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 […]

Even More SKIRMASHers and Zero Player Duelling

Over the past week I’ve added three more warriors to my SKIRMASH collection. An Orc Champion, an Assyrian Officer and a Goblin Shaman. I’ve had these guys for ages so it’s good to finally press them into action, and to have a fun little game like SKIRMASH I can throw odd figures into. Here are […]

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 […]

Improving my terrain

Barreling towards some games of Deathzap, I knew I needed to improve on my terrain. I’ve had the same cork buildings for some time now: They functioned… sort of… but could do with some improvements. One of the major complaints I had was the lack of room on the insides of the buildings, it was […]

The Supremacy of Kannis’ Second Ascended

Darros Mortan’s work in genetic engineering brought about the ‘Ascended’, the elite troops of Mortan’s Men and feared defenders of the moon of Oltra. Their increased size and strength allowed Mortan’s Men to put heavy weaponry in the hands of infantry. They were the best troops seen, out pacing and out fighting all comers, their […]

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 ALL Alien Response Force

While the Jendari Defence Army utilised fairly standard infantry platoons and supporting armour in the Selenoid Wars, the ALL took a different route. Heavy infantry armour had been in use for centuries in Swordsport, one of the more popular Warsports played between the League of Zandor and Legion of Kharthion. While fighting in the Oltra […]

Kitbashing Space Orcs

I think I’ve been experiencing a bout of Covid over the past week, which has slowed me down somewhat, plus now pepperoni pizza and coffee tastes particularly bad, a change that I’m not a fan of and that hopefully doesn’t last too long! Stuck in the house with nothing to do, I’ve been setting my […]

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 […]

What Are Alien Races?

I’ve been taking my time pondering the Selenoids, and it got me thinking more generally about Alien races. More specifically how would a human civilisation begin to research or interact with an Alien race? I guess you’d need a crack team of people at the height of their respective fields to begin to unpack a […]

Let’s Develop an Alien Race Together: The Selenoids

The Selenoids have been a race in Deathzap almost since its inception, but despite being around in my mind for six years, I’ve done very little to develop them past their initial appearance. Since they’ll be playing the big threat for the next little while (I don’t want to say ‘big bad’ as the humans […]

Star Wars: A Deathzap Story

The wife and I have once again found ourselves wandering around Disney World in Florida. Being away from the hobby table, once again has gotten me to think about my Deathzap setting. What do people like or dislike about different fantasy/ sci-fi settings? What makes one setting successful and another fall by the way side? […]

Some Really Great ‘Penny Dreadfuls’

While stalking the dark alleys of Amazon I noticed a discrepancy: The figures outside the bag are different from those within the bag. The ones outside are decent, but I do have a lot of them already. The ones in the bag really piqued my interest because I spotted a figure closer to the original […]

The One Box Wargame Challenge

Malev Minis recently started a challenge to create an entire wargame from a single box of miniatures. His own creation ‘Convict Combat’ is a death match style game using a box of Wargames Atlantic’s Cannon Fodder. https://youtu.be/yG8IhzpMk8Y?feature=shared I thought for a while about the challenge and wanted to go with something a little outside the […]

Mechanics Lab: The Amalgamation

Non descriptive titles maybe unhelpful, but I couldn’t think of what to call this post. It’s my attempt at combing the Simple Toy Soldier Game and my Universal Skirmish Rules into some sort of Chimera. Warning! This post is really rambling and only half makes sense, but this is the creative rules writing process in […]

Revisiting The Super Simple Skirmish Game – Dragon Temple vs Invaders

I realised I hadn’t played with the latest version of my Super Simple Skirmish rules since I posted about it last time and made adjustments. A bit mad considering that was almost two years ago: https://deathzap.co.uk/2022/09/24/revisiting-old-rules-super-simple-universal-skirmish-rules/ My warbands were as follows: The Dragon Temple had: A Hero (Monster M16), a Dragon (Monster M24), two Flamers […]

Something Wicked This Way Comes 2: Electric Boogaloo

I remember failing to make a Nurgle Plague Tower some time ago: https://deathzap.co.uk/2019/02/22/something-wicked-this-way-comes-part-5/ That project burned out for me, I think because I didn’t have too many skills yet in the trash bashing arena, but another attempt is bubbling away in the back of my brain. This time round however I set my sights on […]

A Saturday Morning Cartoon SKIRMASH

Cue the power metal intro as colourful heroes and villains dart across your 14” CRT TV screens. Three Dice of Power have fallen from the gods above! Heroes and villains rush into the bleak valley to claim them. Vlad the Vampire darts forward, screeching like an animal, heading for the central Dice. Polar the Bear […]

War of The Psychic Space Babies

After making my Nurglings for my Trash Nurgle army I was wondering what I should do with the other 72 babies I had remaining. I had an idea: The rules are as follows and ought not be taken all to seriously: The odd formatting is because this is the way I uploaded the rules to […]

Deathzap 3 – 2nd Edition: Force Lists

Here’s an intense post with all the force lists I currently use to play games of Deathzap 3. Hope you find it at least somewhat interesting (as you’ll probably notice after messing around with tables on the blogging app, I found it was easier to take screenshots of my Google Doc). FORCE LISTS A standard […]

Deathzap 3 – 2nd Edition

Deathzap 3 was probably my favourite of the ‘simpler’ versions of the game. I like to imagine it as that easy to learn, difficult to master type thing, but you’ll always have rose tinted glasses when it comes to your own games. I played a game this morning of the latest version I could find, […]