Necromunday: Scumathon26 Announcement

Well howdy, Scummers! I'm excited to announce here on Goonhammer that Scumathon is back for a third year, running from March 27th through April 9th! What is it? Scumathon is an annual celebration of kitbashing, creativity, community, and mashing plastic together shared across Instagram and Discord. Participants are tasked with delving the depths of their bits box and scouring their sprue stash while piecing together fresh models without instructions and with abandon. When we focus on quantity, we inevitably find quality along the way, and with plenty of learning and surprises throughout that journey!

2025 Heaviest Arsenal winner. Credit: @tamhammer

Plan to set aside anywhere between a few hours and a few days to bash up some new buddies and share your work across the internet under #scumathon26 to share in the collective undertaking! Keep your minis gray to keep the focus on creative modeling and away from painting, which you'll have plenty of time for after the event! Never kitbashed before? Consider this your calling to give it a shot, surrounded by an encouraging and enthusiastic community ready and waiting to cheer on cool models as they come together!

2025’s Best in Show winner. Credit: @purp_miniatures

As with past years, we've got multiple categories to help spark and guide some of your bashing throughout the event. At the end of the event, you'll be able to submit some of your work into these categories for our judges to review. They will ultimately select winning and commended entries from among the submissions!

2026's event sticker is a whole sheet! Credit: @girlgremmy

You are encouraged to work in whatever way and with whatever materials best harness your own creativity. While I myself am a devout Necromundan, fun interpretations of our categories across all game systems and settings is encouraged as well!

What are this year's categories?

Underhive Artwork is your calling to glue up a gang relic, in-game sculpture, holy shrine, forbidden artifact, or grandma’s mung vase collection. If hive citizens could debate its artistic merit and you can squeeze it on a base, you’re good to go! Show off some pieces that are ready to drive narrative gameplay!

Who’ll be judging submissions for this category? Necromunda community pillar @carl_r_johnston of Underhive Art, of course! Carl’s illustration and design work can be seen throughout the Necromunda community on a whole range of supplements and projects as well as on terrain boards across the globe with his free series of posters, scrolls, and other 28mm-scaled printable goodies. He's also a part of the relaunched Sump City Radio podcast team, which you can check out here!

Credit: @carl_r_johnston

Next up is Perfect Pairing, challenging you to assemble two models in sync with one another. Rivals? Lovers? A Hiver and their loyal hound? Two bitter enemies locked in a duel? We want to see some narrative chemistry and spark in gray plastic (or resin or putty etc etc). What story can you start telling between two unpainted models?

Judging this category? Stephanie of @orionsbeltminis, host of the syndicated Twitch show "Lascannon of Love" and an incredible painter who's managed to explain "but what is glazing?" in a way even I've understood. You'll recognize her vibrant and painterly style from Instagram and Tiktok where she's shared a host of beautiful Votann and Ogre models (and many lesser-important factions such as "Space Marines"). Check out her excellent work with a slew of busts over on IG as well as her painting tutorials on Tiktok, and join me in cheering her on as she hops into Necromunda with a gang of cheery Squats!

Credit: @orionsbeltminis

We'll be stepping into the subterranean sludge with Sump Seafarer! Privateers, pirates, press gangers, plunderers, trash pickers, treasure hunters, and corsairs of all stripes are encouraged for this category. Will you share a solitary captain or an entire motley crew? You're welcome to include a barge, raft, boat, ship, floating tire, or sea monster of your choosing so long as they're more at home in the sump than the open seas.

Jay and Dale of @JDintheSumpSea will of course be your judges for this category! The pair run an active YouTube channel connecting with fellow Necromundans around the world, and you can also find them on Instagram and Discord. Though they dabble in a range of games, they're anchors in the midwestern Necromunda scene with Dale's famed "Sump Wall" board, and are internationally known for being so gosh darn nice.

A section of the legendary Sump Wall. Credit: @jdinthesumpsea

Mechanical Mashup is up next, tasking participants to get their tech-priest on and glue up some fresh heresy. Robotic creations are encouraged, along with automata, servitors, cyborgs, drones, visible bionics, servo-harnesses, Men of Iron, and anything else the machine spirits might suggest. The challenge isn't just putting together a machine, but giving it character and personality in the process.

Our judge? None other than Jonas of @rokksville, an established master of kitbashing mechanical creations. He's been sharing Inq28, Necromunda, and even some Howling Griffons models on Instagram since 2020, and is the originator of the oft-imitated WamBot-pattern automata. Check out his sprawling Ordo Sepulturum project, with a hefty dose of combat servitors and heavily-augmented Inquisitors included, and his current run of excellent House Escher conversions if you're in need of some modeling motivation.

Credit: @rokksville

Last and certainly not least, you'll be able to submit a single entry to be considered for Best in Show. While Scumathon embraces a "quantity leads to quality" approach, we want to give you an opportunity to proudly share your best work from the event. This might be a good time to mention that winners and some of our favorite submissions will make it into a future Goonhammer recap of the whole event, so take this opportunity to show off and celebrate with the kitbashing community.

I'll be taking a step back from judging to put my focus on keeping the event, submissions, and results running smoothly after some challenges on my end drew things out last year. I'm excited to share that Necromunday’s own editor-in-chief (and definitely not my Goonhammer boss) "Gold" Kevin Fowler of @fowlerpaintsstuff will be selecting our Best in Show winner, finalists, and commended entries! Kevin has had a prolific hobby output over the past few years across Necromunda, Mordheim, and beyond while also running events, sump whale hunts, and local campaigns. A knower of all things Necromunda, you may very well recognize his award-winning Manwolfs Orlock gang from their years of exploits.

The legend himself, Ted Balloon. Credit: Fowler

What else is new for this year? I decided it was best to push back the event until I was clear of all frantic Adepticon panic painting, which conveniently lines the start of Scumathon up with Adepticton. As such, I'll be hosting a physical, in-person kickoff event at Adepticon for folks in Milwaukee to come and kitbash some models together on Thursday, March 26th!

2025 Best in Show Bronze winner. Credit: @hudd.exe

Four of our category judges will already be floating around the convention, I'll be present with a pile of bits and some bottles of glue, and infamous goober Erick of @goobinsgitz graciously agreed to help folks "push putty around until it looks good" if they are trying their hand at sculpting on their models for the first time. This will also be your first chance to snag one of the Scumathon26 sticker sheets whipped up by my best pal @girlgremmy, which we designed for you to build your own sticker models with! I'll be sharing more details about this as we get closer to Adepticon on both Instagram and Discord!

It's time to start gathering those partial sprues and random bags of bits into one pile! Any questions? Reach out to me at @hivemarketminis on Instagram and we'll get it sorted out!

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Tags: necromunda | Necromunday | Adepticon | scumathon