Playing Kingdom Death: Monster

 I've been lucky and this weekend I've been able to finally play a game! In addition, it's been no less than Kingdom Death: Monster, a game I've been wanting to play for ages.

(In the unlikely event you don't know what I'm talking about, please visit their web first)

I have been tempted through the years to get on board of some of their kickstarter campaigns, but I never found the right moment to do so, considering that it was quite an investment and the probability of actually playing was thin, and not even mentioning the probability of running a proper campaign.

However, my pal Hetairoi (What do you say? You don't follow his IG yet? Please, go, no worries, I'll wait) got the game back in the day and has been struggling (oh, everything regarding this game involves struggle, I'll explain later) to run a campaign. He has played a few games and I finally got the chance to jump into one! Needless to say I was that much eager to play.

Specially if you play in such a handmade board. Please go visit Hetaitoi's IG

The story of the game itself, its narrative, is pretty much game-driven. A group of puny humans awake in the darkness and have to survive to the hostile environment. As I got into an ongoing campaign, the characters had already lived some adventures and, well... they had seen things. So they have some traits, disorders, abilities and impairments that make them unique.

I played with these two characters (my pal got another three):

One suffers of apathy and the other has anxiety. Yup, this game brings in your real life issues

This game was about hunting an antelope. But, oh, my sweet summer child, not what you understand for an antelope...

But I'm anticipating events. The game has several and very different phases. During the Hunt Phase, the survivors look for the trail of the beast. You have to draw some random cards (some of them generic, some of them specific of the monster you are hunting) showing some events happening while in pursue of your objective.

Oh, is that truly an... antelope??

For example, my very first move into the game. I had to draw a card, it was a random event, and my character fell into a pit and hurt his foot. An sprained ankle or so. Just the beginning!

Characters have separate statistics for head/arms/body/waist/legs, and so for brain and insanity. 

 

*This* is insane

Our poor pals wore some simple pieces of cloth (+1 armour on waist) and some close combat weapons. That will have to do!

After following the trail of the monster, the survivors finally got it cornered. Then the Showdown Phase started.

Showdown!

In this phase the monster uses a deck of artificial intelligence cards and hit location cards, so every interaction with the players is driven this way. To put it in few words, the AI cards represent the monster's wounds. When you cause a wound, a card is taken away from the deck, until no cards (or survivors!) are left.

But oh, the antelope can graze, as weird as it seems on such a board. It can eat the acanthus leafs that are scarcely growing here and there, and recover a wound wich each one. So another part of the strategy for your game can be denying the food from the monster. But beware! If you try to reach an acanthus leaf, you may be bitten by a snake (which happened to us!)

The survivors approach the monster

This creature is not called "screaming antelope" for nothing. It suddenly started a monstrous stampede of one while screaming aloud, throwing everybody away and causing brain damage to any survivor who was not deaf (yes, I insist, this game descends to that kind of management).

Hard to say who is the hunter and who is the prey

There are advantages if you attack the monster on his blindspot. Oh, yes, I already made the jokes

The antelope is quite an agile creature (and a deadly one!). It kept moving along the whole board during all the game. Its kicks caused serious wounds to the characters. One ended with a ripped up arm, another with her spleen bursted, all of them with some brain damage... Oh, it's nice to point out that in this game insanity is your brain's armour. Your way to avoid understanding the reality of your surroundings. Cute. This is Murphy's favourite game. Anything that can go wrong... will go wrong.

It is worth noting that cornered animals are most dangerous

It kept on kicking and killing until the end

But little by little, the survivors managed to cause wounds to the antelope. Each time, a card was taken away, so everytime you had to shuffle the AI deck, there were less and less cards. But finally...

Die, spawn of hell, die!!!

The antelope is killed! But one of the survivors had been squashed by a kick and the others are injured and bruised all over. A high price to pay...

Now that the Showdown Phase has ended, the Settlement Phase can start. You have to collect your prizes from the hunt...

Fruitful hunt!

...and then organize your settlement and bring them in. You can craft new gear, develop abilities, try random events and so. This is a purely management phase, but is crucial for the campaign, as it will determine the effects on your survivors for future encounters!

 

This is a very brief review which makes no justice at all. I had some intuitions about the game, but now that I have tried it, I have to say it's awesome beyond measurement. The dynamics are really elegant and swift, yet full of content and detail. The kind of events you have to pay attention to is not at all overwhelming, but enriching, and they add a lot of depth into the game. You can feel the tension growing as events begin to go wrong and wrong. In fact I'm pretty sure that any good thing that happened to the characters was due to any mistake we made applying the rules. Nothing good ever happens to these poor people!

I'm in the conundrum again. I'd love to get the game, seriously, but it takes quite a lot of time and commitment to make the most of it. I'm not sure if I'm ready to spend the money it costs; not because it's not worth of it; it is! Trust me, it is. But I'm sure I'm not able to run a whole campaign. Oh, I won't say it's a lifetime project (though it can be!), but it requires some dedication.

However, the minis are exquisite (even if my pal replaced the antelope with an even more usettling creature), the game is full of details, it's exciting and incredibly well designed down to every detail. I can understand it's not everybody's cup of tea, but if you ever have the chance of giving this one a shot, please don't think twice.

