Can one ruleset cover 2,000 years of warfare?

Historical tabletop wargamers are always on the lookout for rule systems that strike the right balance between accessibility, historical flavour, and tactical depth. In my latest video, I take a closer look at two rulebooks from the growing On Bloody Ground series by WIP Games and Miniatures: The Wars of the Roses and The Punic Wars. Written by father-and-son design team David and Daniel Toone, the On Bloody Ground system has steadily expanded over the past few years. What began as a small set of rules covering the Norman Conquest and the Reconquista has now grown into a range of more than a dozen books covering multiple historical periods—from the American Civil War to Caesar’s campaigns and the English Civil War.

At the heart of the system is a rules engine inspired by the classic Warhammer Ancient Battles style of ranked combat, but streamlined to avoid unnecessary complexity. Instead of introducing gimmicks or novelty mechanics, the designers focus on clear, traditional tabletop wargaming principles: movement, morale, formations, and decisive combat between units. The result is a system that feels familiar to experienced wargamers while remaining accessible for newcomers.

In the video, I explore how these mechanics translate into two very different historical periods. The Wars of the Roses brings late medieval English warfare to the tabletop, where blocks of billmen, men-at-arms, and longbowmen clash in brutal infantry engagements led by ambitious nobles. The Punic Wars, on the other hand, shift the action to the ancient Mediterranean, where Roman legions face the diverse armies of Carthage, complete with Iberian warriors, Numidian cavalry, and the ever-popular war elephants.

One interesting challenge for me when reviewing these rules was scale. The system assumes individually based figures (often in 28mm scale) grouped together on movement trays. My own collections for both periods are quite different: 6mm armies that are permanently multi-based. In the video, I explore whether the system can be adapted to work with smaller-scale miniatures and alternative basing styles without losing the intended gameplay experience.

The answer, happily, is yes. With a few simple adjustments, the rules proved flexible enough to accommodate different collections while still delivering engaging and decisive tabletop battles. That adaptability is one of the strengths of the On Bloody Ground system, making it suitable for a wide range of players and miniature scales.

Does accepting free products change how honest a review can be?

One of the quiet but powerful forces shaping modern hobby YouTube is the rise of free review products. Rulebooks, miniatures, paints, tools, and even entire games are regularly sent to content creators in exchange for coverage, often with the promise of an “impartial” review. On the surface, that seems harmless, even helpful. After all, it lets viewers see new products without having to buy them first. But beneath that surface sits a much more complicated question: Does accepting free products change how honest a review can be?

In this video, I explore that tension from the perspective of a historical tabletop wargamer and miniature painter. Over the last few months alone, I’ve received more than a dozen offers of free products to review, including three different 3D printers, despite never having used one on the channel. I turned them all down, not because they weren’t generous offers, but because they would have pushed the channel away from what it’s actually about. Accepting a free product doesn’t just mean opening a box; it means committing time, energy, and creative focus to something that might only be there because it costs nothing.

That’s where the real danger lies. Free products don’t automatically make someone dishonest, but they can quietly distort priorities. They can pull creators toward what is being offered rather than what they genuinely want to explore. In a hobby built on long projects, deep dives, and slow creative work, that shift can be damaging.

The video also looks at the other side of the argument: are reviews of things we buy ourselves really more objective? Paying for a product doesn’t remove bias; it just changes it. We all want our purchases to feel justified, and that can colour how we talk about them. Whether something is free or bought, what really matters is transparency, context, and a willingness to talk about both strengths and weaknesses.

Throughout the discussion, I argue that trust in the tabletop and miniature painting community doesn’t come from pretending money and freebies don’t exist. It comes from being honest about them. Viewers deserve to know whether something was bought, gifted, or part of a larger collaboration so they can judge the opinion for themselves.

If you care about historical wargaming, hobby YouTube, and the future of honest reviews in our niche, this video digs into a topic that affects us all, whether we realise it or not.

Review of Salute 2023

It's the morning after Salute 2023 and time for a review of the show. Needless to say, I think it went very well indeed. I had a brilliant time and spent all day meeting friends and chatting with subscribers to this channel. Thank you to everyone who came and said hello.

Revisiting my Vortex Mixer: Cheap, but still working!

Over a year ago I bought a cheap vortex mixer for my paints. I reviewed the product at the time but it wasn't clear if it would either be used much or keep going. Fifteen months later it is still going strong and performing the job I bought it for. 

IMHO a bargain, but maybe I have just been lucky with this low-cost alternative. As usual, I would love to hear your experiences with vortex mixers - cheap or expensive - in the comments below.

