CONflict Rhineland 2026
Last weekend, the latest installment of CONflict Rheinland took place in Langenfeld near Leverkusen. Just like in previous years, we had our own table, this time covering some retro gaming of Warhammer 40,000 2nd edition.
CONflict is a closed, invite-only event that runs from Friday evening until Sunday afternoon, with some people, just like the three of us, only staying for Saturday. We covered things like the location, car park, and so on over the last few years, so I’ll skip that in this year’s coverage. If you’re interested, just check out the coverage since 2022:
As catering was expanded this year, we had more room in the car for miniatures and such, and I brought along two IKEA Samla boxes of sprues and kits for the bring & buy. Once we arrived around 10:30 am, a lot of gaming was already going on, and we did a quick browse before we set up our own table.
Right next to us, Lion Rampant was being played, covering a battle from the Italian Wars with lots of Landsknechts.
May 2026 review
Post-Chaosbunker Classics
Welcome to June! It’s almost the halfway point of 2026, and I’m still catching up on the things we did during that weekend. I started covering the individual army shots in separate posts, including the icons you might know from old White Dwarf battle reports.
I took a lot of pictures and screenshots from old magazines and recreated them. Unfortunately, due to a file error, all of the Ork icons I had already prepared were lost, and I have to redraw them. That is something I might tackle on the next long weekend.
Stargrave – The Last Prospector
With Quarantine 37 covered, we move on to the second full supplement for Stargrave: The Last Prospector, released in 2022. Where Quarantine 37 leaned into science-fiction horror, The Last Prospector takes the game somewhere different entirely – the space western.
What is it about?
The setup arrives as an intercepted message. An old contact, known only as the Prospector, has found something big in the Honereb System – a run-down cluster of asteroid mining operations near the edge of a forgotten galactic arm. He wants to cut you in. By the time your crew arrives, the Prospector is nowhere to be found.
What follows is a ten-scenario campaign built around tracking down your missing contact while navigating the politics of a system that nobody with options would choose to visit. The Honereb System is populated by five factions, each with their own agenda: Pa, the mysterious authority running the decaying Penthalia Station – nobody is sure if Pa is a person, a council, or a computer; the Honera Collective, a semi-socialist operation on a jungle planet with strict border controls; The Gliders, a pirate gang operating out of a scuttled ore hauler called Saint Mollia; United Minerals Incorporated, a pre-war corporation that is now functionally a dictatorship; the Freeholders League, independent asteroid miners who pool resources for mutual survival; and the Darksiders, a secretive, robe-clad group in the third asteroid belt that nobody quite understands but most people leave alone.
Joseph A. McCullough is upfront about his inspirations. The space western as a genre has a long history. George Lucas built the Mos Eisley cantina on it, Joss Whedon ran with it for a single glorious television season, and the British film Outland put Sean Connery in a mining colony and filmed a remake of High Noon. For tabletop hobbyists, the reference points extend further: Marshal BraveStarr, The Mandalorian, the whole visual grammar of the frontier in space. The Honereb System is built from these materials, and the supplement wears its influences without apology.
Warhammer 40,000 – Imperial Fists Call to Arms Pt 9
This article covers the very last days before the event. Every evening, I painted for at least three to four hours, once the kids were in bed.
Tension was high, and there was no room for errors. I was trying to lock in the finishing line, but of course all the things you do not need suddenly come into play. For example, the Sergeant falling off the little pot from a height of only three or four centimetres, with everything breaking off instantly. That is something that would happen with some of the other multi-part miniatures as well, especially the Devastators.
To get the weapons done quickly, I glued the bolters and bolt pistols onto a coffee stirrer and gave them a black primer. Then I touched up the metal parts with AP Gun Metal and True Copper, followed by a quick wash of Nuln Oil.
Warhammer 40,000 – Imperial Fists Call to Arms Pt 8
We need to catch up on how I got my Imperial Fists ready for the Chaosbunker Classics. This article picks up where we left off in part 6 of the Call to Arms, with more progress on the core of the regular Space Marines.
I finished the base colours on all the infantry and added a first coat of wash, Casandora Yellow, on the marines. For both the backpacks and the shoulder pads, it was easier to paint them before attaching them to the miniatures. I finished the base colours on the backpacks and kept them on the small sub-assembly holders. That was incredibly practical for priming and further painting. I prepared everything that would get a metallic colour with a black primer.
Warhammer 40,000 – Imperial Fists Call to Arms Pt 7
The next thing I painted for my Imperial Fists was the Dreadnought, the heavy armour in my small force that supports the Space Marine units.
