Irregular Wars Wargaming

Having returned from a dander around France, Belgium and the Netherlands, we returned home to find that my wee lad's best mates are all away. A boon for me, as he agreed to play a couple of games of Fantastic Scuffles ! In the first game, I controlled my party five of rogues (mercenary, burglar, harlot, highwaywoman and potion dealer) who's objective was to knock out and abduct one of his party members. He controlled a foot knight, sorceress, ghost and two spear-armed minions who had been asked to acquire an item held (determined randomly) by my half-orc harlot. My highway woman took an early dislike to the sorceress, sneaking up to fire her pistol at short range. The sorceress was wounded, but still standing until the halfling burglar emerged behind her and finished the job.  The wee man's knight charged the potion's dealer who threw down a smoke bomb to escape. The knight then turned his attention to the burglar, taking revenge for the mess he'd made of the sorcer...

Its a difficult time of the year, and if  wargaming was food, then halflings provide the perfect comfort food. Built as a bit of light relief, and yet providing some heavy support, callsign 'Bunker' is the latest asset to join the Flores Minor Ranger Corps. This wee chap is a converted Mark VI Horus Heresy spacemarine, cut down to size and rebuilt with greenstuff and a Max Mini halfling head.  Scale comparison of Bunker along with some brave colleagues (classic 90's GW ratlings) from the Flores Minor Ranger Corps. The FMRC have previously seen some hot combat using the This is Not a Test rule set, and when a hard copy of the 2nd edition is available, they may well again. I do intend, however, for them to take up arms and test out a few sci-fi mods for Fantastic Scuffles as well. Look at the little guy being all small!

Another of our Fantastic Scuffles playtesters, Marc, has send this next report in from the States: *** Two necromancers walk into a graveyard... There's a joke in here somewhere. 😀 Bones and his Rattlers are looking to loot this particular precinct of the necropolis for an ancient artefact of great power. Meanwhile, Mumm-Ra and his Remnants are merely passing through, being the only crew willing to take an important message through these haunted acres. Bones sets up in the corner nearest the treasure. The plan is simple - his crew will hold off the enemy while he searches the pyramid. Mumm-Ra sets up in the next corner over to minimize resistance on his path across the board. Mumm-Ra plans to take the message himself, being the fastest member of his band (and the one whose survival he cares about the most). Meanwhile, his zombies will try to stop Bones' looting.4 On the first turn, the pieces are set in motion. Only Bones' skeleton archer gets in any action, sticking the ...

As playtesting continues for Fantastic Scuffles , Giulio has sent in another beautifully illustrated game report that he's happy for me to share. If you missed his previous experiment, you can find it here . Giulio continues: *** The lists My wife kindly offered once again to be my opponent for this game, so I created two 165-ish point warbands. I've been testing fantastic scuffles for a while, now, using mainly two lists: a Witch Hunters warband and a "Villain" minion master who controls all sorts of evil creatures. I recently painted Torgillius from Warhammer Cursed City, so I decided to use him as my minion master. He is a Sage, and I gave him the Erudite trait and chose three spells for him: Summon (to bring in some extra friends), Mystic Missile, and Transfigure, to transform him into a giant spider! I also wanted to create a loyal, powerful warrior bodyguard character to accompany Torgillius, so I used a Kosargi guard from Warhammer Cursed City. I wanted him to ...

The goblin potion dealer is the fifth member of my ne'er-do-well party of rogues.  It is another Vae Victis 3D sculpt bought online. It came from a different seller to the others in the party, and the resin is completely different with much softer detail. I got quite disillusioned with painting it to be honest and abandoned it. It's been sitting base painted in a drawer for the last three months. However, it's been a bit of a funny weekend (not in a humorous way) and I wanted to do something quick and easy, so I finished him up. I'm not super happy with it, but content.

*Record Scratch* *Freeze Frame* " Yep, that's me. You're probably wondering how I got into this situation … " Andrew and I continued our gnomes and goblins campaign this week with another encounter. I had spent some of the loot accrued over the last two glorious victories to hire a new minion for the bog goblins, this time a little chap with a net and the trapper trait. Otherwise, the parties were the same as previously: Clachtoll the unstoppable wyvern and his little gobo jockey, Nigg, along with their two minions (archer and trapper), against the gnomes, Hrolf, Haakon and Hans, and their two fox minions.  Rolling for objectives, both parties ended up with NPC focused missions. The gnomes had to keep the peace, ensuring no NPCs were slain, while not making the first aggressive action. As for the goblins, they were trying to win over the hearts and minds of the local populace, striving to convince them the join the boggy gobby side rather than the notoriously nosey gn...

I've had these 3D sculpted traps from Vae Victis sitting around for a while and, after taking the head staggers with work this week, have finally gotten around the painting and basing them. In Fantastic Scuffles , traps can be set by models with the trapper trait during a regular encounter, or can be placed by the dungeon master during a dungeon delving scenario. Depending on the players' needs and wants, traps come in five varieties: bear traps, fire traps, pit traps, poison traps and spike traps. They can be based on anything up to a 40mm base - all these are on 30mm rounds. Lyra Halfcraft negotiating some bear traps. The Wolf, caught between what could be a fire, poison or spike trap, and a poorly disguised pit trap.  Flint Runehammer nestled between a fire trap and a spike trap. And because you were all thinking it...

Over the last few weeks there have only been a few snatched hours here and there to paint, so I have been slowly working on the second unit (and first infantry unit) of my 10mm Romano-British army for Fantastic Battles . Again, these are entirely Pendraken miniatures, taken from a mix of packs in the Late Roman range to give a real levy/ad hoc sense to the pedyt shield wall.  Rather than a single uniform shield device, I went a little wild with variations of geometric patterns, chi rhos, and alpha-omega in black and white marking what is most definitely a levy unit from a Christian civic community. I have aspirations for other shield walls to be more uniform, or more wild from the hills.