Para Bellum Launches In-Store Event Kit to Celebrate Conquest: First Blood Release

With Conquest: First Blood hitting retail shelves on March 26, Para Bellum Games gave stores just a two-day runway: the "A Bloody Good Night" in-store event kit was announced March 24, leaving participating retailers barely 48 hours to confirm their kits, notify their regulars, and set up a launch-night table.

The kit's contents tell you everything about what Para Bellum is trying to accomplish. Inside: a Faction Guide, dice, stickers, and demo materials structured to let staff run casual skirmishes and pickup demos without dedicated event experience. The whole package is designed so a store can run a credible launch night off the shelf. The prize that makes it worth the effort is John Fishtblood, the AdeptiCon convention miniature debuted at the Baird Center in Milwaukee, cast in limited quantities and distributed through the OP kit. Reporting by Jeffrey Dohm-Sanchez for ICv2 confirmed that Fishtblood will also be available directly through Para Bellum's online storefront, but the OP kit version is a different proposition: cast in "First Blood Red" resin, it's a physically distinct object from the standard grey version sold separately. That detail alone separates a launch-night prize from a routine online purchase.

Fishtblood sits within Para Bellum's growing lineage of whimsical limited sculpts rooted in the studio's "Murderous Fish Gnomes" lore. The Peaky Flounder, a limited release tied to the UK Games Expo, set the precedent; Fishtblood follows the same playbook. Convention exclusives in this format historically generate secondary market interest quickly, and a "First Blood Red" cast in genuinely limited numbers adds a collector dimension that grey-resin online stock simply doesn't carry.

The wider context matters for painters evaluating whether First Blood is worth the investment: the 2026 edition is a mechanically rebuilt game, not a re-box. It drops the unit-based movement inherited from The Last Argument of Kings in favor of individual model activation and a comparative dice system that pits roll values directly against each other. Smaller warbands, individual hero moments, faster resolution: for painters who prefer a focused project over an army commitment, that design direction is a genuine selling point.

If your FLGS didn't run the launch-weekend kit, call and ask whether they ordered stock or plan a follow-up event night. Para Bellum operates an ongoing store-run events model rather than a one-time window, so the OP kit may still be running at stores that received late shipments. For Fishtblood specifically, the eShop listing (SKU PBW6599) is live and the model can be deployed by any faction in both First Blood and The Last Argument of Kings, which makes it a useful addition regardless of which warband you're building.

The "First Blood Red" resin version is the standout piece to chase. Painting it is straightforward given the warm cast: thin washes of deep crimson and black settle into the recesses without fighting the base material, and a final pass of gloss blood effects turns a character sculpt into something that genuinely sells the event's name. Grey resin is a blank canvas; red resin is already halfway there.