Hell conquered your world. The stars fell, oceans burned, and demons ripped a black hole in the heart of your sun. They took everything: the people you loved; your ideals and dreams; nation-states and continents. Now, only shattered remnants drift through the void, jumbled together with other worlds. Everything here is dead but cannot die. Souls are currency and power—a promise of freedom and literal ammunition. Hell forges you into a weapon to consume other worlds.

You awoke in this shadowy realm, rescued or press-ganged, your captor-saviors a lost order of a dead god or a cult of some ragged prophet. Survivors, rebels, and half-mad pariahs, desperate for souls to consume and strengthen their own. Some few tend an ember of hope that they can reclaim what was lost and save the next world from oblivion. They hide in sanctuaries where Hell’s gaze does not linger—shrines to forgotten heroes, crumbling libraries, or the bones of god-beasts. They scavenge magic and technology from devoured worlds. They blend these arts to forge weapons against their oppressors.

You’ve been claimed, drafted, or baptized, your flesh marked with sigils that shield you from Hell’s corruption. They’ve given you a weapon and a purpose—or perhaps merely grafted you to a gun and driven you into a frenzy. You are hollow, a vessel for souls. Driven by vengeance, a desire for freedom, or a dying ember of hope, you must feed this fire, spread it, or let it gutter and die.

What is this?

Brimstone and Lead is a set of skirmish rules designed to reproduce the adrenaline-pumping and blood-spattered combat of games like DOOM, Quake, and Gears of War. It is a game with an overpowered arsenal of rocket launchers, miniguns, and magic spells. It’s gothic architecture and inter-dimensional portals. It’s demons and shotguns. It’s a heavy metal album cover.

This book has all the rules you need to play. As a miniatures-agnostic game, the intent is for you to use miniatures you have on hand or kitbash something special.

Why play this game?

This game is about speed: There is no measurement. Movement, Line-of-Sight, and weapon ranges are built into the same system. Concepts like reactions, suppression, and overwatch are built into the action economy, minimizing exceptions, gotchas, do-overs, and subroutines.

This game is about positioning: Brimstone and Lead is gun-chess. Every model controls an area with a specific flavor of violence. Your opponent must respect that and respond, and the only valid response is a different violence from a different angle.

This game is about playing your opponent: The beating, bloody, heart is the Counter mechanic. When your opponent acts, you can spend your Counter token to seize control. But once used, the token passes to them, giving them the same power to use against you. This means that you must study the board, and find your best action, and bait the other player into wasting their counter on something trivial. It isn’t enough to have the best tactics, or the best list, or sheer damn luck. Every turn is a test of your ability to bluff, read, and outsmart the competition.

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Latest Changes

Changelog 7/12/25

Removed "Arena" from title. Originally "Arena" was included to differentiate the game from the RPG I was working on, but since that is unreleased and unfinished it doesn't add. 

Added new photos.

Added new art by Del Teigeler. 

Added new fluff by yours truly.

Changed the way Sniper Rifle works to be simpler and more in keeping with source material. 

Changed the way Chaingun Works to limit multiple actions per turn and emphasize support role.

Changed the way Chainsaw works to limit multiple actions per turn. 

Changed model costs and points. Fireteams now only 4 members. This is done to account for upcoming additional classes and because often there are not enough actions to go around.  

Added rule where Player A chooses either the Counter Token or 4 Adrenaline to start with. This is done to limit the power having the Counter Token grants from turn 1.

Added rule where all models start with 1 Adrenaline. This is done to limit the danger of backline kills and give models more resilience. 

Removed Sanctifier's ability to inflict Strain on damage roll because it trapped models in the flames. 

Specified that Sanctifier is a 2d Hazard. 

Changed it so that models cannot rotate without moving (Advance, Run, or spending Adrenaline). Specifically this was done to emphasize how Snap Fire cannot change facing, but I made the rule general to avoid exceptions and edge cases. 

Corrected "fiver" on page 6

Added a note about weapons representing broad "categories"

Added link to draft campaign stuff.

Added a link to creating a grid.

Corrected cross references and table of content.

Changed SP-FR to SPT-FR on weapon cards to avoid confusion between Support and Snap Fire.