ByronM - Frogdog, Mole Preacher, and Stone Building

 

Today I have a group of three submissions that are all vastly different.  Let's start out with my favourite and the oddest, most NSFW one, which of course means a Kingdom Death model.  This is one I have waited a while to get to and paint, the mighty Frogdog and her multitude of dogpoles. This is a huge model, being on a 100mm round base and towering a little over that in height.

This is one of the newer KD models and as is normal in KD, she is anything but normal.  This is a cross between what looks like a simian face and a frog/toad body.  To help add to the strangeness of the model, she has human breasts hanging underneath and 6 human faces on her back, each with a vagina for a mouth and is giving birth to more "dogpoles".  Only in the strange and inhuman world of Kingdom Death could this creature be a thing! 

In game, the monster likes hopping around the swamp from lily-pad to lily pad that it treats as trampolines, sending people flying through the air.  She also charges up her double sphincter before releasing the most noxious of farts (she even has a fart AI deck with various toxic odours ready to release) that cause you to pass out and potentially drown in the swamp.  All in all it sounds like a cool and different fight, which is what KD is all about (although definitely not for everyone!).

Next up I have a small addition for my Burrows & Badgers collection, a small mole preacher.  I call him Friar Tuck, since he reminds me of the outfit in the Disney Robin Hood animated movie, just not big enough or fat enough, but its all they have that is close in the line.  As with all my B&B stuff it is a pretty simple cartoony paint job, but looks good with all the other miniatures.

Lastly, I have a 3D printed stone house from the Greendale line that can be found on myminifactory (there is also an equivalent line called Grimdale that is the destroyed versions of each building).  I printed this on my Anycubic Kobra S1 that I got a few months back, and it did a great job for a filament printer.  

However it did really remind me why I HATE filament prints. The lines and textures are a pain in the ass to work with, and I would really rather have printed in in resin.  The only reason I didn't is that I have about 10 buildings to paint up in this line, and another 10 for the ruined versions, and filament costs about $5 a building to print while resin would be $30-$50 per building.  To be fair, once on the table and at arms reach you can not really see the lines, so while I hate dealing with them, its not really noticeable when you are playing a game with them. 

The building is 5.5" long, 3.5" wide, and 5" tall, making it fairly substantial.  I painted it a stone grey colour to start with, then went in with 5 different shades of tan and brown and started painting random stones different colours.  From there it was washed to mute the colours a bit and then onto the roof and all the details.  Honestly, it too WAY too long to paint and was not worth it in the challenge due to the huge time sink it was as I had to be careful to always wet-brush and not dry-brush for the print lines to show up.  It probably took me twice as long as the frogdog to paint!  I am still thinking of adding some flock and moss to the roof, but decided to leave it for now until all are painted and I decide if I am going to do snow or moss.

And providing a group shot with a standard space marine for scale.

 

Overall these models should give me a grand total of  45 points.  The Frogdog is equivalent to the King I posted earlier in the challenge and should count as a 40mm monster for 25 points.  The mole preacher is a 25mm model for 5 points. Lastly the building is equivalent to many others that I have awarded 15 points to, so am claiming the same for myself here. As always though, points don't really matter to me, I am happy to just be getting stuff done, so adjust as you see fit.

 

ByronM - Kingdom Death: The King in Yellow

 

It was a busy Christmas so I didn't get much painting done, but I did manage to get some base colours on a bunch of models and at least this one model done, so I am posting it alone this week.  It is a figure that has caused much consternation with the wife, as she despises the colours I am using.  However, how could I not do an evil demonic king in any colour other than yellow?  So, I present to you my version of the Kingdom Death (KD) king as the King in Yellow.

I wanted to do him yellow since I first got him a few years ago, but delayed and delayed as painting anything in yellow sucks!  It's such a hard colour to work with, and its so easy to get it wrong (which unfortunately I probably did as I am not super happy with it but nothing I did made it better so I just left it). Over all though, despite the yellow being a bit muddier than I wanted, since I was looking for more of a shade of ochre through yellow, I think it suits the model.  It makes the fleshy bits a little harder to see and they blend in a bit, but overall I am not un-pleased with the result, just not thrilled with it either, if that makes any sense.

This is a huge model at almost 6" tall as shown with the already fairly tall KD survivor next to it!

 

As with all KD models he is full or strange, dark, twisted details.  For KD that usually means tentacles, penises, extra body parts (normally arms and hands), and babies and the King does not disappoint. While there are no tentacles or penises, the whole King appears to be made up of human arms and hands and babies.  No idea why, and really not sure I even want to question or know.  All I know is that it is creepy and disturbing to many people, but I love it! Heck, he even has a flowing chain of babies around his neck and back.  I normally don't paint pupils on models as it always looks like they are shocked with wide eyes, but I felt in this case that look would work on the babies, as it gives them a confused "why the F am I here" look to them, so I went with it.

 

From ByronM - Kingdom Death Good vs Evil on Corsucant

 

This is a submission LONG in the making, I originally primed these up about 4 challenges ago and then never got around to them.  I kept putting them off as I was not quite sure how to deal with 2 of them and didn't want to screw up such expensive models.  Well, this year it was time to bite the bullet and do them anyway, and I think I nailed it on one and screwed the pooch on the other, but you be the judge.

