Questing for the Realm

 Now for a totally diferent thing! What can it be?

Oh, it seems that I'm mixing the holidays and I'm back to Christmas in the middle of Easter. Look, look at this candy cane:

Hey! That's no candy cane!

Oh, you got me. I'm starting a new project. Well, you can say that technically it's not really new, but after all these yearts it feels like that, and given that it involves painting a whole army, I'm counting it as new!

I started playing WHFB at 4th Edition, the first one released here in Spain. I had a few Empire minis but not a proper army. Later on, at 5th Edition, I also got some Bretonnians, even the core of an army. But my pals back there weren't that much into Fantasy, so I ended up focusing on WH40K and selling most of my stuff.

I don't know if all this new "The Old World" is responsible for the WHFB revival, but the fact is that I can see a lot of people undusting their old armies, and I'm doing so! I've recovered what I had and have patiently bought some old stuff, so now I can say I'm on my way to build a Bretonnian army!

I had already repainted some plastic Knights of the Realm (that was 2018!! Seven years ago!). Not necessary to click on the link, I'll be bringing them again on this very same post. I decided I could re-start this project with a few Questing Knights, this was my first one:

The Knight of the Stairs

It was fun and I enjoyed it, so I immedately painted another one:

The Knight of Snowfield

It's not that easy to paint heraldry without any figures on it (as Questing Knigts must be!) and yet make it look interesting. My greatest fear was to make them look dull. So I tried something different for the next one:

The same blue I'm using on my Titans!

Three of them!

 

Believe it or not, this is already a whole rank of a unit

The good thing about Bretonnia is that it's not real heraldy, so you are not restricted by its rules, you can play with different hues of the same colour and go wild with some things.

Once I got the basic knights, I started with the characters. First, the trumpet guy:

That one would look better with some figures on that shield

 

I had some problems deciding how to paint the banner bearer, as I hadn't still decided what colours I would apply on the banner itself. I played it safe and used white as base colour, being neutral enough to combine with anything I could come up later:

At the moment I didn't realise I was painting the flag of Finland. Hei ystävät!

 For the Paladin of the unit I got infatuated with the idea of bright red, as I thought it would combine well.

Not original at all, I admit it, but I hope it works

With this one I got six Questing Knights:

A full unit! Weeeee!!

Time to think of the banner. At first I was reluctant to use heraldy figures on it, but in the end I leaned towards that idea, thinking that it would look nice and it can represent the banner of a higher Lord. So I came up with this:

I'll try to pay attention to proportions next time, I promise

OK, let's leave these young, impetuous Knights for a moment, as I will do their bases later. Let's pay some attention to my old Knights of the Realm. I can do all the bases at a time.

I know that Questing Knights don't bear figures on their heraldry and Knights of the Realm do, but I guess that if I was crazy enough to paint these schemes, you will be indulgent on me. Remember them from seven years ago? Well, I don't blame you, here you have them again, with a Knight of the Grail Paladin:

Knights of Epilepsy! Charge!

If you check the link I provided before you may notice I have repainted one of the knights since then, a yellow/green one with an awful and failed scheme. I used an easier pattern:

The Knight of Argyle. His socks combine, of course

 But I wasn't really happy with the Paladin of the unit. That livery was awfully dull among his peers. I thought of a new design, but you see...

...I lacked the stenght of will to do what I had to do

 The only reasonable option was... not to think about it and just start doing it!

Sir Proton, he leads quite positive charges

 It was kind of a hell. I started painting a chequered pattern, which gave more regular spaces, but in the end I was messing up the places I had to paint. So I started over again and painted the crosses just by approximation. However, I think it works. More or less.

Once I was using turquoise, I made the banner in the same colour:

I wanted to make a lion, but it can be a wolf, a dog or a cat deopending on the angle

With all this work in order, I just made all the bases. The ones of the Questing Knights as well as some refurbishing on the Knights of the Realm ones. Here is the final result:

Bushes to hide the plastic grass

The background book is an A3. I need a bigger one!

I don't quite remember the rules, but I pity the poor chaps who have to bear this combined charge

Well, this is it for now! May the Lady of the Lake guide my hand and bless my brushes. I think I'll be doing some men at arms next, but before that I still have Orks to paint! And Titans! And...

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!