When are enough rules enough? Shooting

With recent hype around possible changes to Warhammer 40k with 10th edition on the horizon I’ve been thinking a lot about Deathzap. Namely, what do I want from it as a ruleset? The early forms of it were simple and streamlined rulesets primarily designed for quick and deadly games, mostly to inspire me to write […]

Mechanics Lab – Super Simple Universal Skirmish Rules: Groblins vs Elves

Often a throwaway line in a ruleset can have massive ramifications, or in other words – no ruleset has throwaway lines! While setting up for playtesting I read the deployment rules: Five shrines are placed before the game. Place a single shrine in the centre of the playing area. Player’s then place two shrines each […]

Mechanics Lab – Super Simple Skirmish Rules

Tinkering with rules is what I do. I suppose its part of the hobby you really can take with you, in a boring or slow moment at work when you haven’t got anyone to talk to you can theorise about combat systems, probabilities and hopefully think up new and unique mechanics. Having played a good […]

The Forest vs The Bobbies

Our forces are as follows: The Bobbies: 1 Inspector – Gunslinger, 15 Might 1 Detective – Gunner, 15 Might 1 Headsman – Berserker, 15 Might 1 Sarge – Soldier, 15 Might 2 Bobbies with Rifles – Soldier, 10 Might 2 Bobbies – Warrior, 10 Might The Forest – 1 Witan – Monster, 32 Might 4 […]

SUPER SIMPLE SKIRMISH RULES REVISITED AND The Clockwork Empire vs The Family

In the interest of spending less money on this hobby, I often find myself returning to old projects. This week I looked back at my Monochrome minis and the Super Simple Skirmish game, to see if I could simplify it further and add even more strategic depth. I think I’ve managed that. WARBANDS, FIGHTERS AND […]

real violence, digital violence, movie violence and PLASTIC VIOLENCE

Wargamers on the whole appear to be an intelligent and sensitive bunch. News of the Russian invasion of Ukraine seems to have sent a bit of a shockwave through our niche community with many bloggers expressing feelings of guilt, distaste, even a little shame. I myself have been turned off exploring my own Global War […]

mechanics lab: polygonal dice

It’s been an odd week, one of those weeks where I experience a bit of creativity overload, many new ventures, many new projects, almost none of them the Global Warfare rules I’m supposed to be working on. One such venture this week was a simple skirmish system using polygonal dice to do all of the […]

Rescue the Boss – A Simple Toy Soldier and Deathzap Battle Report (Sort of)

So analysis paralysis made me hold off on playing out this scenario for a while. I want something that plays well and is exciting, but I’m frankly lacking in experience when it comes to designing wargaming scenarios, but the table and terrain was sat waiting for a game so I just went for it. It […]

Evil Astrorangers vs The Skelebots – A Simple Toy Soldier Battle Report

Since everyone’s angry with Games Workshop and many have complaints about the rules getting even more bloated and complicated, why not play something simple just for fun? The Evil Astrorangers will all activate with D10s and roll D10s in melee combat, I’ll allow the champion to add 1 to his melee rolls too since he’s […]

Fences, a Detention Block and a Conlang

I needed terrain to play the follow on scenario from my last battle report, namely a prison of some description and suitable fences. The detention block was easy enough to build, it’s just an old box I had lying around that I super glued a bunch of spare bases too and then painted: It was […]

Mortan’s Men vs The Void – A Playtest Battle Report

After the last battle report I was asked by Hexeres if smaller elite forces have an advantage in games of Deathzap since you get 3 victory points per destroyed unit. So a force with fewer better units will give away less points. So today amidst a headache and flu like symptoms (but not Covid as […]

So what did I do in 2021?

One of the weird things about having a hobby blog is being able to look back over the year and see pretty much exactly what I’ve been up to in the year just gone. JANUARY I started the year with my 0 player duelling project. It was a fun distraction and got me revamping old […]

Converting the Wobbly Stick Man

I’ve read a few times of Man of Tin’s masking tape repairs on old and damaged toy soldiers, but I never realised how versatile a little bit of tape could be. The worst figure by far in the current figure set I use is the man with the wobbly stick. Although he is leagues ahead […]

Just Your Basic Bloodvault

Grab some 25mm and 20mm square bases and glue them to a big die. Add details with some more spare 25mm bases and a few stick on gems. Then mount on a flight stand, glue sed flight stand to a 40mm base and cover on texture paint. Then paint your bloodvault, try to make it […]

The Plastic Plesiosaurus Problem and a Somewhat Successful Solution

Whenever you buy a bag of cheap dinosaurs there’s always a few aquatic ones in there that have limited use. That’s unless you’re into really ancient naval wargaming which is an untapped niche I think. I’ve always kept them in a bag because like most people in this hobby I have the uncontrollable urge to […]

Ectomites – The Cheapest Army Ever

Ectomites have inhabited my brain for a while. I suppose you could say they were low rent Shoggoth rip offs, they’re back story is almost entirely similar. However when I first imagined them when I was about 12 years old, around the turn of the century, I had never heard of or knew anything about […]

Finishing Projects I’ve already started…

I’m sure like me you’ve got a desk where the edges slowly creep in as you push things you’ve already started to the side so you can get going on something new. For me Deathzap has always been like that, a world of infinite possibilities tends to lead to too many ideas, and before I […]

Infinite Battles – Another Irregular Project

One thing I’ve always wanted to have is a generic system that could be used for anything – fantasy, historical, sci-fi, anything. The idea is to keep the rules interesting enough that they give a good game while also allowing you to stat your own units to fit any genre or period. I’m calling it […]

A Packaging Fortress

The worlds of Deathzap are pockmarked by defensive structures and fortifications, not just due to the number of wars humans have had in the past but also there are remains of structures built by the Korban the reptilian race that previously lived on the planet Jendar. I found one of these bits of packaging lying […]

My Current Deathzap Collection

If you’re wondering about the odd set up of the room in which these pictures take place it’s because we’re currently moving our living room to what was a dining room. So that’s all 267 little people (excluding vehicles, monsters and around 70 bugs that wouldn’t fit) I have currently painted for the latest version […]

Deathzap Progress

So I didn’t manage to get my Deathzap campaign going in the week I had off of work, but I did make a lot of progress on the Deathzap front. I played a good few disconnected games just to make sure the rules for all the factions were good to go by the time I […]

Big Boys

A nice day was had bumbling around our local ‘big town’ Barnstaple today and the Mrs and I took our weekly pilgrimage to the finest discount shop B&M. Most of the time it’s fairly slim pickings in the toy section but today that was definitely not the case! 76 pieces for £5, sure there’s two […]

Milliput Conversions: The Vel and The Fleshfreak

I’m building up to another large Deathzap campaign, the majority of which I’m hoping to get done next week and to this end I’ve been trying to churn out as many forces and other units as I can. On my hobby table the past couple of days has been a ‘Fleshfreak’ a support choice for […]

Easy Terrain – Wrecked Cars

The 1/72ish scale figures I’m now using for Deathzap are a good match for your standard discount shop toy cars. Destroyed civilian vehicles aren’t often something you see on a gaming table but I think they add a lot, they take a set up from an arena for doing battle to a place people actually […]

Kay – Story Battle Report

The war ground on, unrelenting, unforgiving. Oltra a once promising mining colony was now nothing more than a burned out husk, an industrial corpse. SynJen were on the verge of pulling out of Oltra all together, and giving up entirely on Kannis as more and more soldiers of House Baronor and the Jendari Collective were […]