Collection round-up - June 2026 and a painted Wolfen Zombie

Another month, another collection update, and boy is this a big one. Let me tell you one thing, size does matter. Especially in this hobby, the bigger the box, the bigger the excitement. And, not to be exclusive, the bigger the receipt. 

This has been my second big purchase flying from across the pond from Chimera and I'll be sane enough to say that I'm certain that truly sane people would not be doing this. Yes, some of these models are rare, especially when NIB and especially in the current state of available supply on the market. And yes, this is Confrontation and yes, it is my main hobby where I don't flinch about expenses because I love it to death. But realistically speaking, if you are in Europe and doing it like this is not worth it unless you're really that deeply invested. Between the insanity of shipping rates for packages from the US, extra VAT, newly added EU import fees, and all the other things that can get complicated and expensive along the way in the global economy today, you're looking at a drastically inflated bill before the package lands in your lap. Not to mention the long transport time and the even longer customs clearance period. Horrid all around.

Buying single blisters or boxes is unwise since the shipping is always high to begin with, in most cases equal or more to the price of the actual model. Buying bulk like this skyrockets into oblivion, but maybe ends up being worth it if you can cash it out. Alternatively, European folks can stick to Europe and arm themselves with extreme amounts of patience, something that I always recommend. The well has been dry for months now, and although I imagine a lot of old product will surface back up once Incarnation sees the light of day, it would still add a considerable amount of time to the collecting agenda. So, choose your own faith based on that.

But enough of that, let's crack open the box!

First off, two Cry Havoc issues. My CH library still isn't anywhere near completion, but these I picked up primarily for the Hybrid cards and, of course, the Kaeliss card in issue #2. These have actually been the first CH magazines that I pick up that are completely NIB and for some reason it is such a nice feeling. Still haven't popped 'em open yet, I'll let them be glorious on the shelf for a little bit longer.

Also, speaking of Kaeliss...

... voila, the Starter Paint Set! Primarily got it for the miniature, but the paints themselves and the box with that cover art seem so iconic for that era. Rackham truly knew what they were doing with their packaging design. Similarly, of course the dropper bottles for paints will forever be superior to pot paints, but these Rackham pots look absolutely gorgeous! Still didn't open the box and I don't know the state of the paints inside, but I imagine they are dry after all these years. Regardless they will be beautiful on the shelf.

As far as the Fangs of Vile-Tis go, my Devourer army has been growing steadily every once in a while and it is always a joy to add them to the collection. Their units are impressive to look upon and I imagine that fielding them on the table is truly a sight to behold, something to look forward to! I do find them intimidating to paint, not sure my skills will do them justice. 

More Vile-Tis! The Flesh Eaters are probably my favorite sculpts of the army right after Shurat, happy to finally grab them. I'm still missing some important pieces for Devourers, like the Tyrant, so there's still thrilling stuff to hunt down.

Sasia is there for Hybrid, but also thinking about it I'd say that she's probably my favorite Dirz character. Purely based on aesthetics alone, she's such an iconic character in my eyes, way above many other fan favorites. Not exactly sure why, but I find her eeriness alluring. 

And now to dive into all these blister boxes...

Extremely glad to finally pick up these two, since these boys mark the nigh completion of my Behemoth collection with only the Troll missing now. Kolghor especially I am happy to acquire, as he has been eluding me on several past occasions locally. And it is funny to me how my previous, and in fact first, purchase from Chimera was just me waking up one day (?) with this inexplicable need to start collecting Behemoth, an army I previously never cared for much. Since then they grew on me a considerable amount and I'm confident to make the claim that they are, without a doubt, the most aesthetically pleasing orc miniatures ever designed. That said, truly hope the Behemoth Troll lands into my hands soon. 

