Reflections and goals at the end of 2025

Months go by and the wheel keeps turning, the yearly cycle coming to an end. I'm not one to celebrate the end of the year much, but this time of the year does always bring me into a contemplative mood. A good time to reflect and think about the plans ahead.

When it comes to hobbies, 2025 has been a good year all around. Collecting, painting, writing, reading, somehow I managed to do it all this year. Well, everything except playing, but I like to tell myself that that one is reserved for next year. Let's break it down.

Painting has suffered a little bit, I managed to paint only 22 miniatures, out of which 14 were Confrontation sculpts, almost half of what I painted in 2024. This was mostly due to two factors. First and foremost, painting challenges. In 2024 I was part of one escalation painting league and one painting competition, which I talked about in this post, the one organized by Sweet. This year I only took part in the challenge organized by Shino, covered in this post, and the current ongoing Crôn-mas Miracle competition. All of this is to say that I think events like these bring out the best of me when it comes to spending time at the painting table. I find those challenges extremely motivating and I always try to go the extra mile, using almost every free minute of the day to hold the brush. 

Without challenges and competitions I find it very easy to slip into other hobbies or some other less productive forms of procrastination. One of the positives was that I spent a lot of that time writing here and, to be honest, I enjoyed this journey a lot. And what I liked even more about it was sharing it with the community. End of September with the "Lucky finds..." and October with the "Climbing the Monolith" posts were an extremely motivating time, since those posts generated the most views and feedback from the readers. I hope that I contribute at least a small part to our hobby space and seeing some of my articles getting lots of clicks is humbling and inspirational.

That said, I like that I increased the monthly publishing count in the last quarter of the year and it is definitely something I hope to keep doing in the future. A considerable effort has been put into planning out schedules for posts and pondering about the things I want to write about down the line, so hopefully this space can continue being valuable and entertaining to all of you. 

Overall, I think 2025 has been a tremendous year for the blog, definitely surpassing my own expectations and hitting some important milestones. I think it provided me with much needed focus and space to clear my mind and to realize which hobbies are important to me. I've mentioned before, I'm all over the place and have many things I collect and ruminate over, but this blog and the community made me understand just how important Aarklash is to me, how deep I want to delve into it further, and how I only barely scratched the surface. It will definitely put a lot of other hobbies into the back seat and some I might drop entirely for the sake of Rackham's worlds.

Speaking of other hobbies, another factor which contributed to painting less is time spent writing elsewhere and just being away from home a lot. I've been traveling back to Serbia quite often this year and every time that I do I run an RPG campaign back in my hometown which takes a lot of preparation, which is enjoyable nonetheless! I have another blog where I sometimes post about RPGs which is currently on an extended break, but I hope to lively up that place soon-ish, at least in order to mention the campaign I'm running, so I'll definitely advertise it here for all those interested once that happens.

All of this is to say that I need more structure to organize my painting time when competitions, challenges, or leagues are not happening. My Confrontation collection keeps growing rapidly and I dislike seeing it just sit there, regardless of calling it a pile of "shame" or "potential". The collection has easily quadrupled since the blog started and I don't think the purchasing sprees are gonna slow down any time soon, so the brush truly needs to see more use.

So, what are my goals moving forward and for 2026 specifically?

• Try to achieve, or hopefully surpass, my painted miniature count of 2024 - this means have at least 40 miniatures painted by the end of 2026, with at least half being miniatures released by Rackham;
• Figure out a good painting regiment in order to achieve this - aka stay motivated to paint even when no "events" are being held;
• Keep my focus on Rackham - reorganize all my other hobbies and stay focused on Rackham games primarily;
• Get some games going - my aim is to get Hybrid on the table first and make that a semi-regular activity, then slowly transition over to Confrontation;
• Write, write, write - ideally, I would love to keep posting here once every week, or once every other week, if I could keep up that pace for the entire year I will be quite happy;

I have a lot of other plans and wishes for the time ahead, but I want to keep these goals strict and achievable. All the signs point to 2026 being another great year and I'm looking forward to sharing that journey with you all. A huge thank you to everyone reading the blog and taking any kind of interest in my thoughts on here, the support and attention means the world. Hope you all had a great year and that the time ahead of us will treat you even better. See you soon!

Survival guide for the rabid collector

One of my previous posts about the moments when collecting made me sad and frustrated truly got me thinking. I've read numerous bad experiences from other collectors, not just among those who collect Confrontation mind you, and many of those make my lows completely pale in comparison. There are horror stories out there and I'm glad that I've managed to evade them in a rather wide swing.

But it did get me thinking regarding why that is. I don't consider myself all that lucky, persistent and patient more than anything else, and I'm also not one to toot my own horn above anyone else's misery and imply that they were careless and dumb and I was not. But I guess there simply is something that I'm doing that's reaping me rewards or at least making me not lose sleep over bad shopping decisions.

Contemplating all this got me behind the keyboard again, so here we are. Before delving deeper though, Drunes and Acheron galleries are done now as well!

I've mentioned a couple of times before, I honestly think that the Confrontation market is pretty stable and healthy, a fact which warrants to be repeated. When you consider for how long the game has been dead, it is surprising to find a lot of product circulating around at decent prices. Sure, you get some crazy spikes for some models or just clueless sellers on eBay trying to rip you a new one, but for the most part the community is keeping it normal.

As time goes on and product truly becomes scarce, some models do stop appearing so often, thus you either have to arm yourself with some extra patience or you have to bend the knee and go outside of the community for your purchases. Most people don't have the patience since life moves fast nowadays, so going out into the wild in search for loot is where accidents happen. 

It's worth noting that I've been collecting various things ever since I was a kid... Card games, RPG books, board games, the list is long and one might say that I have a problem, but all those hobbies have more failed stories than what I wrote about before. I lost money many a time, though never spectacularly since I've always been careful with spending, but all those failures gradually accumulated some worthy experience for evading monetary disaster.

Without further ado, here's the survival guide for the rabid collector, or simply how to be safe when venturing outside of the community safety and stepping into the world of various obscure online stores and websites.

Spend some time and do research. I think I spend a considerable amount of my time browsing the market, keeping tabs on past sales, active auctions, current offers, and then you kind of get a good sense of health when it comes to the state of the market. This is especially important if you are new to Confrontation and you learn what is rare and what is common. Similarly, the below image is a good guideline of the prices within the community, but venturing outside warrants some price increases unless you're lucky and the seller is generous. However, as I said, knowing the market and its past, you'll get a sense of what is rare and what is justified to be more expensive than what the list says.

On a similar note, and probably the most important piece of advice, stay calm. Rare things are out there. Rare things that are cheap are also out there. But often times if you see a rare thing for a low price, to the point where it seems too good... that's when you need to be careful. It's easy to be trigger happy, but it's also easy just to take a breath and think about it: either you're lucky and the item is just sitting there waiting for you, in which case congrats, or it is there because it stinks and others saw it and walked past it leaving it for the next sucker. In order to not be the sucker, keep on reading and thank you for the continued attention.

If you're on renowned second hand market websites (such as eBay or the French Leboncoin), always prefer ads with actual photos of the item in question, not just a "stock" photo. Stock photo auctions rarely end up being NIB or legit product, but if you do stumble on such ads which tickle your interest some of the points below will be helpful to verify it. Similarly, non-stock photos could as well be taken from other places on the internet and reposted, in which case it is an obvious scam. You'd be surprised how often this happens. If you are insane like me spend a lot of time browsing the market eventually you'll end up semi-recognizing past ad photos, so you'll get your sixth sense tingling when these reused photos appear. 

