Dark Guide Tony’s Trash Can, Games at Under the Dice Fest, The Game Design Grind

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Dark Guide Tony's Trash Can

The trash is back!

‘Tis the spooky season, so let’s dive into some obscure trash comix classics Quimby’s Bookstore released in 2011 and 2013.

Thai Comic Horrors Vol. 1 and 2 are zines of translated tales of terror in the vein of EC Comics morality, where the wicked get punished for their heinous crimes. Like great B-movies, some seemingly unintentional comedy, especially in the art, is sprinkled throughout.

Straightforward narratives with rad titles like Hunt for the Hell Drugs and Only your head comes…where is your body? plunge the reader into quick and tidy stories of carnage. Deaths are swift, and justice, like a majority of the depicted anatomy, is skewed. 

These yarns are delicious junk food. A Burrito Supreme (or two) with a few cold High Lifes. 

Check out the sweet physics of this crashing jeep and obviously awesome Predator rip-off from Hunt for the Hell Drugs. 

Or the stiff, but gruesome, melodrama in The Ghost That Comes to Steal Your Heart. 

Logan Bay, the editor, tells us these comics can be found “in any 7-11 in the Kingdom of Thailand.” And that is glorious. It warms my heart that, at least in the mid-00s, trash like this sold like our 80s spinner rack comics. But this time, Archie and Veronica plotted how to hide Betty’s body in Riverdale.

-Dark Guide Tony

Arcane Sword Press

Games at Under the Dice Fest

Who needs big box stores that only stock major games from major publishers when you have a community like the one at Under The Dice Fest? The brainchild of Steve of the Under The Dice fanzine and set up by him and the rest of the Hivescum podcast crew, it's become a beacon for meeting some of the most passionate hobbyists and most creative people within the DIY tabletop gaming community. The hobby is alive and well! After attending my first one a few years ago, it was the impetus for making ArcaneCon. So while UTDfest focuses on miniatures and skirmish/wargaming with room for RPGs and CCGs, ArcaneCon focuses on the RPG side with room for skirmish/wargame and CCGs. But both draw from the same mentality: DIY, indie-focused folks who celebrate a hobby's past while staying enthusiastic about what's coming around the corner. The intent of this article is to highlight some new games emerging from the DIY community that you need to check out because I cannot stop thinking about them!

Thrash by Dave Hoskins

A head-to-head jet-fighting arena skirmish game set in a futuristic setting- Thrash captured my mind and immediately pulled me in. Thrash is a board game that uses hexes for movement, elevation bases to increase jet height, and equipment cards that a jet can install. Each player has two squadrons and takes turns activating them, attempting to eliminate the opposing team in a deathmatch. Jets must move each round, and each one comes with an additional single-use weapon or a specialized piece of gear. What makes it engrossing is how simple it is to pick up. The rules are intuitive, but there's a lot of strategic depth here. And the game is FAST; there is never a moment of number crunching or gameplay slowdown. I was fully locked into my cockpit the whole time, sweating when my partner made a decision. 

• The Arena: The arena is set above a massive city in the clouds, but the tops of the buildings are obstacles on the board. There are also six teleportation locations where, when your jet enters, you roll a d6 to determine where it comes out, with a chance it comes out of the same spot. This alone adds a fun, arcade-y gameplay element that can be used both offensively and defensively.

• The Leaderboard: What I like about the playtesting is that Dave has a leaderboard for ranking any squad leader who eliminates three or more jets in a single game. I’m currently at 4 kills with my pilot Dmitri Tarkanov

I cannot wait for this game to come out and play.  I cannot stress how much fun this game is. If you see Dave around, ask him for a game! And if you run into me, feel free to challenge Dmitri!

