I learned the power of the blade at Under the Dice Fest 2025.
Howdy, Schlubs!
It’s been a minute! I’ve skulked through the forests of New England and over the plains of Iowa, but I’ve finally made my way back to you. Fittingly, I’ve got a supersized edition of the newsletter today with store updates, art projects, a recap of Under the Dice Fest, a podcast spotlight, and more!
First off, I want to thank everyone who bought Schlub Cinema: Issue 1. Y’all are the reason I want to keep writing and putting out new handmade stuff. Sincerely, thank you!
For those who haven’t bought a copy yet, the zine is still available on my BigCartel site, along with the Miami Vice bumper sticker! I’m also working on a PDF version of the zine, which will be available at the end of June for a reduced price.
Commander Deck
In the long road to the zine’s completion, I occasionally shifted my attention to other projects to clear my head. A trend I’ve been seeing a lot lately is the “proxy card”—a handmade or alternative card that can be used in place of an official card for games like Magic: The Gathering or Pokémon. I’ve only played MTG once (shoutout Sydney), and even though I refuse to add another insanely expensive nerd hobby, I wanted to flex this muscle! I have enough friends who play, so I asked them for their favorite cards and went to work.
As someone with little to no knowledge of the lore or deeper gameplay mechanics, it was so fun to just free associate and spin off from the original card’s image, name, and the person I was making it for. You’ll see that it was a challenge to cram in the text for larger cards.
If you play MTG and are interested in some cards, shoot me a DM or an email!
Under the Dice Fest 2025
Under the Dice Fest was a dream soaked in blood, sweat, and Wyrdstone shards. Held in Enfield, CT, the festival celebrated the punk and DIY side of wargaming. Hosted by the folks behind the Hive Scum podcast, the three-day event focused on kitbashing (mixing two or more separate models into one custom model), indie games, the New England Mordheim Open (NEMO), narrative play, DIY vendors, awards, and plenty of metal and synth bands.
I was worried that I’d be a wallflower since this was my first solo convention. Instead, I met two hundred of the fucking coolest people—all talented, creative, and kind. To say that this event was life-changing would be underselling it. Whether it was geeking out over someone’s art, swapping zines, or playing wargames over live dungeon synth performances, everyone in that sweaty Elks Lodge walked away with new friends and a newly ignited sense of creative purpose.
If you’d like to hear the excitement in my voice, and listen to many other brilliant attendees, check out both episodes of Dragged into Turbolasers! I was lucky enough to be interviewed by Adam and Greg Wier, two of the minds behind the Between the Bolter and Me blog. They’ve brought a journalistic eye to the hobby for years, and I was honored to join them on the pod. For a more in-depth look at the festival (and high-quality photos of all the amazing miniatures), check out their blog!
Riding the high from my zine, I brought a disposable camera to the event with the intent of making a fest-specific one.
Unfortunately, a lot of them looked like this:
Terrible pic of Elijah’s (@elijahdprophet) beautiful piss-yellow Chaos Warriors for the One Page Rules: Regiments tournament on Friday. Definitely a goal of mine to compete with a full army next year!
I might still make the zine at some point, but in the meantime, please enjoy these schlubby pics!
The event took place at the Enfield, CT Elks Lodge. It was heartwarming to see locals, staff, and nerdy punks shoulder-to-shoulder at the lodge bar each night.
The homemade gaming boards were something to behold. There were plenty of sci-fi boards for games like Flames of Orion and Necromunda, but it was also cool to see unique biomes mixed in with traditional fantasy boards—like this jungle terrain.
I played my first game of the fest on Friday with Harlan (@harlanbrand0). We played Flames of Orion on the creator of the game’s MASSIVE Mordheim board. The scale was funny (giant mechs in people-sized terrain), so we came up with a backstory abut our squads crash-landing on a post-apocalyptic planet of medieval giants. I think I lost, but most of our mechs blew up in a chain reaction anyway. Check out Harlan’s zines here!
Slade (@exobscuris) and I waiting for lunch. Slade’s new game, Blood Red Blades, is holding a narrative wargaming event in Chicago this August. Check out more info here!
Gretchen and Robyn (@bogbodyminis) outside the venue. Robyn’s game, RATKING, was a madcap fun time. I’ll talk about it more further down.
Blerz (@blerzcraft) came with five giants for the One Page Rules: Regiments tournament. I wish I had watched more of that tournament on Friday, but it was so sick to see waves of neatly ordered troops go up against these big-ass boys. Blerz told me that each giant is supposed to represent one of his siblings. Check out his YouTube channel here!
An objectively terrible picture of Cameron‘s (@cmframent) diorama and warbands. HOWEVER, I do like the “out of focus cryptid” look of it. He brought two warbands to the event, and his diorama actually took home a runner-up medal at the Rusted Demon awards on Sunday!
Mike (@Kitbash_Chaos) and Harlan getting a practice round of Mordheim in on Friday. For many tournament goers, the last time they played Mordheim was last year’s NEMO. Chatting with both of these dudes was a highlight of the con. Check out Mike’s YouTube channel here!
