Since childhood I have always been enamoured with miniatures wargaming. This interest started when when as a 12 year old boy I learned what Warhammer 40,000 was. A grand game with hundreds of 28mm tall and hand painted little dudes with guns fights your friend's collection of little dudes with guns over a hand made battlefield. As someone who has a passion for board games for a while, miniature wargaming has stayed in the corner of my eye, making sure I can't forget it.
As an adult with disposable income I've now tried just about every miniatures wargame, from the high budget soulless corporate cash grabs of Games Workshop, to the fan service of Star Wars Legion, to the competitive world of X-Wing or Infinity. None of these have stuck for a number of reasons, mostly their commitment required to find the magic in these games, that is financial (buying the models), time (assembling, painting, learning the rules) and community (having to find people to play with). Not having friends with much interest makes it very difficult to get started as you have to carry all these burdens for two people that makes starting even harder.
In recent times I've found an absolute obsession with indie miniature war games. Games that frequently start as small online publications that gain popularity, this gives them space to experiment with new and exciting ideas. Games like Gaslands that use actual matchbox cars in a mad max style skirmish or Frost Grave where you have a wizard, their apprentice and some hired muscle to scrap over a frozen wasteland for treasure. These games are often much more considerate of your time and resources and care more about you having fun then buying new models. These games are magic and have so much inspiration and life inside them.
My favourite of these is Tonks!.
After playing a fantastic game of Gaslands with my friend Tobi I finally understood where the magic of Wargames was. In imagination. Sadly even Gaslands, which is a pretty small miniatures game, was still too complex to get to the table too often. Months later I come across Tonks! from a inspiring YouTube channel Bill making Stuff where he shows himself making an array of really fun tanks for this ruleset. In Tonks! each player has only one tank and immediately I thought this would be fantastic to basically convert into a boxed game. So I did that.
Traditional model making techniques are not something I've been very comfortable with in the past. There have been very few models I've finished with these techniques that I've been happy with the result. So I decided I'd work with something I did know, timber. So I started immediately having a lot of fun sketching.
So I made a simple first tank, fit with rotating barrel as is needed in the rules. He looked adorable, the right scale and most importantly adorable! This filled me with immediate confidence I whipped the other three up in quick succession. The ascetic of Tonks! is very round and comical proportions which really inspired me and helped me create these fun little guys.
There is a fun naming chart at the end of the Tonks! rules book that helped us name all these guys and I love all of them, although my favourite has to be Tonketh-16 with his lovely round shape and tribute to real life designs. Since I had decided pretty early on I wasn't going to paint the tanks, I wanted to give them all distinct silhouettes so they could be easily picked apart when playing.
The game also needed some terrain and was pretty clear of dimensions so I cut some old 2x4s and painted them bright primary colours in an attempt to mimic toy blocks and to continue the toy ascetic.
Last piece was I quickly 3D modelled and printed, measuring sticks and corner markers so I could make this a boxed set ready to play if I wanted to take it to a friends place. The fire markers I found using Thangs here.
And here it is all done!
This game is a blast to play and was just as much fun to make. This is a rare project where I likely wouldn't really change anything. It turned out exactly how I wanted it to with pretty minimal time commitment. Tonks! is a free game you can download here and I'd urge you to play it, even just playing with carboard boxes can be a lot of fun but the low model count means you may actually be able to find the time to make something you are happy with and to possibly even convince your friends to join in!
It has been fantastic finally being able to experience what I longed for so much as kid but finally on my own terms and in my own way.
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