So much stuff to unpack here, pun intended! As you can expect, all of these, sans the Knight of Cadwallon, have been picked up for Hybrid. Hybrid-related models have definitely become an important focus for my collection, since I want to own all the factions present there. Yes, even TNB, to my great disgust. To my even greater surprise, I have to be honest and say that these TNB models actually seem nice. I am not over the Moon crazy for them, but I do appreciate that they are single-piece models and that, for their size, they seem dynamically posed and hold details well. I'll most likely plan to paint one of these TNB blisters for the bingo, so I'm curious how that experience will be like, but I do have to say that I'm excited for it. Worry not, I still hate these dwarves with a passion. 

Similarly, the two blisters above are the first Acheron models I acquired and I was curious how painting that faction will be like, so stick around to the end of the post to see that! TL;DR I loved it and I'm excited to paint more Acheron. Weirdly enough, past more Wolfen Zombies, the Ghouls, which seem to be a pain to find, and the Morbid Puppets, which are even harder to find, I don't have a tremendous need for more undead. The faction is well designed and I appreciate it, but it is definitely near the bottom of my priority list, sans these few units for Hybrid. 

Similar situation with Dirz, in my opinion. I'm well aware how iconic they are for Confrontation in general and that they are among the fan favorites, but I haven't had a huge drive to collect the Alchemists. Most of what I own is either for Hybrid or happened to cross my path locally for ridiculously cheap, so I'm not going out of my way to put crazy effort into acquiring more than needed. It's not that I dislike the sculpts, on the contrary, but I simply wouldn't rank them among my favorite factions. Luckily, or unluckily, the list of Dirz available in Hybrid is considerable and I still have a long way to go there.

A wild mix of things in these photos. Drunes keep ever expanding in my collection, a sort of natural step following my initial dive into Sessairs. There is just something pleasing to me when it comes to Drune aesthetics and it makes me slowly keep coming back to them. Up to this point they have always fallen into my lap by pure chance of some good deals, but this is the first occasion that I purposely pick them up, a sign that they surely have my focus. If I manage to find enough time this year, I have a plan to make a small faction diorama for the bingo which I am really excited about... so many things to paint, so little time, and the collection just keeps getting bigger!

On a similar note, expanding the Ophidian collection is terribly difficult nowadays. The danger noodles are quite scarce, so I'm glad I managed to snag the small snek before that too disappeared. Also, always a pleasure to add some Mid-Nor into the pile. Despite me truly loving these dwarves, I don't prioritize them a whole lot. The Scourge Bearer was more of a tactical pickup since it was the last one in stock and it is one of my favorite Mid-Nor models.

Last, but never the least, some additions to my favorite faction. Thrilled to add the Elemental and the Familiars, since I adore those designs and I'm proud of Daikinee being wise enough to be so entwined with the aspect of water. Regarding the elves themselves, I always neglect talking extensively about them since I always save my thoughts for a dedicated Daikinee post, so I should get on with that sometime soon. Preliminarily thinking about doing a whole series of posts dedicated just to them and talking about various things. We'll see.

And that's an unwrap! Massive haul for the collection, always so thrilling when a box of this size is on the way and it finally arrives. Being so focused on collecting Confrontation and the pure speed at which I've been acquiring things, it is in a complete disharmony with the speed at which I am painting. But I'm having fun with both aspects of the hobby, collecting and painting that is, so I presume that that is what counts at the end of the day. Despite the complexity of my life this year, the output has been decent and I'm confident that the number of painted models by the end of the year will beat my numbers from 2025. Right now I'm primarily focused on painting Hybrid since I want that to start hitting the table when done, so having a plan is what seems to be working decently for motivation.

And speaking of all that, one final thing to show before closing this post! The Wolfen Zombie in the photo above has been promptly painted, so here it is in its final form.