Cyber Savage by Benjamin & Jared McClure

In the hyper-future, the war for Saturn is exploding with lasers and space wizards! Cyber Savage is a miniature-neutral skirmish game that emphasizes having fun with your toys, making more minis out of junk, and playing an easy-to-learn wargame with friends. I first encountered Cyber Savage at Between Two Cons in the McClure’s home territory of Oregon, but having them come all the way out to New England was a real treat. I’ve had a great time hanging out with Ben, and we tend to have a lot in common, but when it comes to games, Cyber Savage captures the same passion and enthusiasm about games I share. 

• Cyber Savage is a “warGAME,” meaning you're playing a game; lean into the mentality and let it take you away! Cyber Savage isn’t about stats and number crunching; it's about playing pretend with your friends. 

• Cyber Savage is a breath of fresh air: This isn’t grimdark- it's Laser-Sorcery! RIP to Grimdark bummer war and the dorks who missed the satire. Hyper-Future is colorful and leans more into my inner kid playing with second-hand action figures waging wars across the living room furniture. It’s fun and absurd! It doesn't take itself seriously, nor should you take yourself seriously for playing with toys!

• Cyber Savage has an Army Builder: To help facilitate gameplay, folks can use the Cyber Savage Force builder to help them assemble an army easily! This is something that a lot of larger games either don’t do or do very poorly. 

Cyber Savage is accessible and readily available, so you don't have to invest money in a game. If you're already a fan of kookoo-bananas “gonzo” shit, Cyber-Savage is absolutely right up your alley. And even if you're not, but are wargame-curious, then you should really check it out!

Honbasho by Ryan Nox

Is anyone else watching Sumo? Because I am (well, recaps), and so should you! This game by Ryan Nox, co-host of The Weekly Scroll podcast, is not only a fun miniature skirmish game. It also teaches you about Sumo wrestling by letting you BE a sumo wrestler. A game takes 5-10 minutes and uses both dice and fingers; you start with an enhanced game of rock-paper-scissors to set the tempo. I love that! Then from there, the goal is to push your opponent out of the ring (the dohyō) by rolling dice and playing to your chosen wrestler’s style. It's a struggle of contested rolls and chosen maneuvers. It's really simple, but it also helped me get into the frame of mind for why sumo is so compelling. Ryan found sumo miniatures and had a scale dohyō that really kicked this game up plenty of pegs for me as a visual learner. But also- Sumo minis!!! But you could easily use any other grappling minis for this game (Ryan suggested the warbot toys I was hanging out as good robo-sumo minis!) This game rules. Do yourself a favor and grab the PDF!

Of Ash and Oaths by CJ of The Hothead Collective

Braunsteins are back, bay-bay! The realest form of roleplaying, pioneered by David Weelsy, is making headway into the next generation thanks to CJ leading the charge with this approachable, fantasy Braunstein-like. I didn't know this was about to be played until Steve told me moments before the game was to run, describing it as “risk but with more negotiation” and basically explaining Diplomacy to me. Which to me sounded cool and like a Braunstein or Kriegspiel-style game, but also thinking, "there's no way someone is running something like that” thinking that only Braunstein is only being done by twin-city grognards. Boy, was I wrong! It WAS a Braunstein!

And my god- thank you, CJ, for doing this! I literally started writing a Braunstein-style game to run for UTDfest last year but abandoned it for other projects, so it's great to see one emerge and be executed far better than I could have. I feel like the urge for something like Of Ash and Oaths is running through the currents of DIY RPGs and wargaming. The push toward narrative elements in war games, and conversely having fantasy RPGs move beyond dungeon-crawling and world-exploring into domain campaigns, is starting to bubble up. I mean, this exact mentality is what led me to make Demesnes & Domination. But Braunstein is the REAL point of origin for RPGs, in my opinion, so it makes sense that DIY-minded hobbyists and OSR folks would return to it and celebrate it. 

