Prepare yourself for the bizarre as you venture deep into a world of radioactive insanity...

Wasteman is the brainchild of JL Fairclough produced under the Thunderchild Miniatures aegis; a 35mm post-apocalypse skirmish game which is lovingly maintained by its creator, with regular Kickstarters to support new content and a small, but highly-dedicated online community which continues to help expand the setting and mechanics, with many of the supplementary rules materials made freely available via its Facebook group.

Imagine you grew up in the late 80's/early 90's, when GW's Rogue Trader provided a template for tabletop wargaming firmly routed in RPG mechanics, films like The Goonies and the Mad Max trilogy were 'de rigeur', and almost every high school wargamer had a crack at designing their own simple wargames systems instead of doing their Maths homework, and churned out a metric ton of idiosyncratic gaming-inspired sketches in their English book, whilst the teacher droned on about 'Of Mice and Men' - Wasteman is the mutated lovechild of all these influences (and more), gestated and refined into a compact, concise and engaging system. Straightforward and intuitive rules create a surprisingly sophisticated set of mechanics which are easy to pick up, and emphasis is given to full player customisation reminiscent of Rogue Trader or Necromunda's forerunner Confrontation.

The art and narrative style is unabashedly torn straight out of those teenage years of wargaming heaven and spiced with the twisted, irreverent humour of a generation some 30-40 years older and wiser, carried over into a range of delightfully quirky and beautifully sculpted figures which hark back to the characterful miniatures of bygone, 'LE-07: Wizard with a Machine Gun' -style days. That being said, Wasteman is inherently designed to enable you to gather up any miniatures you have, irrespective of genre (and no matter how esoteric or downright bizarre), and cobble them together into a workable 'posse' that can be fielded in games 'as is' with recent (free) supplements also providing 'build your own' style vehicle creation rules, amongst other things (Horrific, hill-dwelling mutants - Check, Cavern-dwelling feudal troglodytes - Check, B&W movie-style dinosaurs - Inbound).

With the core rules costing £23 ($30/€26), all supplements currently available online for free, and the average 'Posse Pack' (of around five resin miniatures, bases, 'Activation' bottle caps, dice and 'Serving Suggestion' cards) costing about the same, Wasteman makes a really worthwhile addition to your gaming collection for those evenings when you just want a hilarious, pick-up-and-play gaming experience that's easy to get into (and share with friends) and caters to the inner, gaming teenager we all were at some point.