Read the ad description of the listing carefully. I've had friends collecting "Oldhammer" get burned millions of times buying loose miniatures which end up being recasts, simply because they haven't read the ad description which clearly stated that they are recasts. It did also happen to me once on an auction for an RPG book which stated in its fine print that it is a print-on-demand copy. That one is on me. Just read people, please.

Engage with the seller. If you have any doubts about anything, contact them. Ask for a photo of the actual item or ask some follow-up questions regarding the description if they can't provide an image. No photo for me is usually sus, but sometimes I might cave in either if the price is low enough or the seller is good with communicating.

Similarly, if the seller doesn't sound any alarm bells in your head and you end up buying from them, always ask if they have more product and make an offer regardless. In my experience there's always a high chance that they do and they just haven't listed it yet cause they are still debating whether to sell or they are going through a backlog of items. This obviously applies to sellers you consider legit.

All that said, if you're shopping on these second hand auction websites like the aforementioned eBay or Leboncoin, you're somewhat protected as a buyer and you usually have rights to file a claim or report the seller if you feel like the seller did you over when it comes to delivery or item condition, etc. These are things worth keeping in mind cause technically you can be a bit more relaxed on those markets.

The real hazard is on random stores on the internet and unknown low traffic online shops.

Always check if the store has other items from "live" publishers, especially those that are currently considered new. By this I mean whatever is fresh in other games that are currently in print. For example, at the time of writing this the Thunder's Edge expansion for the Twilight Imperium boardgame is popping up on most active websites, or if the store sells GW product it is easy to quickly check online what is their newest release and whether the store has it. This is a good indication that the store is still operational, since a lot of the stores where Confrontation or any other older game pops up are sadly defunct and haven't been updated in ages. A good tip for easy inspection is to check the copyright stamp on the homepage of the store, you know one of those "© 2017-2025" for example. If that latter year is like 2012 then I have some sad news for you.

Additionally, go into a bit of a stalker mode and check the social media of the store. If there are no socials for the webstore, that usually ends up being a red flag. If there are, check if they have recent updates. If they do have socials, but the last update was from some years ago, this could mean that they just stopped being active on there, yet other times it might indicate that they have shut down their operations and the store is no more.

Further into the store stalker mode, you can also check the store's contact page. If there is no phone or address listed, red flag in my book. If there is a phone, good, though I don't recommend you ring up international numbers, so be weary of the store's country of origin. Phone usually isn't the deal breaker, but having a physical address scores major points. If they have an address, Google Maps Street View is your friend and many times that can help you verify the authenticity of the vendor. But, keep in mind that many smaller stores did move to being fully online during/after the great plague of 2020, so the address could just point you to their warehouse or otherwise weird looking location where it is hard to imagine a store or gaming club. In the end, it never hurts to send the store an email, if they have one listed.

If the store has a lot of rare product, chances are that it is no good. Either a dead store from back in the day, some kind of scam, or just a recaster. The latter category has some pretty notorious or famed websites, depending on who you ask, so if you want to see a list of the known ones you can find that list on the "7 Hills" discord server. Personally I dislike recasts and just don't want to give them traffic from here, so I'm not going to list them.

Last, but definitely not the least, interact with the community. Chances are that you can find someone who lives in the country or state where a particular store is located, the player map is helpful for this, and just ask them if they've heard about the store or if they've shopped there before. This can obviously save you a lot of trouble verifying all of the above yourself.

And I think that is about it. This wasn't a super exhaustive list of all the things that you can do to be 100% safe, since technically there isn't a completely foolproof method for hunting rare things. You do need some luck, but some of these tips listed above are just little things you can do to minimize going utterly unprepared. It might seem like a bit of homework, but it'll keep you happy in the long run and at some point you might even end up enjoying the whole process of investigation, like I do. It's fun looking into the bowels of the internet and seeing what pops up. 

Do you have any special tips and tricks for hunting those rare pesky minis and avoiding traps? Drop a comment, I'm always interested in new tools of the trade.

Thanks for reading and remember, patience is a virtue. Happy hunting!

Hybrid and Hybrid: Nemesis

I'm a simple creature, a visual creature, and I imagine that we all are. We all like looking at pretty things, especially in this hobby, and I think we're lucky enough to be so extensively spoiled by Rackham and all their pretty things. I remember, at some point, searching for the contents of the Rag'Narok box and stumbling upon this post on the "Strange News From Under There" blog. And I also remember scrolling through it back and forth, enjoying all the gorgeous content inside the box.

At some point later in time I hoped that I would be able to view the same thing for Hybrid somewhere on the internet, but as far as I could see there was no such thing. The blog called "thecount" created this post detailing Hybrid via all the rules, Cry Havoc articles, and Hybrid unit profile cards in French, but that wasn't exactly what I was looking for. So, here we are now.

Hybrid & Hybrid: Nemesis

This is an attempt to create a simple visual overview of the components for both the Hybrid core box and the Nemesis expansion. Not a full review per se, but I will toss some words into it to make it a bit more interesting. 

Photo dump coming in, so you know the drill, click "read more" below to see the full post!

Collection round-up - November 2025

As before, a small note ahead of today's post. New miniature galleries are complete, this time featuring both Orc factions and the Lions of Alahan. I'll have to admit that this journey of investigating and uploading of the galleries has started bearing fruit. The whole process of diving into one specific army and being surrounded by it makes me somehow appreciate it more. Never in my wildest dreams did I think that this would be possible for the Lions, but I've grown somehow more tolerant of them. I've recoiled in disapproval every time I saw their models previously, but now I come to realize that there are some interesting sculpts within their ranks. Miracles do happen! Though I'm fairly certain that my disgust for Dwarves of Tir-Nâ-Bor will remain steadfast. We'll see soon enough!

Now onto the meat and potatoes. Previously when I planned out what I want to post on the blog as far as my collection updates are concerned I just wanted to show what I have from specific armies. Which, I come to realize, in the long run doesn't make much sense since I'd have to repost some armies over and over again as I acquire more, since let's be real, every army I have is not fully complete. So instead, now I decided to group my purchases and do a monthly summary of what I've managed to snag. And oh boy, this month was a big one!

November haul!

Big, beautiful boxes! And I would say a pretty important milestone achieved in my collection. Some would argue that AT-43 and Hybrid are the best things Rackham ever released, rightfully so. I haven't delved into either deeply enough yet to deny or confirm this, but finally holding them in my hands I can definitely say that both are insanely impressive. I plan to do more thorough posts for both games sometimes soon, so stay tuned.

The Damocles purchase came with an extra army book for Therians and the Operation Frostbite campaign book. I was extremely happy with the addition of the army book, since Therians are visually my favorite faction in AT-43. Not only that, but the box itself came with a few extra Therians, namely some Assault Medusae, a few Golem Specialists and two Nano Generators, which I forgot to take out of the box for the photo. Needless to say, a great purchase for yours truly, made even greater by the price tag on the whole lot which was a whooping 30 euros.