The Braunstein is a style of play that uses Diplomacy as a basis but with more roleplaying as political figures with direct input over their chunk of the map. Ash and Oaths uses 8 30-minute turns over four hours, with a live game state. Players make decisions among themselves or in association and inform the referee, who tracks everything and makes calls as needed. So much can happen in this type of game, and everyone I talked to afterward was absolutely elated with the experience. I cannot wait for CJ to run it again so I can jump in on a session because I've been itching to play something like this since I learned about Braunstein. The only downside is that it's not currently available, as far as I can tell, since it's a work in progress, but keep an eye out for its release. 

Vortex of Hell by Tyler

UTDfest focuses on sci-fi/fantasy wargaming, but you better believe historical wargaming is alive and well amongst us millennial and zoomer gamers. In fact, interest in this corner of the hobby seems to be growing rapidly. Hundreds of thousands of dry, dusty historical wargames exist, but how many of them are emerging from the DIY miniature hobby scene? Why does it matter? Well, Vortex of Hell (and Shadow Over Europe, which I’ll talk about next) focuses on the narrative and consequences of war rather than soaking damage and optimizing numbers. 

Set during the American Civil War, Vortex of Hell focuses on commanding troops in battles across the farms and yards of civilians caught in the middle of the ACW. To drive this home, Typer made corpse minis for every playable model used in the game. This means that if you lost a mini in an exchange, you replace their model with their corpse, which is left on the board both as a reminder of the loss and as part of the growing destructive narrative that takes place across the board. One thing that makes this game even more special is that Tyler is a professional historian and costume designer by trade, and an expert on the ACW. Tyler adds a human element by letting players see the consequences of their actions as a commander sending their soldiers to their doom. War is bad, and Vortex of Hell truly captures that. 

Luckily for you, Tyler is running Vortex of Hell THIS week at ArcaneCon, so make sure you sign up!

Shadow Over Europe by Ben Levesque

Another approach to the human element of war is Ben’s WWII squad-based skirmish game, Shadow Over Europe. Just as a disclaimer- I have been an active playtester of this game, and so I KNOW I'm biased, but this is easily one of the most compelling wargames I've played. Ben, who runs Empty Castle Press, has been the secret sauce for Arcane Sword: he’s pushed me to where I am today with feedback and discussions about games and history. So here we are: his first major game release, an incredible game of small-scale, narrative skirmish action. But what makes this stand out against other WWII offerings?

• It’s Squad-based: You control a squad split into three teams using hidden movement to achieve the scenario’s objectives. Each player controls 10-12 models split into teams of 3 and 4. This makes the game much more approachable for someone who is curious but doesn’t have the time or money to build an army of 50-100 models. This also makes the scenarios much more localized, with no vehicle rules or other elements that could complicate gameplay or confuse a new player.

• Hidden Movement: Both players try to avoid being spotted by using dummy tokens, with some assigned to one team and others used as decoys.

• Player Choices and Cascading Consequences: When firing begins, the attacking player chooses how they attack, such as KILL or SUPPRESS. But then the target player can choose how to respond. This can be blind firing, returning fire, hitting the deck, or clearing out, each with consequences for future actions. 

• The Exchange: Returning fire triggers a chain reaction where each player chooses how to respond, which could push them into becoming pinned and eventually eliminate the team. Why does this matter? Because players choose how much they want to risk by gambling with their units' lives and the potential detriment to the team’s function next round. You can psych out your opponent if you pull it off or shoot yourself in the foot. But once either player stops returning fire, the exchange is done. It creates a tense, stressful game driven by the player's decision to weigh the risk, reward, and ultimate consequence of chaining return fire.

• Emergent strategy and changing objectives: You can pin an enemy team and capture them, forcing the other player to split focus between rescuing their squad and pursuing the scenario’s objective.

• The Actual Book: The self-published edition by Empty Castle Press feels like a professional book. It captures an aesthetic that feels almost like a soldier’s journal while also providing illustrated examples and great photos of gameplay models in action, juxtaposed with hi-res photos from a Soviet archive. The only downside is that Ben hasn’t released the PDF yet and only has a literal handful left currently!

