discarded and forgotten, so many exciting ideas to rediscover. So what am I hoping for in 2024? A New Year’s resolution of mine is to play more games and to attempt to stay 5% more focused on current projects. […]

Easy Tabletop Hominids

So I’ve had a bag of crappy army men I’ve been looking to do something with for a while. I’ve also wanted a game about the various hominid cryptids, Sasquatch, Yeti and my personal favourite the Skunk Ape. Picking out some of the open poses I cut off the guns and gave them a wash. […]

Entering The Ion Age

Games Workshop has reached a tipping point for me mentally, a point where I can’t really justify buying their models. While I may have funds available, the cost per miniature is just too high for me to want to spend that money. £4 per Khorne Berserker is just not worth it. That’s entirely a personal […]

Painting Basilea

So after playing a lot of Grimdark Future my usual gaming chums have started on One Page Rules’ other battle game Age of Fantasy. I dove in with a good amount of enthusiasm and even though I already had a couple of fantasy armies already I bought a couple more (since as wargamers we are […]

Army in an Hour: Spooky Spiders

One of the factions that has never fully manifested in the Deathzap Universe are the Khydran Enclaves. Giant bugs chomping on soldiers has been a love of mine ever since I saw the film ‘Them!’ as a kid. With Halloween upon us there’s a plethora of cheap plastic bugs (usually spiders, but not always) in […]

Ghost Hunting

I’ve been making slow progress on my Ghost Legions project. Most of my free time last week was spent painting up my Army of Spartacus figures, and I went with highlighting skin in white and shading some parts to add variety. I don’t think I’ve lost the ‘ghost’ look, but I do think it’s a […]

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 […]

Return of the Elemental Knights

I think I’m remembering some stuff from my childhood that’s made me somewhat obsessed with the idea of knights that have elemental powers as the basis for a Fantasy setting as seen before on this blog: The original Elemental Knights post is here: https://deathzap.co.uk/2021/07/13/elemental-knights/ The three major culprits as far as I can see are […]

Chaos Cultists

Chaos Cultists are a problem, and they have been for a very long time. This is a bizarre problem for the biggest wargaming company GW to have. Cultists are a basic infantry option for arguably the second most important faction in Warhammer 40,000. That’s like Warlord Games announcing Bolt Action and then saying they’re not […]

Uniforms of the Deathzap Universe: Allegiance of Gnossos and The Solar Raiders

Instead of countries the Allegiance of Gnossos is divided up into Sectors and each Sector has its own army. The uniforms of the Sector armies generally have the same mix of colours, black, white, blues and greys, however in different combinations. The SA soldiers above are from the 5th Sector Vol-Zo. The Prosecution Directive is […]

Uniforms of The Deathzap Universe: Jendari Collective

A commenter on a recent post said they’d like a look at all the various uniforms my Deathzap figures have and I was a big fan of that idea (thanks Kyle). So to get things going here are the uniforms of the Jendari Collective (House Baronor, The Hegemony of Synthos, The League of Zandor, The […]

When Pegs Fly…

I’ve often though about space battles in my own Deathzap universe, but came to the conclusion that they would likely not take place at all. Battles in the void of space itself would most likely be avoided. There’s no real need to fight in deeper space especially if you can warp travel away at any […]

Teeny Tiny Skirmishing

As always I’m on the hunt for quick and easy fun, probably why the majority of the rules you’ll ever find on here are on the lighter side. The goal is to have a game that feels like an actual game, that for me requires minimal set up, and minimal effort for expansion. Spurred on […]

Polishing More Turds

I posted what is possible with basically the worst figures available in your local discount shop a while ago: https://deathzap.co.uk/2021/08/15/polishing-a-turd/ And recently I had a strange hankering to paint some truly terrible figures. I think the worst a available (although if you’re aware of worse please let me know) are these guys: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Y-Republic-Traditional-Army-Battle/dp/B0BCL3YDLV/ref=mp_s_a_1_3?crid=25YJ3OYRJ6KMV&keywords=army+men+figures&qid=1688734468&sprefix=army+me%2Caps%2C74&sr=8-3 I’ve had […]

A Couple of Very Cheap Armoured Cars

In my last post I played out a quick ambush battle report featuring a couple of armoured cars. The cars themselves came from a cheap set of soldiers and vehicles: https://deathzap.co.uk/2022/06/27/soldiers-of-the-combat/ I wanted to use the cars in my ambush scenario, but was concerned that paint wouldn’t stick to them. It’s seemed to be that […]

Another-nother lesson in never throwing anything away

In the dark, dark house, there was a dark, dark staircase. Down the dark, dark staircase, there was a dark, dark cellar. And in the dark, dark cellar, some space marines were in a plastic container covered in goo. I’ve been holding onto these marines for a long time, and they had been somewhat unsuccessfully […]

Weird and Wonderful Warbands

I’m still working on my one page skirmish rule set for the one page game jam, and a big part of that is playtesting, and so obviously I needed minis to playtest with. Sticking with the same ‘grimcandy’ style I’ve been figuring out of late I’ve been kitbashing various 28mm plastic kits together: A few […]

Miniature Painting Styles?

I occasionally like to get artsy fartsy on this blog. In this case I’d like to talk about miniature painting styles. This has been spurred on by my recent delving into Grimcandy/Grimbright painting, but also this YouTube video from Lenric’s Realm: So as Lenric points out most painting styles come under the heading of ‘realism’, […]

Grimcandy

So biting off more than it probably is possible to chew for the one page game jam mentioned in my last post I’ve decided to revolutionise skirmish wargaming. I think I have a problem. I’m not posting about the rules here yet (they’re top secret), but in putting the rules together I realised that I […]

Warhammer 40k 10th Edition and My World Eaters

I suppose this is necessary despite this being a blog about cheaper wargaming. I was spurred on by a comment by Brother Brutus on my blog post regarding Grimdark future: Sorry for the late post – just finding this article. Yes, OPR and GrimDark Future are the WH40K that I’ve been missing. Our group loves […]

Another Army in an Afternoon and some simple rules

So I’ve finished my Strelets WW1 Russians in a similar style to my previous Fallschirmjager: The Russians came in green plastic so I was able to do the same black paint and Mod Podge wash directly onto the plastic. I picked out their gas masks and weapons with citadel’s Black Templar and then just a […]

Army in an Afternoon

So like you (I’m sure) I’ve got piles and piles of figures. Which is fine, but it’s the unloved ones, the ones tucked away in bags and boxes not getting any attention which I don’t like. Back when I visited my parents on the Isle of Man I picked up a box of Italeri (former […]

Repainting Cheap Train Figures for Slasher Gaming

As mentioned in my previous post I’ve been working on some figures for playing out a slasher movie scenario. They’re very cheap train layout figures I picked up from Amazon, 100 for £5. I went for the standard basecoat, wash and highlight: Albert Fielding is taking his students on a trip to the abandoned village […]