Hybrid and Nemesis both came unwrapped, but all the contents have been untouched inside. It was a bit steeper price tag, around 150 euros, but still a great deal considering that just the core box goes for that much at times and not at all in NIB condition in most cases. I think only the French version of the game is still available at Rackham-esque prices, which is extremely commendable thanks to the efforts of the French community.

The two Cry Havoc magazines and the Aarklash world book I picked up for crazy cheap, around 2 euros total. Sure, the CH issues didn't come with the gaming aids booklet and the cards, but just having them on hand for so cheap was worth it. Especially neat in my case is that both of these issues have some terrain building tutorials which I plan on recreating, so these will be workbench copies which might get stained and messy along the way. The extra Aarklash book is nice to have as a reading copy, since I've heard these have notoriously bad spines with pages falling out often if used regularly. 

And that's it for the month of November! As of this post, we're already a few days into December and I've already landed some hefty new purchases, plus I'm already writing several other upcoming articles, so a lot of things are cooking. Stay tuned and thanks for reading!

It's a Crôn-mas Miracle! Winter 2025 Painting Competition

Yes, you read that right! There is a new Confrontation painting competition brewing on the 7 Hills server. Technically it is already under way and running only until Christmas, but there's still enough time to join.

You only have to paint one miniature, the almighty Crôn The Undefeated. If you are wondering why that particular character, Crôn will be merciful towards your ignorance this time around. Head on over and read his entry in the Sessair miniature gallery and stop embarrassing yourself.

But enough yapping because we're short on time, here are the rules of the competition as written by Krillion:

***

Welcome to the final painting competition of 2025! 
Hosted by @Jeremy from End of the World
The rules are simple. Paint the best Crôn in all its Crônness glory. 
If you wish to participate please post a picture of your unassembled/assembled but unpainted/primered model no later than December 10th.

Your models will be judged on the overall Crôn-ness they display and how well they are technically executed.
Attempts to detract from the Crônosity of the model via needless conversions or head/weapon swaps may negatively impact your overall score.
This is an attempt to find the Crôntonic ideal of a miniature painted in just over 1 month.
There will be a prize for Best Crôn even though everyone here knows Crôn is already the best.

***

And there you have it. It'll be fast, it'll be brutal, it'll be glorious in the name of our UNDEFEATED champion. And yes, of course, I'm participating. And yes, I am a firm believer that all of us lucky enough to paint Crôn have already won. See you on the battlefield!

"THIS DAY WILL SEE YOUR END!"

Bad luck and garbage bins

Before we begin, another entry to the Miniature Galleries has been added, this time featuring the Wolfen of Yllia, plus I went back and edited some of the previously posted armies. Progress has been slower than what I hoped for because life got a bit chaotic lately, but I'll keep on truckin'!

Back in September in my "Lucky finds and bargain bins" post I touched on a couple of instances in my Confrontation collecting journey which I found inspiring and worthy of sharing. Truth be told, most of my collection is bound to end up on the blog, but these little vignettes are definitely some of the moments which made the journey thrilling. I think I'm lucky enough to say that most of my Confrontation acquisitions have been positive experiences. Sure, I broke some serious bank on several occasions, a mistake I'll definitely make again, but it's still a good hobby investment when you consider factors like the game's age and the inevitable scarcity of NIB product, its sheer rarity and rise of value as a result. 

What I'm trying to say is that this is a hobby after all and as such it is a luxury. True collectors need to be ready to break the bank on occasion, especially when that special rare piece pops up out of nowhere and you just pull the trigger regardless of a potentially outrageous price. In all honesty, I'm currently in such a mood, since I found a truly rare piece hidden in one corner of the internet, but it is three times the amount of what models of that size go for... but that's another story, hopefully.

However, on certain other occasions, contrary to that previous blog post, are those times when you've pulled the trigger and are just out of luck, or you hit a certain collecting frustration that you end up making some mistakes. And in those moments, the luxury feels like a nuisance. So with all that said, this is what this post will be about, thus I welcome you to my shit show.

This is probably a bit too dramatic, as I've never been burned too much. It's more that I've brought myself into situations where I just ended up scratching my head and wondering what the hell I was thinking. One such situation stems from the string of successful local purchases. As you've seen in my first collection post, a series of various blisters, boxes, and card packs randomly popped up on my radar locally, all of which I ended up buying. This kind of became a thing, to the point where I'd see some Confrontation locally and I'd just buy it without question. Which has been fine, up to a point when it wasn't. 

On that occasion, the first of my blunders, I saw an ad for a Dirz Neuromancer for some fraction of a blister price and it seemed to be in order. Listed as "unused", the one photo posted in the ad showed the see-through side of the blister, the miniature definitely seemed unused and the stamp said it was the English version. So far so good. Not so good when it arrived though! The blister was clearly open before, since the sword was already glued to the mini and there was some tiny amount of glue residue elsewhere, the card was missing, and the biggest insult of all was the included round base... Long story short, the seller was kind enough to just return the money back to me and actually let me keep the miniature, as he made it kind of obvious that he doesn't need it back, so I guess a curse also came in the blister but he decided not to disclose this information. Regardless, this hasn't been so damaging since I got my money back but the whole ordeal just made me feel bad.

The longer you stare...

...the more painful it gets.

Didn't learn from the bad experience though! Next time a Confrontation auction popped up I slapped that BID button faster than you could blink... Just thinking about it makes my eye twitch a little. It was this second hand lot of used miniatures featuring some Sessairs and a bit of Cadwallon. Eventually I got it after a small bidding war, so I cashed out some 30 euros for Kelen, Guardians of the Moor, Kelian Durak and the Cadwallon Militia. Which doesn't sound too terrible, but some pieces of the Militia were missing, the bases were terribly treated by the previous owner, there were no cards, and some of the minis had some bent weapons and/or truly bad paint slapped on them... not to mention poor Kelian Durak being so badly set on the base that his weapon had to be bent in order to fit. This auction definitely deflated my spirits at the time and it made me become more aware and hesitant about second hand lots. Maybe it's just me being spoiled by good luck with NIB products previously, but used miniatures really need to be either something truly special, at a very low price per model, or in nigh pristine condition to get me excited. And I definitely learned from this experience, though luckily that specific lesson cost me cheaply.

Send help...

Other times, there are factors which are seemingly out of your control. A while back I stumbled upon a decent stash of items on eBay from a seller in the UK and I ended up winning a few blisters. Since the seller had a bunch of stuff I wrote to them and asked if they have things that have yet to be listed, because chances are that I'd be interested and can offer a reasonable price for any potential items. They said "no". Items arrive some weeks later and then boom, the person puts some more listings up. Bit frustrating, but still interesting, so I bid again, win again, ask again, get a "no" again. Items arrive, they list stuff again. Obviously, they don't owe me anything, nor am I feeling entitled to anything, but this just felt like I'm being strung around to no obvious benefit to either of us... the items I won on the second auction I got at a lower price than what I would offer the seller have they said that they have stuff in their backlog, so the seller lost money, and I had to pay shipping and import taxes, again, so I lost money. Either way, I stopped looking at that particular seller after that second purchase, even though they kept listing stuff. Could be that they were periodically plundering their stash, but still I think this is bad practice for both parties involved and sometimes it is just wiser to step away.