That's all for now! I'll be resuming painting production soon!

The walking gun

 Now that I have three Titans per Legio, one of each basic kind, it is time to start to make them different and unique, to imprint them the traits that will define their combat attitude and their whole personality. Having just one Warbringer Titan, I decided to assign it to the loyal Legio Artemis, turning it into a more kind of long-range focused force. Let's see how it goes!

First of all, I believe I had a confusion with this model and the Warmaster Titan. I really thought this one was larger than a Warlord, and it's just the opposite, it stands more like in between the Warlord and the Reaver. However, it's a true monster with that ordnance on its back. But I'm anticipating. I started with the legs, as usual:

And it was the usual hell of a build, with hundreds of pieces!

As I've done with previous Titans, I've painted most (or maybe all) the pieces as I was assembling them. The overlapping of plates can be an issue, especially edges, and it was easier to glue them once they were already painted. I believe I've already discussed this in previous posts. At this stage I don't need to paint all the details (checkers, decals, whatever), but at least the basic colour needs to be done. However, as I started to paint armour plates I let myself go a little and I highlighted them.

There are many hours involved in this pic!

There are three possible options for the shoulder plates. A totally neutral one, a variant with Eyes for overtly traitor Legios and this other one with eagles, which I thought fitted in more for my plans. There is no such thing as subtlety in Warhammer.

The gun on the shoulders is monstrous. In a good sense, of course. This is pure Warhammer 40,000, some good old oversized weapons all over:

The level of detail is insane, seriously. Look closer, it has already shot two rounds

 Once I got to this point I just had to put all the elements together and paint the details. So, ladies and gentlemen, with you all... the Ultima Ratio, Warbringer Titan.

No checkers on the back, I promise

The Maniple so far:

I need a larger backdrop? Already? Oh, come on!

With this addition the loyal guys begin to look different and to have their own way of doing things. I guess I'll have to go back to Legio Faucibus, to add some close combat or smaller units. A pair of Warhounds most likely, but that's still to be decided.

In the meantime I'll be working on some different stuff, to bring some variety here and to not get overwhelmed by a single project. More minis soon!

Ya neva see dem koming!

 Ork goodies again today. While working on more Titans, I've been trying to put some order in the Orks box, which I have found to be quite a challenging endeavour. Mainly because, even if I call it a box, is more like a collection of boxes, bags and foam trays scattered all along the place. Which, all being said, I still find pretty Orkish anyway.

The thing is that I've put together all my Ork Kommandos:

Some of them were already mine, others came in later

 I've broken the non written rule of working only with old models, because I also happen to have this Kaptin from most awesome Knightmare Miniatures.

Da Boss

 I know that this guy kind of breaks the aesthetics of the Kommandos, but I liked the mini and felt that it should fit in here. I reckon it's a rendiditon of the old Freeboter Kaptin, but I have some plans for Freebooters in the future, so I'm taking the risk of making this mini into this unit. If I change my mind in the future, I can always pull it out.

I took some time to think about how to paint them. My first impulse was to use some weird camo pattern, something garish. The Ork idea of camouflage. But I think that's a path heavily treaded by many people over the years. However I came with some silly ideas along the way, mostly waving through real life  current camo patterns. For example, the former Belgian Army camo pattern looked like a good option:

Come on, even the troopers are already green!!

But I really didn't enjoy the idea. From that I jumped upon the US Army ACU pattern, which was once supposed to be the ultimate camouflage (and if you ever met anyone who has served wearing it, you may find different opinions on that idea). However, that's a thing I had already done long ago, and I wasn't so keen to repeat it.

At some point I even considered the idea of using Multicam pattern, i.e. some current, actual camouflage, buy I also discarded the idea. Somehow it really didn't feel right on those fatigues. It was only then when I found my particular solution. The uniforms. It was there all the time. They somehow resembled me WWII British Royal Marines, and that finally inspired me. (Disclaimer: my dear British friends, feel free to disagree, but now I see these Kommandos as Royal Marines and you cannot change my mind XD).

I cut out and replaced some weapons in order to avoid identical minis

Finding the correct colour was tricky, and I don't think I've really got it right, but at some point I had to make the decision to move along with it. After all, I'm not painting historicals, so these will have to do. In the end, these are my results:

Still sceptical about this one, but I'm keeping him for now

Kome on, Boyz, let's go infiltrate behind enemy lines

Of course there are shark mouths on the chainswords

Here you can see the whole unit:

Don't let otha Boyz ta tell yer wot iz ‘da propa way uv warfare

On this rear pic you can see the Blood Axes symbol, but in the colours of the WWII British Commandos patch, red over black:

Please note the glorious Swiss Army knives too!

 This is it. I have to say I had a lot of fun painting them, it's been a different kind of project, combining Ork foolinesh and a more serious approach. Now these fellas are ready to rock. But beware... ya neva see dem koming!

Bring me bigger Titans!

It took a little bit longer than expected, but I've finished the next step in this Adeptus Titanucus project. So here you have, not just one... but two Warlord Titans!