First up the one I think I nailed, and the one I was most worried about, the Watcher.  This enigmatic entity is your saviour and killer in Kingdom Death.  In this bleak world there is no sky, no sun, just endless darkness and evil, when you wake up in the world though you find magic lanterns that keep the darkness and monsters at bay and let you survive.  [SKIP THE REST OF THIS PARAGRAPH IF YOU DON'T WANT KD SPOILERS!] What you don't realize up front is that Watchers provide and power these lanterns as a way to gather groups of humans into settlements.  Then after a while (25 years/games) they come out from their underground lairs to devour the now hopefully highly populated grown up settlement.  Yeah Kingdom Death is an evil evil place.

The Watchers are supposed to both create and devour light (and hopefully I am getting all this lore correct as its pieced all over the books and cards and not clear on purpose) so I wanted to try and paint something both dark and light.  I went with black but didn't want a pure black so it is actually a deep blue then shaded down to black in the crevasses and up to a slightly lighter blue at the highlights.  I then painted his sash in a bone colour to provide some kind of colour contrast (going black/white but not true colours at either side of the spectrum) and lastly painted the lanterns and some OSL light effects from them, but kept them muted on purpose to show that the light is fading around him.  I am super happy with the result, and I am almost NEVER happy with my own painting, which makes it even better!

Next up is the one I don't like how he came out, the Manhunter.  This is another super cheery monster in Kingdom Death who comes to settlements and demands you sacrifice people to him.  If you don't he likes toying with you in the fight breaking arms, legs, and backs as he breaks you down and then hauls you away.  It never says what he does with the people he takes, but it can't be pleasant.

He is dressed pretty mono-chromatically as he is supposed to be wearing leather made from animals and people, so I tried to use various browns, tans, and skin tones to make up some division in his outfit, but I am just not happy with the overall result.  I struggled with thinking about what to do with him for the last few weeks, but just couldn't come up with a solution, so am submitting him as is, as he is at least usable for the game even though he is not great.

Next up are two survivors to add some extra weapon options to my collection of figures.  The female figure is a Savior figure holding what could be a great sword or twilight sword in game, either a very useful option (even though the twilight sword makes you super powerful for about 8 games then kills you).  

The male is just a random fighter with an axe.  I fell in love with this figure due to the fish head he is wearing as a helmet, so I had to make sure it stood out so painted it a bright green and refer to him as the Fisherman. He kinda suffers from the same monochromatic issue that the Manhunter does though with all his leather items, but again, I wasn't sure where to go from there.

 

 

Overall, I really like the Watcher and the Saviour figures and the Manhunter and Fisherman may need a revisit at some point for more contrast of a few colour changes.  If anyone has suggestions, I would love to hear them.

As for points, I am not sure so leave it at your discretion Millsy.  Kingdom Death is a 40mm game, so the 2 heroes are easy (2 @ 7 = 14 points), but I am not sure how you want to count the monsters.  Normally monsters are equal to vehicles, but these don't seem quite big enough to count as 25 points each, but they are also not cavalry, but I think it would be more reasonable points wise to count them as such and 15 points each instead of the 25?  Your call completely.  Whatever you come up with, I also get the bonus 20 points for completing a good vs evil post for the planet of Corsucant.  

Oh, and I almost forgot, this will also be my 4th squirrel point! So far my topics for Squirrel points include:

1. 15mm Eldar
2. 10mm Undead
3. 30k Marines
4. Kingdom Death Monsters and Heroes
   

ByronM - A Kingdom Death: Monster story - Wierd Dreams event

 As many of you know, my favourite game of all time is Kingdom Death: Monster, a brutal survival game where you play as a settlement of people rather than individual characters since the characters die so often you really should not get attached to any specific one....

So, last night we had a great game of it, and I have to tell a story about why I love the game and love the friends I play it with!!!

At the end of the battle portion of the game there is a settlement phase where you deal with enhancing your village, crafting new gear and dealing with story events.

Well the story event that we drew last night was "Weird Dreams" where one player rolls on a few tables comes up with several strange items, and then the group has to nominate another player to tell a story about those items. Once the player does, the group then again votes on if that story was well told or not and then there are rewards or penalties doled out to either the dreamer or the story teller as a result.

I ended up being the dreamer and after rolling what the dream was about we nominated SteveA as the story teller.

Steve thought for a few minutes and then asked.... "So, I have to tell the story as one of the characters, correct? Then the pros or cons happen to that specific character?"  We answered that yes that's how it works.

Then Steve threw a beautiful and demented curve ball at us and said "Ok, I choose to tell the story as Torbuss".    Now, here is why it's beautiful and demented.... 

 

At one point in the fight, the Hand (who is an insanely hard fight, who you have no way to kill, he just toys with you until you hit him enough times to earn his respect and he then leaves) drew a fight card that had him point at the ground in front of him and wait....  You had to move someone in to be slapped by the Hand in the next turn, or he would attack everyone even worse than the slap....  Well, Torbuss stepped up to take the slap and as a result had his jaw shattered and ripped off his face by the hit!  So Steve started telling the story by grunting, moaning, emoting in various ways and waving his hands about madly!  

The rest of us lost it, laughing so hard we almost fell off our chairs!  Obviously, we gave him extra roll playing points and immediately said that it was an excellently told story!

In other madness that happened in last nights game:

- A character got sucker punched in the balls and they were destroyed and he can no longer father children!

- Another character went start raving mad and will always count as being insane.

- Yet another character went slightly crazy and has now sworn revenge on anything and everything and will go into a berserk frenzy anytime anyone dies (which in this game is almost every singe game)!

- We eventually earned the Hands respect by hitting him with a giant bone club right in his codpiece!

Man I love this game (and the people I play it with)! And next week we have to fight Spidicules....   A giant spider that drives a spike into the top of his preys heads and then uses the bodies as puppets to try to lure their friends in closer... lovely...