Monolithic expectations #2 - Long-term sustenance

Like I wrote near the end of my previous article, I felt like I was opening a can of worms with some of my statements.

It seems to me, based on the kind of response, or lack there of, to these kinds of posts and on the blog stats alone that these topics don't provoke almost any kind of discussion at large, at least on the English side of the community. And it is quite a shame that most of the community decides to keep on getting more and more jaded instead of trying to spark up some healthy discussion in preparation for, hopefully, a steady revitalization of the scene. But oh well, to each their own, I will sleep better at night knowing I at least tried keeping it positive.

I've stopped my previous Monolith-related article at an interesting juncture. There was so much more written in the draft of that post before I decided to chop it all up and split it into numerous articles, hopefully creating a series that will prove true or false as time goes on. I left it adjacent to one of the most important topics regarding the revival of Aarklash, the questions surrounding miniatures in whatever kind of product we get from Monolith first. Word of warning though, when I say Monolith I also semi-adjacently refer to the new Rackham team since they are operating under their wing and it is effectively now Monolith's IP.

Curiously enough, since I wrote the previous article an interesting post popped up on the 7 Hills server:

This was essentially an unofficial additional response to a rather lukewarm and vague statement from Rackham Games about the current progress and future™ plans. While I do always consider these corporate statements an exercise in patience on behalf of the fans, Monolith would be wise to learn from these kinds of "mistakes". The history of the IP is heavy and "fans" are largely annoyed, thus vague statements are bound to provoke a response, which most of the times is best left unsaid. Of course, many a discord user failed to do just that and instead reactively responded with unwarranted outrage formulated into walls of text of senseless and baseless drivel. 

But, I digress. Let us just consider the statement from Frédéric Henry on its own and let us consider for a moment that this is a genuine response and not a reaction to put out a fire. I personally believe that plans like these, shifting focus to a long-term perspective, impact not only the amount of care that will be paid to the product, but a fundamental change to how things are going to be done and a completely new incarnation of Monolith. If you think about it rationally, if Monolith indeed wanted to get an easy "win", no matter how small, we would probably have some kind of Aarklash related product in our hands by now. 

What my gut is telling me is that this restructuring is largely focused on two things: different approach to miniature production and figuring out how to maintain a non-boardgame, living product. This time around I'll focus on the miniature angle. 

The biggest question suggested in my previous article is just what kind of material will be used to produce miniatures. In relation to the above statement from Frédéric, the answer to that question will largely also answer just how serious Monolith is about this IP succeeding. There is simply no avoiding the fact that the original Rackham managed to impact the industry in so many ways that still resonate to this day, decades after its demise. In my eyes it would be quite sad to not at least try to honor that legacy, a thing other IP holders utterly failed.

I still firmly believe that metal miniatures are out of the question, if anything just for the production costs associated with metal. The roads to metal lead either through owning your own production plant, which I would not like to see from Monolith investments since that money could be used elsewhere more effectively, or having a much lower production scale and producing at a third party, which I also don't consider good. Unless, of course, Monolith wants to take it slow and have slow and steady scalability over time, which on the flipside might be a safe thing to do. Personally, I would love to see metal miniatures, but there are so many factors going against that that I simply doubt it will happen. Ready to be pleasantly surprised though!

Resin would be a terrible choice, as no sane person who plans on actually playing with their miniatures likes resin in this day and age. Yes, it can give decent results as far as details go, but the hassle of assembly, the brittleness of material, and the score of other annoying things coming along with it, resin is just a bad choice. 3D prints are largely laughable and still leave a bad taste in my mouth (metaphorically speaking, stop eating miniatures), no matter how much progress there has been with 3D printing technology. Just look at what Trench Crusade went through and it makes me not want to touch a 3D printed miniature ever again. 

