Internal CONflict Rhineland 2024

The Internal CONflict is actually the first wargaming event I participate in this year. Due to multiple schedule collisions I wasn't able to visit any shows early to this date, as you can see from my event schedule. What does Internal mean regarding the CONflict? Well, it is not an open event, but internal affair and you have to be invited to tag along.

But (!) this is the first time, that I will host a demo table as well and I'm really looking forward to it. And obviously, we wouldn't show up empty handed, so we packed the car with some snacks (make sure those are non-greasy, as you don't want Orange Cheeto Dust on your miniatures) and drinks, as well as gaming materials. I'll go into that later, what my essentials for a convention are.

Regular readers know - no event report without a proper parking lot picture, and as the CONflict is held at the clubhouse of a local rifle club, parking is not an issue. Beside that, the hosts provide us optionally with a full catering, (breakfast, lunch and dinner from Friday afternoon until Sunday morning, along with a broad variety of drinks).

Right next to the entrance was the newest addition to the Torsten's terrain collection, as you could see on CONflict Rheinland. It's a trench fight table he built for his son, with the help of Team Würfelkrieg.

Just like last year, Benni and Gregor from GamesnDice hosted a gaming table, not American Civil War this time, but French Indian War. And we will cover our day at CONflict in the next podcast.

Obviously I would take up the chance to have another game of Asymmetric Warfare, and was happy to see the Val Verde Favela table, Ivan and Torsten hosted at Tactica this year.

Among the tables was Tamet Airstrip, an airstrip raid, hosted by Thomas / Gypsy Painter, that looked great at night as it used small leds to light up the table. I love the idea of a scenario like this, as it is something different than the regular platoon combat and in my opinion a great addition for a campaign weekend.⁠

There were various further tables, hosted by the participants (incl. Red Lion Con, Kiepencon, Tabletop Rheinmain and Team Würfelkrieg), with different scales and fictional as well as historical settings.

Florian asked me, if I would like to host a gaming table with him, and we went for a postapocalyptic tank battle. As we didn't have any models prior to that idea, we had to build everything from scratch, and I'll cover that "journey" on this blog with a Road to CONflict article.

Along 3d printed and MDF terrain, we used Sherman tanks by Warlord Games, and prepared the rules of Tanks for the Apocalypse by Snarling Badger Studio as well as Achtung Panzer! by Warlord Games.

If you don't know Tanks for the Apocalypse, it's a quick tank battle game for two+ players written by Vince Venturella and Adam Loper (Uncle Atom/Tabletop Minions). You pick up an M4 Sherman and pilot it in the post-apocalyptic American Midwest and fight against other Shermans in what's left of the world after the July 1945 nuclear test went all kinds of wrong.

We played multiple rounds that day, but kept mostly towards Tanks for the Apocalypse as it has a much lower entry barrier and plays more casually. The real mayhem began, when we went for multiple players. Quite impressed how well it went, as it provided quite the entertainment and tactical depth for something that I expected to be rather beer & bretzel.

Dino covered a demo table as well, providing Mortal Gods by Footsore Miniatures, with a small setup and having a total of 8 games just on saturday.

One of the games, where I was interested in the setting, was Draculas America and I was happy to see, that the Kurpfalz Feldherren offered a demo.

The game itself is a Horror Old West setting by Osprey and Northstar, and in this scenario the Crossroad Cult fought the Tong over a conflict of interest in a railroad expansion. While expanding the rail networks through America, the chinese workers came across a huge black monolith, and while the Tong wanted to simply blast the rock, the Crossroad Cult wants to avoid this at any costs.

While I really like the setting and the hosted scenario, the rules themself don't really appeal to me, as some sequences were not very rewarding or felt fitting, as we had struggles killing the desert scorpions, but other characters like the Behemoth and one of the Tong warrior cut through other like butter.

Another highlight as the Asymmetric Warfare hosted by Torsten and Ivan, covering the Favelas in Val Verde, as mentioned further above.

The scenario was that the cartel was running a data center and the PMC (private military company) had to distrupt the upload within 6 turns. This put quite the pressure on us, we played with 3 players in total, along with Torsten hosting the game, two players would take charge of one SpecOps team each and the third would play the cartel.

After a bloody beginning - the PMC lost 3 soldiers in the first turn, we really had to push our luck as due to some unlucky dice rolls we barely had the initiative, but in the end after some further casualties, we were able to push through towards the server room and stop the data from uploading in the final turn.

Torsten and Ivan gave us a heads up on the next chapter of the story, as we will stay in Val Verde, but more away from the city. I'm already excited.

Just like the last years - I can only repeat myself and say a big thank you to Torsten for inviting us and the whole crew for the great hospitality. We're looking forward for the next events to meet again.

The next events in our event schedule will be Crisis in September and the Rhein Main Multiversum in October.

Link: CONflict Rheinland