Do House Rules Ruin Wargames?

One of the most passionate debates in tabletop wargaming isn’t about which tank was best or whether Napoleonic squares are overrated. It’s about house rules — those little tweaks, rewrites, and “we do it this way here” moments that sneak into almost every gaming group sooner or later. In this latest video, I dig into the question that every wargamer eventually faces: do house rules enhance the experience, or do they quietly undermine it?

For many of us, tinkering with rules feels completely natural. We don’t just play historical games — we study history, obsess over specific battles, and get emotionally invested in moments when everything could have gone another way. When a ruleset doesn’t quite allow for that, the temptation to adjust it is almost irresistible. Maybe a unit should be tougher, maybe morale should matter more, or maybe the official army list doesn’t quite reflect what actually fought on that day in 1942 or 1815. So we change things, often with the best of intentions.

But rules aren’t just words on a page. Underneath every good game is a web of probabilities, balance decisions, and design choices that are usually invisible to the player. When we start altering things, even in small ways, we might be tugging at threads we don’t fully understand. A tiny bonus here or a new rule there can slowly warp how a game plays, sometimes without anyone noticing until it’s too late.

The video also examines the individuals behind the rules. Designers bring their own vision of history to the table, based on research, playtesting, and compromise. Changing their work can sometimes sharpen a game, but it can also erase parts of what made it special in the first place. And, just to keep us humble, there’s always the risk that we, as players, might not understand a period quite as well as we think we do.

At the same time, house rules aren’t the villains of this story. They can be powerful tools for learning, creativity, and personalising a game to suit your group. They encourage deeper engagement with both history and game mechanics, and they let us explore those wonderful “what if?” moments that make wargaming so compelling.

This video isn’t about declaring a winner in the house rules war. It’s about exploring the tension between creativity and consistency, between personal vision and shared systems, and how that tension shapes the way we enjoy our hobby. If you’ve ever rewritten a rule, ignored an army list, or argued passionately over a single modifier, this one is for you.

Painting Challenge XVI: 2 Soviet GAZ-AAA Trucks

I have just finished building and painting these two trucks from Rubicon Models, a matched pair of GAZ-AAA 2-tonners, and like the armoured vehicles I showed last week, they are daubed in a hurried whitewash over their standard Soviet green. That slapdash winter camouflage was not about style; it was about survival. When the Red Army crossed into Finland in November 1939, it found itself fighting in a world of blinding snow, black forests and temperatures that could sink past –30°C. Against that backdrop, a green truck might as well have been waving a little flag that read “please shoot me.” The Finns, masters of camouflage and patient marksmanship, took brutal advantage of anything that stood out, so Soviet units did whatever they could with limewash, chalk or even mud to blur their outlines against the frozen landscape.

The GAZ-AAA itself was a workhorse of a very Soviet kind. Based on a Ford design built under licence and then steadily adapted by Soviet engineers, it was a six-wheeled, twin-rear-axle truck intended to haul around two tons of men, ammunition, fuel or food across the vast distances of the USSR. In peacetime, it was everywhere, delivering everything from grain to bricks, and in wartime, it became the backbone of Red Army logistics. During the Winter War, it was often pressed into service far beyond what its designers had imagined, rumbling along narrow forest roads that had been hacked through the snow or driving over frozen lakes that groaned ominously beneath their weight. They were not glamorous machines, but wars are not won by glamour; they are won by whoever can keep rifles fed and soldiers warm.

Those conditions, though, were merciless. On the pls side, the GAZ-AAA was mechanically simple and reasonably tough, which mattered when you were hundreds of kilometres from a proper workshop and your hands were too numb to feel a spanner. The extra rear axle gave it better traction than a simple two-wheel-drive truck, letting it claw its way through packed snow and icy ruts where lesser vehicles would just spin. On the other hand, it was still fundamentally a road truck, not a purpose-built winter vehicle. Deep, powdery snow could swallow it whole, its engines hated the cold, and the Soviet fuel and lubricants of the period were prone to thickening into something closer to porridge than petrol or oil. There are plenty of stories, many apocryphal but all evocative, of crews having to light fires under the engine block just to get the thing to start.

A lumbering convoy of GAZ-AAAs will be a tempting target for Ray’s Finns. Hit the first and last truck, and suddenly you have a frozen traffic jam full of trapped men. I may need more tanks. Maybe the T26 Model 1931 with twin MMG Turrets? Guess I’ll be perusing the Rubicon website again pretty soon.

Incidentally, these models, like many of the Rubicon kits, can be built in different variants. The box contains the parts needed to make the GAZ-AA 1.5Ton single axle truck, and the canvas canopy is optional. There are also components in the kit to convert the model into an Anti-Aircraft truck (with the gun sold separately). All the models come with a driver, and I was surprised to find the figures were almost complete (only the feet are missing) despite the fact that the driver's legs end up essentially invisible, hidden inside the cabin. And that, for me, sums up these models from Rubicon, attention to detail, even the bits that probably can’t be seen once assembled. 

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.

Painting Challenge XVI: Soviet BA10 Armoured Car & T26 tank

This week I present a couple of armoured vehicles for my Winter War Soviets, both finished with a rough, field-applied whitewash over the standard Soviet green. This was very much a leap of faith for me. After assembly, I got the models fully painted, decaled, and weathered to the point where they looked “done”… and then deliberately smeared white paint all over them like a vandal. 

There are plenty of established whitewash techniques out there, but I ended up bodging together my own. I mixed white acrylic paint, distilled water, and airbrush flow improver in roughly equal parts. The flow improver is the unsung hero here: it reduces surface tension and stops the paint from pooling or beading. What you get is a milky glaze that needs two or three coats, depending on how heavy you want the finish. I hand-brushed it panel by panel, deliberately avoiding raised edges and high-wear areas like hatches and crew access points. The aim was that hurried, uneven, already-wearing-off look you see in historical photos. 

 

The BA-10 armoured car was developed in 1938 and produced until 1941, making it the most numerous Soviet heavy armoured car of the pre-war period, with over 3,300 built. This is the earlier BA-10 variant, descended from the BA-3 and BA-6, using the GAZ-AAA chassis and sporting improved armour up to 15mm on the front and turret. It was meant to be replaced by the BA-11 in 1941, which would have had a diesel engine and a more advanced armour layout, but the war rather rudely intervened. The BA-10 soldiered on in Red Army service until 1945, and a number were captured and pressed into Finnish service during the Winter War (at least 24 that are known of).

The T-26light infantry tank needs little introduction. Developed from the British Vickers 6-Ton, it became one of the most prolific tank designs of the interwar years. More than 11,000 were built across an eye-watering 50-plus variants, including flamethrowers, engineering vehicles, self-propelled guns, artillery tractors, and armoured carriers. Early versions had twin turrets with machine guns in each, but this is the 1939 single-turret model with the 45mm main gun, a coaxial machine gun, and an additional rear turret MG. By 1939, its armour was already starting to look thin against modern anti-tank weapons, but sheer numbers kept it relevant and deadly through the Winter War. Once again, captured vehicles were hastily repainted and used by the Finns to defend their homeland, many in service right through to the end of WWII. 

Both models are from Rubicon, and they were a pleasure to build. The BA-10 can be assembled with or without the over-tire tracks, while the T-26 kit gives you enough parts to build one of several variants on the same chassis. The instructions for each kit are very clear, but as with any plastic kit, patience is the key to success. I enjoyed making these so much that I have now bought a couple of GAZ-AA trucks from Rubicon to carry my infantry in. Gotta give Ray’s Finns something to shoot at during his Motti attacks after all.