This miniature was an absolute joy to paint, something I didn't expect! A fun time experimenting with painting undead flesh, the wounds, moldy hair, and all the gruesome details. That whole process alone made me excited to paint Chagall and all the other Wolfen Zombies when I get my hands on them. The blade especially was a breeze to do, especially surprising since it was done with sponges and acrylics, not any kind of specialist rust effect or pigments, so I am proud of the result. Overall I think I managed to keep the paintjob fairly clean and detailed, despite the whole process being messy and loose, plus I think I did a better job with the base compared to what I did with the Hybrid Griffins. Live and learn!

And that's a wrap for today, hope you enjoyed taking a look at my ever growing hoard of metal. I know I need help, you don't have to remind me. Thanks for reading though!

More news, more thoughts, more hype, some caution

It has been less than two months since I posted my thoughts on the initial preview of the Aarklash revival and we're already faced with a bunch of additional information and juicy teases! This will just be a summary of all the things we've gotten, or at least the things that I can remember, and my brief thoughts on all of it, so let us dive in.

Onyx returns!

The legendary Wolfen is coming back, as vital as ever. Based on an interview with Rackham CEO which was done after this preview, more on that below, Onyx has been busy recruiting "younger Wolfen" into his pack which will affect the overall tactics of the bunch, leaning more into agile harassment and less into straightforward aggression, collectively nicknamed "Les Furtifs", the sneaky ones.

It is great to see Onyx back, as he was always a beloved character in previous editions. I love this new version of him, the pose is dynamic and it somehow fits the description of his new pack.

New blood!

Kylliar, as described by Monolith, "a young Wolfen predator carrying the weight of his father Killyox's failures on his back. Now he must prove that a son is never bound by his father's fate."

As stated in the promo image, this will be a gift for anyone following the campaign and pledging once it gets going. And as the saying goes, never look a gift horse wolf in the mouth, but I don't like the sculpt much. The stance is great, but the overall model is just too busy. Chains, beads, spikes, moons, ornaments, there is a few things too many. Also someone on discord pointed out that the blade looks like something Signum made and I fully agree. Maybe my perception changes when we see this model painted, but until then it's just drowning in unnecessary details. Still, it is a gift, and I won't give it too much of a hard time.

We had a lore update for Incarnation which nicely started digging into Aarklash and the overall struggles of its peoples. I'll not bore you too much with my dissection of it, I'll just let you enjoy it yourself.

There was also an update for Depths Of Cadwallon which goes into some of the introductory lore of the iconic city. Same as above, click the link and enjoy the read.

Now, let us move on to the meat and potatoes of this post. First of all, French youtuber Hiigy interviewed Boris, Rackham CEO, and a translated summary has been posted by user JangaMX on Discord, so here are the key points and my thoughts on them:

Scale will formally be 32mm. - To be completely honest, this is the one I hate, but also at the same time it is slightly tolerable. I find the scale creep in games annoying, since the fact that we are playing with "miniatures" is being lost in translation and it is slowly becoming "action figures" almost. Part of why I also get annoyed with this is that companies doing this are just following Games Workshop in their hyper capitalist desire to pander to the consumer base which is too lazy and intimidated by painting "super small" models and it is just so.... ugh. But, if I stop being a grumpy asshole, scale increase usually opens the door for more complex sculpts and intricate details, so at least that is not something to complain about. Unless of course you're feeling like me when it comes to the Kylliar sculpt, so I guess we'll just have to wait and see.

Fewer stats than before. Movement, Attack, Defense, Shooting still exist, others TBC.  Mysticism now one shared stat for all mystics. - It was to be expected that we will see changes to the overall system and unit profiles, but without knowing other accompanying details it is difficult to give an opinion on this statement. My only hope is that the new system is similar enough that old profiles can easily be ported (and vice versa!) and to not dumb down the system too much from what it was.

