• 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 – Hind Commander
    Rating:  Hind Commander a set of rules from Assault Publishing, a company from Poland and Marcin Gerlowicz, creator of Sturmovik Commander, and describes itself as a ‘Modern helicopter warfare tabletop game’ – something that is probably best described as a ‘niche genre’. I was initially [...]

  • Review: UFO Squad – Defenders of the Earth
    Rating: UFO Squad is the new sci-fi skirmish game from Crossover Miniatures, where squads of human troops defend the earth from the threat of alien invasion. As well as the rules, Crossover has produced a range of figures for the game. In this blog, I’m taking a look at the human troops. [...]

  • Review: Skirmish Sangin
    Rating: Skirmish Sangin (SS) is the latest release from Radio Dishdash, a New Zealand based company. The rules, as the title indicates, concentrates on small unit combat in Afghanistan. The game is designed to be played with 28mm figures on a 4’ square board, which represents an area of roughly [...]

  • Review: Clash of Empires
    Rating:  Clash of Empires is a set of Ancients rules produced by Great Escape Games, who are previously known for producing the World War 2 rules Rules of Engagement. As with many sets of Ancients rules, these are aimed to cover a wide period: from the massed chariot battles of Ancient Egypt right [...]

  • Review: Test of Honour Ronin
    Rating:  The Ronin box set for Test of Honour was one of the wave one expansions for the game. The box set allows players to field a force comprising fully of masterless Samurai, led by a special character – Tadashi ‘The Dishonoured’. The box contains the aforementioned metal [...]

  • 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: A Fistful of King-Fu
    Rating: Do you remember the seventies? Chopsocky was liberally splashed across our cinema and television screens, Karl Douglas topped the charts and Bruce Lee was the coolest guy on the planet (and every boy had ‘that’ poster on his bedroom wall). Everybody was Kung-Fu fighting, with not a [...]

  • Review: Pocket Quest…opening the box
    Rating Pocket Quest is a 6mm Dungeon Crawl game produced by Perfect 6 Miniatures and The Miniature Architect. As you first look at it, this game is a thing of beauty. It comes in an MDF box which is just over 6″ square – this doubles not only as the game box, but also as a [...]

  • Review: Saga -Varjazi & Basileus
    Rating: Varjazi & Basileus represents the last of the current Dark Age supplements to be released by Gripping Beast at the current time. Whilst they are no doubt due to visit the Arthurian period at some time in the future, for now, these are the last factions. As such, this book not only comes [...]

  • Review: Battlegroup – Fall of the Reich
    Rating: Battlegroup Fall of the Reich (FotR) is the third volume of the Battlegroup Kursk WWII rules that were released in 2012 by Iron Fist Publishing. As you might expect, Battlegroup Fall of the Reich looks at the last months of the war, as the Allies marched into Germany on both the Eastern and [...]

  • 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 [...]
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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 – Augustus to Aurelian
    Rating:  Whilst many wargamers are content to play with rules they have bought ‘out of the box’, there is a sizeable number of gamers who are notorious for ‘tweaking’ rules, changing them so that they correspond with their own particular view or reading of history. Sometimes, this reaches [...]

  • Review: Dead Man’s Hand
    Rating: In my experience, Wild West games tend to be very hit or miss affairs (no pun intended). They tend to be games that promote style over substance – they can look incredibly pretty, as you can produce some stunning scenery to fight over, but (if you’re not careful) they can be dull as [...]

  • Review: Jugula
    Rating: Jugula is a gladiator game, written by the same team that have previously published Saga and Muskets & Tomahawks. Unlike some previous gladiator games, Jugula does not simulate a detailed combat between two gladiators. Rather, each player takes on the role of a Lanista, taking charge [...]

  • 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: 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 [...]

  • Review: Longships: The Wrath of the Vikings
    Rating : The Dark Ages as a gaming genre has been under something of a revival ever since Saga appeared on the scene a couple of years ago. Longships is Peter Pig’s addition to this growing catalogue. The rules concentrate, as you may well gather from the title, on the Vikings as the main [...]

  • Review: Test of Honour Ninjas of Iga Warband
    Rating: Ninjas of Iga is the latest box set of miniatures to be released by Warlord Games for their Test of Honour Samurai skirmish game – it is the second box set they have released which includes all new metal miniatures. The box set includes 7 metal miniatures, 10 plastic bases and 2 [...]