The harsh reality is that the thus far established Monolith miniature line featuring a mix of ABS and PVC plastic is simply not up to par for anything above simple board game quality. Meaning, it is amazing for MB-esque board games, but those same models standing on the table with other skirmish wargames is just not good enough. Not only this, but those production plants are based in China and despite their current Berserk and L5R minis being produced there I suspect that a lot of board game companies will be focused on either slimming down their games or moving away from China altogether, due to the current state of the world which I simply don't see getting any better any time soon sadly. It is, I suspect, not at all profitable anymore as much as it was back in a pre-pandemic world and the zenith period of huge games and Kickstarter companies. Lucky for us at least that Monolith managed to hold their ship afloat and come out of the decline of the bombastic KS craze as winners.

Which leaves us with HIPS, in my opinion the only proper and feasible way to move into the wargaming world. This type of plastic production technology could do a wonderful job at materializing many concepts from original Rackham designs which simply weren't possible to do with metals back in the day and the only other feasible material solution that can cater to the hobby side of the consumer base in a professional enough way. 

If all of this rambling of mine isn't enough, give me a few moments to put my tinfoil hat on and provide you with a solution of how I think Monolith could get into HIPS plastics. Without further ado, let me introduce you to Archon Studio.

So in case you don't know, Archon Studio is a company based in Poland and founded in 2014. I'm not gonna go too deep into their history, but as any other company it had its rocky start, namely some issues working with Prodos on their AvP game, but have since learned from their mistakes and grew into one of the best and my personally favorite European company. Over time they grew as a competent game design studio, but have also expanded into becoming a manufacturer, investing into their own plastic injection machinery to produce miniatures. This was initially to produce their own Dungeons & Lasers and Rampart lines of terrain, but they have since started producing for other companies and games, such as Trench Crusade and Conquest from Para Bellum. They worked on scores of other games which they acquired license for, such as Masters of the Universe, Heroes of Might and Magic, and the most recent StarCraft miniatures game. An overall great company that has been on an upward trajectory for years now and it doesn't seem like it is going to slow down any time soon. 

Chance would have it that I've recently picked up a warband box set for Conquest, since my colleagues at work wanted to get into a miniature game and Para-Bellum's larger scale was appealing to them. Why is this important in the context of the article? Well, as mentioned above, Conquest uses Archon for the production of its miniatures. 

I've picked up the Old Dominion faction, mostly because I wanted to use them as an excuse to practice painting rust effects and old bronze, plus the combination of Roman/Orthodox/Byzantine aesthetics is pleasing to me. You can browse the miniatures on Para Bellum's faction gallery, but here I will post a few photos I took of the actual plastic sprues. 

Keep in mind that these miniatures are larger scale, 38mm, so by extension some of the details of the sculpts will be much easier to create. For the purposes of this article, the first two images posted above are of a mounted character, while the rest are infantry sized models. All of these are fantastic, especially some of the faces and pieces of armor which already have that rusted ancient metal detailing sculpted.

Anecdotally I also have Archon's "Masters of the Universe: Battleground" skirmish game, which might be an even better example to look into since the miniature scale is more on par with Confrontation, assuming of course that Monolith keeps with the original scale. Also keep in mind that in this project Archon worked on its own designs, unlike for Conquest which is obviously just producing Para Bellum's designs, but of course restrained by the original MOTU guidelines. 

All of the photographed models are infantry sized. Honestly, the level of details and how crisp and clean they are is astounding. Upon inspection there is minimal cleanup required, essentially aside from the sprue mold lines there is not much left to remove. Almost no details have been lost in the process of producing these sculpts, from the clean facial expressions to the minute armor engravings and tiny details. Also, I personally love that they are doing differently colored plastics, as it is a great addition to any kind of box that features more than one faction. 

Here's a few photos of some of the terrain and bases that come with the MOTU core box, mostly because some of these could easily pass as parts of an abandoned Dirz laboratory! Just beautiful. 

That's all fine and dandy, but I hear you thinking and asking: "Stefan, you beautiful smart man, what does this have to do with Monolith?"

Aside from the amazing quality and selection of products under their wing, Archon vastly grew in popularity thanks to their regular AMA streams, being completely transparent with fans and supporters with how they do business, what their plans are, and what their overall thought process is. So with that being said, let me just...