"Divine Favour" is a new resource that models accumulate when rolling crit fails and can be used later for effects including rerolls. - This sounds boardgamey on face value, but I actually love game systems which award you in moments when you fail terribly. Most notably, the most fun I had was while playing an RPG called "Dungeon Crawl Classics: Dying Earth", where rolling a 1 grants you "grudge tokens" which you can later spend to make the GM (or even other players) reroll a successful die roll. Great fun, especially since it gives a dopamine hit once you critically fail, which is a bit of a weird sensation, but it also doesn't completely remove the fact that you indeed have failed. Either way, excited for this one, curious to see if they'll just use it for rerolls or something else as well.

The other 2 factions beyond the launch set are already fully designed, being sculpted soon. - Not much to say about this one except to be hyped based on all the reveals thus far. (EDIT: as I was wrapping this post up an update dropped on the Incarnation GF page asking followers to vote for their favorite faction, since Monolith decided to increase the number of factions for the initial release from 4 to 6, so check out the update and cast your vote here)

Competitive play and narrative play to be supported including one International Open tournament. - To get it out of the way immediately, I'll be honest and say that "narrative play" provides a massive amount of arousal in me. I've always been a fan of games which lean into their lore and actually do something with it, instead of just having it as a backdrop. The original Rackham knew what it was doing across all of its products when it comes to story, lore, and narrative play, so I am more than happy to see that Monolith is picking up that torch and carrying it onward. Similarly, "competitive play" and an "international open tournament" signal a desire for maintaining a live game with an active scene, which is a thing needed desperately in today's climate in order to keep your product alive and fresh. 

Aiming to add / add profiles to "several factions each year". - This is something I appreciate a lot and in fact something I wanted to write about in a new "Monolithic Expectations" article. Ever since the initial reveal that Monolith acquired the Rackham rights, I hoped that they won't make this a one-and-done campaign, but instead have a steady stream of releases over a prolonged period of time and provide continuous support for the game. It will make the world alive and thriving, not to mention the hype of the consumers having a steady heartbeat. So this point and the one above regarding competitive play and tournaments is exactly what I was hoping for. Great news! 

Rumored/mentioned (?) campaign in Q1 2027 - I'm not entirely sure where and when, if at all, was this mentioned in an official capacity, but the first quarter of next year has been circling around as the initial campaign launch for Incarnation. Makes sense, as half a year is enough to polish the game and warm up the crowd.

In addition to the above, a streamer named GregauryC got to play one demo game and has since shared several key points:

Units will be cross compatible between skirmish game Incarnation and dungeon crawler game Depths of Cadwallon. - As expected, it is good that Monolith will trail the same paths as Rackham did, where all the releases for different sub-games are entwined and can be used together. I would hope however that there won't be a faction released ONLY via DoC, meaning for example Dirz get released only in DoC in pre-assembled plastic and not get an Incarnation HIPS release (this will make more sense when you read the point below) 

Models will be in HIPS plastic (like GW), assembly needed for Incarnation, but pre-assembled for Depths of Cadwallon. - YES!!! God damn it feels good to be right! Though to be completely fair, I was only half right, since I nailed the HIPS part. As I've written before in my second Monolithic Expectations article, my preferred material would definitely be metal, but I believe it simply isn't possible in this day and age (economy much?) so HIPS is the absolute next best option. HIPS will enable so many dynamic and detail rich sculpts to come to life, it will do wonders where previously metal failed to do justice (Kaeliss I'm looking at you). I had a lot of opinions in that article, so definitely check it out, though it remains to be seen whether or not I was also right about Archon stepping into the spotlight. When it comes to DoC being pre-assembled, it makes so much sense it simply blows my mind and the only reason I haven't considered this as an option is because I believed that DoC would actually be Hybrid 2.0, aka also come as HIPS. But pre-assembled models is the winner for the dungeon crawler part of Aarklash, since anyone who even remotely spent time around hardcore board gamers will know that a lot of them get instantly butthurt the second someone mentions the possibility of them having to assemble models. "USE GLUE?! ME!? MYSELF!? I BEG YOUR PARDON!!"