Top 3 Rulebooks of all time (and why they made the cut)

Today's video is another inspired by my recent 'Call to Arms' for ideas and questions. The question submitted by pbeccas asked, "What are your top three favourite rule books of all time". I decided to expand this to also ask, why my top three were picked but also decided to ask a couple of my mates from Posties Rejects to give their suggestions as well. The result is an eclectic mix of rulebooks covering a wide range of periods. 

For more detail about Richard & Ray's choices check out their blog posts reviewing some of the rules mentioned in the video:

Richard's review of They Died for Glory

Richard's review of Koenig Krieg

Ray's review of Donnybrook

Ray's review of Beneath the Lily Banners

Unboxing - Old D Day Maps

Today I have a short video showing off a couple of reproduction D-Day maps published by Godfrey Edition. These have all the D-Day Bigot planning annotations on the maps and will keep me engrossed in the detail for days to come. 

I plan on using these to enhance my setting up of terrain and possibly for a campaign series of linked games sometime in the future. 

Dad's Army Museum

Over the weekend I and my family took a short trip to Norfolk to visit a couple of museums. I'll post some pictures of the others later in the week but the main focus of our trip was the Dad's Army Museum in Thetford. For those outside the UK, I'm not sure how much you'll know about this classic TV comedy from the late 60's & 70's. Set in WWII it was a respectfully light-hearted look at the Home Guard, the armed citizen militia that supported the British Army on home soil. Many of the stories featured in the series were drawn from real experiences and it is a wonderful homage to this typically British response to the very real threat of Nazi invasion. 

Needless to say, the Hadley Household are all fans of this TV series and despite the fact that the episodes are over four decades old they still make us laugh. We have been trying to visit the Dad's Army Museum for a while but it is run by volunteers it isn't open every day of the week, so when we have been in the area before we have always been there on the wrong day! This time we planned the whole weekend around our visit, determined not to miss out again. Much of the memorabilia displayed is unique and gives a very clear picture of how the BBC crew and actors effectively took over the town (and its hotels) for weeks on end each summer. Many scenes were shot in Thetford and the surrounding countryside which doubled for the fictitious Walminton-on-Sea in the series. 

The Dad's Army Museum is behind the council offices in Thetford (where many of the outside scenes were shot) and is very well signposted. 

Poster from the first movie version of the series. 

Getting a dressing down from Capt Mannering....Silly Boy! 

Lead figures of the characters made by Good Soldiers of Stevenage

More toy soldiers of the characters in different scales. 

The 'Butchers Van' of Corporal Jack Jones is stored at the nearby Burrell Museum. This is the original vehicle used in the series. It has had several restorations and is often seen at events around the country. 

Jone's improvised 'Pistol Ports' in the side of the van. There were also some in the original roof (now replaced) which featured in several episodes. 

I can't get my kids to dress up any more so I guess I'll have to do it! 

The museum is Free entry (a rarity these days) and is open every Saturday from March 23rd through to November 30th and on Tuesdays in the Norfolk School Holidays, so October 22nd was the last Tuesday until July next year. Its run by volunteers and visitors of all ages are welcome. Its not a big museum, just two rooms a tea room and gift shop so allow about an hour for your visit...but do visit, its very interesting and if you have ever seen the series it's guaranteed to have you quoting "Sill Boy" and "Do you think that's wise?" and a dozen other catchphrases. 

Looking Back for Inspiration

I'm starting a new project (more on that in a later article) and am beginning the process of gathering information, buying books and tracking down old magazine articles. The Internet is a fantastic resource for this and of course, it also opens up the possibility of buying long out of print books and magazines. I recently picked up an old copy of Wargames Illustrated for a single article that links to my new project but I have found myself thoroughly enjoying the whole magazine, and not necessarily for the reasons you may imagine. 

I have pretty much stopped buying paper copies of magazines now. Those that I do subscribe too I receive as electronic copies and when I do buy a hardcopy I usually pass it on to friends or family, simply because I don't have storage space for more than a handful (it's surprising how quickly the pile grows when you get three or four magazines a month). I have also come to realise that if I need a particular issue the internet makes it fairly easy to track down to purchase. Not surprisingly eBay is filled with back issues of magazines for sale and there are plenty of digital copies available on publishing websites like Issuu. It was to eBay that I turned to for this copy of Wargames Illustrated from December 1990.

My magazine arrived in the post yesterday and considering its 29 years old it is in pretty good condition. The article I bought this issue for was very informative and I even found a second article relating to one of the other periods I collect, so the small price tag of just a few quid was money well spent in my opinion.

The surprise for me though was that I have also really enjoyed flicking through this magazine from 'another era' and especially remembering our wonderful hobby from before the advent of Internet shopping! The adverts are particularly interesting, many for companies that have long since ceased trading or have been absorbed by other companies. The whole Magazine (bar the cover) was black and white and none of the traders advertising had a website (the web was 'invented' in 1989 but the first publicly available browser wasn't available until 1991). Nearly every listing included a variation of "Send an s.e.a. for a catalogue". When was the last time you had to send a self-addressed envelope to anyone?