Yoel (@sallet_hobby) brought the coolest board of the event. I didn’t have a chance to play on it, but it came with custom rules involving diving into pools of blood, and sacrificing your own characters to the big spiky woman (for no benefit lol). Yoel was the nicest dude. Not only did his board take home an award, but he also won for best representing the “spirit” of the hobby!
Seth, @ethical, @masterblaster, and Drew (@travalchemy) playing Terror Target Gemini. I picked up the game at GenCon last year because of the sick art, but never had a chance to play it. Lo and behold, Drew was running a game on Friday night! The book’s adventure was a fast-paced, anachronistic, train heist, clearly inspired by movies I love, like The Good, the Bad, the Weird(2008). Hilariously, my first character was killed only 20 minutes in with a shotgun blast to the head.
My first NEMO opponent, Mark! His warband was an eclectic mix of mercenaries, all infected with various nasty mushrooms. He was a great first opponent, and helped guide the game while I sweatily flipped through the rulebook. The first game ended in a draw, as we were mostly focused on completing the round’s objective to collect Wyrdstone shards throughout the sewer-like board.
My second NEMO opponent, Ben! My memory is a bit shit, but I think his warband was either Carnival of Chaos or Possessed. My warband was set to ambush his as they entered the city…but his units mostly mobbed my shit on the grand steps of the town square. Thanks to my Esaul (big sword boy pictured below), I was able to fend them off and take the win. In the randomized exploration phase after the game, both of us had characters who accidentally drank bad well water, which removed them from the finale due to diarrhea.
My final NEMO opponent, Dan! He had a dwarf warband, which was one of the rarer warbands at a fest full of Chaos Warriors and freaky mutants. The objective was to control the center of the board, with my warband rushing in to take on his well-fortified troops. Despite a well-positioned group of archers raining death upon me, I was able to take down enough of his wee-lads and secure the win. Dan was a total sweetheart—a perfect guy to end the tournament with. With that, after nearly an entire day of exhaustive gaming, NEMO was done!
I was completely wiped after NEMO, but I couldn’t pass up a chance to have Robyn demo her game while live dungeon synth echoed in the background. We played on an insane board from Blerz and Durzin (@durzin_miniatures)—complete with smoke effects and lighting. RATKING is a card-based game that involves various groups of nasty rats fighting each other for precious resources. The best part: if any player characters are too close together when a certain card is drawn, they become tangled and turn into a ratking monster controlled by the GM. One formed in our game, so we kept trying to dive-bomb the beast by leaping off tall buildings onto its back. Unfortunately, we kept dying on impact…splattering onto the concrete and adding to the beast’s health.
Enzo (@Lancebenchpress) enjoying a cold one at the lodge bar while Kyle (@reelsleazy) mugs in the background. Schlubs should turn their attention to Kyle’s excellent Heat (1995)shirt.
Two HEMA (Historical European Martial Arts) groups, The Headsmen and The Worcester County Commoners, battling it out in the parking lot. These warriors were leaving it all in the ring, even with it being 90 degrees and humid as all hell.
Dylan (@dylanmelisko) won a Rusted Demon on Sunday! A punk-tinged version of the Golden Demon awards at Adepticon, the Rusted Demon celebrates kitbashing and creativity first and foremost.
The Kislev Astrologers
Finally, Dillon (@voidhalation) set up a professional camera rig and took photos of people’s warbands. Being a total gem, he did it for free. You can head to his blog to check out tons of other great photos.
Here are the insane photos he took of my warband!
Coming Attractions
New Essays: I hope to publish one or two more essays before really beginning Issue 2 in earnest. I’m always open to suggestions for what to cover! Reach out at schlubcinema@gmail.com.
Mystery Collab: While you’re waiting, I’m happy to tease that I partnered with another magazine for something schlubby coming to shelves later this year. Keep your eyes peeled! 😈
Flames of Orion: One of my favorite games I played at UTD was Flames of Orion, a 28mm mech skirmish game created by host, Steve. Flames rules because you can learn it in thirty minutes and finish a whole game in under an hour. Immediately after the fest, I went to work creating a board and two additional mech squads to rope my friends into playing. In an effort to connect more with my local gaming scene, I’ve decided to host demo games at my LGS! If you live in Wisconsin, come swing by!
Issue 2: Dreams, goals, and Pinterest boards…Issue 2 is slowly starting to take shape. At the moment, I plan on write entirely new essays for the issue—only available in print. It’s still a ways off, and ideas might change, but I can tell you that I’ve been enamored with old magazines lately—namely Nintendo Power and White Dwarf. The clay models used in old Nintendo ads call to me like siren songs…
Pikmin 2 promotional art featuring clay models by Wataru Yamaguchi.
If you happen to have any old issues of either that you’d be willing to sell, hit a girl up!
That’s all folks! For any movie suggestions for letters to the editor, reach out to schlubcinema@gmail.com
It was an absolute pleasure to chat and hang over UTDF, and an honor to get to photograph your Astrologers.