In those Archon AMA streams, there are nuggets of information one can pluck along the way. I usually keep up with their streams, though I've been lagging behind a couple of latest ones due to life, but Archon is definitely one of my favorite currently active bigger companies to follow and keep tabs on. Even though I am personally invested in only a few of their wide range of products, notably some are extremely uninteresting to me, it is always amusing to keep up with their growth as a company. What I find absolutely fascinating about Archon is that they've realized the amount of consumers that can be easily classified as nosy goblins (the ones constantly prying and demanding for answers, deadlines, and product pathways) and they just fully tapped into it. The way Archon is transparent, patient, friendly, and superbly professional with their consumer base is above and beyond anything you'll see anywhere else in the industry, and not only is it an absolute joy to watch, but one can learn a lot about how to run a successful business. Their growth over the years has been tremendous, planning and thinking ten steps ahead even in these insane times, all the while being so open about it, it just blows my mind every time. 

Personally, I'm extremely annoyed with the goblinry of your average consumer and cannot stand the amount of senseless questions and demands a single "fan" can generate, but the way Archon approached and tended to their customers has undoubtedly brought on great success. And all they needed was "just" a tremendous amount of patience and willingness for communication.

If you listen carefully enough, Jarek, Archon CEO, talks a lot about what is in the pipeline for the company and many times throws little bits of interesting information that raised my eyebrow on multiple occasions, especially since he seems like a genuine nerd (and I say this in the most positive way imaginable) and always looks like he's biting his tongue to not say anything ahead of schedule. As I've shared on 7 Hills before, he is on record talking briefly about AT-43 and his interest in it, during a conversation with AMA chat where someone asked if Archon would do an X-Com game and then someone saying "do AT-43". Where most people nowadays don't even know what AT-43 is, he responds to it without a second thought, and implies that things are happening with it behind the scenes but that "it probably won't happen soon", meanwhile his AMA co-host Szymon is just standing there with a grin on his face... and usually Szymon is the one trying to make Jarek not reveal too much. Worth noting in this context is that Archon also produces pre-painted plastic things, which in relation to AT-43 is pretty a good checkbox ticked off.

What this little scene telegraphs to me is that there is definitely some rumbling in the background, where even an obscure product such as AT-43 is making noise. There is reason to believe that Monolith, at least in some capacity, approached Archon, and I can't think that it is for any other reason other than making a deal for production and distribution. 

In context of this, a few months ago Jarek mentioned that while they do have scheduled upcoming miniature game releases for 2026, most notably StarCraft and, I believe it was World of Tanks, they still have open slots for plastic production available and some more IP's which they haven't announced yet. While I do think 2026 is still early for a Confrontation product, it is good news that Archon keeps room for picking up new clients and/or IPs, so there is room for Monolith to strike a deal.

So where does this all leave us in regards to Monolith? Aside from all the wishful thinking and wild speculation, I believe the best way going forward would be to work with Archon. A domestic European production company with a proven pedigree and serious upward trajectory is a sure and stable step for Monolith if they are at all serious about making their long term product a success. A deal with them would surely instill a lot of much needed security and trust with consumers, as well as open a big avenue for communication and information sharing if such a deal lands and production is in Archon's hands. This last bit is especially important since Monolith is not the best with sharing information and updates. Despite me having a lot of confidence in them due to all the previous experience I have with their products and campaigns, I know that their way of dealing with news and updates would not sit well with a lot of naysayers.

And to circle back to what started this article, Archon's plastic production and quality of said plastic would be able to do beautiful things in Aarklash. I would without a doubt put an absolute seal of approval on Archon making a Confrontation revival a reality. And not only this, but Archon itself would be a huge marketing platform, seeing as how many active consumers and followers they gathered as a company, especially now with the explosion of the StarCraft miniatures game. They alone would be able to create a lot of hype about the revival of our beloved Rackham IP's.

