Gen Con 2026 BOOTY - What Did I Bring Back?

0:00 In this video, I'm back from Gen Con 2026, the largest tabletop gaming convention in the country, and I'm going to show you my booty. It was another great Gen Con last week, the largest tabletop gaming convention in the entirety of the United States, held in downtown Indianapolis, Indiana. 74,000 plus attendees there to play role- playinging games, board games, trading card games, and miniature war games. And not just, you know, to play those games, but also to buy those games. The exhibitor hall is absolutely massive with vendors from every kind of gaming related thing that you could think of.

0:51 certainly game companies selling games and game accessories, but also artists and clothing. So many dice sellers and and every other thing that a gamer might like. I've been going since like 1992 was my first one back when it was only about 15,000 attendees and it was in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where Adepticon is held now. It's a a huge overwhelming spectacle of tabletop gaming. But to be honest, it's much more about board gaming, role- playinging, and trading card games than it is about miniatures wargaming these days. Now, sure, like some of the big players are there, of course, you got Games Workshop, you've got Malifox, Corvvis Belly, you know, with Infinity and Warcrow, you know, Mantic with all their stuff, Warlord games. But if you're like really only interested in miniature war gaming and not also into like RPGs or board games or whatever, then honestly, Adapticon is probably a better trip. Nonetheless, I still really enjoy the show, seeing new things, talking to lots of people who stop by and say hello and, you know, buying stuff which I then bring home and show to you folks. Speaking of which, let's get right to it and take a good long look at my booty. All right, here's the first thing that was available for me to grab out of the bag. Uh, this is from uh Rampart Modular Terrain, even

2:23 though it's not terrain. It's kind of weird, right? Anyway, Rampart is the company. It's technically Archon Studios. You can see the Archon Studios logo down here, but it is Archon Studios City Defenders Miniature Pack. And it's kind of like I don't know, there's sort of sci-fiish. Um like there's definitely like some guys on horses, but then there's also robots with missile launchers, and there's a lot of different guns and things like that going on. You get six stormtroopers, six marksmen, six commandos, three Goliath heavy weapons, three Uberman's, uh three psychic covenant, and three rider of the storm, which I assume is the dudes on the horses there. Um, they're just sort of weird random characters that I'm going to use for whatever, you know. Um, it was a relatively inexpensive box for 30 models or however many models it is.

3:16 Wait, 666. Uh, three makes another six. It's like 36. I don't know. Whatever. It's a bunch. Maybe it's Oh, it's 30. 30 minis. I'm very good at math. Um, but yeah, it's just a really interesting uh kit of weird different miniatures that I can just use in all kinds of different things. I love miniature agnostic games. These guys are the, you know, pin, not pinnacle, they're definitely the, you know, you can definitely tell that they're miniature agnostic because they don't really fit with anything else. They're, if anything, I would say that these guys are not as kind of trader guard coded as the um the models like the damned that I talked about recently from War Games Atlantic. I did a video talking about the damned army box. You can check it out here. Pchow. Um, but this is a little different than that.

4:03 These guys seem a little bit more like good guys to some degree, I guess. I don't know. Um, but yeah, I just saw them. I thought they were pretty cool and I decided to pick up the box and um I'm looking forward to messing with them. Some more miniatures. I was over at the Monster Fight Club booth and uh they make a game called Cyberpunk. Uh, Cyberpunk Red Combat Zone is their skirmish game and I like the the the game and I like the models. They've recently changed their model technology. They used to use something called Seiocast, which is a plastic, but instead of being injected into very expensive metal molds, it's injected into rubber molds, which are highly, you know, cheaper in comparison. And from what I understand, they're moving away from that technology and now they're moving more back into just straight up 3D printed stuff, but 3D printed stuff has a tendency to sometimes be kind of fragile or um brittle or something like that. And uh John the president told me that they're doing something different here. It's not an additive. Uh I don't know what it is. He was being very cy about what technology they were using, but these are evidently all 3D printed.

