Painting Blackshirts for Bolt Action

A quick guide to speed painting Italian Blackshirts for Bolt Action.

Purposefully Playing it Wrong

A while back I set myself an insane goal, the goal of playing every sci-fi skirmish game ever… utter madness it was. And this was after I’d laughed off Discourse Miniatures claim on YouTube that she was going to play a game of every Wargame ever… I guess my goals were a little more sensible, […]

Perpetually Painting Partisans Part 2

First part here… from 6 Months ago… https://deathzap.co.uk/2024/12/20/perpetually-painting-partisans/ I had been rather silly, having finished the toughest bit of any Bolt Action force – painting the bulk of the infantry. I seemingly forgot I had made any progress with my Partisans, and as yet they have not made it to the table (very silly me). […]

One Army For Every Game?

One of my favourite YouTubers is Trent from Miscast, and a while back he had the idea of creating a single army to play every game. The idea seemed completely mad to me. How could you possibly create an army to cover all sci-fi, fantasy and historical settings? Although if the aim of this blog […]

Speed Painting Pretty Much Anything

After weeks of Havok (I’m waiting for some tanks to arrive), and after playing with those AI generated rules, I was in the mood to not be so sensible. My heart is always with silly little skirmish games, and Ghost Legions is a project that I frequently stop and start without really scratching the itch. […]

Borkian Mercenaries and Reaver Captains

Continuing on, with my ever expanding Havok collection… I’m pretty happy that I’ve managed to fill a few slots from the original Havok line up that I thought I’d struggle to recreate. First up are my Borkian Mercenaries: They’re very different from the originals: I’ve gone less flying psycho in fishnets and more Laserburn – […]

Havok Reinforcements Completed

As shown off in my last post, here are my finished Havok reinforcements, for the Nexus: It’s been an interesting project recreating these figures using Wargames Atlantic’s fantastic range of plastic figures, and then painting them has also presented its own challenges, in trying to mimic a more modern pre-painted style (toysoldier2000?). The Storm Troopers […]

Invasion of the Pteravore

In the week just gone I was frantically painting figures for my Pteravore army for a game of Havok Skirmish. I’m not sure if I like the overall effect of the finished force as funnily enough I think it’s a bit too uniform. To explain further here are my Nexus and Karn forces: Each force […]

The Nexus Rebellion

In opposition to the Karn Empire we have the Nexus Rebellion. This time I picked up a box of Wargames Atlantic’s Cannon Fodder, a kit that I’ve also had before and was already well aware of how much mileage you could get out it. First up are the Nexus Troopers: They’re the backbone of the […]

Havok in 2025?

Havok was a wargame produced by Blubird Toys in the late 90s. It was extremely short lived, dying before all of the units were released. I can’t imagine their intention was to rival 40k at the time, but maybe just exist as a slightly cheaper pocket money option. All the miniatures came pre-assembled (bar vehicles […]

Perpetually Painting Partisans

Phew! It’s been a longish stretch of painting Partisans this week (and picking up penguins*). It’s not that the Partisans took a long time in the grand scheme of things, a full platoon in a week isn’t exactly tough. However, they did take long as far as Bolt Action painting is concerned. My Russians and […]

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 […]

Ain’t no Party like a Partisan Party!

It’s been a slowish week but I have set about building my Partisan force. Here’s everything I was able to get out of the Wargames Atlantic box, all 32 figures. I’ve grouped them into two 10 man Rifle squads and two 5 man Assault squads. You can probably guess what the Rifle squads have (9 […]

Bolt Action 3

Looking forward to the new edition of Bolt Action I’ve spent a while thinking about what army to go for. The sensible choices would be Russia or Italy since I’ve already got those armies and have barely plumbed the depths of them. But of course being a wargamer that was infected by Games Workshop’s brain […]

England Invaded

My attempts at sticking to a few things this year are once again frustrated. Maybe a better New Year’s resolution is to not restrict yourself to one or a few projects at all, but just let yourself go nuts. While putting some much needed washing in the machine, I saw a A5 rulebook jammed in […]

Chaos Cultists

Chaos Cultists are a problem, and they have been for a very long time. This is a bizarre problem for the biggest wargaming company GW to have. Cultists are a basic infantry option for arguably the second most important faction in Warhammer 40,000. That’s like Warlord Games announcing Bolt Action and then saying they’re not […]

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 […]

Battle of the Rulebooks Part 3: Gathering Forces

Of course I had to take this opportunity to buy more little plastic people. This wasn’t as simple as grabbing whatever I wanted though, I did have a few goals in mind. My main goal was to have two forces, one elite with few models, decent armour and weaponry, and the other with more models, […]