As I've mentioned before, I missed a few of the recent AMA's which I plan on listening to soon, and for some reason I'm sure I'll hear more things between the lines to solidify these claims. For now I just wanted to get this article out because it felt relevant to all the recent rumblings. Surely enough, if I hear anything else of interest from Archon I'll either update this post or mention it in a future one, since there is more to write about this entire subject.

But as I said, this is all just my own daydreaming sprinkled with a little bit of positivity and common sense. Time will tell how much I've missed the mark with what is written here... I might look back on all of this and think what a naive and hopeful fool I was, but then again what if I was even remotely right? In that case, man, good things lie ahead in Aarklash.

Thank you for reading, see you in the next one!

Confrontation: The Age of The Rag'Narok - Wolfen vs Griffin Starter Set

Similar to the post from December featuring the overview of the Hybrid and Hybrid: Nemesis boxes, this will be a simple component overview of the Wolfen vs Griffin Starter box for Confrontation: The Age of The Rag'Narok.

Front of the box...

... and the front of the box with the lid open...

... and the back of the box.

Stunning artwork on the cover done by Paolo Parente, a single glance is truly enough to completely immerse you into Aarklash. Love having this box on the shelf, gorgeous to look at and the pop-up lid for a quick glance at the contents inside is very neat.

Accessories: dice and ruler

The famous ruler and the set of dice with the awesome Rackham dragon logo replacing the sixes. Out of the long line of Rackham products only a handful had these accessories, so it is great having them.

Wolfen.

Griffins.

Cards.

I fall into the camp of people not very impressed by the Rackham plastics, which makes the ownership of this box a bittersweet thing. Regardless, the miniatures are good by themselves, but in no way an upgrade from previously released Rackham metals. The card design is also quite different, but good, though of course I still prefer the design from the previous Confrontation iteration.

Double-sided play map, side A...

...and side B.

These maps are actually quite interesting. Extremely simple design, but visually very Aarklash since they feature small details that are truly evocative of the world. Obviously paper surfaces aren't ideal for actually playing the game, especially if they are are barely ever unfolded like mine, but if properly pressed and straightened they are great for a quick small setup.

"Seal of the Dragon" terrain piece.

The legendary piece of terrain, this is the one specific element which always stood out to me in this box. Truly reminiscent of the Rackham workshop aesthetics, it is a wonderful addition to the table. My one gripe with it is that it is "hollow", aka there's no real bottom on the underside, so ideally this should be filled up and glued to some other terrain piece for some extra sturdiness and balance. Regardless, amazing piece of scenery.

Confrontation: The Age of The Rag'Narok rulebook.

One thing to note in the end. My copy of the box sadly came without the rulebook, but for the sake of archiving here we are. Also worth noting is that this "Complete Rules" book is a downsized version of the main C:AoR rulebook which has the same cover art sans the "complete rules" tag and a black background/frame.

***

And there you have it, one for the archive. I love doing these archive posts, mostly because I like documenting these sorts of things, but also it is nice to go over all the bits and pieces and contemplate for a while... and get sad when you realize that you are missing something! Definitely need to hunt down a copy of the rulebook. 

Stay tuned, I will probably be doing a similar post for AT-43 Initiation box in the near future. Thanks for reading, see you in the next one!

Monolithic expectations #1 - Hybrid upgrades

Author's note: I wrote most of this article back in December, but failed to publish it for a variety of reasons. The initial article I penned down was long to begin with and I kept coming back to it adding more each time, so I decided to break it down into a series of articles in order to be able to be more focused on certain aspects I felt needed to be covered. Needless to say, more info has started creeping out into the light of day, positively reinforcing some of the things I mentioned below.  It's important to note that this is a think piece article, it is all just rooted in my own speculation and contemplation, I have no insider information nor do I claim any of the below as a fact of certainty. I'm just thinking out loud.

If you're following all these rambling posts of mine, you know by now that way back in October I published a component overview of the newly crowdfunded and delivered board game by Monolith, Mythic Battles: Isfet. Receiving MB:I made me realize that it is time to prioritize and push Hybrid way up my collecting wish list. I acquired both Hybrid and its expansion recently and I've promptly posted a component overview of both shortly afterwards.