Another "out of my control" situation happened last summer when I purchased quite a hefty used second hand lot of miniatures. I won't cover this story too much here since it is currently sitting in my drafts waiting to be published as one of my Collection Update posts, but that one I list as a "bad" experience since the minis were poorly packaged and various pieces came broken. I don't blame the seller, because they did what they could, but it is one of those situations where you simply have to accept that things can't always go according to plan. I'll take the punches and, if nothing else, it'll be a cool process to salvage that army. But more on that in another post. 

One more "interesting" adventure happened when I stumbled upon a fairly obscure website which had a lot of Rackham product listed. I got in touch with the store and of course it turned out that most of the product was out of stock. For some of the items which they did supposedly have there were some weird communication failures coming from the store, so in the end I backed out of the purchase. Fairly strange encounter, but I guess the depths of the internet hold many a thing best left untouched.

And I guess that's it for my bad experiences. Quite unimpressive, I'll admit. But looking back at collecting Confrontation thus far, as well as collecting many other things in other hobbies, I haven't had any major blunders, nor have I lost lots of money due to poor choices, though I'm not entirely sure why that is. Truth be told, as I've mentioned before, Confrontation is in a very healthy and safe spot. There's a lot of product circulating in a relatively small community, so the chance of a scam is at a minimum. In most cases you don't have to venture far and wide to find models, as even being on the outskirts of the community you are bound to find what you're looking for eventually. I feel like one of the big benefits when collecting Rackham games is that the company is dead and people often decide to give up and sell their collections simply because they aren't playing or interacting with it anymore. And also when you think about it, in the grand scheme of things the years when Rackham was active aren't that far away in the past and there are much older games and products which are still circulating today.

The market is alive, is all I'm saying. And if you do end up being burned a few times, chin up and wise up, because the hunt goes ever on and on.

Kelian Durak preventing me from making further mistakes...

One package flew into the cuckoo's nest

I've been working on a few longer "think piece" posts lately, so while I've been bouncing between some research and contemplation for those I've decided to write a more casual collection update in the meantime. This is also done in the hopes of guilt tripping myself into getting Confrontation back to the painting table via a visual reality check of how many unopened miniatures are still held hostage in my closet. Spoiler alert, it is a lot. But at least, as a result, there will be a lot of content on here, so hopefully you enjoy reading about it all.

Hello eBay, my old friend...

Photo dump coming in, so you know the drill, click "read more" below to see the full post!

Climbing the Monolith (MB:Isfet unboxing)

'twas a rainy day yesterday, pretty gloomy and grim in my part of Scandinavia, but made all the more enjoyable via the simple act of the local courier dropping off 15kg of Monolith goodness on my doorstep. Yes, the long awaited package from the Mythic Battles: Isfet Kickstarter campaign has finally arrived. 

Before I get into the actual meat and potatoes of the post, I'd just like to briefly point out that two more factions have been added to the Miniature Galleries section, namely the Ophidian Alliance and the Devourers of Vile-Tis. It's a bit of a slow process, mostly since Blogger is a bit clunky when it comes to formatting (this post especially was a nightmare to edit!), there's a lot of back and forth in order to make everything perfect and my OCD definitely isn't helping. However, I'm truly enjoying the process, because I am using this chance to get a better understanding of some of the models which I might have overlooked previously, plus not to mention expanding my own knowledge about some of the trivia of certain profiles. I tried adding a bit of extra information on some entries, but I'm still trying to decide what it is that these galleries are supposed to contain, just data regarding the actual models or also some info about the cards as well. Regardless, it's loads of fun and, again, if you've got any kind of feedback then I'll gladly hear you out.

But now, let us get into the review/unboxing! I've used a post break here since this one is long and heavy on images, so unless you actually clicked on the post and are seeing the whole thing, please click "read more" below.

The sands of time cannot be stopped...

Under The Mountain is dead! Long live Under The Mountain!

A blog of legendary status throughout many years into the past, it seems that it has almost completely ceased to exist recently. For whatever reason, some months ago the whole section hosting the Confrontation model images has disappeared from the blog. I initially thought that maybe this was due to Monolith acquiring Rackham rights and the establishment of the new Rackham Games and that perhaps the UtM owner was simply afraid of any potential legal action by the new owners. When you think about it, this wouldn't make sense due to Fair Use rights, since UtM made no profit off of the images, nor claimed them as their own. In any case, a few weeks ago I revisited the site and now it seems that all of the content from it has been removed and only an empty page greets you when you visit the blog. 

Regardless of the reason, this is a severe loss to the Confrontation resource pool since it preserved a lot of precious information from the game's heyday. I've spent countless hours browsing through it and it has singlehandedly kept my interest in Rackham creations strong in the years before I got personally invested in Confrontation. It was always such a simple pleasure to browse through all the model images hosted there. 

Of course, everything is still accessible via the Wayback Machine, but it is definitely not an optimal solution and you never know when that might get scrubbed away as well. But as Christopher Paolini writes, "...years pass whether we will them or not… but we can remember," and remember we will.  And not only that, but we should continue the legacy established by our predecessors. 

With this in mind, I want to use my blog and continue carrying the torch of usefulness for the community. And since UtM was, among many other things, most famous for hosting images of all of the Confrontation models, this is where I will also start. This has been something that I've wanted to do for a long while and now is finally the time.

On the right side pane you will find links to Model Galleries of specific factions. For now it only features the three Elven factions (Akkyshan, Cynwäll, Daïkinee), but I will make an effort to periodically add more to it. The miniature entries have a recognizable format previously established by UtM, but I've so far tried to fill in some gaps with additional information from other resources where possible. 

This will be a continual work in progress and in some way I would like this to be a community endeavor. If you spot that any information is wrong, or there is something crucial that I've missed adding, or you have a suggestion on how to further expand the entries, please feel free to get in touch. I am in no way anywhere close to being a Rackham scholar and historian, as some members of the community certainly are, so it would be great to get some feedback in order to make all of this useful for other people, especially those new to the hobby.

As always, thanks for reading and I hope you stick around!

Lucky finds and bargain bins

EDIT: I wrote this post at the beginning of September, but got lazy with taking photos and uploading them, thus the delay in publishing.

Some days ago there was a brief discussion on the 7 Hills discord server about lucky finds and good deals, so it kind of inspired me to share some of my loot highlights.

I've already mentioned during that discussion that my greatest bargain deal was definitely a 1 euro copy of the Dogs of War book which I snagged from an Ebay auction. Obviously I was the only bidder, which somewhat made me think that I misread the ad and that it is either a fake ad or the book was a DIY printed copy, but for such a low price I was willing to gamble. Turned out to be the real deal in the end. This one was closely followed by a still-shrink-wrapped Cadwallon RPG book for 10 euros, along with a GM Screen for free, found in a local used bookstore.

These books are worth picking up for the design and the art alone...

Moving on, back when I was making some initial purchases for my Sessairs as part of the painting challenge last year, I purchased both Sons of Ogmios models, separately priced as single models, 8 euros each. Little did I know that these were not single models, but each 8 euro "blister" was actually one of those boxes containing two blisters, as seen on the image below.  That was quite an unexpected surprise! As far as I've noticed online, these boxes don't appear in circulation that often anymore, which is quite a shame since the artwork on them is gorgeous, and it definitely makes this find all that more special. The art on the boxes is such a classic Confrontation piece and I've been lucky enough to get the third art panel in some other purchased lot where the person just randomly threw in the box as part of the overall packaging. I'll drop a few images here, but the one with all three panels will be posted all the way at the bottom!