  • Review – PMC 2460
    Rating: PMC 2460 is a set of hard sci-fi wargames rules from author Marcin Gerkowicz of Assault Publishing. PMC is an acronym for Private Military Companies – the rules are set in the27th century, where most wars are fought by hired mercenary armies; somewhat similar to the Hammer’s Slammer’s [...]

  • Review: Quadrant 13
    Rating: What’s this? Too Fat Lardies producing a non-historical set of wargames rules? Perhaps the Mayans were right and the world has ended after all – we just haven’t noticed yet… …joking aside, Quadrant 13(Q13) is the first venture for TFL outside of their previous historical wargames, [...]
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    Snowdonia – lots of fun to be had in North Wales
    Last night saw our first play of Snowdonia, the new game from Tony Boydell and Surprised Stare Games. Tony has previous designed games such as Fzzzzt and Totemo, both of which I own and enjoy. I’d played a final draft of this game at the UK Games Expo back in May, and liked it very much [...]

  • 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 – Saga:Northern Fury
    Rating:  The Saga rules, published by Gripping Beast, have taken the wargaming world by storm over the years, and are still proving to be very popular. Northern Fury was the first of several supplements which contained additional new factions to add to the existing factions from the core rulebook, [...]

  • Review: Sarissa Precision 28mm Japan MDF terrain
    Rating: Sarissa Precision Ltd are a company that produce high quality MDF terrain in various scales at a mid-range price. This review is looking at their Japan range of buildings, which are useful for playing games in the Sengoku period – especially rules such as Test of Honour I have a [...]

  • 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: 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 [...]

  • 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 [...]

  • Review: Hail Caesar
    Rating:  Wargames rules, it seems, are somewhat like buses: You seem to spend ages waiting for a set to come along, and then two or three arrive at the same time. Last year (2010) this was true of Napoleonic rules, this year it’s the turn of Ancients, with several new Ancients rulesets being [...]

  • Review: Went The Day Well?
    Rating:  A Very British Civil War first hit our wargaming tables around 2009, and is the brainchild of Solway Crafts and Miniatures . Since that time, there has been a steady release of new supplements detailing various units and factions within this alternative history, but up until now these [...]

  • Review: Banzai
    Rating: Banzai: Age of the Country at War is a set of wargaming rules written by Robert Fellows and published by 2D6 Wargaming in 2016. This game is written to be used with 6mm miniatures using 60mm x 30mm basing, though it should work for any scale miniatures as long as the basing has a 2:1 ratio [...]

  • Review: Vpered Na Berlin
    Rating:  Vpered Na Berlin (“Onwards to Berlin!”) is the second supplement from Too Fat Lardies for the third edition of I Ain’t Been Shot Mum. Following on from Battle for Liberation, this book (produced in PDF format, 111 pages, full colour) details army lists for the war on the Eastern [...]

  • Review: Chain of Command
    Rating: Chain of Command (CoC) is a platoon-level skirmish wargame from Too Fat Lardies. There are many platoon-level WWII rulesets on the market, each with its own particular take on how combat at this level should be represented. Some concentrate on the weapons being used, others on the men who [...]
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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: Black Powder – The Last Argument of Kings
    Rating:  Almost as soon as the original ‘Black Powder’ rules were released, there were rumblings about adapting these rules for fighting the earlier Horse & Musket period, and this supplement – penned by Pete Brown – formalises these adaptations. Black Powder: The Last Argument of [...]

  • 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 [...]

  • Review – Tremble Ye Tyrants
    Rating:  Tremble Ye Tyrants is the new fast-play Napoloenic Wargaming rules written by Chris Peers and distributed by North Star Military Figures. The rules are designed around the using 28mm figures, although they do use elements rather than individual figures. An infantry unit is defined as 4 [...]
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    New Uncharted Seas ships
    I bought some of the new wave of Uncharted Seas release from Stafford Games on Friday – tey arrived on my desk this morning – and thought that I would put up some pictures and some immediate impressions. The Dwarf Heavy Cruisers look simply awesome! An improvement on the basic Cruiser, [...]

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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