• 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

  • 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: Open Combat Sword Masters
    Rating: Open Combat is a set of warband skirmish rules designed to be played with any set of miniatures that the gamer has to hand, and is published by Second Thunder. The setting is pre-gunpowder, but can be historical or fantasy in nature – it’s completely up to the players what and [...]

  • Review: Forager
    Rating: Forager opens with an excerpt from the account of Lieutenant George Drummond Graeme of the 2nd Light Kings German Legion of the battle at Le Haye Sainte in 1815: “There are countless tales written by soldiers of the Napoleonic Wars, many highlighting that some of their experiences [...]

  • Review: Battlegroup Kursk
    Rating: Battlegroup Kursk is the much anticipated set of World War II rules published by the Plastic Soldier Company. They are written by Warwick Kinrade, who is perhaps most well known as the author of the Kampfgruppe Normandie rules from Warhammer Historical. The rules are written as the first of [...]

  • 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: Fistful of Lead – Reloaded
    Rating: Fistful of Lead: Reloaded is a set of wargaming rules for ‘Gunfights in the Wild West’, published by Wiley Games. It was funded by a kickstarter project which was launched in November 2015, which had 132 backers and raised just over $8,000. Fistful of Lead (FoL) is a skirmish [...]

  • Review: Battles in the Age of War
    Rating: Battles in the Age of War (BAW) is a set of wargames rules designed for Samurai Warfare in the Sengoku period between 1467 – 1650. They were written in 2008 and are published by Peter Pig. The rules are 136 pages long, perfect bound and are black & white with a full colour soft [...]

  • 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: 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 – Mortem Et Gloriam
    Rating: Mortem et Gloriam is a new set of Ancients mass battle rules, written by Simon Hall, who was previously a co-author of the Field of Glory rules, which were published by Osprey Publishing. The first thing of note about these rules is that they are not presented in a traditional bound [...]

  • 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: 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 [...]

  • Review – Wargames Terrain and Buildings, The Napoleonic Wars.
    Wargames Terrain and Buildings, The Napoleonic Wars is a book written in 2019 by Tony Harwood (probably more well known by his online pseudonym Dampfpanzerwagon) and published by Pen & Sword Books. Overview The Napoleonic period is one of the most popular periods to play wargames in – [...]

  • 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 [...]

  • Thursday Night Gaming – Istanbul, The Big Box
    Thursday Night Gaming (TGN) saw The Great Guru Luff, The Halfling Hickman and myself once again reach into our gaming back catalogue and pull out Istanbul: The Big Box – a game that we haven’t played for about 10 months. Istanbul was released in 2014, and won the Kennerspiel des Jahres (Expert [...]

  • Review: Empire of the Dead
    Rating:  Two wargame genres which always seem popular are Victorian Steampunk and Gothic Horror. West Wind Productions have taken these genres, put them in a blender and Empire of the Dead (EotD) was the result. EotD is a skirmish wargame which takes place in an alternative universe, where the [...]
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    Shogun – First impressions
    Last Wednesday night saw the first play of the boardgame ‘Shogun’ (designed by Dirk Henn and published by Queen Games) at Scimitar Wargames Club. This is a boardgame which is a re-theme of the classic 30 Years War game Wallenstein, and rather than Europe, this game puts the action into [...]

  • Review: Bullets & Brains Zombie Skirmish Game
    Rating:  Bullets and Brains is a zombie skirmish game from East Street Games. It’s set in the near future after some terrorist bio-weapon has turned most of the population into zombies – not exactly an original plot, but to be honest, with the number of zombie games around these days we’ve [...]

  • 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 [...]
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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 [...]
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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 – Dux Britanniarum
    Rating:  With this title, the chaps at Too Fat Lardies bring to life the struggle that engulfed the inhabitants of Britain during the 5th and 6th centuries following the withdrawal of Rome from British shores. The remains of Roman civilisation came under attack from the Irish, Picts, and Scotti in [...]

  • Review: Tanks – Panther vs Sherman Starter Set
    Rating:   Gale Force Nine, the company behind titles such as Firefly: The Game and Spartacus: A Game of Blood and Treachery, have recently released a new game – Tanks: The World War II Tank Skirmish Game. This new game has been launched with the Panther vs Sherman Starter Set, plus a set [...]

  • Review: By Dagger or Talon
    Rating: Tomorrow’s War is my favourite set of Sci-Fi skirmish rules. Although they do contain some guidelines for creating stats for Aliens, they are primarily concerned with ‘hard’ sci-fi battles between human protagonists. By Dagger Or Talon is a supplement that introduces advanced rules [...]

  • 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: 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: Daisho
    Rating: Daisho is a set of skirmish rules for warfare set in mythical Japan. The rules are written by Charles Murton and Craig Cartmell of The Ministry of Gentlemanly Warfare, who have also authored In Her Majesty’s Name and Blood Eagle, and were published in 2015. They are available as a 90 [...]

  • Review: Killer Katanas II
    Rating: Killer Katanas II is a mass battle wargame designed to recreate samurai warfare from the mid-16th – 17th century. The rules are written by Brian Bradford and were published by On Military Matters in 2011 as a 126 page, spiral bound black & white soft cover book. It’s worth [...]

  • 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: 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 – 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 [...]

  • 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: Bad Squiddo Games Onna-bugeisha
    Rating: Bad Squiddo Games have released the first three packs of what promises to be an expanding range of Onna-bugeisha miniatures for Feudal Japan. The first pack contains three miniatures wielding katanas and is priced at £10 at time of writing. The detailing on the figures is very crisp, which [...]

  • 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: 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 [...]

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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