• Mike Hobbs – Funeral Webcast
    It was Mike’s funeral today. Due to COVID restrictions, attendance at the service was strictly limited, and I know so many people would have wanted to pay their respects. The service was recorded and is available to watch for the next week. Should you wish to watch please use the link and [...]

  • Mike Hobbs – A Book of Condolence
    Following the outpouring of messages from the community following the passing of Mike Hobbs, I thought it would be nice to have a permanent record of these to pass on to his wife, Mandy. I have created a Book of Condolence for Mike – you can find it at the following link: [...]

  • Mike Hobbs – The Welsh Wizzard
    As I write this, I am still reeling from the shocking news of the sudden death of Mike Hobbs, only a few days after his 55th birthday. I first met Mike on the UK show circuit as he used to help on the trade stand for Musketeer Miniatures with his long time friend Bill Thornhill. I was introduced to [...]

  • Painting Tally – March 2021
    A decent month for painting, but not on a par with last month. Some would argue that it may appear better than I think it was as cavalry count as two models… Anyway, two-thirds of the month was spent painting wolf riders – I added a further 25 to existing models, including these: These [...]

  • Burrows & Badgers – New Kickstarter running until 2nd April 2021
    Michael and Jo at Oathsworn Miniatures have launched their biggest ever Kickstarter project for Burrows & Badgers, with a whopping 30 new miniatures being added to the range. The Dark, The Devout and The Heroic brings the undead into the realm of Northymbra, and those which fight them. The [...]

  • Goblin Wolf Rider host is complete
    Almost exactly a month after starting them, the Goblin Wolf Rider host has been finished and is ready to join the rest of the army… There are ten scouts… Fourteen riders with hand weapons… Six characters… And five [...]

  • Hobby Update – 8th March 2021
    A fairly productive weekend has seen a group of Goblin Wolf Riders finished and another about 80% complete. This latest group is armed with spears and shields. 20 down, 15 to [...]

  • Evil Dvergr Dwarves on Kickstarter
    I have been a fan of Colin Patten’s Dark Age sculpting for some time – especially his twist on fantasy miniatures, right back to the days of the original Vendel Miniatures ranges. A few years ago he sculpted an new range of Dwarfs for Conqueror Models, and is now following these up with [...]

  • Painting Tally – February 2021
    February has been a hugely productive month for me – I’ve probably painted more models in a month than at any other time, even if I have slowed down a little in the past few days. I have spent the month concentrating on painting my Goblin army, finishing the infantry and starting on the [...]

  • Who let the Wolves out?
    With the Goblin Infantry finished (at least for now) the last few days have been spent building and priming Goblin Wolf Riders. I started painting them over the past weekend. I started with a unit of wolves without riders in order to figure out how to paint them. The plan was to paint them with [...]

  • Goblin Wolf Riders – An attack of Deja Vu
    The next stage in my Goblin army was to assemble a number of Wolf Riders, using miniatures from the Oathmark Goblin Wolf Riders box set Having assembled them, I looked and had a sudden attack of deja vu – the last time I had 30+ cavalry models on that tray, the happened to be Norman Knights, [...]

  • Goblin Infantry finished – Hobby Update 17th February 2021
    Well, I say finished. They are almost finished – one thing remains to be done, as you will see. The weekend saw the completion of painting my Oathmark Goblin Infantry. These have now been based and are pretty much ready for battle. First up is a group of 5 Goblins wielding dual weapons. These [...]

  • Hobby Update – 13th February 2021
    Reached the end of what has turned out to be a very productive week. The last figures of my latest Goblin unit – Goblins with Hand Weapons – were finished on Thursday, and I spent Friday and this morning finishing the basing. Our weekly ‘Paint and chat’ session has just [...]

  • What accounts for the increased painting speed?
    It has been noted that my painting output appears to have increased dramatically over the past few weeks, and I was asked on Twitter what accounted for this – was it regular painting time or using Contrast paints? The character limit of Twitter stopped me from fully expanding on this, so here [...]

