How miniature gaming can support political liberation is, to put it mildly, pretty close to my heart, and when 12th July saw a troupe of lefties – striking board game workers, miniature gamers and game developers – descend on London’s Pelican House for Games Transformed 2025 I was very much a pig in the proverbial. Themed simply around “Smash the Fash”, this was a decidedly different kind of gaming event, one meant to challenge assumptions, inspire creative action and show solidarity around what we could loosely call nerd-game-stuff. While it was a good month ago – making this not a particularly timely report – it’s taken me a while to process (and, I’ll be perfectly honest, nursery-borne sickness has struck me down twice in the interim).
What Is Games Transformed?
Games Transformed is an annual volunteer-run festival celebrating gaming, radical politics and taking positive action to combine the two. For the first time this year it involved miniatures gaming, letting us paint-and-glue people join in alongside staples of RPGS, AARGs, video and board games. It was a hugely diverse crowd all celebrating antifascism, with a will to create new modes of expression in games spaces and take back some of the power we have leant to companies all over the industry. Overall, the event had a couple of major strands – how games can be subversive, antifascist and anticapitalist (with lots of excellent examples on show), how games can support and further class struggle, and what we can do to counter the upswing in fascist infiltration of our gaming spaces. That meant dozens of talks and panels, drop-in-drop out gaming events, and training sessions – a packed schedule, and inevitably I didn’t get to play everything I wanted or chat to everyone I meant to. However, the event as a whole left me immensely positive about gaming, politics and a route to a better future, and I think we need that right now, don’t we?
A major focus of this year’s Games Transformed was also in showing solidarity – and financial support – for striking workers at London’s Draughts chain of upmarket board game spaces. The Draughts crew, now members of the United Voices of the World are fighting for what most of us would consider pretty basic workplace protections, and the hundreds who came out on the day were vocal in support, an excellent opportunity to find out how the workers who facilitate our board gaming and are essential to the operation of these third spaces are treated in the jobs. Panels on Union organising and how solidarity can empower workplace struggles were fascinating – the kind of practical action that a lot of theory-based discussions tend to miss out. Our hobby, at base, runs on shopworkers, casual staff and precarious contracts – it’s good to be reminded of the support we can give even just in our choice of venue.
Miniatures at Games Transformed
Since this is Goonhammer, and miniatures was most definitely my bit, let’s talk about that first (will dive into Thatcher’s Tech Base later, I promise). Miniatures was a new addition to the programme this year and I think one that was slightly unexpected – we’re still the little sister to RPGs and Video Games, and the idea of explicitly antifascist or even subtly subversive miniatures gaming seems a rather new one, for all that a 40-year-old game pokes occasional fun at British Conservatism. I think all of us involved in the minis side of things had a shared view – that we should be there, part of the conversation, able to show something that we do and only we do that could contribute to the wider topics of discussion.
I attended as a representative of my gaming club – the Hobby and Tabletop Enthusiasts (currently based up in Wood Green, London). We go by the very punk but occasionally confusing HATE Club name (cue dozens of explanations throughout the day). We’d done a fair bit of planning in the run-up but found ourselves on the schedule for much much longer than expected – functionally running our stuff from 11am to 11pm. That meant kitbashing, emptying out the entire club bits box onto a series of tables, providing superglue and clippers and chatting most of the day away while we encouraged everyone to come and build something. The idea was to put together a series of hero models – our valiant fighters against fascism – to use for a massive zombie-killing drop in session in the evening.
The Zombies were an all-club effort, including some frantic late-night painting sessions on my end to get enough ready to make them feel like a horde. We ended up with about 60 – all of mine from the fantastic Wargames Atlantic Zombie kit, made to represent the various fascists kicking about in the world today. They were pure contrast paints in greys, blues, reds and blacks, later to be flocked with classic retro green sawdust:
The kitbashing was a huge success, and we’ll be running this at events in the future. With no guides beyond advice if you asked for it, it worked well and taught me a lot. People who came in with ideas of what miniatures should look like made some lovely miniatures. Fair enough. People working in the industry in one form or another (including myself) made some standard-to-blanchitsu style pieces, all exactly what you’d expect. We had a chat and felt very smug for bringing it together. All to the good. What was really interesting was the reaction of people who had never touched a miniature before. Faced with a dizzying array of bits from all of our collections, going way back beyond rogue trader into strange malformed bits of lead, they picked up the tools and made beautiful monstrosities. When we explained they could do whatever they like, no expectations whatsoever, there was such joy – arms became heads, sprues became insanely out of scale keyblades, legs proliferated, chainsaw bodies married to Quar feet. You could really see the sense of possibility spilling out of people and I think we miss that occasionally in miniatures gaming. When we pick up a sprue, we know what it should be. All the converting in the world, even the greatest masters of the weird, can’t create what you get if you come into this with no rules, no expectations and a lot of ideas.
We acted as a bit of down time for many people, which I think worked well in the theme. You can’t fight and struggle all the time, and if your fight is also your hobby you need something else. A tea, a pile of sprues, clippers and conversation. It was rejuvenating, freeing – great fun, as well as being a source of discussions around artistic freedom, self expression and joy, a lot of them had with grimdark expert Mangling Minis.
From that relaxing and stress free space, I headed off to represent my club at the Indie Wargaming Panel, ostensibly to talk about antifascism in miniatures gaming. This was, to put it mildly, intimidating. Joining force-for-good and exceptional human Annie of Bad Squiddo fame, TONKS designer Ben Rose and YouTube supremo Mira Manga felt like stepping up and out of my comfort zone. Online, I think I can spout a pretty good line (thank God for Bernhardt’s editing). In person? Far more worrying.