Before we really get started, have a look at the level of crazyness of this kit:

It's not just that the femoral head is a separate piece... it comes into pieces itself!

The first steps are kind of slow, because you have to decide the general layout of the whole pose. Besides, I made a conversion on one of them, to make it look like walking, with a foot in the air:

This pic is highly unimpressive. Give me some time

One thing I've learned is to paint the Titans as I assemble them. The overlapping on the armour plates makes some areas impossible to reach later on, so you better take care of that issue as you go. At this point I had to decide which one was to be the loyalist and which one the traitor:

There we go

When I go out/ yeah, I know I'm gonna be/ I'm gonna be the Titan who goes along with you

I need so desperately a 3D print of the GW's running man, you know the mini

After that, I assembled the upper bodies. I primed them metallic to save some time:

It looks like the blue one is kicking the body

The keen eye may have noticed that the traitor Titan has some not-GW's pieces. Right, they are from Battle Bling, who have awesome ranges and an outstanding service. I placed an order to try their bits and I'm so happy I did!

Do you have any doubt of this Titan's allegiance?

 In any case, the standard pieces from the original set are not less awesome:

Tricky to assemble, but cool in the end

I made a mistake at this point. Well, I made it earlier, when planning this stage. I ordered a weapon for the right arm, but silly me didn't realise it really wasn't a weapon for a Warlord, but for a Warmaster Titan, which is noticeably larger 😕

Warlord, Warmaster, Warbringer, Warmonger... Oh, come on!!

What was that thing about oversized weapons in Warhammer?

For the left arm I ordered a spiky flail. Honestly, no idea of the rules or what does it do, I simply guide myself by the Rule of Cool:

The head is of course also by Battle Bling

A preview of the unfinished leviathans:

These monsters are humungously huge

The only thing left was the missile launchers on the carapace:

I would walk five hundred miles, and I would walk five hundred more...

Well, then come closer!!

 Finally, the bases. As per the comments in the previous post, I was decided to show the monstrous weight of the Titans, the very earth crushed beneath their feet. In the pic below you can see my puny attempt to represent pipes and tubes being smashed and bending on themselves.

LEGO pieces would have been more dramatic

Well, this is what I got in the end. Let me show you the final result. Here you have the Pertinax Ira of Legio Artemis:

...just to be the Titan who walked a thousand miles...

Not satisfied with the effect, I'll try it again on future Titans

Here you also have the Maugrim (Imperial designation Rubrus Fauces) of the Legio Faucibus. I added some greenstuff chains/chainmail for dramatic purposes and also tried to represent the ground a little bit sunk under the feet:

I just noticed I have to clean the edges on both bases

Ready for battle!

Ah, curse your sudden but inevitable betrayal!

Well, all my Titans so far:

The backdrop is an A3. I need a bigger one. Bigger!

I guess this ends Stage One of the project. I now have a single model of every basic Titan on both Legios, making them somewhat symmetric. Now it is time to start the differences. One Legio will be more focused on close combat and agile manoeuvring (I guess it makes more sense for the traitorous Legio Faucibus, the dreadeds Death Jaws) and the other one will rely on heavier elements and long range weapons (that will be Legio Artemis then!). I will have to adjust the different Titans and see what fits better for both Legios.

For now, just a funny pic, the mandatory size comparison shot of the Warlord through time:

Daddy with the kids

 This is all for today. More stuff incoming as I paint it!

A pool of Orks

 While I'm still building a couple of Warlord Titans (which is taking quite some time), I've been having a look at what else do I have on the queue. Wow. The things I still have. After crying in the shower for a few days, I realised I had to pick something. One clear rule: when in doubt, go for Orks. You can never be disappointed with Orks.

I have a ridiculous amount of metal Orks from the RT-2nd Ed times. In fact, when tried to get them all along I realised it was going to be difficult to just separate them into mobs. So I took the easiest solution. Just start painting and I'll make the decision when I have them finished😄

I started with some basic RTO2 Orks. I've always loved these models, and have always provided some fun times. I had painted some of them before. Now I had a few painted models, some others untouched and a few kind of in the middle of the process. Time to make this bunch of minis work!

I guess there's little to say when it comes to these. You can only rejoice in the sculpts of the old times and the sweet silliness they instil. Once again I'm not making them into any specific Ork Clan, I simply let myself go and see what happened. This is the result:

He insists in calling himself Da Kommizar, but no one really pays him any attention

I added some skin variety, asusual. I really find it more attractive than the ubiquitous only tone of green. When doing this, I first paint the skin (at least the first layer), and then I decide the rest of the colours depending on that. Not very scientific, but hey, it works for me.

I've never known the tactical role of the drummer, but it's so cool I have to go with it

I may have inadvertedly made a Bretonnian livery

I also have never known what the helmet rattle is. Ultramarine maracas!

Well, I have 16 Orks for the moment! I can make a mob with them, but I think I'll be adding a few blokes more

Finally! A backdrop!

 Right, I recently received a backdrop book by Jon Hodgson, from his latest KS campaign. You can find them all here, go have a look at them! They are wonderful, I may even get another one!

Next time I'm confident I'll be able to bring the two Warlords. Coming soon!