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Cult Of Games XLBS: What Wargames Would WE Make?
August 24, 2025 by crew
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Homebrew game? Meh, I have no idea about that. Maybe have addendum Rules of Cool for different systems to play in but that’s about it. The breakdown between painter and gamer rears its head once I start thinking about chucking dice. I’m only dangerous with a brush or rolling my metal block dice for Blood Bowl.
@shayott I had no idea about that nightmare fuel either. I only was exposed to the Big Naso comedy group here in the US. Go ahead and check out that for wondering “what the hell?”
@avernos Your prickly personality sounds like it’s useful for analyzing an affinity for anthropomorphic figures in Burrows&Badgers if you’ve now decided to toss off squirrel tail for hedgehog heiney
@brennon Check out Pellek and his “I Can Swing A Sword” from long ago. Your game might now have one of those inspirational music liner notes for the addendum A4 sheet
I shall give it a look 🙂
Crooked Dice have exorcised their Mr. Noseybonk demons by making the ‘Psycho Killer’ miniature https://crooked-dice.co.uk/products/psycho-killer?_pos=1&_psq=psy&_ss=e&_v=1.0
Absolute geniuses that they are
Écorcheurs sounds perfect for all those unnamed grubby skirmishes that happened on a regular basis during the HYW
Back in the olden days when clubs held tournaments players would use the home clubs rules rather than the tournamentusing a commercial set
@brennon I can I imagine the conversation as you have to break the news that those %^&£%@#£ at work have decided at the last minute that they would like a show report from Colours this year
I am carefully avoiding all mentions of it beyond XLBS 😉
Golem asses. Putting the butt into butt butt ding since 2025.
Oh and yes, I have been slowly working on a Wild West version of a game i am recently enamoured with..
Ah awesome – will be intrigued to see how it turns out!
You’re welcome
Given the chance ?
Nope.
I might tweak the rules of an existing game and scenario a bit, but fresh rules from scratch ?
I’d rather play a game and not waste my precious hobby time on creating new rules …
There’s plenty of rules out there already. Many covering similar periods.
The only thing you really need is a wargaming mindset equivalent to the one that gave us OSR and Mork Borg for RPG’s.
And that includes letting go of the need for absolute detail and focus on the holy trinity of scenario, theme and narrative.
I used to be infected by the D&D virus and think that I needed rules and systems for every possible action in a rpg.
As a result I collected a ton of equipment and splat books, because they described new mechanics.
Now I only need a single rule that states how to check if an action succeeds at a given difficulty and a way to determine how difficult an action needs to be if it is important enough for the plot to be random as plausible actions always succeed.
tl;dr;
First we need to define the essence of wargaming in the same way we kind of have discovered the essence of roleplaying.
Maybe what we really need is a neutral judge of conflict that can determine the plausibility of any given action on the battlefield ?
We could call hime a referee …
I have been working on a Wild West game (working title “Frontier”) for many moons on and off.
I have recently started to dive back into it and I shall make a project soon to collate all the current aspects of it and track the progress
Would be cool to see where you go next with it!
I’ve only made my own games to cover weird moments in history duch as my cheese riot game which wouldn’t interest too many people. But covering one odd event I found interesting because you can have very bespoke rules or in my case event cards that covered actual accurances to tell a story. I want to do another based on mob rule in the 18th century using similar rules but listening to feedback from the players is very important when doing your own game.
I do like the sound of that – filling in the gaps with something fun and unique
Wish I could part with some of my miniatures, but im put off by the memory of selling a guitar i wasn’t using at the time. It was a awesome guitar that now would cost me a ridiculous amount to replace.
I actually have written a set of Rules, and even got the mark 2 set published in the one off Sci fi special for minature wargames mag.
It was reading them in the magazine, that I realised I needed it better laid out and then re wrote them completely.
These were my rules for playing out the old 50’sci fi movie ‘Them ‘ with Giant Ants.
They eventually morphed into a more Generic B movie set which finally got the name ‘I’ve got those B Movie Blues ‘.
Strangely enough there was never an initial intent to write. They actually came about as an off the thumb set , when the guy running the club Wednesday game at last minute and had to put together something at last minute for 4 to 5 players.
Is there anywhere we can get a look at your rules? It sounds really interesting.
Sounds awesome!