The old Dreadnoughts were chunky blocks of pewter and certainly a challenge for any hobbyist. You get a full metal kit, and quite often some of the smaller bits are missing, like the auto-launcher or the banner top. Sometimes the banner itself did not survive the 20+ years of service, especially once it was dropped from later edition boxed sets of the metal kit.
I managed to sub-assemble mine and left off the banner for now. I want to replace it with a brass rod, as the original metal banner pole is too soft for its size and tends to bend or break.
I assembled the pieces, cleaned up what I could, and unfortunately noticed some damage in the cast that I will have to turn into battle damage. I primed it white first and then added another coat of Imperial Yellow by Titan Hobby. Spoiler alert: do not do it that way. Unless you own an airbrush, prime that hulk of metal black, give it a heavy drybrush of metallic paint afterwards, tape off what you want to keep dark, and then go for the main colour of your Chapter.
Painting all the dark parts in the recesses without spoiling the yellow was certainly time-consuming. And after blocking in the base colours, I ran into my usual problem with this project: how to adapt the contrast colours for the 3rd Company of the Imperial Fists. As you can see, I made a collage from the Angels of Death and Ultramarines codices. I think there is a picture of an Imperial Fists Dreadnought somewhere in the 3rd edition, but I could not find it in the later codex. Most likely it was in a battle report. (Update in White Dwarf #226 from October 1998 includes an Imperial Fists Dreadnought, but I could not find proper pictures.)
We had a lengthy discussion about the Dreadnought’s base (not just mine, but the Chaos Dreadnought as well and so on). In later editions this is not an issue, as you get the 80 mm round base, but in 2nd edition there was a mixture of DIY solutions: some people crammed those models onto 50 mm squares, used the old flat Titan bases, or simply did not use a base at all.
Stargrave – Quarantine 37
We covered Stargrave extensively over the years on this blog, starting with the core rulebook and the several plastic kits for Crew, Troopers, Mercenaries, Scavengers and Automatons. The last supplement we took a look at was Dead or Alive, the solo supplement that started as a free PDF and received a major overhaul in 2024. Now it is time to work through the remaining supplements – and that means going back to where it all started: Quarantine 37, the first full supplement for Stargrave, released back in 2021.
What is it about?
Imperial Research Station 37 once housed nearly ten thousand scientists working on biological and chemical research. Six months before the Last War, it went dark – no distress signals, no escape pods, just a single repeating broadcast: This station is under quarantine. Do not approach. Now, with the war over and independent crews picking through the ruins of the galaxy, the station has been rediscovered. Whatever happened there, the technology inside is worth a fortune.
That is the setup for Quarantine 37, and it is a good one. Joseph A. McCullough freely admits in the introduction that he could not decide between two classic sci-fi horror archetypes for this supplement, zombies or alien bugs, and in the end simply chose both. The station is big enough for both threats, depending on which airlock you enter through.
The result is two separate mini-campaigns of four scenarios each. The first, The Shuffling Dead, sends the crews deep into the zombie-infested sections of the station before they are surrounded and have to fight their way back to the ship. The second, Strike from the Shadows, pits the crews against a swarm of alien bugs that herd them steadily deeper into the hive, culminating in a face-to-face encounter with the alien queen. Beyond the scenarios, the book adds two new captain backgrounds (Aristocrat and Hunter), eight new powers, six new soldier types, a table of advanced technology to loot from the station, and a bestiary covering zombies, bugs, and everything in between.
April 2026 review
Chaosbunker Classics!
The premiere of our inhouse retro series was a full on success! You can read a recap on the weekend on here - Chaosbunker Classics 2026. We played Warhammer 40k 2nd edition for two days, had some amazing armies and terrain to play with.
The feedback on that weekend was overwhelmingly positive and in such volume that I'm still trying to process it all. Thanks everybody for joining in and especially to Tobias and Evi for the great pictures and coverage afterwards. We got invitations to podcast, we were asked when the next event will be, offered sponsorship and but most of all, the people shared their fascination and enthusiasm for what we did.
The coverage on the Classics is not done either, all the armies will get their presentation posts, like I did with my Imperial Fists and the Sisters of Battle so far, it just takes some time to prepare the small icons. And of course I want to provide the narrative that we played on the weekend in a proper way, editing the campaign maps, capturing the scenarios and such takes a bit of time, but will be posted on here as well.
So be sure, this won't be the last endeavour into the old times of Warhammer. We'll keep you posted.
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