The Joy of Grimdark

Even Neverborn Need a Little Friend.

GenCon 2026

Last month I had the opportunity to attend GenCon. I have a friend who designs board games and attends every year to sell his games and playtest new ones. He also has a bad back which means he needed help with the heavy lifting. I offered to help and he offered to pay for my admission, good deal.

I’m not a huge board game guy but I am a miniature guy. Wait… no, I mean I’m a guy who likes miniatures. It was fun seeing all of the minis (and not-so minis) from lots of different games, some of which I’d never heard of. Here are some pictures.

A gigantic mech at the TTCombat booth. I think it was a promotional display and not something they sell, which is fine because where would you put that?
A display of some of the cool ship models from their Dropfleet Commander game.
There’s a StarCraft game now apparently. So if you ever wanted to play a miniature wargame based on a video game inspired by a miniature wargame, now’s your chance.
They forgot to construct additional pylons. I’m digging the transparent blue energy plastic though.
A Thunderforged Titan from Shadows of Brimstone: Gates of Valhalla by Flying Frog Productions. Someone did a great job on the lighting effects.
Trench Crusade was a game I’d heard people talk about a lot but had never seen in person. They have a lot of really awesome sculpts. This one was my favorite. “Lord of the Tummy Aches”.
Two plant-bird monsters perform a mating ritual. They’re from the Weaver Courts faction from the game Conquest by Para Bellum Games.

Out of all the models I saw, the creatures from Kingdom Death blew everything else away. This is one of those things I would buy if I was obscenely rich. Even then I’m not sure I’m qualified to put paint on something this bad-ass.

Leave a comment