Following these two linked statements, dear reader, I expect you to do the math. 

If you can't firgure out where this is heading, I'll interject with a hint in the form of a newsflash relevant to this post. Most of my readers here come from the 7 Hills and the French Confede server, but some come via other places where I try to "advertise" the blog. Thus, most of you have probably seen the infodump done by Sweet on the 7 Hills back in December:

Back when I saw the initial announcement that Monolith acquired Rackham's IP, the first thoughts that sprang into my mind were not about Confrontation or Rag'narok, but instead they were about Hybrid. And okay, to a lesser extent about the Cadwallon RPG and AT-43, but let us shelve those thoughts for now. Hybrid simply made sense and the more time passes the more it seems to become a reality.

Obviously Confrontation was the flagship product of Rackham and the one that made them popular and the one which ultimately made them sink into oblivion in the end. But back then Hybrid was a natural extension of the skirmish game, mimicking the steps Games Workshop took with things like Space Hulk, thus Rackham so beautifully flowed into that direction, doing it with such smoothness that it was simply amazing to witness. It had the classic Rackham signature quality with amazing art and design, packed with tons of lore and atmosphere, and a relatively simplified ruleset to what Confrontation had to offer. It was a big step into the world of boardgames which opened the gates of Aarklash to a potentially new source of consumers.

With this being said, it is important to understand that, unlike Rackham, Monolith is a board game company, first and foremost. They've dabbled into other avenues, namely RPGs and publishing art books for their games, but again lets shelve these for now. So as a board game company which operates for more than 10+ years on platforms such as Kickstarter and Gamefound, it simply makes sense for them to first step into Aarklash via Hybrid.

I know a lot of people are going to grab pitchforks at the first mention of Kickstarter (actually a lot of people are going to grab pitchforks just by the mere mention of any kind of Rackham revival, but they are fairly harmless clout chasers, so we can freely ignore them), but this post is not about that. If you want to take a chill pill for a second, sit down and go read my Monolith article linked above, it has some information to soothe your soul. And if that ain't enough, there'll be more posts about that topic on this blog, trust me.

What this post is about is me writing my thoughts down about how I think thus far released Monolith campaigns/games might translate into Hybrid and what are my expectations on how it will be shaped and modified in its new iteration, based on what I previously saw from Monolith. I have a lot to say about this subject, so probably this will be only a first post in a line of many to come. Also, this is still speculation at best and who knows, maybe they don't even do Hybrid and I end up looking like a fool. Whatever, it is fun to speculate, sue me.

Let's tackle the "boring" things first, the rules.

I've previously mentioned my experiences with games released by Monolith. I played two incarnations of their Mythic Battles games, with the latest Isfet still waiting in storage, and I've played Claustrophobia 1643. Way back when those crowdfunding campaigns were live, I also closely followed development of Batman: Gotham City Chronicles and Conan, as well as the latest Berserk/Rokugan campaigns, so I've read the rulebooks for all three of those titles even though I didn't back them, mostly due to limited storage space.

And for the purposes of this article, I've read the rulebook for Hybrid, but with an important caveat that I still haven't played a full game of it, just a dry run testing session, and I don't have firsthand experience with how this all plays out on the table. So take these opinions with a grain of salt.

All of this is to say that I think I have a fairly good grasp of how Monolith designs their games. They tend to have very streamlined basic rules, yet they gain complexity when certain bits of the rules system interact, which mostly means that the games themselves remain tactically engaging albeit simple. I think this kind of approach will benefit Hybrid tremendously. For me, Hybrid does seem to be fairly straightforward in some aspects, but then also tends to be a little needlessly complicated or confusing in certain spots. There are instances in Hybrid where the rulebook tries to give examples and explain a rule, only to leave you scratching your head and going back to the original rule for further clarification. As much as I understood browsing the internet, this was mostly the issue with the English translation of the Hybrid rulebook. This has never been an issue with a MB title, which are fairly straightforward and clear in the sense of layout, rule definitions, and overall clarity. Similarly, as much as I've noticed, no big discrepancies between language versions. 

