January 2026 review

Kicking off the hobby year

Let’s do a quick recap of January! We started the year with our first event, heading to Szenario Con 2026 near Bad Kreuznach, and it was a great way to shake off the winter break and meet familiar faces again. You can read the full event report and see more tables and impressions on the blog.

Hobby housekeeping: Stormbringer

I still had a few days off at the beginning of the month and used that time to tackle some long overdue sorting. I went through the Stormbringer magazine stacks and decided there was no reason to keep the assembly and painting guides, as they are not only available online, but also reduced compared to the options on the sprues and the full paint ranges. What I did keep were the parts with lore and bonus content, like the backdrops and extra background articles, which are much more useful for inspiration at the workbench.

Back on the table: Imperial Assault

Our board game group has settled on Star Wars: Imperial Assault as an ongoing campaign, and I’m really happy to be part of it again. I had forgotten how intense the missions can get, and it was great fun to dive back into the rules and narrative. With the reprint of the game coming in February, I’m hoping that Asmodee will also bring some of the expansion sets back over time.

A dino-flavoured day trip

We used the last days of my vacation for a short family trip to Frankfurt and visited the Senckenberg Natural History Museum. Among all the fossils and skeletons, I came across a fantastic dinosaur diorama that looked exactly like a gaming table you might see at Salute or Crisis. It instantly made me think of a board for The Drowned Earth or even a modern reboot of Die Schlacht der Dinosaurier.​

Oldhammer focus - Warhammer 40,000 2nd Edition

As promised, I kicked off the year with a strong focus on Oldhammer. There were two unboxing reviews, one for the Warhammer 40,000 2nd Edition starter set and another for the Dark Millenium expansion.

As part of the ongoing Imperial Fists project, there will be more reviews of kits from that era, and I am lucky enough to have some of them still in their original boxes, in some cases even with untouched sprues.

Looking ahead: terrain and events

For Q1 2026 you won’t see that many brand-new releases here, as I skipped the latest Kill Team sets and the 500 Worlds releases for Warhammer 40k. Instead, I will cover two terrain packs for Star Wars Shatterpoint and Star Wars Legion, which have been on my wish list since last autumn and finally arrived last week.

With 28 miniatures waiting to be painted for April and carnival in February eating into hobby time, I’m not sure I’ll manage to squeeze in any wargaming events this month. I’ve been eyeing the Dutch Oldhammer Con, which sounds great but is a three-hour drive each way, so it’s unlikely to happen, and the same goes for Tactica in Hamburg this year.

Closing out January

All in all, January laid a solid foundation for the hobby year: one event, a good bit of sorting and planning, some great gaming, and a clear Oldhammer direction for the coming months. February will probably be more about painting than travelling, but that should pay off when event season really kicks in.