5:16 I don't know if we're going to catch any detail here, but these are all 3D printed. That lady doesn't have her head on yet. You got to glue that part on separately. Um, but they're different. They're they're they're they're far less fragile, I guess, is what he was telling me. So, I was like, "Well, I want to check them out." And I've recently painted some Arisaka models from this set, which were the old technology, the Seiocast. So, I'm going to compare those to these and see what we get. But it's a box of a bunch of different uh models. These are the uh danger gals. So, it looks like a lot of uh cyber cat girls or something, which I'm not going to lie, that's not normally my jam. But I wanted to check out the the material is really more than anything. And I'll paint them up. Why not? You know what I mean? Maybe I'll do something cool with them. Maybe I'll make I'll make them goth. That would be cool. Last year at Gen Con, I bought an RPG called Vast Grim, which is based kind of a little bit off of Morborg. It kind of like jumps from Morborg and goes forward, right? Vast Grim is a very, very colorful sort of sci-fi thing. And I picked it up not because I'm going to play it because I'm not really an RPG player, but sometimes I just love reading RPGs and like looking at the layouts and figure, you know, just and kind of that stuff. So, I picked up Vast Grim last year and as I walked by the booth this year, they've got some new stuff. And so, they've got this new skirmish game which is called Squirmish.

6:43 Now, you might notice here it's in a tiny little trapper keeper here. Hanging. Is that Does that ring any bells to anybody who's about my age and who went to school and kept stuff in their Trapper Keeper? Yeah. So, they call them battle binders. uh according to this, which it won't focus because it's doing something else. There we go. And so inside there's like basically three little zenes. Uh we can see here there's the crew manual, then there's the core rules, and then right there, and then there's also the uh first scenario. So all of these things come in this little binder. And if you down the road want to buy something, you know, um you know, like another one, you could stick it into this binder and keep it in there. Now, you'll notice also that these are all based off of Forbidden Psalm, which is a skirmish miniatures game that is based off of Morborg. So, if you're familiar with Forbidden Psalm, then you're kind of familiar to some degree with skirmish and kind of how it works. So, I thought this was really cool. Um, and I'm going to be definitely reading this and trying to figure out if it's something that I want to start making models for or do I already have models for it? That kind of thing. But then there's another one here which is called Neon Lords of the Toxic Wasteland like you do. And this is um I don't know if this one's also based off of the same this is using Savage Systems. So it doesn't seem like it's the same type of

8:13 um you know like it's not using like Forbidden Psalm like the last box um or the last binder. But again we have in here three different zenes. We have the scum dogs manual. Uh we have the rules manual right there. And then we also have the um mission book one. I really like this concept of being able to Oh, I recognize this artist, I'm pretty sure. Um I really like the concept of being able to, you know, have these different little zenes that you can kind of, you know, add and subtract from and things like that. And it's also really nice to have them in this little binder. So if you know I need to bring the core rules and I need to bring scenario book two because that's what we're playing, you can just put them in here and they'll stay protected.

9:03 Last year at Gen Con, I picked up from the Corvvis belly booth the uh new uh essentials kind of starter box for, you know, getting into infinity and things like that. Uh there's a new one now. You can see here it's again the essentials start here. It's like a starter, but it's start here, I guess. Um, and it's got Nomads and ALF or ALF. I'm not sure how to pronounce it. Uh, in this box, it is, from what I understand, basically kind of the same terrain as last time. Um, but it has three models from one team and three models from the other team. Uh, pretty much everything you need. Dice, cards, terrain, a mat, all that stuff in this little box, which is just barely smaller than my head. So, you know, you got that going for you. The other benefit too, which I think is neat, um, is that they added this little thing here, build your army and in step.

9:53 So you start here, hence the start here box, and then you could buy an army pack to which would be your next step to go further. And then support pack remotes. Like it's really nice, especially with a game like Infinity, which as an outsider I find to be a little I don't want to say opaque, but I can definitely say challenging to some degree. you can look at that that whole um you know game and really be like I'm not sure what I'm supposed to be doing. Now obviously just saying start here makes a lot of sense. But um yeah, so again they're still metal models. So if you're like super anti- metal model, you're probably not going to want to look at it. But I will tell you from building the models from the last Essentials box that they go together a lot better than they used to. It used to be a lot of ball and socket where you just had a ball that just sort of fit into a socket and you hope it works. Now it is a little bit more there's no such thing as a push fit metal model but the arms have like a squared off kind of lug that goes into a squared off socket in the arm. So it goes in one kind of specific way which the lug itself kind of takes some of the weight because again we're dealing with metal. And so in doing that, it just sort of helps. I don't know. I I found that they went together a lot easier.