Claustrophobia 1643 is also a good example to look into, since it is the same thing that Hybrid will be, a new version of a previously existing game released by a different publisher. The original Claustrophobia, while a great game, suffered a similar bane to that of Hybrid, since some rules were convoluted and needlessly complicated, while also somehow limiting its own tactical depth at the table. Monolith stepped in, modernized some rusty bits and pieces (to the absolute horror of the grognards mind you), streamlined some of the questionable rules which in turn made the game faster and more tactical, while keeping the overall Claustrophobic flavor. A clear win in my book.

When it comes to components, I think we'll be in for a massive upgrade in the new iteration of Hybrid. Monolith has always produced high quality games with sturdy, long-lasting components. For example, my group has actively played MB:Pantheon ever since the 1.5 version came out in 2018 with over a 100 games under our belt (yes, we keep a score, it is a dreadfully competitive group) and all the components are as good as new. Tokens, unit dashboards and cards, boxes, none show any kind of wear even after so many games.

Box comparison #1

That said, the actual box itself is in for a bump in quality. It didn't even occur to me to write about this, but when I took out both boxes to make some photos of the components the difference in quality is glaringly obvious. In almost all aspects the Isfet box is done better, from the actual material used, to the way the box is glued, its thickness, and the way it is coated to protect the print. Sure, Hybrid was released more than 20 years ago, but these are the sort of upgrades which will make the potential 2.0 even better.

Box comparison #2

The biggest upgrade I see coming is for the faction boards. I'd expect those to be of high-quality thick sturdy cardboard, probably multi-layered for order placement and keeping the tokens in place. The Hybrid "boards" are fairly bad due to essentially being just thicker paper and are easy to push and mess up all the tokens on them. Not to mention that you do have to handle them with more care, either that or laminate them yourself for extra sturdiness. And also, lest we forget the dreadful glare possessed by the boards. Under stronger light and many angles, they are nigh unusable.

Faction/unit board glare comparison

As you can see on the flipside, Monolith boards for MB are made of thick, reinforced cardboard which can definitely survive a lot of punishment and they have a nice matte finish with zero glare.

Faction/unit board thickness comparison

Similarly, I'd expect a glow-up (hehe) for the tokens themselves. Hybrid tokens, the ones that come from the cardboard sheet with the door tokens, are visually amazing, but when held in hand there is a bit of a weird glossy finish to them which tends to get easily tarnished over time and also feels somewhat sticky in your hands if they are being handled often, ultimately I suppose caused by the very thing that gives the components the strong glare. In contrast, the tokens so far produced by Monolith have had a matte finish which is smooth to the touch and is quite sturdy and resilient. If memory serves me well, between MB:Pantheon and Isfet the tokens grew in size slightly (haven't played Pantheon in a while, so my memory is a bit foggy), which is a welcome addition to prevent the fiddliness of handling. 

Token comparison

I'm not even going to comment the wound and activation tokens from the thin paper sheet, since those are an absolute crime in the original Hybrid. I'd expect a massive upgrade to those, we'll most likely get proper thick cardboard tokens or even actual dice for wound tracking or perhaps some plastic tokens, though these are not that common in Monolith games as far as I remember. Monolith does occasionally produce nice little 3d tokens, as you can see the cute little Isfet scarabs. 

Scarab tokens from MB:Isfet

Similarly, the update to the dice is a certainty. There's nothing wrong with the original Hybrid dice, but as a big RPG fan I'm not a stranger to weird and niche dice, so some bling for Hybrid 2.0 wouldn't do any harm. I'd go so far as to hope for maybe faction (or at the very least Light/Darkness) specific dice, which would definitely be a nice little addition to the box.

