Irregular Wars Wargaming

First post of 2026, and my first painted miniatures of the second quarter of the 21st century! Here we continue with the project to build 28mm heroes and contingents for the Trojan War with Helenos, the prince of Troy and favourite of Apollo. All miniatures are from the Eureka Miniatures Bronze Age Greeks range. These four warriors will forming the core of Helenos' promachoi. They have come to me third-hand, and it is great to be putting them to good use. The chap on the left had a broken plume which has been substituted for another, more robust one I just happened to have lying around.  I went with a red and white theme this time - although I am aware that my 'red' is more terracotta. Simply put, I care not; I like it. The bow-armed promachoi have been ordered, along with a bunch of other bits and pieces for the project, from Eureka. Helenos himself is the Greek Priest model from the range and works well as a princeling calling on his patron deity or reading the flight of ...

For the last wargaming night of the year, Andrew and I caught up for a chat and a pint, talked through the immediate project for 2026, and played a sci-fi game of Fantastic Scuffles with weapons and traits sub'd out for guns etc for a laugh. Anyone familiar with Fantastic Scuffles will hopefully be able to see the basic parallels and this may well be something that is made an official free download in future.  Three characters and two fireteams of the Flores Minor Ranger Corps (halflings in space) went up against six characters from a zealous band of witch hunters (space witch hunters!).  The FMRC were led by Skipper, a 'tactical', supported by the 'recon' Sarge, and 'pychic', Psych. The two fireteams were identical (Alpha and Bravo), each containing four cannon fodder, one with assault pistol and grenades, two shotguns, and one heavy machine gun. The imaginatively named witch hunters were led by a tactical, Lady Mace, supported by three other tacticals: H...

It has been a long December, but over the weekend I managed to finish off the first batch of scenery for Bronze Age skirmishing. Of course, it's pretty universal stuff, but the driving ambition if to pull together material suitable for the Aegean periphery c.1,250 BC. All the terrain pieces shown here are 3D printed models created by Deweycat and purchased from a printer/seller on Etsy.  I expect that this would be spectacular printed in resin. The set I bought has been printed in FDM and if you look at any of it in detail you can clearly see the horizons between layers. That said, all together it cost me £10 plus postage and painted by much nicer than I expected, so I certainly think it was a good buy.  I particularly liked the very traditional well, although the proportions of the lever are a bit off and only work with the uprights at an angle. Still it gives it an aged, well-used feel! In the new year I'll look to add some trees - olives if I can find decent ones, cypresses...

As Fantastic Scuffles goes live, I have continued to build the first of my Trojan contingents that can be used as a Fantastic Scuffles party, but will also form a force for a future Irregular Wars wargame. This Amazonian contingent is made from Lucid Eye miniatures. Following on from the Amazonian  warriors posted last month , we have three archers to support the melee fighters.  To my colourblind eyes, they have a lovely rusty red and black colour theme. My better half tells me that its a very nice reddy brown. Ah sure! What can you do? To lead the Amazonian contingent we have Penthesileia, the doomed princess with a death wish, destined to fall to Achilles. As the Lucid Eye Amazons have a very Aegean aesthetic, I wanted to give a slight nod to the traditionally steppic feel of Amazons in later Greek art, so the bi-coloured rosettes on a black band across her cloak are based on the edge decoration of a rug I picked up in Bukhara when working in Uzbekistan many years ago.

I'm delighted to announce the release of Fantastic Scuffles , the skirmish wargaming toolkit designed for any fantasy or pre-modern historical setting. Fantastic Scuffles is designed to allow players to enjoy small-scale skirmishes with less than a dozen miniatures per player. It takes as its starting point the wargaming principles set out in its army-scale predecessor, Fantastic Battles (2020). Games should be engaging and unpredictable; force creation should be flexible, allowing players to play their fantasy. Being both setting and scale agnostic, the rules can be used with whatever miniatures a player has at hand for scuffles in any fantastic realm or historic setting from the dawn of time until the early modern period. Using one set of core mechanics, the rules outline several different ways to play solo, co-op and oppositional games including randomised encounters between two parties, arena fights, and dungeon delving. Where is Fantastic Scuffles for sale? The best place b...

