Games with Brad: A new beginning

There is nothing that orcs like better than a good brawl (the two very nicely painted models are courtesy @wraithwisp).

Here at Between the Bolter and Me, my brothers and I spend most of our time building models and critiquing the scale of miniature firearms, such that we rarely play miniature games. In an effort to change that, I started to meet up with our longstanding friend and gaming buddy Brad to try out different games once a month. We have now been getting together for the past few months, playing games like Mike Hutchinson's dexterity-based orc brawling game Space Gits and @sovthofheaven’s mech combat game Flames of Orion. To inject a little randomness into what we play, we have taken to writing possibilities on a spin wheel and letting that decide what game we will play. Rather than discuss any particular game for this first post, I thought I would show a handful of images from our previous sessions.

NOVA Open 2025: Recap

Two Heretic Legionaries created by DOOMGIVER, as seen at NOVA Open 2025.

NOVA Open is a tabletop gaming convention held annually in Washington, D.C. Despite living within an hour of D.C., this year was the first time we attended the convention. We decided to go after realizing how many of our friends were attending, chief among them some friends who helped start 28 magazine (and now Trench Crusade). Ultimately, we did not sign up for any events or classes; instead, we wanted to talk with people and photograph anything that caught our eyes.

Space Gits: First Impressions

'Ere we go!

I recently had the opportunity to play the miniature skirmish game Space Gits with a few longtime friends, and I had such a good time with it that I wanted to write about it. Space Gits is a game about drunken orks fighting one another and causing mischief. It was created by the game designer Mike Hutchinson, best known for Gaslands, a Mad Max-esque vehicular combat game. Space Gits is marketed as a “dexterity-based” miniatures skirmish game, which is liable to turn some heads as “dexterity” is not something you expect to employ while playing a miniatures game.