  • Hobby Update – 9th February 2021
    Started the week with another ‘Paint and chat’ session. These type of get togethers on social media – whether on Google Meet, Jitsi, Discord or whatever other platform you wish – have been an invaluable way of sharing hobby time. I hope that even when we can all safely mix [...]

Painting & Modelling

Battle Reports / Gaming Sessions

  • Review – God of Battles
    Rating: God of Battles is a fantasy mass battle game from author Jake Thornton and published as a 290 page hardback, full colour rulebook by Foundry Publications. It is set in world of Aren, which is, in many ways, a fairly ‘standard’ fantasy worlds with Elves, Dwarfs, Orcs and Undead, but also [...]
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    Miniature Reviews – Can’t wait for the video
    I’ve been stating for a while that I’m very keen to exploit video as a new means of reviewing miniatures. However, I’m having some technical issues in getting this all together as an actual  video, so I’m planning on producing a ‘half-way-house’ show. I’ll [...]

  • Review – Saga
    Rating:  Saga is the long-awaited and much-anticipated Dark Age skirmish wargaming rules from Studio Tomahawk & Gripping Beast. The rules are aimed at being played in 28mm scale, on a 4’ x 3’ table (designed so that it could be played on the author’s kitchen table!) with warbands [...]

  • UFO Squad is now available
    Rating:  You may remember back in episode 146 of the podcast, I interviewed Rusti Gregory or Crossover Miniatures about his Kickstarter for a new game: UFO Squad. Well, I’m very pleased to say that these rules, and the associated figures, are now available to buy from the Crossover [...]

  • Review: Gothic – A Dark Companion for In Her Majesty’s Name
    Rating: Gothic is the third supplement for the Victorian Science Fiction rules In Her Majesty’s Name, written by Charles Murton and Craig Cartmell, but it is the first published directly by The Ministry of Gentlemanly Warfare, as opposed to Osprey Publishing. Whilst the original IHMN rules [...]

  • Kill Team – First impressions
    I had the opportunity earlier this week to take a look at Kill Team – the new skirmish wargame from Games Workshop, set in the Warhammer 40,000 universe – when I went to Boards & Swords Hobbies in Derby. As you may be aware, whilst I used to be a fully paid-up member of the GW fan club, it [...]

  • Review: Muskets & Tomahawks
    Rating: Muskets & Tomahawks is the second set of wargames rules to be published in English by Studio Tomahawk, following the success of their previous rules: Saga. These rules, however, have been available in French for a while. The setting for these rules is somewhat unusual. I don’t think [...]
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    New game for the pub – Wazabi
    Well, it came too late for this week’s game night, but I’ve just picked up a very interesting looking dice game from Gigamic (the people behind the gorgeous wooden abstract games like Quarto and Pylos) called Wazabi. The idea of the game almost couldn’t be simpler – you have [...]

  • Review: Land of the Free
    Rating: Land of the Free is a set of wargames rules from Osprey Publishing. Written by Joe Krone, the rules concentrate on four wars in the Horse and Musket period which helped shape the modern day United States: The French Indian War, the American Revolutionary War, the Northwest Indian War and [...]

  • Review: Lion Rampant
    Rating: Lion Rampant is the eighth in the series of Osprey Wargames rules. This set allows you to fight battles from the medieval period, in either an historical or ‘Hollywood’ setting, from the Norman conquests until the Hundred Years War. Whilst there were many large set-piece battles during [...]

  • Review: Enduring Freedom
    Rating:  Enduring Freedom is the second supplement for the Force on Force rules for modern warfare, which were published earlier this year. This supplement covers the campaign in Afghanistan from 2001 – 2010, and gives all the information required for players to recreate battles in a region of [...]

  • Review – Operation Squad Modern War
    Rating:  Following the publication of Operation Squad World War Two in 2011, Italian company Torriani Massimo Games subsequently released Operation Squad Modern War rules concentrating on combat in the modern era. The rules are aimed at skirmish gaming, using a single squad per side (6 – 20 [...]

