Irregular Wars Wargaming

A little more progress on my party of ne'er-do-wells for Fantastic Scuffles , I've added a lovely half-orc harlot to the gang. As with the rest of the miniatures in this party, she is a 3d sculpt from Vae Victis, bought as a physical print from an online marketplace.  I assume she is supposed to be a generous elf, or perhaps a half elf, but the print I received was out of scale with the rest of the party, so after preparing to retire her to the bits box, I relented and decided she could well be a half-orc with good genes... I'm glad I persevered with her, because she adds a certain 'something' to the party. As with her colleagues, she will adopt an animal nom de guerre. So along with the Wolf, the Vixen, and the Mouse, I present, the Great Tit.

The next ruleset from Irregular Wars Wargaming will be a skirmish game for encounters between small parties, Fantastic Scuffles . currently being playtested by players around the world, the following report has sent into me by Giulio in Italy. Giulio graciously permitted me to repost it here. ***** 1. The lists I created two lists, one for me and one for my wife. For the first playthrough, we decided to try to play together to learn the basics. For the first list, I wanted to create a hunter warband of the Order of Azyr from Warhammer. This is something that I've always tried to create in Warcry, but there was not much customization. The list has two mages, Domitan with Push and Fireball, and Leona, with Fly, Blink, and Curse. They both have Medium Armor and Holy Orders. Tavian is a tank with Shieldwall and Heavy Armor. Haskel and Brydget are two (relatively) cheap Hunters with black powder pistols and Resolve. For the second list, I had some cool set of werewolf miniatures that I...

Mark is back with another dispatch from the Indies: the Portuguese raid on Songkhla. ***** Don Marco da Pattaya has decided it’s time the Sultan of Songkhla received an unfriendly visit from the Portuguese. He leads a squadron North into the Gulf of Ayutthaya. The Portuguese sailed with 414 points, comprising - 1 x Galleon (Santa Caterina da Goa) (106) Q3 C4: Chaser guns, Drilled soldiers, Flagship, Galleon rigged, Master gunner, Trained gun crew. Don Marco is a Swaggering commander (I made him re-roll and he delivered another D6=6). 3 x Fragatas (Santa Barbara, Sao Jorge, Sao Martinho) (60 each) Q3 C3: Chaser guns, Galleon rigged, Master gunner, Trained gun crew. 1 x Submersible ram (Baderna) (58) Q3 C2: Ramming, Submersible, Unarmed, Unorthodox 1 x Dragao (Dragao) (70) Q3 C2: Airship, Bombs, Fiery attack, Lateen rigged, Master gunner The Songkhla fleet was not expecting (§ contingent event) this attack and some of it’s galleys have been hauled out for off-season repairs and maintenan...

After too long of a hiatus, Andrew and I set out to start testing the campaign rules for Fantastic Scuffles this week. We each started with a 100 point party.  My group of murder hobos known variously as Itinerant Adventurers Inc. or the Blue Company, had only three members - Lyra Halfcraft, the halfling rogue, Balthazar the Blue, the human seer, and Crom (just Crom), the ogre warrior. Andrew's restless dead had five members in the party - the King, a skeleton warrior, the Priestess, a mummy seer, and three minion skeletons with swords and large shields.  Rolling for individual objectives, we had each been commissioned to take out the other's seer - a straightforward enough prospect. As the restless dead shuffled forwards, Lyra turned herself invisible and snuck forward, hoping to get behind the enemy lines and remove the mummy seeress with a well-placed bolt to the rear of the head. Crom stood to one side, as Balthazar readied himself for the joy of a chain lightning spell. ...

I have started working on a party of rogues, all nominally 28mm scale 3d prints sculpted by Vae Victis. These are all beautifully sculpted and characterful miniatures and I have at least another three to go before I call the party 'finished'. The hired blade/mercenary known as The Wolf.   The highwaywoman known as The Vixen. The diminutive yet skillful burglar known as The Mouse. As I say, beautiful work from Vae Victis on the sculpting. However, as I don't have a 3d printer myself, I have to buy printed versions of 3d sculpts from third party printers. I'm finding the quality is pretty hit and miss, and the difference in how sellers scale them is causing a real headache.  I think after this I might have to return to some good ol' fashioned metal minis in small scales!