It's been a fascinating look back at another age, and boy do I feel old because I remember it vividly! Having said that I'm not one to look at the past through rose-tinted glasses and while I have a fond nostalgia for my early gaming years I am glad to be living and gaming in an internet-enabled golden age of wargaming.

Royal Green Jackets (Rifles) Museum Winchester

The final day of my Museum Crawl Weekend and we visited Winchester. I had one specific target for this leg of the trip, the Waterloo Diorama in the Royal Green Jackets (Rifles) Museum. 

This museum brings together the collections of the Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry, the King's Royal Rifle Corps and the Rifle Brigade. These regiments went on to form the Green Jackets Brigade in 1958 and the Royal Green Jackets Regiment in 1966. 

Private, 60th (Royal American)
Regiment c 1758

This paiting depicting the 3rd Bn, 60th Rifles somewhere in Zululand in 1879

Diorama of the Battle of Vimiero, 21st August 1808. It shows the 5th/60th, the 2nd/95th and the 1st/95th firing on the French. 

An Infantryman of the Greenjakets at the start of the 'Road to Waterloo exhibition

The route of the Imperial Guard at Waterloo by Jason Askew

The capture of a French Battery by the 52nd Regiment at Waterloo by Ernest Crofts RA

The exhibition, entitled “With the Rifles to Waterloo”, opened in 2015 to commemorate the 200th anniversary of the Battle of Waterloo, is focused on the Napoleonic Wars. The centrepiece of this exhibition is the Waterloo diorama, a 25 square metre model of the battlefield with 30,000 model soldiers and horses.  

The scale of this model is breathtaking but it doesn't represent a single moment rather it is an amalgamation of important events.

The Duke of Wellington and his staff

British Square resists repeated attempts by French Cavalry to destroy them. 

Looking down from Hougoumont towards Le Haye Sainte

Hougoumont Chateaux

Le Haye Sainte

Cavalry as far as the eye can see!

The Thin Red Line

Of course, the museum is not just focused on Waterloo and includes displays of the whole history of the regiment and its antecedents.

Assault on the Kashmir-Gate, September 1857

Artefacts from WW1

The Rifle Brigade in North Africa

Pegasus Bridge

There is a lot more to see although it has to be said the Waterloo Diorama does tend to steal the show. 

Bovington Tank Museum

Day three of the museum crawl and I visited the Tank Museum at Bovington. I have been here dozens of times but the thing that I love about this place is that it is always changing. Their collections is massive so they are constantly moving items around and are able to display new items and put on new special exhibitions regularly.

My happy place...and on a gloriously sunny day too.

King Tiger. I have seen this tank dozens of times and its size never fails to impress me. 

The French FT17 may have been small but it was probably one of the best tanks of WWI

The British Whippet Tank. This vehicle was commanded by Lt Cecil Sewell. His VC is on display in the entrance to the museum. 

On 29th August 1918 Lt Sewell saw one of the tanks in his troop fall into a schell crater and catch fire. He got out of his own tank and under fire ran to the stranded vehicle and helped dig out the door and free the crew before they burned to death. He then ran back to his own tank and gave first aid to his own gunner. While doing so he was shot several times, the last fatally. His family collected his VC at Buckenham Palace in December of 1918 and the family have loaned it to the Tank Museum to honour his bravery.

The Lanchester Mk II Armoured Car.

A Vickers Armstrong Mark E Tank. The British army decided it didn't want this tank so Vickers sold the tank all around the world.

The French Char B was technically a superior tank to anything the Germans could throw at it but tactically they were not used very well.

An American Grant tank. I'm not convinced by the camo pattern but I guess its correct... this is the tank museum after all. 

Panzer III

The Sherman Firefly

I had to resist the temptation to play with the toys.... 

A new exhibit is Long After the Battle, featuring the stories of Royal Armoured Corp soldiers. 

Five stories in particular were told with audio visual displays and interviews.

Part of the display around the exhibit.

A Matilda I Infantry Tank A11

Churchill Mk IV Infantry Tank, A22

Little Willie, the first tank. It was experimental and never saw action (it was made of mild steel not armour) but it paved the way to later designs.

88mm Panzerjager Jagdpanther SdKfz 173

The Conservation centre is very full. Chatting to one of the volunteers he said they were moving tanks here as they cleared out the workshops. Later developments will see the 'Display fleet' moved to another building.

Once again a great visit to the Tank Museum. I always enjoy my trips here and they always seem to have something new to show. I like the fact that the team here don't rest on their laurels and are always putting together new exhibitions and bringing in previously unseen tanks.