Mechanics Lab: Advanced Gaol28

I’ve been having a lot of fun lately mashing plastic kits together and thinking about rules for my very rules light skirmish game Gaol28. Some commenters on Instagram asked about a more advanced version which presented a good number of challenges, challenges I could think about for hours and hours. I suppose the biggest issue […]

Gaol28 Battle Report: The Infirmary vs The Chapel

One of the things I wanted to be able to do with Gaol28 was post a full battle report on Instagram which means being able to do it all in 10 images, so here’s my first attempt. The full rules are on my previous post.

Still Death Duelling and Reflecting on My Hobby Spend

It was a busy weekend so there was a lack of hobby progress, however I have still been duelling, refining rules, speeding things up, buying miniatures and painting them. The figures bought are mostly from the weird and wonderful areas of Irregular’s 28mm range – zombies, futuristic cops, ninjas and aliens. But a duel with […]

DEATH DUELS

SET UP Fighters have four stats Power (P), Toughness (T), Agility (A) and Special (S), a fighters stats can be any number between 2 and 9 as long as the total of a fighter’s four stats equals 24. The game is played on a 1×8 grid. One fighter begins on the 4th space in, the […]

Harry the Executioner vs Ankh the Egyptian

So I’ve been zero player duelling again, and things have moved on somewhat since my last duelling post: https://thedeathzap.wordpress.com/2021/01/01/new-years-brawl/ Now each character has four stats Power, Toughness, Agility and Special and they roll for which move they want to perform during each ‘turn’ – Strike, Heavy Strike, Kick, Heavy Kick, Grapple or Special for the […]

Death Patrol – A Simple Toy Soldier Game Battle Report

The end of the Camerian Civil War sparked a global war on the planet Jendar when House Baronor fearing a sudden attack from the Jendari Collective chose to strike first. With the ensuing dissolution of the SynJen alliance troops from both House Baronor and the Jendari Collective withdrew from the moon of Oltra back to […]

Easy Terrain: Craters

Good for Bolt Action, 40k, especially good for Lunar if you skip a step, and of course good for Deathzap! Start out with a foil pie plate: Then mash it into your basic shape: I then coated the entire thing in texture paint. Mine is home made and hard wearing. It’s a mix of filler, […]

Hegemony of Synthos vs The Exiled Tribes – A Deathzap 4 Battle Report

The Exiled Tribes brought three squads of Pariahs each of seven men, two squads carry rifles with a single support repeater and the third squad has repeaters and a single destroyer, all squads of Pariahs are classed as basic. They also had a single squad of five Afflicted, which are elite troops armed with grenades. […]

Getting Stranger

That strange creativity flow hasn’t yet slowed down it seems as over the last week I’ve been adding even more odd creations to my collection. Starting with some town guards, they were your garden variety plastic knight figures in rough 54mm scale, with head replacements and added cocktail sticks. One guys weapon was replaced with […]

Let go and get weird

The wife and I went to the Broomhill Estate for our Wedding Anniversary (7 years) and took in some art. A lot of it was the sort of stuff you look at and don’t really ‘get’. But one piece really did get me. It’s called ‘Welcome to the Third Millennium’ by artist Mike Roles. It’s […]

Reducing my hobby debt

As previously mentioned I’m tracking my hobby spending this year and the value of finished models and trying to make the latter exceed the former. I think rather than talking about piles of shame a hobby debt or deficit is a little healthier. I shouldn’t feel guilty for buying things I want, but keeping an […]

Is this how to paint fire?

It was hard to think of a title for this post that didn’t make me sound like a know it all. So now I’m just going to talk about how one of the best painters I’m aware of does things incorrectly. Darren Latham: Darren painted this Avatar and did an incredible job, there’s no denying […]

Some Most Irregular Warbands

I’ve been itching for a number of reasons, (the main one I’ll talk about later) the other reason is to do with my Universal Skirmish rules. I keep rewriting them, writing entirely new skirmish rule sets and trying out all sorts of odd mechanics, but I haven’t got anything solid enough yet for a good […]

When are enough rules enough? Part 4 – The Big Battle

So my quest for bigger, quicker and simpler games of Deathzap is somewhat over. I compiled my previous posts into a ruleset and played a big game: three platoons of infantry and a tank on each side, a total of 151 minis in play! I did make one pretty huge change to the rules before […]

when are enough rules enough? Part 3 – activations and Morale

In the continuing quest for simple but satisfying wargame rules, I’ve thought up the following for turn sequence, activations and morale and they’re all here together because I’ve integrated them. ACTIVATIONS During a player’s turn they can activate each of their units once. To activate a unit they roll a 2D6, if the unit is: […]

When are enough rules enough? Part 2 – Shooting and melee

After some comment reading and further playtesting, I’ve settled on the following rules for both shooting and melee in this much simplified version of Deathzap, the idea is to be able to take into account the various Sci-fi troop types without getting bogged down: SHOOTING WEAPON RANGE SHOTS Rifle 24” 1 Repeater 12” 2 Medium […]

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 […]