11:10 You still have the other issues with metal to some degree. Sometimes there's extra flash that you don't get, you know, on regular plastics and things like that, but for the most part, they've really been doing metal models for so long that they've really got it dialed in. So, if you're interested, you should check out the essentials. The new essentials start here with Nomads and ALF. And um and uh yeah, I'm looking forward to, like I said, painting these guys, you know, and well, building them. I'm looking forward to slightly less, but I'm looking forward to um to to painting them. And uh I don't think I'll probably do it, you know, right as far as like the way that the you're supposed to or whatever necessarily, but I'll look around and see if I can find some painting guides or some like, hey, you should use these colors and things like that and then decide if I want to do it that way or not. Last year in my booty, there was um a weird miniature called The King in Yellow, which was from somebody called Dimension Games, and it was just this sort of oneoff uh model, but it was a hard plastic, you know, a HIPS type model. Hard plastic or high impact polystyrene is what HIPS stands for. And it was um it was a really cool model with incredibly high detail. what actually really drew me to it last year.

12:21 So, I walked up, they just had the sprew laying out and I picked up and looked at it and went, "Oh." And just like there's so much incredible like surface detail and little texture and stuff like that. It was a really cool model. Uh they they had another box this year. They still had the King and Yellow there. Uh and as I was standing there, I bumped into Hank, who's one of the main guys who runs Adepticon, and we chatted for a while, and he picked up the King in Yellow. And also this, this is the Gilded Husk. Um, it is the bombard of Chattanooa. Chattanooa. I have no idea, but it's a really cool looking weird model. Um, this is what it's designed to look like, right? So, there's like a big cannon here and there's like maybe a person inside of it and there's chains and there's like it's a little it's a little kingdom death looking little bit. There's not nearly as many naked bits, I don't think, but it is definitely got a Kingdom uh a Kingdom Death vibe to me just from first glance.

13:20 And um so I'm I'm very interested in checking it out. Is it open? Yes, it is. But I'll show you the miniatures or not the miniatures, the sprew. I mean, um, again, you know, big plastic sprew, but like really like super fine detail. How close can I get with this? That's about there. That's not too bad. Very, very, very fine detail. Um, and so I just think that's really interesting. And sometimes some companies can go overboard on detail and sometimes it's required almost to have a lot of detail, right?

13:59 [snorts]

14:00 Uh, but yeah, Dimension Games or Dimension Games, Dimension Games, I guess. Uh, neat thing. Like 35 bucks. Um, definitely going to put this one and the other one together. I'll be honest, I haven't put the other one together yet. And I'm looking forward to painting them. I might just I don't know, maybe I'll work on them on Twitch or something like that. That might be kind of cool. There's this thing that's been at Gen Con for years and years and years, and it's the Gen Con auction. And um Shenan auction is it's its own thing. It's actually they've moved it to a completely different building. It used to be in the main building and now they've moved it to a different hotel so that it could expand and everything like that. And there's two halves to the auction, at least in my opinion. There's the part where there's a guy that says, "Hey, this is a thing and whatever. We're starting the bid at $5 and then da da da and all that kind of stuff." And then there's also what they call the consignment area. And when you go to the consignment area, there's things there that people are just trying to sell, things that are used, things they bought. they decided they don't want anymore. And um uh me and my friend Jason poked our heads in there and walked around a little bit Friday, I want to say. Maybe it was. I think it was Friday. And the thing that's interesting about it, so I picked up this Quirs War uh Fidw Specialists, which I don't have this box, but it was unopened and everything's inside and everything. That's great. But the thing that's interesting about it is that they put this like document on there and they say, "Okay, well this is what it is and this is the description and it's, you know, it's it's sealed and all that kind of stuff, but then they also put the price down here. So if you buy it on