  • Review: Chain of Command: At The Sharp End Campaign Handbook
    Rating: At The Sharp End (ATSE) follows the release of the Chain of Command platoon-level skirmish wargame rules from Too Fat Lardies last year. Chain of Command is designed around using text-book, full strength units with a few additional extras. However, in the heat of battle, this set-up would [...]

  • Review: UFO Squad – Vehicles and Buildings
    Rating:  Crossover Miniatures has just released UFO Squad, a set of skirmish rules for fighting battles of Humans vs Aliens, inspired by the games that we saw in the old X-COM: UFO Defense computer game. Following on from the rules and the Human and Alien Troops, we also have a range of vehicles, [...]

  • Review: Ice Cool
    Rating: Ice Cool is the new dexterity board game from designer Brian Gomez and published by Brain Games.  In a nutshell, it’s a flicking game with penguins. The Components The game board is actually made up of several box inners …plus a set of 16 wooden fish token, 4 plastic penguin [...]

  • Review – Twilight Struggle, Digital Edition
    The lockdown due to the COVID-19 virus has caused a certain amount of disruption to tabletop gaming, and has forced many people to look online for substitutes to their usual face-to-face gaming fayre. I have always been a fan of the Twilight Struggle boardgame from GMT Games, and backed the Digital [...]

  • Review: Red Star, White Lights
    Rating: Red Star, White Lights is a new scenario book for modern warfare, written by Jason Weiser. During the Cold War, most eyes looked to Germany as the place where a potential land battle between the forces of NATO and the Warsaw Pact would take place. This book highlights Scandinavia as another [...]

  • Review: Pandemic – Reign of Cthulhu
    Rating: One of the (few) saving graces from attending Strategy Game Con last weekend was the fact that I got to play a couple of games of the new Pandemic game: Reign of Cthulhu. Reign of Cthulhu is a co-operative game for between two and four players. Players take the role of one of seven [...]

  • Review: Lord of the Rings – The Card Game revisited
    Rating: The Lord of the Rings: The Card Game was originally released by Fantasy Flight Games in 2011, and upon release very quickly became one of my favourite games. I and my son Josh are big Lord of the Rings fans, and so we played this game a lot over the next couple of years. Then with one thing [...]

  • Review: Battlegroup Overlord
    Rating: Battlegroup Overlord (BO) is the much anticipated second campaign volume to the Battlegroup Kursk WWII rules that were released last year by Ironfist Publishing. It is perhaps the book that many were expecting to see first, as 1944 Western Europe appears to be the most popular part of World [...]
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    A Horse! My Kingdom for a horse!
    After a week’s break from gaming club (My son was performing in a concert last Wednesday evening) last night saw what was actually my first board game played face-to-face for several weeks. Having bought it a few weeks ago, I was really glad to get War of the Roses: Lancaster vs York to the [...]

  • Review: The Campaign for Kharkov: October 1941
    Rating: This 48 page book, available as a PDF or an e-book, is a campaign supplement written by Chris Stoesen for the Chain of Command World War II Platoon level rules from Too Fat Lardies. It is worth noting that this supplement is not a complete game in itself, and you will need both a copy of [...]

  • Review: Ambush Valley – Vietnam 1965 – 1975
    Rating:  Ambush Valley is the third supplement for the Force on Force rules for modern warfare, which were published in 2011, and is actually the second edition of this supplement – the first being solely published by Ambush Alley games in 2009. The book is split into 8 main sections: The [...]
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    Miniatures Review – Reinforcements By Post
    Welcome to Episode 5 of the Meeples & Miniatures Miniature Review Show. In this show, I do something a bit different, and rather than review a miniatures range, I’m reviewing a miniatures painting service: Reinforcements By [...]

  • Review – Cold War Gone Hot
    Rating:  Cold War Gone Hot is the fourth supplement for the Force on Force rules for modern warfare, which were published earlier this year. ‘What If…’ Cold War scenarios have been the staple of modern period wargamers for some years, and this volume from Osprey capitalises on that fact by [...]