I've played Shadow Over Europe on boards set up as farms, villages, and ruined cities, and the rules are simple but flexible enough to fit these different environments. Commanding soviet snipers in a ruined city or playing as a team of British paratroopers evading capture by Germans both use the same rules but create absolutely different game experiences that have stuck with me. This game has driven me to start writing a French Resistance supplement, which I will hopefully start playtesting soon!

Thanks for reading! And keep your eyes peeled for these games! Many of them you can only play at cons, so make sure you check em out when you can! Some games will be played at ArcaneCon both as scheduled and as pick-up games, so please don't hesitate to ask for a round or two! 

If you're going to ArcaneCon, then I'll see you this weekend! If you're not, then until next time!

• Bryan

Stillfleet Studio
The Game Design Grind

Check out the draft cover of DELVER Magazine #1 (art by Anthony Grasso; writing by Konstantine Paradias, Anthony Grasso, and Wythe Marschall): an influencer livestreams while running away from a massive alien tardigrade. Pure Tony G. I immediately want to find out what’s going on in this world. I want to know if the influencer makes it out alive. Where did this cover come from?

Currently, we’re working with our friends at Plus One Exp to plan the campaign for our new game, ULTRADELVE—a near-future sci-fi tower crawler (and Stillfleet prequel). Part of campaign planning involves thinking about what a game needs beyond its core rules.

In the case of ULTRADELVE, we want to keep the core rules to a single 64-page, A5 landscape, Grit-powered book—approachable, only a wee bit bigger than a zine—but we know we need to offer example Structures (living alien tower-dungeons) to explore. Plus One suggested a supplementary zine. Konstantine had most of the text for an intro adventure ready to go. What next?

Tony put together an outline; we added more articles and edited the text; and Tony started to assemble the zine. In addition to the full example Structure, he had to flow in a variety of shorter articles stuffed with random tables. Check out this draft design for a table of rooms assimilated by a Structure:

Is this not a warm invitation to both lean into the specifics of a random table and to “yes and” the diegetic fact that an uncannily familiar company called IDEA is still selling you home goods, post-alien invasion? IDEA is not mentioned in the core rules. It’s a byproduct of framing content in a magazine for Delvers and thinking about who would sponsor the articles.

In this way, supplements add to (supplement) the games they support. Supplements such as the DELVER zine should not only make it easier for players and GMs to pick up the game, but also drive home the vibe of the game world. Designing a supplement alongside a rulebook means considering what was left out of the rulebook and why. Should it go back in? Does a birthed-along-with-the-game supplement add a bit too much to the game world, warping it away from the original vision? Is the supplement truly useful or just a buncha inside baseball? (Even if it’s alien baseball).

In the case of DELVER, we are asking and answering those questions right now. Tony is drawing and designing visuals to unify the main book and the Structure/adventure zine. And of course we’re thinking about ever more playtests. It’s all part of the grind of moving from idea to book to game, realized in three-plus dimensions (considering time, strings, cthulhicate warpspaces, etc.).

We genuinely love this recursive back-and-forth design process, and we love hearing from players and GMs about what they want. If you’re a fan of The X-Files, Annihilation, Roadside Picnic, and/or Tony Grasso’s art, join us for the ride and weigh in.

ArcaneCon

Northampton, MA – October 16th & 17th

ArcaneCon is returning October 16th & 17th, 2026. Join us in a celebration of indie, old school, and old school-inspired RPGs, miniature games, board games, and more! ArcaneCon is Western Massachusetts's premiere tabletop hobby convention! Game submissions are open now!!! See more information at Tabletop Events.

Your editor this week has been John "Hambone" McGuire from Ham & Egg Publishing.  

Keep emailing us at hello@analogunion.com to tell us what you’d like to see more of/less of, and to share ideas.

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Until next time!

—JHM