15:30 Thursday, I would have paid $34. But since I waited until Friday when I which is when I first went in there, I got it for $30. But if it hadn't sold by Saturday, then it would go for $26." So, it's always interesting like on Saturday you can find like the cheapest prices, but the good stuff's already been picked over at that point. But it's a good place to go and check out and find interesting things that you might want to have, you know, for your collection. There's not a lot of wargaming in there. It's a lot of board games. 68 board games get made a second in in in this day and age. So, you know, but um whereas war games, it's only like 38 uh per second. But still, yeah, there was uh there's a lot of, you know, obviously Warhammers type stuff in there that you could get. But I did come across a couple of Quir things and I was I scoped those out from a distance, went over.

16:18 There was only just two of the same box and I only really needed one, but 30 bucks was a pretty good price. I was going to say, and I didn't even buy a t-shirt this year. I almost always buy t-shirts at uh Gen Con. And then as I was digging through my bag, I went, "Oh, no. I I did I did buy a t-shirt." Uh I picked this up at the Catalyst Games booth. I think this is the only thing I bought from Catalyst. I think it might be. Um, I did not pick up the new Battletech. I know there was like a new edition of Battletech that came out this year. I didn't really I don't really play Battletech. I like Alpha Strike and other stuff that they do, but anyway, this is a um it's a Dishy. It's basically like a a blueprint of uh the I think it's called a Dishy. Um it's kind of a bigger hunchbacky kind of looking um uh mech. And so it's they also did it in like dark gray and like pink and I was like that's cool but it doesn't look like a blueprint. Like this looks like a blueprint. It's blue and there's white and it looks like a blueprint to me. So yeah, I picked that up. Um this is the one t-shirt. There was a couple other t-shirts that I wanted. There was a company there that I saw a t-shirt and I was like right on the first day and I'm like yeah can I get that extra large?

17:27 And they're like oh we're all out. And if you ever have to sell t-shirts at Gen Con, bring a lot more extraarges and double extraarges than smalls. I'm just saying, it just seems like a good idea. But right away on Thursday, they were sold out. So, didn't get that one, but I did get this one. The folks at uh Warlord Games sent me the starter box for the new version of Conflict 47, which I appreciated. And I haven't really talked about it because I sat down to start building it and I started building the base kind of American troops. They're called the Fireflies and they have jump packs and then they have like Thompson machine guns and jump packs and it's a thing. Um [sighs and gasps] I tried building three of them and I screwed every single one of them up. They generally have the arms already pre-attached to the guns. If you've ever built a space marine, you know that the bolter is attached to the right arm and the left arm is just sort of wiggling out here. And if you don't get them lined up right, your guy is never holding his gun properly. You may have done that yourself. In this situation, the gun already has both arms attached to it. You just glue them to the shoulders, which you would think would be really easy, but I think I somehow screwed up and glued them to the wrong torsos. I don't know. So, the torsos were too wide that I was trying to glue these and so my guns all got bent and they just I did three of them and then I was like, "Well, I'm not doing this right." And there weren't like I don't think that there were instructions that said that I should do it differently. I just wasn't doing it right. Anyway, so I went to the Conflict uh 47. Well, I went to the Warlord booth and picked up uh this Firefly Airborne Infantry um so that I can try it again.

18:59 And maybe they'll do better this time. But uh yeah, you get I don't know 18 multi-art plastic Firefly Airborne Infantry. You get some little uh you know, water slide decals and all that kind of stuff. They got the jetpacks there. You can see that. So yeah, we're going to give it a try again and see because I like the concept of Conflict 47. I really do. But um man, I just just bounced right off of those initial Firefly builds and I want to give it another try and see if it's just me or if it's maybe it's them. I picked up this book at uh Studio 2 Publishing. They have a huge booth that's both sides of a aisle for quite a ways. And um they sell mostly RPGs, but all kinds of different book related stuff and tons and tons and tons of it all up and down the booth from all kinds of different, you know, you know, uh manufacturers or whatever, but they're kind of like a almost like a distributor, but they go to Gen Con and always sell stuff there. And uh this book is called An Infinity of Ships. And the reason I even looked at it was because the cover here specifically is done by Rob Turpin, who did the artwork for the game that Vince and I did, uh, the most recent Snarl, Snarl 2025, which had a game in it called Chrome Rangers.

