Bronepehota (Armoured Infantry)

A strange Russian package arrived the other day, a solid block of polystyrene wrapped in tape. My wife wondered if it was a bomb. I had to explain that I had just ordered some Russian toys. She responded “Of course you have.” Inside was a sort of starter set for Bronepehota (Armoured Infantry), a Russian […]

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 […]

Growing Neo-Arcane

I’ve been busy this week planning and painting my forces for Neo-Arcane and I think I’ve also come up with a fairly innovative points and activation system. First up I’ve added there Ghosts to my undead force I’ve now named the ‘Necrypt’. The corporation I’m now just calling ‘Core’ has gained a Sniper, Cyborg and […]

Mechanics Lab: A Diceless and Statless Game?

A long time ago on a blog far far away I wrote a post about solo gaming and the issues of playing non-solo games (Warhammer 40k for example) solo. The main issue I have with solo gaming is not playing the game itself, I’m fairly happy to take on both sides, but it is the […]

The New Earth Engine

The following is a post from my old blog pictures and all. It’s a game I’ve often thought about revamping and I’ve recently been either stripping and fixing some of the same figures from this post or rebuying them. So you’ll probably see more stuff along these lines in the future. I’ve been rethinking the […]

A 6mm Distraction

Occasionally I find things in the drawer of abandoned minis. In the week just passed I found some 6mm infantry from Scotia Grendel and some sci fi tanks from Irregular. I think the trick I’ve learned is to paint less and paint more starkly. Don’t do too many highlights, keep your scheme simple and striking. […]

Playtesting Darkfell

As mentioned in a previous version post I’ve been playing a lot of Darkfell and rather enjoying it. The basic rules are still the same as seen here. Although now I’ve added 15 separate character classes, 5 Magic Users, 5 Ranged Weapon Specialists and 5 Melee Specialists, each with 10 different traits that your character […]

Fantasy Rule Hunting Part 1: Warlords

I’ve got a large collection of fantasy miniatures mostly consisting of several different armies I have previously built for Age of Sigmar. They tend not to see the table all that often, and so I’ve been on the hunt for a good generic fantasy ruleset that lets you build your units however you want and […]

New Years Brawl

So I’ve managed to build a roster of 16 fighters for my zero player duelling game. Here’s the previous post if your unsure what I’m on about: https://thedeathzap.wordpress.com/2020/12/24/zero-player-duel-wargame-rules/ Funnily enough there are only 15 possible combinations of 3 whole numbers between 1 and 5 that total 7: 115,151,511 124,142,241,214,412,421 133,313,331 223,232,322 So I had to […]

Alternative Armies Corporate Ashigaru and Post Apocalyptic Warriors

I’ve been feverishly painting and rules writing again. When I started counting how many miniatures I had painted this year I didn’t expect to go over 1000! But thinking about it I probably also should have kept count of how many rule sets I was going to write too. Needless to say I’ve now lost […]

Mechanics Lab: Deathzap Examples

Based on the last post, I thought it would be a good idea to post some examples of how shooting works in my latest version of Deathzap as the rules as written can seem far more complicated than they really are. Example 1: A squad of Reddinists open fire on some Allegiance Riflemen. The Reddinists […]

Mechanics Lab: Deathzap and the D6 Round 2

I’m calling what you see below Deathzap Version Plasmashok. This is because the key dice mechanic is stolen from a much older game unsurprisingly called Plasmashok I wrote back in university. What I like most about the mechanic is that shooting and combat both ‘feel’ right, are fun to resolve and leave room for the […]

Mechanics Lab: Deathzap and The D6

I’ve been playing a lot of Deathzap lately and not reporting on it. I think that’s because I’ve never been happy with the rules. Even towards the end of the Oltra campaign I played out not too long ago the rules were niggling me. By then I was using a variation on the Simple Toy […]

Featherstone’s Ghost Legions

Elves Vs Dark Dwarves Vs Me Vs Age of Sigmar

I couldn’t finish painting those Elves and not have a battle now could I? Originally this little Fantasy project was going to use and abuse Tony Bath’s Ancients rules from Donald Featherstone’s War Games. However having far too much confidence in my own ability to write rules I decided I’d take this opportunity to ‘fix’ […]

Not So Vintage Toy Soldiers

Cameria had always been a divided nation, ever since the first settlers arrived the North and South were two distinct colonies, peoples, cultures. However after a few bad years of mining the Camerian Council decided to send forces out to take resources from other weaker nations. Ngoai just north of Cameria across the Amenic Sea […]

A Ramble on Rules and Deathzap

I took the opportunity this morning after waking up rather early to play the next game in my Deathzap campaign on Oltra the moon of the planet Kannis. Since the game didn’t include the Legion of Kharthion I figured it would be a good opportunity to iron out and tweak parts of the rules that […]

Tiny Wars – Fantasy Skirmish The Rules

BUILDING A FORCE Each force begins with a Leader; this figure is always a hero and costs 0 points. Then the player has 5 points to recruit the rest of their force. Heroes cost 3 points, sergeants 2 and troops 1. Each recruited figure and the leader is also assigned a battlefield role. They can […]

Deathzap 2 Play Testing and Campaigns

Men of the League of Zandor were seen today engagning in a bloody firefight with Mortan’s Men on the edge of District Anzo in En Sikkar the capital colony city on Kannis’ moon Oltra. The fighting was brutal and swift, as Zandor utilised their advanced weaponry and shield technology to devastating effect. Mortan’s Men suffered […]

Irregular Miniatures 2mm Yobbo Army

The Mrs and I are self isolating because of a cough. We managed two days back at work before another 14 day holiday. Hope you’re all keeping safe given the circumstances! I should get a lot of hobbying done since there is not much else to do. I dived (dove?) in this morning on my […]

Mechstorm

A while back I wondered what a Donald Featherstone Mech Combat ruleset would look like. I give you Mechstorm. The smaller Mechs are painted and based pieces from Risk 2210AD, the larger mechs and flyers are from EM4 (you probably already recognised them). For the rules the smallest of the Risk Mechs I named ‘Pups’, […]

15mm Sci Fi Rules Ideas

Here’s a little bit of fun I think has legs! While I don’t have much if any suitable terrain for 15mm figures a stripped down Darkfell board will suffice for some play testing. Here’s a little look at my current thinking on how a sci-fi, or other game could be played. Each unit has a […]

Darkfell

Merry Boxing Day! He’s is the report for a small game I played out this morning for some homebrew rules I’m calling ‘Darkfell’, I wanted something quick and simple that gave me that Mordheim feel. I used the ‘Markup’ function on my phone to put the text on to the pictures as I played, so […]

Irregular Miniatures 2mm Aliens

I finally got round to painting half of my 2mm sci-fi battle pack from Irregular Miniatures which I have based up for ‘Hell On The Margin’ the ruleset you get in the pack. Here’s everything. Hell On The Margin tells you to base things on 50mm x 30mm, although they recommend basing in threes a […]

The Small and Mysterious Box (Tiny Tostig)

I’ve been rather overloaded with hobby projects of late, having recently picked up three more: Chaos Orcs for Age Of Sigmar, 10mm Mass Battle Fantasy and 2mm Sci Fi, the last two were as a result of having won Irregular Miniatures most recent painting competition with my Samurai figure: After basing my new 10mm Fantasy […]