Fantastic Scuffles - design notes

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 setting most interests them.

However, for an indie wargame designer working with micro-budgets, publicity is always a huge problem. Using social media to spread the word about your latest project can be a bit like screaming into the void. This is especially the case as the all-powerful algorithms continue to dictate the content that we see online. That is why the support from the hobby community and the direct engagement I have with my players is so important to sustain the creativity of our hobby.

Introducing Fantastic Scuffles
The next set of rules published through Irregular Wars, Fantastic Scuffles, will be released on the 5th December 2025. The game develops the 'play your fantasy' ethos for small scale skirmishes, integrating the force building flexibility of Fantastic Battles, with the tried and tested activation and combat mechanics of Devilry Afoot.

Fantastic Scuffles is, at its heart, designed as a toolkit. It allows players to enjoy small-scale skirmishes with just a handful of miniatures each. Somewhere between three and six models per party would be usual, with perhaps a dozen models for someone emphasising quantity over quality.

Using one set of core mechanics, the rules include several different ways to play oppositional, solo, or co-operative games, including randomised encounters between two parties, arena fights, and dungeon delving. There is also, naturally, a campaign system to allow you to chart the fortunes of your party across multiple games.

Games are designed to be engaging and unpredictable; force creation is flexible, allowing players to play their fantasy. There are rules for everything from climbing and falling, to locked doors, traps and quicksand. 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. They are also suitable for historic skirmishes anywhere from the dawn of time until the early modern period.

 

Central tenets of Fantastic Scuffles
The following principles are the central tenets behind the design of Fantastic Scuffles:

• Engaging rules. The rules need to keep all players engaged at all times with randomised initiative and play passing quickly between players.
• The fog of war. The rules need to limit the omnipotent control a player has over their party and the battlefield conditions.
• Setting agnostic. The game must be applicable to any fantasy (or pre-19th century historical) settings.
• Flexible party building. As a game of fantasy skirmishes, why accept restrictions on your fantasy? Throughout the pages of the rules, you’ll see example profiles, but the flexible profile building system allows players to create parties to suit their own tastes.
• Scale agnostic using singly based figures. All measurements in the rules are expressed in inches, but there is no reason players couldn’t adjust them to suit the scale of their miniatures or tabletop.

Party building
Each player controls a party, built to an agreed points value. Models in the party are all assigned an archetype (warrior, sage, rogue or minion), a size (small, average, large or huge), up to four traits and six pieces of equipment that will impact on what they can do during a game and how well they can do it. With choices from four archetypes, four sizes, 95 traits, and 71 pieces of equipment, the possible combinations are almost endless. 

Throughout the rules, examples are given of ways characters might be created, using some of my favourite miniatures from companies both small and large. However, the emphasis is on flexibility and players are encouraged to be as creative as possible. For those who like that sort of thing, there is even a MS Excel spreadsheet builder to help streamline the process.

Final thoughts
Fantastic Scuffles launches in December 2025. It will be available as a digital download direct from irregularwars.com or from Wargame Vault, or as a softcover book from Amazon. 

I hope that it’ll help players find their niche and play their fantasy. Of course, if you have any questions or want to get in touch, there are already active Fantastic Battles and Devilry Afoot Facebook groups, and there is an Irregular Wars Wargaming account on Bluesky. I sporadically drop into the Lead Adventures Forum, or you can always use the contact form at irregularwars.com.

Happy gaming!