20:14 Rob did that artwork and, uh, I following him on Blue Sky, I saw, oh yeah, he's been working and then so this was the first time I'd ever seen it in, you know, in in person. It's an expansive toolkit for creating unique spaceships for sci-fi rolling or role- playinging games. 150 pages of generator tables, adventures, and resources. Dozens of strange and wonderful ships with fullcolor illustrations to inspire infinite possibilities. So, again, sometimes you just buy a book because you're like, "Well, this is really cool, you know, and I do I have to come up with spaceships for um role playing games?" No, not too much. But there's just all kinds of cool stuff in here. So, um, it was something I wanted to pick up. I like supporting the artists that we get to work with, and, uh, I like spaceships, so this seemed like it was a slam dunk.

21:03 I backed the Kickstarter for Trench Crusade several years back or whatever. H, but I just did the STLs. I did not do the hard coverver book, right? Um, I just did the STLs because I was like, well, the rules are free online. I I like free rules. Also, the rules will update whereas the book will not and all that kind of stuff. So, I don't need the book, right? And then after the book came out and started getting shipped out to Kickstarter people, uh the fellow who designed the book, did the layout and all that kind of stuff, uh he did a video on his YouTube channel talking about it and kind of paging through it and everything like everything like that. And I watched that video and then I was like, I kind of wish I had gotten the book. So, as it turned out, they were adepticon. The books were at Adepticon. The booth was right across from the Army Painter booth where I was hanging out a good portion of Adepticon.

21:53 I did not realize they were selling the books and I didn't find out until after Adepticon. So, I was like, "Oh man, I missed my chance again." Well, this time I didn't. So, at uh Gen Con, they did finally they had the books. Um again, this is the Kickstarter edition. So, they're going to be coming out with a new I think soft cover book that's going to go into stores and um that'll be a slightly different book than this one. It'll have some different artwork in it and things like that and that's coming at some point. But this is the like, you know, leftovers to some degree from the Kickstarter edition. So, I was very happy to be able to pick it up at Adepticon. I got some schmutz on it. It's a very glossy cover, so um it's the reason I just picked it up is because it's just gorgeous. Like the stuff in it. Um I I am not going to take this, you know, when I come here to the studio to play um Trench Crusade against Sam. I'm still going to use my iPad because it's just easier. But just the artwork, it's stuff that you haven't seen before. You know what I mean? It's stuff that's not on the website. It's a lot of crazy good stuff and it's just gorgeous. So, um yeah, when I saw that they still had some there at the booth, I was like, "Yeah, I'm going to definitely have to uh pick that up." I mean, I wish I had digital versions of a lot of this artwork because it would be great for like making videos and things like that. like we have like I think maybe we have that guy, we have some of the other stuff, but yeah, it's the entirety of the rules, but it's also tons and tons of art and lore and all kinds of neat stuff. So, yeah, I was

23:23 really happy to be able to pick this up at Gen Con. Also, over by the Trench Crusade booth, there was uh someone selling terrain. They were working with the Trench Crusade people. I don't know if it's officially licensed officially, but they were in the booth, so I kind of assume so. Um Elrich Hobbies, Elrich's Hobbies. Elrich, Elrich, one of the two. Um, they produce a lot of cool stuff. They originally, when I first knew about them, they just made resin bases and they've expanded into getting a lot of other things and they're starting to do terrain. So, this is the trench zone set um from uh Elrich's Elrich or Elrich's Hobbies. I think it says on the front. I don't you guys I can't see if you can see this. How do I do this? This box is just too big. Elrich's Hobbies. There's an S in there. I don't know if you guys can see this.