Board size is 24x24inch / 60x60cm. - Love this honestly. Of course, one will hope that the board size scales up with army size, but 60x60cm being the default is amazing. I've played some other skirmish games with this board size (Bushido, primarily) and I always enjoyed the compactness of the playing field in those. Smaller board means more impact given to terrain means more tactical movement means more thrilling actions sequences means... the list goes on and on. Naturally people will be worried about the smaller playing area and without previous experiences rightfully so, but honestly I am yet to see a game where things like movement or board control were an issue on limited table spaces. This is especially true if we get game rules where table elevation is important, which I would love as it opens up a whole new level (pun intended) of table design. I've spent a lot of time playing Infinity, where scatter terrain, building floors, and corners are important, so having something like that in Incarnation would be a welcome addition in my book. Excited about this one, it opens up a lot of room for speculation and hype, but with an important caveat that the actual rules of the game need to be properly designed and synced in order for things to truly work out. (EDIT: I was very close to expanding this section even further because I have a lot of opinions on it and because a new interview with more details also dropped while I was writing this article, but I will hold that desire in check for now and write about it some time soon) 

Bases are 32mm for human infantry, 40mm for Wolfen infantry, and looking like c. 50mm for cavalry, and larger base size bring certain bonuses in-game. - Kind of covered the scale increase, so won't bother you more with my rambling.

Alternating activations, activation order determined by players setting unit cards in a certain order in an activation deck, set after the initiative roll. - Smart to stay close to the classic, don't think anyone will complain about this one!

Each model has 2 actions except the incarnated who have 3. - Without knowing other rules or what constitutes as an "action", type of actions, etc. it is hard to comment on this one. It does seem a little bit like a step towards boardgame-ification of the original Confrontation rules, but I'll refrain from theorizing about this for now.

Each action is resolved by rolling 3D10 against a relevant stat (roll under ie 10s are fails). Bonuses and minuses add dice rather than change the stat. Examples are larger base size, charging, plunging fire etc. - I am split on this one. On one hand the D6 is somewhat iconic for Confrontation and I like the regular dice for their old-school feel, but mathematically speaking D10s are way better for a broader range of numerical values which add more nuance and minimize the dreaded fail/crit chances. I am extremely glad that they decided not to go with some custom dice bullshit since that rarely works for non-boardgames, so that is a sigh of relief. However, this plus the above mentioned reduction of stat categories for unit profiles signals huge overhauls of the game system which makes me a bit sad. I hope they retain the DNA of Confrontation as somewhat tangible, but time will tell.

Concept of "tactical movement": one attack dice or defense dice can be used to disengage or push enemy models 3 inches. Can create fall damage. - This is interesting, but again, without knowing other details it is hard to comment, though it looks like the actual engagements will be more dynamic and tactical which I definitely approve of.

One last bit of info which I will use in my closing statement for this post. I can't remember where this was mentioned exactly, I was just eager to publish this so didn't have time to research, but it was mentioned that Incarnation will be using inches instead of centimeters and that, somewhat obviously from the playtest pictures we've seen, the bases will be round instead of square. Both of these are fairly controversial points, along with the scale creep mentioned above, so I will give my take on the thing. You can, of course, list a number of pros and cons for these decisions, but what irks me about them is the sheer capitalist mindset of trying to pander to the consumer. 

"Inches are a standard in wargaming, everybody uses it!" 

"Round bases are a must in skirmish games!"

"It'll be easier to get people into the game if they are familiar with some of the concepts!"

To that, and much more nonsense that you are probably going to throw my way, I'll say:

... and a solid, stoic "no". I live for the day when companies will try something new and, gods forbid, dare to step out of standardized norms. Be unique, damn it! Do things that others don't have the balls to do! Stop being so afraid of your current and potential future consumers. Design your games how you feel you should, not how others expect you to design them. The outside world is full of life and chaos, stop being so timid and boring. 

Things like this piss me off, but I'll end it here. Thank you for reading, damn it.