Fantastic Scuffles is the forthcoming skirmish game from Irregular Wars. Infusing the core mechanics of Devilry Afoot with the 'play your fantasy' ethos of Fantastic Battles , it aims to create enjoyable and engaging ecounters on the tabletop between small parties in any fantasty setting or historical period up to the early modern era. Miniature range and scale agnostic, the rules are designed for between one and four players, each controlling a party of 3-20 fully customisable models. A standard encounter takes place on a 2'x2' (60x60cm) and die rolls are based on a 1d10. Once familiar with the rules, games should take under an hour to from setup to completion. The core mechanics are based on randomised initiative and flexibilty in character actions; everything from moving and climbing , to fighting and theivery. Violence is not always the smartest course of action. With so many moving parts, I am planning a staged approach to playtesting, ensuring that the core mecha...

Every so often, as a palate cleanser, I return to my Érineach Preservers, custodians of the craic in the grim dark future. Born of nostalgia, raised on whiskey, and released onto the galaxy, these subversive space marines bring me a combination of joy, satisfaction, self-loathing, and a wonder at how many potential wargamers have been put off over the years by edge highlighting and panel lining space marines!? Here are the latest additions to the little battle force - previous posts can be found  October 2023 ,  November 2023 , and  February 2024 . Initially built with This is Not a Test  in mind, I now have far more than I could ever use for that. Nostalgia draws me back to the one true edition of Warhammer 40,000 - 2nd edition, but I'm not yet convinced it would be worth the effort of tracking down all the books when there are several very viable alternatives out there. Sure, won't we see in due course?!

Here are just a couple of photos to show that, while hobby time is limited at the moment, playtesting, revising and writing continues for Fantastic Scuffles . Andrew, Jim and I sat down for another three-way encounter last weekend, pitting a band of murder hobos itinerant adventurers, a party of gnomes and woodland critters, and a nest of (admittedly too many) kobolds. We each rolled for our different objectives and set to work. Putting the game through its paces, we tested some practical limits, broke the rules for vehicles (as they were then written), refined ideal game sizes and had a good laugh. Frustratingly, Andrew and I also watched as a gnome transfigured into an owl and flew off the table, completing the gnomish objective and winning the game! 

Here are another seven 28mm Warp Miniatures kobolds, completed to add to my 'horde' party for playtesting Fantastic Scuffles .  These are such wonderful multipart sculpts that allow so much variability in how you build them. The little guy in the middle with a scimitar has had a greenstuff turban and ruby added to his helmet, and the gong-banger is a bit of a conversion incorporating a Red Bard Games shield as the gong, and greenstuff for the strap and the fluffy end of his banging stick. So there are now 22 miniatures in this party - nominally coming in at 250 points, where 100 points (spread over an average of 3-5 characters) would be a usual starter party in a campaign. This kobold party only has three characters (Boggle the Irrepressable, Sir Bert d'Hoomin, and Azeeem the Great One), all the rest are minions. I'm unlikely to get to use them all at once in a regular game, but they give plenty of options, and will be useful as dungeon denizens for dungeon crawling sce...

Last weekend saw another 'big game' ancients clash in Belfast - this time returning to the Hail Caesar rules to accommodate the variability in our approaches to basing. My Seleukids allied with Tony's Carthaginians, to take on Paul's Romans and Karl's Iberians.  I didn't realise it when we agreed to the division of an almost plausible Syro-Punic alliance against Rome and its Iberian allies, but our side may have ended up with dramatically more units - and divisions. That said, I think we actually had less heavy infantry than the other side. The Carthaginians deployed to our right, opposite the legion of Rome. I say legion (singular) as there was only a single division of seven heavy infantry units supported by two units of velites - something that wound prove quite a hard nut to crack. My Seleukids were deployed against the Spaniards and Celtiberians, the field to our front interrupted by a frustrating village and with all the Iberian units focused towards the...