I appreciate the attempt to protect my identity @avernos but the large box that arrived from Goblin on Friday says I was at the very least present
When you see things like Mr. Noseybonk you realise there was never any danger of us all getting addicted to screens. We were outside to stay away from the nightmares
I’m writing my game at the moment.I wanted to write rules that let the goblins have a central role. In most games they are just cannon fodder. Also I’ve always liked card activation systems and had some ideas that i found appealing.
Interesting how you all like different levels of granularity and complexity. I feel that games get there flavour and individually from a curtain amount of complexity. Its definitely a balancing act.
Yes I do love those orks, the old RT orks are still my favourites. They are so fun to paint.
Happy Sunday.
Sunday, uh.
00:00 Who would do vodoo?
03:15 “Good reason” – More minis!
04:15 Never sell! Never get rid of! Pry it out of my cold, dead hands!
05:24 300GBP “supplemental” minis… jeebuz XD
09:25 This episode should have been called: “Wargamers and how they find ways to spend money!”
11:10 curvy indie?
37:05 Zoom in. Enhance!
40:30 I’ve got a game in me? That’s what’s hurting me bum?
1:02:00 Maps? Dreaming? Counting? oO
1:12:00 No thinking today. It’s Sunday. I feel meh. Also don’t want to make a game. I make up enough stuff work work. Work. Monday is looming. Meh!
1:19:32 Marbelous work
Back to not thinking and falling into the abyss that is youtube videos.
You cant blame me for the mega army!
He can, he did and now it’s on your conscience!
You’re a very naughty boy. I innocently ended up with a Trident Realm army too 😇
I think I was chatted to by the indie when I went to York’s show back in Feb…
I’m curious as to when Warfare moved to Farnbough – it used to be in Reading the same as Colours (but that at least moved before i went north)
Gerry – where would you prefer me to stick the pins in future….and I’ll try to give you a rest from the headaches….by the way if you start getting pains in a very particular area that’s nothing to do with me..I ain’t stabbing pins in there, cause no one’s got time for that…..😜😜🤣🤣
@shayott Are you aware of the Battlefront Firestorm Campaigns, they do a WW1 Campaign, quite a few WW2 but they also did some Team Yankee Firestorm Campaigns, with sections on a map front, did them as a physical pack for something like a Tenner. If you search for Firestorm Team Yankee should get you some results and maybe some Print and Play by now.
I am aware of them and we got some in OTT a few years back which is what originally made me interested in a team Yankee campaign but they’re not really what I’m looking for and not what my group are looking for either so I’ve started work on my own campaign system since this XLBS was published.
Very interesting topic. I occasionally find myself in the “great miniatures, not-so-great rules” mindset, and that’s when I start thinking about writing my own rules. I’ve got as far as making enough notes that I could probably start playtesting, but since I have a finite amount of gaming time, it hasn’t been a priority.
It seems like when I don’t like a rules set it’s usually due to too much arbitrary dice-rolling with no way to mitigate the results, so I’ve become particularly interested in card-driven miniatures games. I like Unmatched a lot, but it’s normally a one-on-one duel with grid movement on a fairly small board, so it doesn’t quite scratch the skirmish itch. I’ve also started looking at Primal and am hoping to try that out soon.
I’ve been working on two different variations of an entirely card-driven rules set (no dice rolling), one for WWII-style tanks and troops, and another that started out as a generic skirmish rules set but is starting to morph into a streets-at-night vigilante thing. See if you can guess what two miniature ranges I’m trying to create new rules for…
I do like the sound of the card-driven rules. Would like to see how that turns out!
I would guess Bolt Action and mayhaps the Batman miniatures from Knight?
Card driven rules with “special combos” for enhanced actions would be great.
I love the idea of “higher stats = pick one from a wider selection of cards” but then the idea that you could play a “combo” (like making a poker hand or a three-card brag hand) would be great fun too.
Some kind of continuous deck-building element (where you collect cards while playing the game, as a result of successful/unsuccessful actions) would make for an interesting mechanic too – either to balance play (give boosts to poorly performing players) or to reward players (boosts for doing well).
For me, cards just feel more “strategic” and dice more “random”.
Even with a poor hand of cards, you can plan a strategy to play a bad hand to the best of your abilities, but a bad dice roll sometimes just feels like bad luck.