This month, I decided to design a game based on what I think fantasy football is. I don't actually know what fantasy football is. Apparently, according to Wikipedia, it's "a game in which participants assemble an imaginary team of real life football players and score points based on those players'...
In the Battle Companies expansion for Middle-earth Strategy Battle Game, pages 104 to 111 provide a map-based campaign for the game. It's an elegantly simple and fun system for tracking the progress your army or warband is making through any given series of battles. The book suggests that a map-...
I decided that during 2024, I'd design one game every month. This month, I've created Paper invasion, a wargame designed to be played entirely with pencil and paper. The design challenges for this one were that I didn't want to rely on dice for randomization, and there's a lot of notation required...
Most wargames are designed to be played as a single game event. You play a game, the game ends, and whatever story that game told is over. The game has no "memory", and the next time you field your army it's like you're fielding a brand new army, with no battle scars or past experience beyond what's...
Battle in Balin's Tomb from Games Workshop is not just an excellent introduction to wargaming, it's also a fun game. And, I'm afraid, it's something of a frustrating product. But with the magic of arts, crafts, and a few choice purchases, I managed to bring my Balin's Tomb board to life. Here's...
I was recently in the US for a conference, and while there I decided to finally pick up a Steam Deck, which is hard to find in New Zealand. This is my review of [spoiler] a pretty amazing gaming device.
In terms of gaming, there were a few "problems" I wanted to solve.
Time to play
First, I wa...
I decided that during 2024, I'd create one game every month. This month, I've created Magic slinger, a game using the assets of the Grimslinger: Duels box.
Grimslinger: Duels is a game that I bought on a salesperson's recommendation that seemed promising, and ultimately turned out to be not v...
I picked up the Black Ops wargame, written by Guy Bowers and published by Osprey Games, and have had a great time playing it. This is my review of it as a book and as a game system.
The Black Ops book is in the ubiquitous blue book series by Osprey, so it's the usual 64 pages sprinkled with te...
If you're used to D&D 5e but have [wisely] switched away from Wizards of the Coast, then you might be playing Pathfinder 2. And if you're the Game Master for a Pathfinder 2 campaign, then you might notice your players staying at level 1 for a lot longer than you're used to. D&D 5e and its unofficial...
A battle mat is useful in both wargames and roleplaying games, and there are lots of different options for what to use. Like many players, I use a mix of them, including Paizo's dry-erase grid boards and flipmaps, BattleTech map packs, and boards that come packaged with games like Zombicide and...
I'm the developer and publisher of Skuffle Wammer, the universe's smallest wargame. It's designed to be played in 5 minutes or less, with the intent of being the tabletop gaming equivalent of a good stand-up-and-stretch at work. The play area is an A4 sheet of paper, you throw out some miniatures...
Last year, I developed and published Skuffle Wammer, the universe's smallest wargame. It's designed to be played in 5 minutes or less, with the intent of being the tabletop gaming equivalent of a good stand-up-and-stretch at work. The play area is an A4 sheet of paper, you throw out some miniature...
Last year, Catalyst Games ran a Kickstarter campaign to fund BattleTech: Mercenaries, an expansion set of miniatures for BattleTech: A game of armoured combat. I don't play BattleTech (yet?) but I like mechs, I'd like to paint some miniature mechs, and I do play some mech battle wargames, so I...
I love a good tabletop game, but with few exceptions most tabletop games take at least 30 minutes to play. Wargames often take substantially longer, and even quick skirmish games can require a lot of setup. Earlier this year, I found myself wanting a really quick and simple wargame to play literally...
I work in the tech industry, so I think I'm supposed to be really excited about 3d printing but I have to admit that actually, I'm not very. It's a cool technology and all, and maybe some day I will be excited about it, but since it started I've never seen a great use case for it (I know, I know, yo...
I'm a hobbyist game designer. I love looking at games for ideas on how to improve or change them for fun, and I enjoy making up new games. I've arbitrarily decided that during 2024, I'm going to publish one new game each month. Some will be mods of existing games, others will be new games I've devel...