Between the Bolter and Me: Under the Dice Fest 2025: Day 1

While darkness and ill-tidings are certainly the theme of many of the games played at Under the Dice Fest 2025, the camaraderie and friendship on display at the event was just the opposite.

In the past few years, the three of us at Between the Bolter and Me have made an effort to attend more gaming events and conventions, though if we are being honest, it has largely just been attending events hosted by the Under the Dice/Hive Scum crew. May 16, 17, and 18 of this year was the 2nd Under the Dice Fest, and Adam and Greg made the trip to Connecticut to attend! The Under the Dice/Hive Scum crew have been tirelessly promoting the weirder and independent side of the miniature-based tabletop wargaming hobby. They have been shining a bright light on those hobbyists that are interested in telling their own stories through miniature gaming, and those who are willing to step outside of the scope of the game rules as written, or even create their own games and miniatures, to do it. Every event that they host is a gathering of amazing, like-minded people passionate about their interpretation of the miniature wargaming hobby, and something we do not want to miss.

Each year, the festival has grown larger, necessitating a shift to a larger venue to accommodate all of the different events. This year it was held at the Enfield Elks Club.

The Hive Scum crew has always been good at getting their name out and advertising their projects, whether it be Steve’s (sovthofheaven) mech combat game Flames of Orion, Steve’s hobby fanzine Under the Dice, the Hive Scum Podcast, or the In Rust We Trust Discord channel.

The event also introduced a new hobby competition called Rusted Demon! While inspired by the painting competition Golden Demon, the competition placed special emphasis on conversion work and kit bashing over painting. The trophies for the first-place entries in each category were sculpted by the talented bigbossredskullz.

As is tradition at any Hive Scum event, there was a booth with all manner of cool merchandise for purchase to support the event. This year included a wealth of cool t-shirts and music from the hobby community on the venerable cassette tape! These tapes included releases by Taconic Peaks, Gabe's (nile_nellie) dungeon synth project, who played on Saturday evening, and FOOL, goobinsgitz’ silly dungeon synth project. Bill (berserkerwrks) created a flail to go to the overall winner of the Rusted Demon Painting competition!

Matt (totally_not_panicking) set up a beautiful board with miniatures to demo his new game, Sun Rot! Sun Rot is a simple Games Master-led survival RPG that utilizes card flipping mechanics to add narrative consequences to character actions and modify the game state.

In Sun Rot, players find themself in a doomed city beneath the gaze of a dying sun. Guided by a mysterious Oracle, players attempt to escape the city through a hidden portal or collect Void Shards scattered across the city to perform an ancient ritual to avert catastrophe.

The world of Sun Rot is treacherous and filled with monstrous threats!

Gabe (nile_nellie) and Tanner (simpsominiatures) ran a demo of WANTED! REWARD: CC 10000 (created by Tanner Simpson (simpsominiatures) and goobinsgitz). WANTED! REWARD: CC 10000 is a casual skirmish game about Bounty Hunters capturing wanted criminals. Focus is placed on the rule of cool and narrative play. Players are encouraged to interpret the rules loosely and adapt them to the context of the situation.

A cup of fountain soda cowers in fear as a gumball machine minion stalks the streets in WANTED! REWARD: CC 10000.

Cameron Frament (cmframent) was demoing Necropolis28 at the event with a beautiful board and set of miniatures. Hamish the Hunter and his allies step off the road into dark and foreboding woods.

Cody (magos_buer) set up a station at the event demoing his new tabletop survival game 1490 Doom. The game is set in a dying world where the earth is poisoned and a creeping death covers the ground, corrupting all exposed. The remnants of humanity fight for control of any towering structures whose elevated portions provide sanctuary from the tainted air below.

Games of 1490 Doom are played on a circular board with a castle in the center. Players control small Doom Companies and have seven turns to find resources and ascend the castle to its highest point, where the air is purest. Cody (magos_buer) guided us through a demo game on the modular castle from the starter set of 1490 Doom.

For the demo, each of us controlled a smaller Doom Company of two models (compared to the typical 3). Adam controlled a Doom Company composed of a Fighter and Scout. Fortune did not favor the two, and they struggled even to enter the castle's lowest expenses.

The Assassin and Scavenger that Greg controlled made it to the upper battlements of the castle with little trouble, securing victory! Our game ended with almost no combat, aside from a few well-placed shoves, ensuring Adam’s Doom Company never made it far into the castle.

Martin McCoy (martin.mccoy.art) had a booth set up at the event selling prints, some original pieces, and even artwork commissioned at the event itself! It was a pleasure to observe his process and discuss his approach to painting.

Matt (totally_not_panicking) posing with a beautiful rendition of himself painted by the talented Martin McCoy (martin.mccoy.art)!

Daniel Hassell (draugr._), a Baltimore-based illustrator and graphic designer, had a table at the event to sell prints of his artwork and some of his zines. He had a few zines, which he scoured through old Games Workshop books and magazines looking for symbols and sigils drawn by the late Wayne England (the zine was called Gravelord). England was known for his wicked skull designs, and Hassel has taken inspiration from them for his own gnarly skulls.

The first musical act of Friday evening was Tyler’s (billion_dollar_clown_farm) death metal project, Bolt Thrower II. While the project has no official relation to the British death metal legends Bolt Thrower, who famously wrote songs about Warhammer 40,000, it was clearly inspired by the band. Tyler’s music poked fun at the miniature gaming hobby, though clearly from a place of love and appreciation.

Disfigure, a blackened hardcore band from New Haven, Connecticut, was the second musical act of the night, offering a seamless mixture of black metal and the gruffness of hardcore punk.