  • Review: Soldiers of God
    Rating:  Soldiers of God is a set of Ancients rules written by Warwick Kinrade and published by Artorus Games. The game is specifically aimed at gaming tabletop battles during the Crusades. The book is in softback A5 format and is printed in full colour on high quality, glossy paper and comes [...]

  • Review: Broken Legions
    Rating: Thus begins Broken Legions – another in the series of Wargames Rules from Osprey Publishing, written by Mark Latham. As you can already deduce, this is a fantasy skirmish wargame set in the time of the Roman Empire. Broken Legions is a ‘warband’ style of skirmish game, so [...]

  • Review: Sword and Spear
    Rating: Sword and Spear are a new set of wargames rules for gaming in the Ancient period, from the time of the Ancient Egyptians right through to Medieval Europe. They have been written by Mark Lewis, and the Second Edition is published by Great Escape Games. The rules are designed for armies made [...]

  • Deep Madness – First Impressions
    Deep Madness is a new boardgame from Diemension Games, originally funded via a Kickstarter project in November 2016 and delivered – admittedly almost a year late – in October 2018. Overview It’s a co-operative boardgame designed to be played by 1-6 players. The plot is straight [...]

  • Review: Deep Cut Studios Print-O-Mat
    Rating: Over the last couple of year, game mats have become have become a common accessory for players of all sorts of tabletop games, be it Miniatures Games, Boardgames, Card Games or Role Playing Games, with neoprene backed mats (mousepad material) seen as the premium product choice. Up until [...]

  • Review – Hail Caesar: Army Lists: Biblical & Classical
    Rating:  As soon as Hail Caesar hit the wargaming public back at Salute (was it only 7 months ago?) an outcry was seen on many different forums… Where were the army lists? Where were the points values? How could gamers possibly be expected to play this game without them? I must admit, I found [...]

  • Review: Rapid Fire – Normandy Battlegames
    Rating:  Rapid Fire is a World War II set of rules that has been around for some time, but has proven to be enduringly popular, not the least because it remains well supported by the authors. This latest title follows on from the previous supplement; Normandy Battlegroups, which gave balanced [...]
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    Richard III: The War of the Roses
    Wednesday night at Scimitar Wargames Group saw my first play of the much anticipated follow-up to Columbia Games Hammer of the Scots, Richard III: The War of the Roses. There has been a lot of buzz about this game, and I was very keen to try it. My Reaction? To be perfectly honest, somewhat mixed. [...]
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    Conflict of Heroes: Storms of Steel
    A game that has been on my list of games to get for the past several months has been Conflict of Heroes: Storms of Steel. Ever since I bought and played the first game in this series – Awakening the Bear – I’ve been keen to get this sequel. At over £50, the price of the game is [...]

  • Review: Deus Vult!
    Rating:  Fireforge Games burst onto the scene at the start of 2012 when they released their first box set of plastic Teutonic Knights. They have since released a further two boxes of knights and their first box of infantry, with more promised in the near future. One of my favourite images in [...]

  • Review: Ronin
    Rating: Ronin is a set of skirmish rules set in the Age of the Samurai, written by Craig Woodfield and published by Osprey Publishing as part of their Osprey Wargames series in 2013. Each player has a warband, known as a Buntai, of between 4 and 20 models. A game usually takes place on a [...]

  • Review: Painting Wargames Figures – WWII in the Desert
    When gaming World War II, my first love has always been the European Theatre from D-Day until the end of the war. However, since the release of What A Tanker! from Too Far Lardies I have become more intrigued by the war in North Africa. There are some interesting battles to be fought in this [...]

Thoughts of @TheBrummieDwarf

Hobby News

‘Other Hobby Stuff’

In the spotlight

Mike Hobbs – Funeral Webcast

by Neil Shuck in Editorial

It was Mike’s funeral today. Due to COVID restrictions, attendance at the service was strictly limited, and I know so many people would have wanted to pay their [...]

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