Motley Crews

What is Motley Crews

Motley Crews is a grid-based tactical fantasy skirmish for two players, designed by _nubmark and self-released on itch.io. The game is played on a standard 8×8 chessboard with five figures per side, has no points system, no list-building, and no mandatory miniatures. Any ten figures you have on the shelf can play. Games run 30 to 45 minutes.

The full rules are free. Official 3D-print STLs of _nubmark’s own figure designs are $5 a set on the itch page, and a two-player game needs a crew on each side, so $10 covers both. The game is fully miniature-agnostic though, so the cost to start is genuinely $0 if you already have minis at home.

What’s new (August 2026)

_nubmark released Denizens of Dreadwood on 23 August 2026, a $5 set of eight figures: five characters (a Black Knight, Beastmaster, Witch Hunter, Rogue and Green Mage) and three beasts for the Beastmaster to bring along.

Dreadwood is the team for Motley Crews Advanced, which changes two things about how a game is set up. The terrain layout is different, and crews are no longer fixed. You can now mix and match across the whole figure pool, picking any five classes you like, with a limit of one of each class per team. So the roster is yours to build instead of a set you take as it comes.

Two free additions landed alongside it: a set of printable terrain STLs, and Motley Cows, which is exactly what it sounds like. Everything is on the itch page.

Full write-up: _nubmark Dropped Denizens of Dreadwood for Motley Crews.

How to start

Download the free rules at the official itch page.
Grab a chessboard (or any 8×8 grid).
Pick five figures per player. Anything works. If you want the official sculpts, the STLs are $5 a set on the same itch page, so $10 for both crews.

That’s it. Most people already have the chessboard.

The Hobbinomicon take

This is the game that started everything for me. I watched _nubmark’s release video and something clicked. I’d been in the hobby for a long time already, but this renewed my drive to go full force. Within a few weeks I was building a board for Motley Crews, planning a YouTube channel, and registering a domain. Without this game and that release video, this site doesn’t exist.

The game itself earns the inspiration. It removes every barrier between someone wanting to try a tabletop skirmish and actually playing one: free rules, ten miniatures, a chessboard. If a friend asks me for an indie skirmish to start with, this is the easiest yes I have.

From the Community

El Bazar de Horus has made beautiful alternate art cards for the core teams and created two expansion teams of his own. All free on itch. Follow him on Instagram.