Irregular Wars Wargaming

Taking a slight detour from the painting schedule, I added a sixth Mark VI preserver to my beaky marine squad this weekend.  A little background for the rest of the squad was given back in October 2023 . Now, a heavy-weapon toting chappie joins the crew as Brother F. I already have a wee tech support asset and a scout sniper  and another five 40K 2nd edition scouts that can be scrounged out of the bits box if I ever need to add them. I'm not sure when they will see action. I have very little interest in what 40K has become over the last 25 years really. Ideally I'd like to use them in an over-sized game of This is Not a Test   at some point, but should the need ever arise, I also now have enough painted marines for a Kill Team.

This week I have focused on painting up canines for games of Devilry Afoot . To the left we have a companionable dog, loosely based on my own scruffy wee critter. On the right, the fearsome barghest. For scale I have matched them with a Bloody Miniatures pipe-puffing goodman in the photos below. In Devilry Afoot , dogs are intended to be useful aids to a hunting party, but not necessarily savage war dogs, slabbering to tear monsters limb from limb. Hunting parties are designed to be made up of members of a normal community, not elite monster-hunters belonging to a secret society. They are unlikely to own dogs trained for hunting anything larger than a wolf and so dogs should not be intended to close with a monster. Think of them more as advanced warning systems that help the hunters to locate their monstrous foes. This perky wee fellow is from Magister Militum (now presumably OOP?). The opposite extreme is the barghest. Sometimes known as Black Shuck, the barghest is a hellhound, summo

When it came to adding a North American monster to Devilry Afoot's book of monsters, there was only ever one obvious choice; the wendigo. The big question, was how to represent one on the table. Wendigos, also known as windikouk, atchen and kewok among other names, are cursed, cannibalistic revenants found among the Algonquin nations. Their badly-lived lives have left them tormented in death with a hunger that can never be fulfilled. Although they are able to take on many forms, a wendigo is forever emaciated; standing grotesquely tall, its frame is draped in tattered, frost-covered skin They stalk their human prey consumed with ravenous appetite, however, with each meal their frame grows larger forcing them to hunt and feed again. The standard wargaming trope is to have a creature with a deer or moose head. While the look is quite iconic, as far as I can tell it seems to be based on a Hollywood manifestation of a wendigo rather than anything coming from traditional beliefs.  Want

Taking the my 28mm Bacchae out to stretch their legs, I headed down to Lisburn Gaming Club last week to take on Roger's 28mm Alexandrian Macedonians in a pseudo-historical clash of (metaphorical) giants! In a typically Alexander move, Alexander (top of the picture) massed his cavalry on his right and took command of one of the units of elite companions himself. The second unit, led by a captain, were overly enthusiastic and deployed far forward of the rest of their lines. A unit of Thracians led by a rogue were late, deploying behind the wood, while the main phalanx also deployed a little forward. The hypaspists on the Macedonian left, and the various small units of archers interspersed around the infantry (mostly) maintained their lines. Dionysos had an easier time with mishaps; only the nymphs were stricken with disease. On the Bacchic left, a unit of leopards were deployed slightly forward in ambush in the woods. Next came an elephant in front of the yakshi maiden guard, a horde

Devilry Afoot is the new folk-horror game being developed as the next Irregular Wars title. Followers of this blog may have seen the gradual process of painting humans and monsters over recent weeks and months, but throughout that time, there has also been extensive playtesting with 47 experiences in the game recorded so far from players spread across Europe, North America and East Asia. The rules are still being amended and tweaked, and it is hoped that next few months will see many more games played so that an enjoyable balance can be ensured between challenge, fun, simplicity and complexity. There are currently 11 scenarios in the draft rules, although I would expect there to be at least one more. This, the first after action report to be shared publicly, is an account of one game playing the “Lost in the Woods” scenario. Lost in the woods They knew that they should not have been awake at such an hour, let alone out of doors, but neither child could sleep. It was as if something ca

Mark's last Paleao-month dispatch using his own underwater adaptation of Palaeo Diet: Pulp . This adventure from the Mesozoic time-travel world of the Utterley-Barkinge Company (NL) takes us back to the early Jurassic , about 100 MYA. It uses the “Predator” scenario suggestion in the PDEE rules for a bit of role reversal. This time the human hunters are the hunted, and the usual beasts (in this case, Squid, Ichthyosaurs, and others) are the hunters. A party of six time travel tourists, including their guide, is on a walking tour through a spectacular canyon on the floor of the Mid-Atlantic Rift. Four of them are armed with spear guns (spears) and two with glaives (clubs). Those armed with spearguns will close to shooting range and shoot, when they get an Attack reaction, if possible. Here’s a group photo of the tour group, taken as they started out on their trek. From L-R: Vlad Putin, Donald Trump, Bashir Al-Assad (spearguns); Kim Jong-un, Binyamin Netanyahu (glaives). And on the f

Mark continues his Palaeo Diet month with another Pulp game: We last met this dodgy outfit back in January 2021 when they pulled off a smash & grab raid on the priceless artefacts of Tel el Pattaya. Now they are back, with different “archaeologists”, to survey the ancient Mayan ruins of Nongprue in deepest Central America.  Here is the team who will be undertaking this absolutely above-board and fully approved work - Front row L-R: Lara Garrod (who is a Naturalist), Angelina Kenyon (Occultist), and Lyra Belacqua (Addict), the Adventurers. Behind them, some local “Hounds” they have hired as troubleshooters. “It’s just an expression snowflakes”, says Angelina, the Adventurers’ leader. “Get over it. They’re all called Pablo, or Sanchez, something like that.” She added “it’s not like they are Goons or anything.” The adventurers and hired help are all are equipped WYSIWYG.  And here is the trouble they may need to shoot - In the rear, some Giant Armadillos with thagomisers, spirit guar