Dice comparison

When it comes to room tiles, Monolith showed what they can do with those in Claustrophobia 1643. That one was released way back in 2018 and the quality of those was excellent, again "lacking" that Hybrid glossy finish and instead featuring the abovementioned matte smoothness of the tokens. You can also see that on the gameboard of MB:Isfet below. Similar reinforced cardboard like the dashboards, our Pantheon boards survived quite a lot of yanking around with no visible tarnishing or damage. As I also mentioned in the component overview, they've expanded their color palette and the level of details up to Isfet, so I imagine they'll be able to do wonders for the new Hybrid boards. And again, no glare.

Game board/tile comparison #1

Game board/tile comparison #2

The biggest question mark will be the miniatures, simply because we don't know what Monolith plans to do in that regard. It is important to emphasize again that Monolith is a board game company and as such has an established process for producing board game quality miniatures made with a combo of PVC and ABS plastics. While I do believe their miniatures are of exceptionally high quality and are definitely the best I've seen in the board game world, they are still "board game quality" and nowhere near what old Rackham established as the norm and what metal is able to replicate in the sense of detail or longevity. It is fairly certain that we will definitely not see metal miniatures, for various reasons. For one, a hard pill to swallow for most people out there, is that Rackham grognards will not be the primary target audience in this campaign. The primary target is the dedicated board game crowd which Monolith garnered over the years and that crowd is used to the Monolith miniature standard. Of course the Rackham IP will attract fans of Rackham, but what I'm saying is that we need a dose of realism.

Second, unless you are producing metal miniatures in-house, things are bound to get expensive real fast nowadays. As far as I am aware, most bigger publishers who still work in metal are either doing it in-house, like Corvus Belli, or they are so small that their production costs are more affordable and on a much smaller scale, like Oathbound Studios, for example. Some publishers who previously had metal miniatures in their catalogue are slowly moving over to some type of plastic, like GCT Studios, the publishers of Bushido, and even Corvus Belli slowly moves over to plastics for their bigger miniatures.

Monolith, so far and to my knowledge, has no production in house, not even for their plastics. However... 

PVC/ABS is what we can expect with a some dose of certainty, but what I would potentially hope for is maybe some kind of crowdfunding pledge level where you might pay a more premium price to get models made entirely out of HIPS plastics, aka on plastic sprues. In order for something like this to happen, I would assume that Monolith would need to have new means of production which currently they do not have in their catalog. Personally, I would love for them to reach an agreement with Archon Studio and establish a manufacturing deal with them. They are currently one of my favorite European companies, thus far been made famous for producing their Dungeons & Lasers miniatures and terrain for RPGs, as well as contractually producing HIPS miniatures for games like Conquest and most recently Trench Crusade, but also dabbling in licensed IP's like Masters of the Universe and the upcoming StarCraft miniatures game. This would be an ideal way to nourish the wargaming crowd coming directly from Aarklash, but I'm not sure if this is something Monolith would be willing to try, nor am I aware of what kind of deal Archon might offer them. Monolith does so far provide different versions of games, where you have a standard bare-plastic version and a "shaded" plastic version as seen in the Berserk campaign, so they are definitely no stranger to producing essentially two products simultaneously. However, providing actually different materials is completely new ground for Monolith which I'm not sure they would explore, but it would absolutely be a direct hit for the more hobby painting part of the audience. 

I have some previous experience with products from Archon Studio, so if you're interested in reading more about that, let me know! I also have a tingling notion that Archon would be more than willing to participate in the revival of Aarklash, so there might be some more things to explore there in future articles.

Think I've opened a whole new can of worms with this final tidbit, so I'll stop the post here, but I'll definitely come back to this topic some time soon.

Again another reminder, the component overview post about Isfet perfectly shows what I mean with all of the above, so be sure to check it out for a much better visual description than what my convoluted words here can provide. I feel like these two articles will play well with each other. And also worth pointing out before anyone gets butthurt, this is not me dumping on Hybrid. Hybrid was and is a fantastic product and one that definitely left an impression on the industry. This is a simple product comparison and me day dreaming about what we might get in a new iteration of the game produced by Monolith, if it ever comes to pass.