24:15 Anyway, it's a lot of 3D printed modular terrain all in this sort of triangularly style. I'll try to put some images up here. I don't want to open the box cuz I don't want to have to repack it and then take it back home again from the studio. But it was it's about 2 foot by 3 foot I think that it covers. And I think it was a hundred bucks. Now, um if I had access to the STLs, I could 3D print it. Sure. Or I could just pay them $100 and then just have it right away. You know what I mean? It's like one of those things where especially because a lot of the pieces are kind of larger sometimes depending on humidity and temperature and things like that, big pieces can sort of peel up a little bit. And with this I just it's all ready to go. So I know that I have it done. Um so I'm going to be spray priming this stuff soon before it starts to get too cold and things like that. It's early August so it should be a little while. But the idea is to paint this stuff up.

25:10 I'm trying to decide if I want to keep it modular or not. I'm not sure. But it's very cool. I was very glad to be able to get it. And initially I was like looking at the booth and I'm like, "Oh yeah, no. I don't want to get that." And then I was like, "Wait, I'm not flying back home. We're driving back home. It's a 6 and 1 half hour drive, but it's not that big of a box. It's not not particularly super heavy." Which is nice because again, it's 3D printed PLA, right? You know, the filament stuff. But yeah, I was very glad to see them selling the stuff there at the booth and I saw it in person. set up and also painted. They had both versions. Um, you know, the unpainted and the painted. And, uh, yeah, I thought it was a pretty good deal, especially for 100 bucks. All right, the last few things. Vince and I were walking around at one point on Friday and the guy came up to us and said, "Hey, you know, because he knew us from the internet and whatnot, and he gave us each a copy of Beefy Shotgun Wizards." Beefy Shotgun Wizards. It's the Quickshot Yearbook uh edition and it is all wizards are mur murder hobos. I don't think that that seems wrong. It's an indie kind of RPG sort of thing. Um I know it comes from Wisconsin. I'm 98% sure it comes from Wisconsin. I believe the Madison, Wisconsin area. There was a convention called Beefy Shotgun Con. No, Shotgun Wizards Con. There was some sort of convention earlier this year that was in Madison, Wisconsin, and it was related to this.

26:35 So, uh, definitely looking forward to checking this out. I also stopped the G by the Game Envy booth. Picked up another little mini um, dry palette, you know, for texture palette. It's a laser engraved with just a bunch of stuff going on there. Says game envy right there. And you just prime this and then you use it for dry brushing to kind of like versus using a piece of paper towel. If you use a piece of paper towel or something like that, it sucks a lot more of the moisture out of it. This has got the texture to pick up the paint, but if you've primed it, it won't suck up all the moisture out of your brush, which is good, too. Also, uh Game Envy um brush cleaner and revitalizer soap stuff, which I'm very interested in cuz I'm always interested in different soaps. Doesn't smell like anything. That's interesting. All right, so um got that stuff. And then lastly, there's this big long hallway between the main convention center and the football field, Lucas Oil Stadium, where the Colts play. And in it is, well, a ton of people at almost all times. And also a lot of uh pinball machines. Yeah. But then if you get just past that once you start to get into the stadium, there's like a maker area.

27:43 There's lots of different craft people that are like gaming related crafts and things like that. And there's this great booth there that sells patches and stickers and things like that. I picked up this cool Moth Man patch. I thought that was very neat. This kind of guillotine patch. He's got a clock that shows it's it's about time. Just, you know, take that as you will. And then this skull in a in a hex thing, which I just thought was kind of cool as well. So, that folks is my Gen Con booty for 2026. I hope you enjoyed it and feel free to ask questions in the comments down below. I'll answer what I can. I think my next convention is Dragonfall right here in Wisconsin coming up in early October. I'll put a link in the description if you want to know more about it. Did you attend Gen Con this year? Are you thinking about attending in the future? Let us all know down in the comments below. And if you if you like my booty, some depressment of the like button or the hype button if you're on mobile is always a big help to the channel and I appreciate it. While you're down there hitting buttons, there's also one that says subscribe.

28:50 So, if you're not already subscribed, you can hit that button and then you you will be, you know, and it and it's free. Thanks for watching.