Luckily, the panel and crowd were supportive and empathetic, and we were all coming from the same kind of space – that Indie Wargaming and smaller manufacturers give us space to explore concepts, test boundaries, teach politics and celebrate our communities. Annie, of course, spoke exceptionally well about the challenges and opportunities of being highly visible as a woman in the industry, Mira on finding Warhammer and experiencing it for the first time as an adult, and Ben on the creation and spread of weird indie wargaming and why that matters in the face of industry juggernauts. For my part, I rambled on about the Knights and making your politics explicit in modelling, our Historicals manifesto and what being a member of an antifascist gaming club means to me. Hopefully, I contributed something useful to the great points raised by everyone else!
After the panel we had a quick pub trip break, then got to work with the results of the kitbashing – the grandly named “Kitbash the Fash: A Co-Operative Nazi Zombie Squishing Killbot Miniatures Game”. Other, wiser, members of the club than me had put together the rules (thanks Gary!), but with a beer in me and vague memories of how GW redshirts had acted back in the day, I took over the first bit of the gaming. It was straightforward, bloody and fun, pick a kitbashed comrade, survive ten rounds of the fascist zombie horde, take your comrade home with you. We had a couple of dozen people rotate through the game over the evening, with thanks to everyone who played (and especially those who played twice!).
I was initially a bit skeptical of the worth of it beyond advertising the club (good!) and killing Nazi zombies being fun (it is!), but it was again a very joyous event. We were collaborating on rules, making up new restrictions and factors as we went, co-designing with players and generally having a great time. If players wanted to do something that wasn’t in the rules, it soon was. It felt celebratory, and something clicked for me – we can have fun doing this, we can be happy in our spaces while being political. The struggle is real, and terrifying, and intimidating, but there is such worth in creating an environment where people can relax, enjoy and be among comrades and I think we managed that.
The Non-Miniatures Gaming Bit
I didn’t get to see as much of the festival as I would have liked, so consider this a fleeting glimpse at all that was on offer. Clapton CFC, local football club and antifascist east London stalwarts, ran a Game Jam that created some fantastic concepts while also teaching attendees how to organise and run community owned cooperatives. I spent far too long playing the legendary Thatcher’s Techbase, a doom clone where you’re attempting to cast Margaret Thatcher herself back into hell – great fun, tricky as anything. An incredibly brief look into From GamerGate to QANON: How Fascists Use Games was enough for me to know I had missed something extremely important, and that educating myself (and others) on how fascists infiltrate communities using games is a top priority. Seeing one of Goonhammer’s Horus Heresy masterminds, JellyMuppet, in their role as lead on SoulMuppet Publishing was also enervating – the enthusiasm of our Heresy events translating exceptionally well into the positive atmosphere of the event (or perhaps the other way around).
More substantially, I had a good chat and dropped in on the session run by Class Wargames. These guys are full on Marxist-analysis-of-wargaming designers, producing some fascinating stuff ranging from Haitian scenarios for Napoleonics to the side-scroller Corbyn run that I spent far too much time on in the post-election catastrophe in 2019. They were running Debord’s Game of War, a teaching tool (and pretty great wargame) of how to organise, strike and take down capitalist structures of power. I’d heard of this, but still not managed to play it, and only had time for a chat. It’s something I want to pursue further – how can we go beyond the winking reference or the painted symbol in wargaming to produce something that teaches as well as entertains? There are lots of scenarios in the world today where miniatures on a board can teach us tactics – how to move, how to support, how to avoid something like a kettle or a raid. There’s a lot there, potentially, for wiser game designer brains than mine to address. I’d love to see it – and a review of the Game of War from a wargaming perspective will follow as soon as I can rope in an opponent to play.
Why Is Any of This Important?
There’s a world in which this all appears like sound and fury signifying nothing; we come together, talk about antifascism and then, for miniature gamers at least, go back to the comforting arms of a FTSE 100 company with no union representation. That’s all true. However, there was much to learn and think about in every encounter and workshop at Games Transformed. Nothing is neutral; the way we act, speak, the games we choose, the way we play them – these are all choices influenced by our politics and our social environment. That’s obvious, and it’s a bit of a smokescreen that allows us to not be strident and outspoken about our politics or what we do with them.
Politically, I am a man of pretty hard edges – strong opinions, deeply held, often relatively unpalatable (probably depends which discord you encounter me in). One thing I’ve taken away from Games Transformed that I think is useful for everyone is in openness, kindness and solidarity. Smashing the fash in gaming spaces isn’t just excluding them or getting right into someone’s face when they turn up with their Warsaw rising themed Ork Army (though if you feel safe to do so you should, absolutely), but about actively creating spaces that aren’t just inclusive, but celebratory.
When playing our game, I realised that we’d succeeded in carving a place out that wasn’t just a sanctuary and a safe space for people who may need one in our current, horrific, environment, but an empowering one. We can make our spaces – online and in person – antifascist and inclusive so that they are safe, but are we making them spaces where people want to be who they are? Where they are encouraged to express themselves as they are? I think we do a good job, here, and HATE does a good job. But there’s more to do, more to do to yes-and that expression, to support and nourish resistance and resilience through gaming and painting and playing. While there was so much at Games Transformed about explicitly antifascist and anticapitalist gaming, that’s not going to be the majority of the work going forward, for all that it would be ace to see things like Mad as Hell or Billionaires and Guillotines replacing Dungeons and Dragons and Pointless. Most of what we can – should – do on a daily basis is in the communities we already have, celebrating the people we are, supporting each other in need and being strident in our beliefs. Games won’t transform themselves. We have to get doing it.
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