The next one I always considered a "must have". Ever since I got into Confrontation I knew I needed to have some Wolfen in my collection and the Predators of Blood seemed like a staple. I remember that I kept eyeing some Ebay listings which were decently priced, but months passed by quickly and all those ended up being sold before I decided to pull the trigger... and when my budget was finally ready to buy a box the available prices seemed to have jumped significantly or the offered boxes weren't the English version. It kinda made me sad for bumming out on those previous deals, but I just kept occasionally checking Ebay and doing random Google searches. Well, on one such bored Google search a hit appeared for a NIB box in English, just the way I like it, for the hefty price of 20 euros, which I liked even more. The bigger surprise was the fact that the item was located in a semi-local store. The store was well known to me and at the time I knew that they had some small amount of Confrontation stock which I already plundered, but out of nowhere the PoB box appeared. I thought it was a mistake, but I ordered anyway, half expecting them to cancel the order due to it actually being out of stock. But surprise surprise, the box arrived, safe and sound and still in shrink!

The auction mystery bag...

Aside from Ebay I tend to check other second hand websites from time to time, like the French leboncoin. There was one particular auction which featured several blisters of metal miniatures from Reaper and a few from Rackham, namely unopened English blisters for the Goblin Fire Support and Syth Mornis, plus one ziplock bag with a few small metal minis and cards, pictured above. The little baggy was what piqued my interest. The auction image showed that the card in the bag was turned to the back where the Rackham logo was, so you couldn't instantly tell which blister it was supposed to be. However, zooming in on the semi-bad quality photo showed that the minis were Cynwall Akhamials. I think I haven't seen English Akhamials... probably ever out in the wild, so this made my heart skip a beat, but I couldn't tell if they were in fact English since the card was flipped, or it was the more common French variant. The other two Rackham blisters were in fact in the English language, so it made me hopeful. However, to my great frustration, the seller also decided to not respond to questions, which did raise some red flags. In the end, I decided to bite the bullet and enter a luckily short bidding war, coming out on top at around 30 euros, if I remember well. Some weeks of anxiety and shipping and the box arrived, so I instantly dived in straight onto that one single zip-lock baggy, only to reveal... the English card version! If any purchase ever epitomized the meaning of "the thrill of the hunt" this was absolutely it!

Who dares, wins!

I'll share one more short story and it's by far one that somehow struck me the most. Not much of a story actually, but more of a fact that I've randomly found an English NIB Daikinee Dream Warrior just laying around online. One of the rarer scarab models, it was just sitting there for 15 euros. It seemed so surreal, since previously I never saw it available, as it is one of those models that were basically released to be rare, and I thought that it will be a miniature which will forever elude me. Yet there it was, a literal dream come true without much sweat or sacrifice. 

Don't let your dreams be dreams...

These little stories are definitely not all of the great bargains which I landed, just some which I found amusing to share. Nor are they anything over-the-top crazy like other people shared previously online where they'd land truly insane amounts of models for pennies or less. All of these stories here are just to tell you that good deals truly are out there, still available after all these years. I believe that at least 90% of the Rackham catalog is out there somewhere waiting to resurface, but you just need to be patient and vigilant. Not to mention that Confrontation still maintains its normalcy when it comes to pricing. For the most part the community tries to maintain fair prices and even the odd sales outside the community are priced fairly overall, even the rare models don't even come close to the price pumping that some other games tend to do on the second hand market. It's just that we've been spoiled by the speed and availability of most mundane things today, we always want the thing we want asap, preferably yesterday. But the old cliche is true, good things take time. 

Painting Challenge 2025 retrospective

The 2025 painting challenge has been officially over since early June and I took my time to settle and collect some thoughts about it. 

First off, the winner is... surprise, surprise, it is none other than yours truly! No really, I do consider it a huge surprise. Here's the sum of my work for the challenge (more images posted below*):

Double the sass, triple the excitement!

Honestly, I didn't expect to win or come anywhere close to winning when the challenge started. During the first month when people started posting their progress I was so sure that some other participants would win and that I'd be in it just for the inspiration and drive to put some more painted minis on my shelves. Sadly, though to my advantage, many participants started falling off as months went by, so by the end of it only discord user ViscountFrangipane and myself stayed as the only consistent participants for the entirety of the challenge. The lack of more competition doesn't very much speak for the quality of my own paintjobs, but I guess that persistence and consistence are their own merit and reward.

I've had a lot of thoughts circling in my head during the challenge, so this post will be structured around some noteworthy topics that stuck out.

Favorite model I painted: Absolute favorite miniature to put together was the Kelt Minotaur, by far the chunkiest model I've handled to date in Confrontation. Usually I dislike painting larger miniatures since the mistakes you make with the brush are glaringly obvious, but this guy was a joy. There are a lot of interesting details for you to work on, yet the model itself is not overcrowded, which sometimes tends to be the case with smaller miniatures. 

As much as I enjoyed painting the cow, I did suffer a dropping accident while painting the Minotaur which was honestly quite rage inducing. I made the mistake of not getting/creating a proper painting handle so I just held him by the base for the entirety of the process... needless to say, this was uncomfortable and unwieldy, so much so that I dropped him directly on his head at one point and he just snapped in half, despite being pinned. Not to mention that sections of paint peeled off... Unsurprising in hindsight, because the model is heavy. At least he didn't end up breaking my desk with his horns! Lesson learned for the future, I guess!

Least favorite model I painted: Out of all the painted models I think the one that was least fun was the Kelt Druid. Not sure why, but he reminded me of the Kelt Shaman which I painted for the challenge last year and for some reason they were a bit boring to spend time with. Must be something about Sessair spellcasters... Regardless, I'm happy how he turned out in the end. 

What I need to improve: Shino took the time to provide some feedback to those of us who asked for it and I have to agree that some of his points are pretty valid. The main point where I'm currently lacking is definitely NMM. I get the idea, I get the theory, but when it comes to the actual execution I am definitely lacking in skill. Some pieces that I painted this time around I'm relatively happy with (for example, the Fianna and the Minotaur), but some not so much (like the Fianna Totem-Bearer and the Ogmios). Shino sent a couple of videos for me to go over, so I'll link them below* for those interested since they really are a good resource.

Another suggestion for improvement that Shino made was regarding my bases. While I definitely want to put more effort into bases overall, I found that this type of minimalistic rock/brownish grass works really well for the plains of Avaggdu, aesthetically speaking. It definitely is a low effort kind of solution, which is good for a time-based competition like this, but it goes well in my opinion. However, I do agree I could have done more and it is something that I absolutely want to do more of, since I always found bases and dioramas to be relaxing and fun. Temple of the West did an amazing batch of Daikinee for the competition and his bases are superb, a brilliant inspiration for my own Daikinee which I hope to paint next year! 

What I failed: My one point of personal failure was that out of all the models which I listed for painting, the extra ones included, I only didn't manage to paint Virae on time. Technically there was time since the challenge ended on June 7th, but I decided that May 30th was my cut off date. Regardless of time, her model is... a bit of a pain. Similar to how people complain about Ayane, Virae has tiny arms (one of which holds a heavy hammer) and a small neck as connecting points and I simply had no patience to pin and glue her at the time.

