Kitbash Your Homies! by guest author @BitSmashing

Kitbash Your Homies:

Making a Hobby-Community Experience that is Uniquely Yours

To start, I don’t mean putting Kevin’s arms on Stephanie or Gabby’s feet on Sammy, and for real, no head swaps. You already knew that, I hope. You’re here at SprudeDude.com. Kitbashing miniatures likely isn’t new for you. But maybe you still haven’t been able to put the different parts of your hobby together in just the right way to make your dream gaming experience. This article might help.

New for me was running a game at my first wargaming convention, UnionCon.

In a historic, stone house that held an American president fighting an actual war, just under 100 people got together to play their favorite games, dead games, and some games just being created. I learned about UnionCon through one of the local gaming groups around me, District of the Damned. (Shout out to a great group of people with a rad logo)

They’re creative, adventurous, and supportive. They’re always looking to try new games, play classics, modify or make scenarios, campaigns, and settings from scratch. They’re consistently putting a unique spin on games and the gaming experience.

Larger events, gaming or otherwise, overwhelm me, so when I learned that the maximum number of attendees was around 100, it felt like a perfect fit. I didn’t want my first foray into these events to be fully passive, so I decided to volunteer to run a game that I’ve been interested in for a while, Ømen Tide. SprueDude wrote an article about it in July 2025. Give it a read if you haven’t yet and check out the game. It’s a 3-v-3 miniatures agnostic, card-based wargame on a 16”x16” board that is set on a coastline succumbing to the mysterious influences of the otherworldly deep. It’s fun, fast, and dynamic.

If that doesn’t make you want to smash plastic pieces together until your imagination burns out, I don’t know what will. I asked the players to pull their victory point tokens out of a hanging skull.

Kitbashing is my favorite part of the hobby, even though I love playing and designing games, and I didn’t want to leave that part out. So, with a lot of help from the SprueDude, I arranged a kitbash option as well. People were welcome to make their sect of 3 characters or whatever they felt like. Then I learned that some other folks from the DotD were ALSO hosting a kitbashing table. The pieces were all coming together. I would run games of Ømen Tide, first thing Saturday, people would be kitbashing all around, and I’d have the rest of the weekend to play other games I’d wanted to try like Necropolis28 and 1490 Doom. Even after that I STILL had time to see what else was happening.

Saturday morning, I was late. Like, players waiting at the table for me to set up while I’m still hauling up more boxes than I need, late. As you might have guessed, though, the people were kind and patient and before long, we had two boards running introductory games and a small kitbash station right next to the gaming table, covered in plastic frames, Spruedude.com cutting mats, dice trays, and tape measures.

And shells. Shells are a thing in Ømen Tide- again, you should check out the game and read the article. Within the span of a few hours, I’d gone from only having played some test games to make sure I had a functional understanding of the rules, to getting a bunch of games in. I lost all of them and loved every minute of it. I think my players did too. There were some rough spots where I didn’t have the rules completely locked in. But, when aren’t there? Sanding sticks and gap fillers exist for a reason.

@Weyoot came with a sect he made whose defining characteristic was the fabric he used as the outer layer of the minis he kitbashed.

@Khalor and @Zenopus used minis I’d brought to play the test games but decided they were interested in making their own. @Khalor brought a strong shell game

And @Zenopus made his first kitbashed mini ever!

(Challenge: Name those kits!)

@We_Wargame made an appearance and a witch-warrior-scavenger and @Willow gets special mention for these creepy crawlers that she made predominantly from Spare Parts Emporium pieces.

@Landlines and @HolyFireThem-Bennet put together an incredible narrative Necropolis28 campaign, complete with surprise trap terrain that changed the diorama on which the game was played.

Photo credit to @chromatic.gray (I think?)

@ntdars, the organizer of UnionCon, and the people that helped him are heroes for what they put together.

@melon play tested her first game, a bread-stealing non-combat harvest-baking-race called “Lammas”, which had me giggling and offending spirits way after the last dice was rolled.

I have to stop somewhere, because otherwise I’ll just keep rattling off Discord handles of the amazing people I met, but the cool thing is, they or someone like them is probably closer to you than you might realize. And if they’re not, maybe you’re the person who can bring them together. Maybe organize a kitbashing or painting day at your local game store or library. Start a club, teach people to play, or make your own game and share it with strangers. If you’re around Washington D.C. next year in October, get a ticket.

Take something you think is cool, see how it fits with some other parts you love, and bring something into this world that never existed before. You might inspire more people to do the same thing. As a matter of fact, maybe that’s what the SprueDude has been doing all along. Look what it did to me.