Irregular Wars HQ has been busy recently with final playtests and tweaks of  Fantastic Scuffles   as we move towards its release on the 5th December. Meanwhile, I've been digging out a few leftover 28mm  Lucid Eye Amazons from ProjectTROY to work on something new. These three will make a good start for a Fantastic Scuffles Amazon warband, but they're also the first steps towards the next project in the Irregular Wars family...

Find your niche, play your fantasy Irregular Wars Wargaming was born from a desire to play something different. To play historical games too niche to be a commercial success. To play fantasy games unshackled by somebody else’s world or the prescriptive demands to sell associated miniature ranges. To play games where the landscape drives decisions, and randomised events can allow even the most gamey players to snatch defeat from the jaws of glorious victory. With various tabletop wargames published through both Irregular Wars and Ganesha Games, my rules are designed to be engaging for all players throughout the game, employing randomised initiative with play passing quickly between players. They aim to create some degree of command friction, limiting the omnipotent control of the player and forcing interesting decision making. Above all, they are driven to be flexible, enabling players to build the armies, warbands, parties and fleets of their choice, applicable to whatever period or s...

I had the honour to be invited down to Cork College of FET - Douglas Street this week for a Fantastic Scuffles playtesting day with their first and second year game design students. Although they are studying computer game design, they have to create tabletop games as part of their assessment. It was a great day with more than 20 students putting Fantastic Scuffles through its paces, stress testing the mechanics and trying to find game-breaking loopholes in the rules. Where issues were identified, mostly driven by trait and equipment synergies, we talked through different approaches to resolve them and implemented a couple of changes. My thanks to Neil Crowley and all who took part. It was a great experience for me, and I hope that the discussions that we had around game mechanics and design choices were useful to the students as they prepare for their future careers. 

This week Andy T and I faced off in the dungeon depths for another playtest of the dungeon crawling element of Fantastic Scuffles . Andrew ran a team of adventurers with four characters (two warriors, a sage and a rogue) and four minions (two archers and two spearmen). I returned to the roll of dungeon keeper, filling my dungeon with hidden movement tokens filled with potential. Knowing me, of course that potential was always going to include kobolds - this time with goblins! With such a large adventuring party, Andy split his team into two groups. All four minions and one of his warriors - the polearm toting knight - went left, discovering the wing of the dungeon populated by kobolds. Having slaughtered a group of kobold spearmen, they continued into the next room, finding the first of their treasure chests, but also running into a group pf kobold slingers led by a mighty (in his head anyway) kobold warrior. Although all the kobolds were to fall, it was not without cost, leaving all t...

I've just finished up this little swarm of 28mm goblings from Old School Miniatures. They will be treated as minions with the swarm trait in Fantastic Scuffles . These smaller goblin cousins have great character and a 1980s-90s vibe that made the kickstarter difficult to dismiss. Some of the casting was a little rough, but mounted five to a base, they are kind of irresistible.  Lets hope the enemy finds it that way too!

There is plenty of editing and page setting going on at the moment in Irregular Wars HQ, meaning there is relatively little new brush work going on. I have, however, finished up a couple of exceptions to that rule over the last couple of weeks, posted below. First up we have this fiercely majestic gryphon digitally sculpted by Cast N Play. Buying 3d printed minis from Etsy can be a bit hit and miss, but this was definitely a winner. She - for some reason I picture it as a female gryph - can either join a party or be used as a hostile fantastic beast. Then we have these four chests and two mimics from Onmioji Miniatures - essential for any dungeon delving! And lastly a couple of photos from our latest dungeon crawl using Fantastic Scuffles . While it looked touch and go for the adventurers in turns two and three, expedient spell casting left the so-called heroes as masters of the dungeon for the low low cost of the life of their halfling rogue.

The most challenging part of creating a fantasy skirmish game is building mechanisms to make dungeon crawling fun and challenging, while still engaging all players with smooth mechanics. The dungeon crawling rules for FS have been through multiple iterations now, switching between matched and asymmetrical parties, from hidden movement, to free-flowing visibility and back again. At this point, we feel the balance is about right, although further testing is, of course, going to be required!  Last week we played a three-player dungeon crawl, with two parties of adventurers attempting to raid the same dungeon through different entrances. Re-instituting hidden movement, my poor denizens were represented by mini playing cards until an adventurer came withing line of sight, when their true nature was revealed. Jim took a 100 point party of gnomes (top centre), Andy T controlled 100 points of Japanese bandits (centre right), will I had 200 points of kobolds dispersed throughout the dungeo...