Personal favorite army: I already mentioned above, but the Daikinee painted by Temple of the West are my absolute favorite. The dude is a beast when it comes to how fast he paints, but to make it look so well in the end is just insanity. Loved the color choices, the amazing bases, the ambiance of the shots... loved everything about those models!

Comparison to the previous competition and thoughts for the future: Now a bit of space for some unpopular opinions. Sweet set a pretty high bar with the challenge he hosted last year, it was casual, fairly light when it comes to rules, and overall just a fun 6 month event where you essentially just needed to slap some paint on your minis and count your points. Shino tried a different approach with more structure, a shorter challenge duration, and, more importantly, scoring via judge.

Some of the rules changed a few times once the competition was well under way and it is somewhat understandable that some people might get annoyed by that. But the part that I truly didn't understand is people being upset by getting a certain amount of points (or lack thereof) from the judge, less than what they expected I guess. It's fine being defensive of your work and thinking that your work might be better than somebody else's, but it is the judge's job to make those decisions. What they say goes and it doesn't really matter what you think, it's just up to you to keep on truckin' and get some feedback about what you could improve. I know it's "easy" for me to say this since I won the damn thing in the end, but I honestly believe that if some of you didn't drop out and just continued to paint you'd have won with points way above mine. And as I mentioned before, I completely disagree with Shino's opinion on my bases, which did obviously net me less points each month, but I just stuck to my guns and kept going, cause I just had fun participating. 

And I guess that's the whole point. I simply wish that more people continued painting instead of being so pissed off about it cause it did make the whole thing a bit awkward. It was just a fun event to participate in and it's a bit sad that we collectively missed the opportunity to get more active and do some creative stuff together, especially since we are a small number of people who realistically aren't the best painters anyway, so I think we should always take the time to jump on these bandwagons and lively up the community, especially when somebody puts in the time and effort to organize the thing in the first place. Hopefully next time, but there are definitely some lessons to be learned for everyone involved! 

My setup for miniature photography: ViscountFrangipane and I got into a small discussion about taking photos of miniatures and I promised to take a picture of my "setup". I say "setup" because it's just an amateurish and made-up thing, but it actually makes the photo-snapping process fun for me and the models do end up looking nice and thematic, in my humble opinion at least.

So yeah, as you can see, just a propped up platform with some boxes, the monitor for background imagery, and the lamp which I use while painting. The top box is from the Shadows of Esteren RPG, the art of which went really well with the background I used for the Sessairs. I also use the layered boxes as a holder for the mobile phone when taking the shot, since you don't actually have to hold your phone and can just easily adjust settings on it without putting effort into staying steady and still, plus you have the freedom to move around the mini for different angles. The monitor is good for just quickly googling an image for the background, this time around I used a creative commons photo of the Rannoch Moor in Scotland. I also did some of my Infinity miniatures this way with some sci-fi backdrop. Personally I find that a good background really makes the mini look better, don't think my paintjobs would excel with a plain white or black backdrop behind them!

Also, my phone is pretty bad for taking group shots, since for some reason it always has to focus on one section of the shot, which then makes the rest slightly blurred. Not sure if that's a bug or a feature, but it is what it is at the moment.

Overall, I'm quite happy with my output. Having two Confrontation challenges and two Infinity escalation leagues behind me, I can definitely say that the biggest benefit of such events is the pure driving power which they instill in me. I get insane amounts of motivation and dedication to sit at the painting table regularly in order to hit my goals. It is always amazing to see a project grow at a steady pace, so having a challenge as the guiding hand helps tremendously when real life stuff tries to bog you down.

That said, last and definitely not the least, I'd like to thank Shino for organizing and curating the event! Hope to see you as an organizer again in the future!

*NOTE: If you want to see more photos of individual minis that I painted, as well as the links to the NMM tutorial videos that Shino recommended, click the "Read more" link below to expand the post.

Something stirs in the shadows beyond...

I was intending to be fairly regular with some updates on the blog, but you know what they say... time flies when you're having fun. And truth be told, I've been having a lot of fun at the painting challenge which I mentioned in one of my previous posts back in January. More thoughts on that one a little bit later in an upcoming article, which will be a "challenge retrospective" of sorts since the event is ending in a few days.

Instead, what I'm gonna scribble about today is something that has been on my mind way before I even created the blog. Back then I had this idea, took some photos of the thing I wanted to write about, and then my laziness got the better of me and it hasn't seen the light of day since. But a few days ago I got a notification on my phone, you know one of those Google Photos things screaming at you before your morning coffee, "LOOK AT WHAT YOU DID ONE YEAR AGO, YOU USED TO BE SO FUN". So yeah, it's been a year since then and enough is enough, let's write this damn thing.

You also might have noticed that this post has a tag at the bottom named "collection update". As I already somewhat mentioned previously, a lot of the posts on here are going to be me just providing unsolicited updates about my frantic spending of loads of money on Confrontation and I will courteously not take this enjoyment away from you... especially when it is an update of these proportions. 

So back in November 2023, I started talking to one very friendly gentleman on the "7 Hills..." server about acquiring a sizeable chunk of metal from him. For him it was just sitting around untouched, while for me it was a goldmine featuring my favorite army in NIB condition. The deal took almost half a year to organize due to a lot of obstacles, both expected and unexpected. For starters, not only was it the biggest amount of change I dropped on a hobby project, but it was also coming from overseas. Add to that the unexpected passing of one of my parents which threw a total curveball to everything in life and, a small cherry on top, the city I live in decided to update many district postal codes just as we were about to agree on sending the darn thing. Saying that this was an adventure is a serious understatement. 

Welcome home little buddy!

But it was finally here. It did end up just sitting in storage for a long while after I picked it up due to all the life issues, but once my every day difficulty level slightly decreased it was time for a little bit of enjoyment. 

Gotta love a nice box full of beans.

Always a joy opening a tightly packed shipping box.

Hmmm, I wonder...

... I wonder how many of you can guess what is behind door #1? If I didn't know, I'd actually be torn between a few possible models. But if you guessed this one, you pretty much know the entirety of the box, so let's get to it! 

Drum roll please...

Double the sass, triple the excitement!

A post in which I explain which models I'll be painting for the upcoming competition. And actually, if you know me from the discord server and have seen my thread during the previous competition then you already know exactly what I'll be painting, simply from using the word "sass", a tidbit which I completely forgot to mention in my 2024 painting post. Which is a shame, since I find it hilarious.

Anyways, to be a bit more serious. TL;DR is that I will be visiting the plains of Avagddu once again. That's probably enough information for some of you (hello Greg), but for the people who are not Sessair haters the not-so-TL;DR is below.

Shino's announcement was an unexpected surprise and since I immediately knew that I would participate it sent me into a contemplating mood, trying to figure out what I'll be painting. One of my previous posts about the start of my collection is, up to this point, actually showing just a sliver of what I own today, so I had plenty to choose from.

Surprisingly, I made a decision fairly easy. For some reason, I dismissed the other armies and was in the "hell yeah Sessairs" mood quickly, which really made me want to analyze "why"... thus, this article.

One of the main things that pushed me to this decision is the kick of riding the wave of enjoyment of writing the previous article. Looking back at the process of the previous competition I realized that my love for the Sessairs grew with each month of painting. There's just that special something when you see the painted models shaping up into a group and the sense of accomplishment pushes you to paint further. And yes, painting just skin and leather gets a bit tedious at times and is probably the main reason why a lot of people dislike the Kelts, but Rackham somehow managed to make even those exciting.

