Mixed Signals

Straight-forward gaming

Snarling Badger recently released Deth Wizards, a skirmish wargame in which you play a necromancer and undead minions. I've enjoyed Snarling Badger products so far, and I like the idea of playing a necromancer with a little team of wights and wraiths and zombies. I bought the physical book and th...

I remember when I first learned about washes. It was a Youtube video demonstrating a dip wash, where you take your entire painted miniature and just dip it into a tin of watery paint, shake it off, and let it dry. I wasn't painting miniatures yet, myself, but it made an impression on me, because the...

I sometimes play the Genestealer Cults faction in Warhammer 40,000. The new Genestealer Cults codex recently came out. I already own the digital index and the physical reference cards, but I purchased the new book for a few different reasons, and I've read it from cover to cover. This is my review...

Buying miniature kits has been an interesting learning experience for me as a newcomer to the wargaming hobby. There are lots of miniature designers and vendors out there, and I don't know of an easy way to get a feel for each one without buying a box of models to find out. I don't have the time, mo...

It's easy to look at a wargame and think that it's essentially "just" the combat system of an RPG. All the G without the R or the P. Similarly, it's easy to look at the original RPG (the fabled Chainmail supplement by Gygax and Arneson, I mean) and notice that the RPG was meant to be all the stuff b...

The best experience I've had in wargaming so far has been with Games Workshop and Warhammer. I don't trust the company any more than I trust any company (which is not at all, due to the authoritarian power structure of corporations) but I do recognise that the '20s version of GW has been able to, so...

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 used to think wargames sounded unimaginative and overly strategic. I pictured players obsessed with military history reenacting, with miniatures, old battles exactly as they were described in the history books. How is that even a game? I couldn't understand how a great game like AD&D could possib...

I was chatting with Jamie, the store manager at my local Warhammer store, about painting and he pointed out that there were lots of different colours for undercoat spray painting available. Depending on what you're painting, it might just be more efficient to undercoat a miniature in black or blue o...

I've been playing a lot of Space Station Zero by Adam Loper and Vince Venturella. It's a simple system and a relatively small book at just 120 pages, and a side effect of that is that the potential war gear your crew can carry is pretty minimal. But the premise of the game is that a bunch of diffe...

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...

The end! The crew fought bravely, but they've met their final challenge with Challenge 16 of the Space Station Zero book. This battle report contains minor spoilers, although there are a lot of branches in the campaign so what happens in my campaign is unlikely to also happen exactly the same in y...

Another challenge, another totally unreasonable target number. I'm playing Space Station Zero wargame with an aim to get through the entire station, and I've decided to post battle reports about each Challenge along the way. These battle report contain minor spoilers, although there are a lot of b...

I'm playing Space Station Zero wargame with an aim to get through the entire station, and I've decided to post battle reports about each Challenge along the way. These battle report contain minor spoilers, although there are a lot of branches in the campaign so what happens in my campaign is unlik...

A gaming miniature usually has a base it stands on so that the miniature doesn't tip over during your game. After you paint a miniature, the finishing touch is to clean up the base, because inevitably paint has splattered on to it as you've been painting. Some people decorate the base with tiny shru...

I'm playing Space Station Zero wargame with an aim to get through the entire station, and I've decided to post battle reports about each Challenge along the way. These battle report contain minor spoilers, although there are a lot of branches in the campaign so what happens in my campaign is unlik...