Deathzap: Crunchy

Or Crunchzap. I had the desire in the past week to get rules writing again, and to go for something crunchier than I normally do. While I’ve got several hundred versions of Deathzap they always seem to play like a WW2 game with add ons. I’ve always gone for the fastest and leanest approach to […]

Army in an Hour: Spooky Spiders

One of the factions that has never fully manifested in the Deathzap Universe are the Khydran Enclaves. Giant bugs chomping on soldiers has been a love of mine ever since I saw the film ‘Them!’ as a kid. With Halloween upon us there’s a plethora of cheap plastic bugs (usually spiders, but not always) in […]

So how do ghosts work then?

Comments and questions posed previously on my Ghost Legions posts have lead my head down a rabbit hole over the past few days. It’s a rabbit hole I’ve gone down briefly before, but now I am exploring it somewhat further, hopefully to the underworld of answers itself. But before getting too esoteric, before I consult […]

Ghost Hunting

I’ve been making slow progress on my Ghost Legions project. Most of my free time last week was spent painting up my Army of Spartacus figures, and I went with highlighting skin in white and shading some parts to add variety. I don’t think I’ve lost the ‘ghost’ look, but I do think it’s a […]

Ghostly Painting and Ghostly Mulling

I was surprised at the challenges that arose when I set out to paint up a few boxes of 1/72 figures as ghosts. Getting those pesky little guys (1/72) onto the table has always been a challenge. 1/72 figures are as detailed as their 28mm brethren, just smaller. The nightmare of realistically painting a bunch […]

Commanding Ghosts

So after my previous post on ghost combat, I thought long and hard about how you’d go about commanding them. Thinking the game could be grid based to avoid lots of complicated rules regarding ‘units’ I came up with the following (still in rough note form): Roll 1D6 per leader figure you have in play. […]

Ghosts Legions: The Revenge

Much like my recent post on Elemental Knights a frequent brain worm of mine is Ghost Legions. My attempt at fighting wars with ghosts in the afterlife, a good excuse to drag out any historical figures you have to hand and play a game with them. Similar to those you may have fought as a […]

Gaol72 – Travel Gaming

We’re dog sitting this weekend, so instead of getting in some painting or building (although I do have a few bits with me) I decided to bring my small skirmish board and play a few games of Gaol72. My warbands, the Seekers: The Rippers: The rules in their current state are as follows: Turns The […]

Blast from the Past: A Dino-Wars Battle Report

It’s always good to play with a ruleset you haven’t looked at in a very long time. When you write your own rules, often times you end up with blind spots as you always know what you meant to write even if an objective observer wouldn’t read what you wrote in the same way. Time […]

Return of the Elemental Knights

I think I’m remembering some stuff from my childhood that’s made me somewhat obsessed with the idea of knights that have elemental powers as the basis for a Fantasy setting as seen before on this blog: The original Elemental Knights post is here: https://deathzap.co.uk/2021/07/13/elemental-knights/ The three major culprits as far as I can see are […]

The Road to Cabolt

Collective forces continued their advance in northern Caerdonia down towards the capital Cabolt. Jendari Rangers, Rin Empire, Jendari Defence Army, Tigers and even Dragons assaulted House Baronor positions held by Baronor Guards, Knights and Solar Raider Mercenaries. The stats required and army lists are minimal with the latest version of Deathzap and the simplicity of […]

Teeny Tiny Skirmishing

As always I’m on the hunt for quick and easy fun, probably why the majority of the rules you’ll ever find on here are on the lighter side. The goal is to have a game that feels like an actual game, that for me requires minimal set up, and minimal effort for expansion. Spurred on […]

Charge of the Bite Brigade

According to Archaeologists at the University of Nyandar the Boskovan Mountains were where the first Solar Colonists set foot on the planet Jendar. One thousand years later the mountains would see some of the most significant battles of the ‘War of the Three Dragons’, and in 1237AC battles of the much smaller ‘Pudding War’. Now […]

Pointing Up Deathzap

Points systems are contentious things, broken at worst (see Warhammer 40,000) and a necessary evil at best. The goal of any points system is to have a game that is balanced, so both players in any given game can feel like they have an equal chance of winning. The only real alternative is very specific […]

On the Outskirts of Ariban

With the failed invasion of Haerkalia, Collective forces had once again found themselves fighting in Khef, but this time the retreating armies were in disarray and a defence was slow to develop allowing the forces of House Baronor to maintain their momentum and strike deep into the country. A hasty defence force was cobbled together, […]

Rescue the Cambarian

On the northern coast of Haerkalia a Cambarian Stalker trapped behind enemy lines with key intelligence and needs pulling out. A small force of Jendari Tigers is teleported to the area, but a similar sized force of House Guards responds hoping to eliminate the escaping Stalker. In this scenario each time the Tigers make it […]

A Couple of Very Cheap Armoured Cars

In my last post I played out a quick ambush battle report featuring a couple of armoured cars. The cars themselves came from a cheap set of soldiers and vehicles: https://deathzap.co.uk/2022/06/27/soldiers-of-the-combat/ I wanted to use the cars in my ambush scenario, but was concerned that paint wouldn’t stick to them. It’s seemed to be that […]

Convoy Attack

Agents of the Prosecution Directive ambush a SolRad convoy on the outskirts of District Aben-Sha on Oltra. The Agents have intelligence on Solar Raiders smuggling Gnossian technology and they must be eliminated. The Agents attack with D12s and save with D10s. The Solar Raiders attack and save with D8s. The two middle APCs cannot attack, […]

Daring-Do Deathzap

After playing out the Battle of Alnoth yesterday I found myself struggling with the rules as I have with so many previous sets of rules I have used for Deathzap. While streamlined they felt slow. I think this is because alternate unit activation does get bogged down with larger numbers of units. They also lacked […]

The Invasion of Haerkalia Battle of Alnoth

It’s been a while since I’ve touched my current Deathzap campaign – the war for the planet Jendar between the Jendari Collective and House Baronor. The previous battle is here and had led to the invasion of the country of Haerkalia by the Jendari Collective after the failure of House Baronor’s invasion of Khef. The […]

The Eyes Above – An Incarn28 Story Battle Report

Carvus looked up at the eyes, they watched him closely. He had thought from youth that they were the gods, watching over him, but in truth no one really knew. No one knew why the sky was covered with them. No one knew their purpose. No one knew why their giant tears of blood that […]

The Most Insane One Page Rules Ever?

‘When men multiplied in the land and developed their own technologies rivalling the gods in power, the gods considered allowing men to join their pantheon. A lesser of the gods knowing what was in men’s hearts gave each of them the power of carnomancy, the ability to manipulate their physical forms to their own wills. […]

Weird and Wonderful Warbands

I’m still working on my one page skirmish rule set for the one page game jam, and a big part of that is playtesting, and so obviously I needed minis to playtest with. Sticking with the same ‘grimcandy’ style I’ve been figuring out of late I’ve been kitbashing various 28mm plastic kits together: A few […]

Big Simple Skirmishes

So based on yesterday’s post, here’s a revised version of the Simple rules I was using. I played around with them this morning. They seemed robust enough for a decently quick game without anything too strange happening. I really like how they mimic the terror of automatic weapons. Figures don’t fire in volleys like most […]

Another Army in an Afternoon and some simple rules

So I’ve finished my Strelets WW1 Russians in a similar style to my previous Fallschirmjager: The Russians came in green plastic so I was able to do the same black paint and Mod Podge wash directly onto the plastic. I picked out their gas masks and weapons with citadel’s Black Templar and then just a […]