The above paragraph is especially important when I take into consideration that the models I painted last time aren't even my favorite among the Sessairs. Of course, you can't not love Tanath and Bragh, but that particular Giant Barbarian and the Hunters are far down my list of favorites, for example. Yet somehow, while painting them I found love and appreciation for them, which in turn sparked even further excitement to paint the ones I truly like and has provided inspiration to continue collecting them. 

That ongoing desire to see the expansion of the tribe has not come to the proper end either. If you recall, I initially bought the lot of Kelts just for the competition, but the ordeal made me want to expand and see if I can do the rest of the models justice with my brush. The Minotaurs, Viraë, Fiannas, all inspiring pieces of the puzzle yet to be completed! 

So in the end, what is this going to look like? Honestly, that is the only irksome thing about this competition, the fact that you need to submit a list and are somewhat restrained with the number of AP per model. There's a lot of freedom and flexibility when you can paint whatever you want on a monthly basis, you can mix and match and adapt to your speed and progress, whereas here you need to commit. Alas, we are not here to cry and lament, we are here to flex and face the opposition head on! 

Painting Competition 2025 List

Double the Sass, Triple the Excitement!

Gwenlaen the Ever-Proud 66 A.P.

Malek the Bloodthirsty 60 A.P.

Son of Ogmios 55 A.P.

Minotaur of the Plains 73 A.P.

Kelt Druid (1) 28 A.P.

Fianna Totem-Bearer 17 A.P.

Total AP: 299

Total Models: 6

This will be the "official" list of my entry. Worth noting is that the Minotaur of the Plains will be proxied by the Kelt Minotaur, since that is the model I own yet is too high pointwise to fit. Mind you, this list isn't driven by any kind of tactical masterstroke of list building, this is led purely by the tactics of being realistic of how many models I can paint while also fulfilling the monthly rules of the challenge. 

However! We are Kelts of the Sessair clan, we are not bound by rules, nor are we shackled by the garb of civility, nor do we cower away from a challenge... we embrace it! We were born free and will paint as such! Aside from the "official" list, I will try to fit in some more models. That "expanded" list is a sort of personal competition and it will look like this:

Expanded Painting Competition List
Charge of the Matriarch!

Viraë, Fianna priestess 125 A.P.
Sinshera 52 A.P.
Danu Warrior 24 A.P.
Spasm Warrior 24 A.P.
3 𝚇 Kelt Fianna 36 A.P.
Sessair Standard-Bearer 14 A.P.
Total AP: 275
Total Models: 8

My first thought when the competition was announced and I decided Sessairs was "Viraë with all the Fiannas!" but the 80AP restriction killed that boner. But the girls are bloodthirsty and shall not be silenced.

Essentially, 14 miniatures in total over four months... On paper it seems like a tall ask, but I'm certain my excitement for painting and the amazing inspiration provided by Xris Wraith's endeavor last year will be more than enough for me to achieve this. I'm trying to come up with some small motivational rewards for myself when/if I manage to tick off any items off this expanded list, but I'll get back to that after the first month of painting is done and I see where I'm at. If I'm being objective, smaller minis usually take me 3-4 days to paint, while the bigger ones like the Ogmios are around 5-6 days, so at least mathematically speaking I'll be able to pull this off... but, we'll see!

Stay tuned and thanks for reading (hello again Greg), happy painting!

Confrontation Painting Challenge of 2025

Only a few days after I linked my previously published post to the 7 Hills discord, user Shino jumps in and decides to host the painting challenge for 2025! Now, I'm not saying that my post and me resurrecting the 2024 painting thread on the server pushed Shino to make this happen, but my ego would like to imagine that I at least inspired them to do so.

In any case, these are the guidelines for the upcoming painting challenge:

• Start February 1st and end June 1st
• Minimum 200AP, max 300AP.
• Single miniature point cap at 80AP
• At least one miniature a month, proxies are allowed for cards that have no miniature designed by Rackham
• Must create a thread on the server for your army
• An army list must be submitted by the end of February

The prize for this endeavor will be a Wolfen Worg miniature awesomely painted by Shino!

You are definitely his victim...

And there you have it, loud, clear, and extremely exciting. A bunch of people have already applied, so it'll be a load of fun once it gets rolling. There's still time to jump in on it, so head over to the discord server (you can find an invite in the Useful Links tab above) and "sign up"!

As for me personally, I will definitely participate in the challenge despite still not being fully decided on which army I'll be painting. I think I have a pretty solid idea, it just depends on whether or not I manage to land some ongoing deals for a few essential minis. This is largely due to having to submit a complete army list within the coming month, so I just have to take some choices into consideration... would suck to signup with a model which I don't end up owning! (that would totally be so "me") 

In any case, I'll probably make a separate post about my decision in a couple of days. Stay tuned!

Paint me like one of your French minis

I've been a bit lazy over the holidays when it comes to Confrontation and miniature painting in general, since I've been prepping for a couple of RPG sessions which I'm due to run next week back in my home town. Regardless, Confrontation is almost always on my mind, so in the spirit of the new year some mental energy was spent on reflecting on the past year, thus here we are.

This time last year (the period when the previous post ended) was like a small Christmas miracle. Not a creature was stirring on "The 7 Hills of Confrontation" discord server when all of a sudden the Living Legend known as Sweet popped his beautiful head into one of the channels. And lo! Up he comes with an announcement regarding the Confrontation Painting Challenge of 2024!

Needless to say I jumped on that faster than S’Érum would get offended by someone calling him a "snek". Truth be told, I am a lazy painter. When left to my own devices I tend to step away from the painting table all too often and progress is extremely slow. So what I've learned over the years is that challenges, competitions, leagues, or any similar collective endeavor in any hobby is absolutely golden when it comes to motivation and there should be no excuses not to participate in this one.

The gist of the challenge was this: starting from February, take a pic of your unpainted army and then paint your heart out all the way up to 400AP worth of models by the end of August. You're in a raffle for prizes and you get extra raffle tickets if you post your monthly progress with at least 50AP.

So the first challenge for me was to decide what to paint! At that point I haven't really collected anything remotely close to 400AP of a single faction, so I had to quickly make a decision. Previously I spotted a decent chunk of Cynwall and Sessair models locally, so picking one of those up would give me a solid start from which to start painting and fill in the blanks with new models over the seven upcoming months. 

Out of those two factions, undoubtedly the Cynwall Elves are beyond iconic as an Aarklash staple. But you have to understand, I am easily intimidated by complex and beautiful sculpts (which the Elves definitely are), so as a result I usually tend to overthink painting such models and I'm extremely slow with those. Yet now we need swiftness, speed, and power, throbbing biceps which flex with a firm hold of our mighty brush while sitting on clenched buttocks and an occasional pause for a guttural scream as we pick up our next victim model. So what did I do? I did what any sane person would do. I got both the Elves and the Kelts.

Not pictured are two blisters of the Sons of Ogmios which I forgot to add to the shot...

On a more serious note, I decided to go with Kelts mostly because they seemed easier to paint out of the two choices, since I'm used to painting a lot of skin and leather from other projects. I really didn't want to overthink the process during the challenge and I wanted an army which doesn't intimidate me with too much complexity. And above all else, Sessairs are awesome, don't listen to the naysayers who are plentiful on the server and should be shunned. You know who you are. 