But that's it for now, more posts on this subject to come! If you have any of your own thoughts to spare after reading this, be sure to leave a comment below as I'm more than curious what other people think on this matter. Thanks for reading, I'll see you soon!

Collection round-up - January 2026

So far in 2026 not a lot of writing has been posted here, mostly cause I've been busy with other things. Painting some Griffins for Hybrid, though right now a bit stuck in the process of basing them, organizing boardgame miniature painting sessions with a group of friends, whom I hope to introduce to Confrontation as soon as I see that they are properly hooked, and some more work done on the miniature galleries. This time around I've completed Concord, Dirz, TNB Dwarves and Elementals, so technically not a lot left until the finish line! I have also been writing one longer think piece article which I'll post soon enough, but until then here's a quick low effort collection round-up post.

Card packs! I've said it before and I'll say it again, card packs are one of my favorite supplementary Rackham things to get. Dripping with lore, atmosphere, and just the overall wonder of Aarklash, opening and browsing through a pack of cards is a beautiful ritual. Especially packs like the Travels or the The Vessel of the Winds campaign which weave a broader picture of the world and its happenings. Wonderful all around! So far I've acquired around 20 packs in total and it surprises me how many more I am yet to get... very exciting!

As far as blisters go, I was a bit all over the place this month, with nothing too fancy or rare to show off, but still attention worthy. The primary focus this year is going to be Hybrid, so I'm happy to expand my army rosters with Phidias, Thallions, and the version of Centurus which I've been missing. I am just a huge fan of the design for the members of the Lodge of Hod, since their aesthetics remind me of "Brotherhood of the Wolf", one of my favorite movies. And perhaps you remember, a chance encounter with the Centurus kicked off my raving addiction for Rackham a few years ago, so these clones have a special place in my heart. 

I'm also glad to be getting closer to having a complete collection of Behemoth orcs with those two Tracker blisters. I have a few more Behemoth things on the way, but I already see that the Behemoth Troll will be the hardest one to find as the final missing piece.

Syriak is also one of those Wolfen models which I always wanted to have, mostly because, somewhat typically, I like Red Oaks. The Drune Minotaur is a rather silly specimen in the world of amazing cow-related models of Aarklash, but still wonderful. Acquiring some of Drunes in the previous months made me slowly realize how much I like them, so I'm very pleased with the addition of the Minotaur, especially since he eluded me a couple of times in the past.

Next to all of those models the Kestrels and the Air Elemental were just additional small pickups which were stupidly cheap, each of them only a few euros. I already own one Air Elemental, which I painted during Sweet's painting challenge, but it's such a beautiful and unique sculpt that I didn't mind investing in one more piece.

And that's a wrap. As I said, a modest lot to kick the year off, but all packages full of Rackham goodness are welcome in this house! Thanks for reading, see you again soon!

Crôn giveth! Crôn taketh!

Hail Crôn! For he has certainly provided us a miraculous spectacle this holiday season! Praise be!

Suffice to say that the server probably never saw, nor will it ever see again, such an influx of painted Crôn miniatures, nor has the internet witnessed such a rapid disappearance of available models. The market will never recover, nor will the people involved. A truly historical moment and, as a proud Sessair supporter, I am glad I was a part of the madness.

While I do honestly believe that all the painted Crôns were amazing and that all people who participated were winners, only a selected few were deemed worthy of a prize by an unknown selection of judges. Thus, here they are in all their glory.

Painted by Shades.

Painted by boyzie2000uk.

Painted by PhillipKaltenstein.

Congrats to all the winners!

My personal favorite was actually the work done by Shades, since I love how clean and crisp it is done, not to mention the lovely choice of gold for the axe. Truly amazing to look at!

As far as my Crôn goes, I mentioned it briefly on the server, I went a bit overboard. Not so much with Crôn himself, but the included diorama which I built for him along the way and that part alone was a whole project in and of itself. But first, a glimpse at the Undefeated!

If you want to see a bunch of photos I took of the diorama click "read more" below, since I dumped a lot of them and it would be a huge post for the main page.