Ambush! An Advanced Deathzap Battle Report

Gearing up for some serious Deathzapping in 2025 means I need to settle on some rules. I recently had an obsession with Deathzap 3, the rules which over time I’ve probably played the most. They are decently compact, and tactical, but I couldn’t help finding my Advanced Deathzap rules so alluring. I suppose going for […]

A Game in a Matchbox Part 2: Rules

While continuing to ponder my Matchbox game with my spare grey matter while at work today, I imagined a game with a single stat. Since there won’t be much room for stats! And along the lines of SKIRMASH I want that stat to be balanced whether it’s low or high. Keeping things simple and using […]

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 […]

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 […]

SKIRMASH Battle Report: Dice of the gods!

Same stats as before: Dice of power have once again fallen from the gods. The great beings however want their dice back, and one of the five dice (randomly picked) will vanish back to the heavens at the end of each round. A side gains 1 point per die they have a figure within 3” […]

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 […]

Christmas Wargaming?

Inspired by the Man of Tin’s snowball fights, and various imagi-nations games, for the longest time I’ve been looking out for suitable snowmen. Snowmen to play out the Arctic Civil War. Here’s a snowball post from the Man of Tin: https://manoftinblog.wordpress.com/2019/10/29/packing-sugar-at-freddie-snowball-fight-wide-games-scenario/ I finally found some snowy conscripts on Amazon which seemed suitable. They really are […]

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 […]

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 […]

One Box Wargame Challenge Progress

So I got working on my Afghans this weekend, making two warbands of 10 figures each, leaving me enough for two more warbands. Wargames Atlantic figures really are incredible value. The kit is great, and you really could knock out a huge Afghan Tribal army for colonial era gaming for very little money (just over […]

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 […]

Dinos of the Dead

I’ve been away the past few days so haven’t made all that much hobby progress bar putting my order in with Irregular Miniatures for the extra figures I wanted for my Super Simple Skirmish Game, and ordering more bases for those figures from Amazon. Before leaving however a small package arrived also from Amazon (do […]

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 […]

Melee Combat in the Crusage

In prepping for another big battle I felt my melee combat rules could do with a tweak. Here’s where they currently stand: Select a target figure in base contact with the attacking figure. Roll the attacking figure’s MA die, and your opponent rolls the target figure’s DF die. The lower roller loses a number of […]

Pegasii and Pirates

I was slowed down somewhat in the week past due to a nasty headache but I came out of it filled with enthusiasm. I’ve finished ten of the Skeleton Pirates shown off in the previous post: I guess I’m really stretching the realms of possibility considering this game is supposed to be set during the […]

Pirates of the Amazon

I was plundering Amazon for various toys I could deploy in my Crusage game when I stumbled across a bunch of Pirates. You may have seen these guys already and were wondering how good they are before taking the plunge and spending your hard earned pieces of eight, well me hearties, let me show you! […]

Crusage

Continuing my fantasy crusade project I’m now calling ‘Crusage’, that’s Crus-age, the age of crusading. I’ve had my Pegasus Cavalry and Rocket Battery on the painting table, and managed to get the Battery finished this morning: It’s already been pressed into service and proved rather effective at dispatching the forces of evil (you can see […]

Monsters, Mutants and Mayhem

Back on the Crusading front, I’ve been working away at some new figures and ideas. With the number of dragons I’ve somehow accumulated, I thought it’d be a good idea to mount a bad guy on one. I gave him an overly sized masking tape axe, the sign of a true bad guy. Textured and […]

Putting My Money Where My Mouth is and Working on Some Dinosaurs

I’ve done this before, but after much changing around in my hobby room I’ve misplaced my previously painted Dinos, and sparked on by my £5 wargaming challenge post I though I’d have a go again. I went slightly over budget (£5.99, forgive me, I’ll say five ‘Hail Featherstones’), and nabbed a bag of small Dinos […]

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 […]

The Big Battle

So I finally managed to get my new armies to the table and let them have a go at each other! The ‘Good Guys’ were as follows: That’s 5 Templars, 5 Handgunners, 5 Grenadiers, 5 Shining Templars, 2 Nephilim and a Warpriest. The ‘Bad Guys’: 5 Devildogs, 10 Wraiths, 5 Hellknights, 5 Sauracens, a Golem, […]