I've been told that I should go and touch grass...

I also decided to get some basing goodies, since I wanted to try out some new techniques and get more into that part of the hobby. I'm really a sucker for nicely looking bases, so I took this opportunity to learn a thing or two along the way.

Couple of things to note though. I guess Sweet's main idea for the challenge (aside from pushing people to paint) was for participants to have an actual army that they can play with in the end. Honestly, I knew I was gonna fail this one right from the get go, since I was more focused on getting things painted and getting relaxed with painting Rackham things in general. But also, I knew I was going to "cheat" for a few months, since I knew in advance that a few months I'll be away from home for longer stretches of time so I had to cheat with models that have a higher AP value in order to meet the monthly quota of painted stuff. 

I won't bore you with all of my thoughts about each and every model I painted for the challenge, but these are some personal highlights.

So immediately to start with, I painted one of the Sons of Ogmios. What an absolute lovely chonker! Usually I dislike painting larger models, mostly because bigger surfaces mean a bigger spotlight for poor painting skills and glaring mistakes, but this one was a joy from start to finish. I guess it is a testament to Rackham's awesomeness when it comes to sculpting, because there are so many neat details packed into their models, yet at the same time they never overdid it.

Painting for that initial month of the challenge was difficult, mostly because I had only two weeks available and I had a bunch of Infinity models which I also needed to paint, since at the same time I was participating in an escalation painting/gaming league and a whole lot of stuff had to be done there. But also, I had a frequent "helper" at the painting table and she made things extremely slow...

Fluffy chonk...

Funny detail about working on the Sons of Ogmios though, while I was basing it I realized that I accidentally glued it to the base at a wrong angle, so it was leaning forward way more than it should have. But I actually ended up liking it like that way more, since the pose looks like he is charging at someone who severely pissed him off, probably some Alahan shitter.

"Out of my waaaay!"

In a similar wain, I painted his smaller brother, the Giant Barbarian. It definitely lacks a bit in the pose dynamic which the Sons of Ogmios has and is much more static, but it is similarly chonky and nicely detailed.

As the months went by, I expanded the tribe with a few more purchases. I was pretty excited about the Danu Warriors since those sculpts are some of my Sessair favorites, but I sadly never got to painting them within the challenge, since during certain months painting more than one model was sadly not feasible and I really didn't want to slack on those. 

Quick and bad photoshop mashup of the few pictures I took back when I purchased these...

Featured above are the said few additional buys I made. There are sooo many more amazing models that I'd love to buy, Fiannas, Virae, the BEEFY BOYS (actually we're all beefy boys here, so you take a guess what I mean by these in caps), the third Danu Warrior, the sword/halberd Barbarians... ah, the list goes on and on.

If you looked closer at the picture which showed the Cynwal Elves, you'll notice that I also got an Air Elemental in that haul and I actually decided to use it in this Sessair project. Since I was painting the Kelt Shaman I wanted to give her a "little" summoned friend. Also, I was actually inspired to put on some paint on it because there are so few images of it painted online and as far as I know there is no official Rackham paintjob for it. What I saw online was mostly people painting it in off-white and gray colors, but I wanted to try out a different approach with blues. It does end up looking more like a water-based elemental at first glance, alas! I am pleased with the final look though, the golden/rusty bits pop with the blue on the model, plus the inclusion of the Air Elemental in Sessair ranks gives nice contrast to the composition of the whole tribe. 

By the way, the idea with the base is that it is also air.

The only models which I didn't enjoy so much were the Shaman and the Hunters. It's not that the sculpts are necessarily bad, but there's something missing to make them more dynamic. They don't really have anything special going for them that would make them unique (outside of the little squirrel sitting on the Shaman's shoulder) and I would guess that these are some of the younger Rackham sculpts, but I could be wrong on that. They were okay to paint, it just felt a little bit like a chore.

In complete contrast, I have to mention the three characters which I painted, because spending time with them felt special. Markhan the Wild, Bragh An Scathar, and of course Tanath, all three were such a joy to paint. The unique weapons, the little details, the poses and basing, everything about them felt like an invitation to pay attention and dedicate some extra time. They ooze with importance and glory on the table, which really makes me feel like I wouldn't want to be on their shit list. The only thing which I regret not doing, but I was actually too scared to mess it up, was the white face-paint on Bragh. I was happy with what I did up to that point, especially with the belt and the blade, but faltered a bit with the face, mostly due to the fact of how difficult it is to manipulate white. Oh well, maybe next time! Picture of all these bad boys are below!

Now, to make this post at least a bit useful and not have it all just be about self-indulgence, I'll give you my super secret recipe for painting the leather parts. One friend who saw the Sessair models in person actually asked me for it, so here ya go. 

The paints for the dirty deed.

It's actually nothing too complex, but it might annoy people who don't have patience to go through the whole process on all the leathery bits. Pictured above are all the paints you need, plus add one extra wretched brush which you will use for the stippling dirty work.

This is what we do:

1. Rhinox Hide as base.
2. Ivory, applied primarily stippled.
3. Black, applied primarily stippled.
4. Skrag Brown, applied primarily stippled. All three of these steps (2, 3, 4) can be fairly messy, and I'd recommend the Skrag being the "dominant" of the three. As stated for all three, primarily stipple, but also make scratches, dots, splotches, whatever. You don't have to pay attention to any kind of pattern or order, the point is that these should create natural layers and be fairly random. It's definitely going to look shit before it looks good, this is the shit part. 
5. Ushabti Bone on the edges of the leather, those raised bumpy parts all around.
6. Washes. This is the fun part, since you can go wild with this one. Use all four washes at the same time, some either straight out of the pot, some mix together, just move them around the surface. This step adds depth to the leather. Usually how I did it is use Agarax, Reikland, and Nuln Oil (as stated, mixed or out of the pot, sometimes also adding a bit of Lahmian Medium to make some parts more watery), once those are dry I'd go evenly with one coat of Seraphim Sepia just to tie it all up. While you are at it, also add a coat of Seraphim Sepia over the Ushabti Bone ridges.

And that's that. It's an entertaining process since you get to be messy and not care about being too detailed, plus it gives decent results.

Overall, this event was an absolute blast. I love challenges like these, because they truly inspire me to put in the effort and it is really fun sharing your progress with the community and seeing what the other participants are coming up with. I just wish more people joined in, but hey, maybe next time, hopefully my entries inspired at least some of you. 

On that note, shoutout to discord user Xris Wraith who managed to paint an absurd amount of Acheron models, which look absolutely stunning! In the end, Xris Wraith and I were the winners of the challenge, since we are both so talented and awesome. Actually no, we were the only participants who posted progress every month and thus had the most entries. But also, we're awesome, yes.

And of course, a special thank you to Sweet for all the efforts with organizing such an awesome event and being a source of inspiration in the Confrontation scene. So if you're reading this, THANK YOU, you absolute legend.

(EDIT: forgot to take a picture of the sweet (hur hur) prize I received for this endeavor and I was eager to publish this tonight, so I'll edit the post tomorrow.)

And also, thank you for reading, if you got this far. Now if you'll excuse me, gotta go flex!

P.S. I've added a post break here to avoid the layout of the blog being shitty, so if you want to view a photo dump of all the painted minis not shown above, click the link below to expand the post.