Still SKIRMASHing

I think it’s important to know with a project when you’re done. Sometimes a painting is finished before you choose to stop, and the paint you added after that point only served to make things worse. The same goes for miniature painting. Films and books can sometimes be over-written, too clever, too well structured that […]

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 […]

The Small Skirmish Obsession

So I’ve recovered from the plague, and in a post fevered state threw together yet another small skirmish game. I suppose you can blame this on the fact that Darkfell was really designed to be a Mordheim replacement and for some reason I’ve been playing it with superhero-ish figures, the two just don’t quite fit […]

Deciphering Darkfell

All the feedback for WOTH was fantastic and I’m looking at doing a post soon trying all the different options and seeing the pros and cons. If you’re wondering what I’m on about, the post and comments are here: https://deathzap.co.uk/2024/01/10/deceptively-difficult-deployment/ So in taking a small break from WOTH to gather data, and to come back […]

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 […]

Deceptively Difficult Deployment

I’ve been working on my first version of WOTH (War of the Hominids), a simple game where you take 6 apemen and make them fight your opponent’s 6 apemen. It’s all lobbing rocks and ripping arms off. I’ve mostly cracked the core of the game, with a small niggle regarding ‘objectives’ (if apemen even have […]

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 […]

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. […]

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. […]

The One Page Game Jam is Here and Incarn28

I must have missed this somehow, but a while ago I mentioned writing something for the One Page Game Jam: https://deathzap.co.uk/2023/04/07/1-page-game-jam-ideas/ After much silliness a friend and I put something together we called Incarn28. I’ve posted a little about it before: https://deathzap.co.uk/2023/05/01/weird-and-wonderful-warbands/ https://deathzap.co.uk/2023/05/08/the-most-insane-one-page-rules-ever/ https://deathzap.co.uk/2023/05/13/the-eyes-above-an-incarn28-story-battle-report/ I’d really recommend checking out the Game Jam, there’s a lot […]

The Technology of Deathzap

While playtesting my ‘crunchy’ version of Deathzap, I’ve realised I’ve needed to think more about the weaponry and technology available to my little plastic men. If I’m attempting to model something in game with mechanics, like an exotic alien weapon, I need some idea of what I’m attempting to model. The lack of powered armour […]

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 […]

The Trouble With Tanks

I’m a big fan of Bolt Action, and aside from maybe Grimdark Future (and excluding Solo gaming) it’s likely the game I’ve played most. The issue with Bolt Action for me personally (as it’s not an issue with BA at all really) is that it slightly and only slightly takes up too much time. The […]

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 […]

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 […]

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. […]

Ghosts Legions: The Revenge

Much like my recent post on Elemental Knights a frequent brain worm of mine is Ghost Legions. My attempt at fighting wars with ghosts in the afterlife, a good excuse to drag out any historical figures you have to hand and play a game with them. Similar to those you may have fought as a […]

Gaol72 – Travel Gaming

We’re dog sitting this weekend, so instead of getting in some painting or building (although I do have a few bits with me) I decided to bring my small skirmish board and play a few games of Gaol72. My warbands, the Seekers: The Rippers: The rules in their current state are as follows: Turns The […]

Blast from the Past: A Dino-Wars Battle Report

It’s always good to play with a ruleset you haven’t looked at in a very long time. When you write your own rules, often times you end up with blind spots as you always know what you meant to write even if an objective observer wouldn’t read what you wrote in the same way. Time […]

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 […]