I’m using Testors standard (non-thin) liquid cement for plastic models.
I’m looking at a couple of different paint wash options in lieu of actually painting these things, because that is not a skill I possess in one tiny iota of a fraction.
If you wash, please spray them (canned spray paint is fine) first. You can even buy two different shades to do some cenital lighting. Spray with cenital lighting + wash = a pretty cool finish for little time and money.
I’m sorry, I can’t stop seeing that as “genital lighting”.
Juan, I’d love a bit more detail about what you’ve done. What did you use and how did you use it?
-Tom
Megadittoes, Juan.
I used an airbrush, but the same can be done with spray paint.
1- Just prime in a dark color, full coverage, and then spray “thin” layers of progressively lighter colors, each layer with more inclination towards the ceiling. So if you do 4 colors, first is full coverage, second is at 45 degrees, third at 60/70 degrees and the last one sprayed from the top.
2- Then I painted in gold the cloths of the survivors and one detail of each monster to make them pop, but that’s my personal touch. This step does need some finesse, but if you are going for the stone look, it’s not necessary.
3- Clear coat if you feel like it (not necessary but protects the base coats) and then apply a dark grey wash.
4- Another optional step is to use the lighter color you sprayed (of course in a non-spray variety, just the same kind of grey) and dry brush generously but lightly all over the miniature to make details pop.
It’s all super simple. Steps 1 and three are the most necessary. You need a dark grey or black primer, a medium grey and a very light/almost white grey (you can add a fourth shade of grey, hehe, for more nuance, but I think it’s not really necessary). And a Dark grey or Dark earth wash. and a varnish of some type, preferable matte (for varnishing before the wash it’s better to use a gloss coat, though). And a light grey paint and a brush for dry brushing.
So, materials for the simple look: 3 paint/primer sprays, 1 varnish spray and 1 wash.
Extra: One brush, one small bottle of light grey, one bottle of gold or bronce color if you so desire.
I did also use my modelling oils to give a verdigris to the gold/bronce, but really, I think it would have looked better without it (the look is too dirty for my taste). So just don’t do this.
The simple look can paint the whole core set in one hour if every model is assembled and you do it as a chain. Maybe two if you don’t feel confident. Dry brushing and metallic details take longer, meybe too long if you (like me) are only interested in playing with better looking minis. Also, probably test with a cheap mini or two before attacking the minis of something this expensive ;P
Let me know if you need more detail. I’m happy to help.
PS: I have 12 expansion to paint now (well 11, since one only has survivor models and I’m not painting those yet), but I also have a six week old baby, so I’m in a painting hiatus. The plan is to do them in exactly the same style.
I continue to be amazed at how the many systems and rolls in KD:M generate what feel like related events. This settlement year is independent of any previous, in terms of what event it should generate, but it’s the third time we’ve seen Murder. Now I know that these people, having Accepted Darkness, backstab and kill their way to the top to become the boss. Once there, they breed the generation that will replace them. No one else is experienced. The cream has been removed. They survive by living like the monster that surround them.
There are only 20 settlement events, so perhaps a brain better-tuned to probabilities expects this. Other, unrelated systems demonstrate the same things. A beautiful, cursed item was handed to a survivor as a challenge. She died with it in her hands when forced to demonstrate what she had learned. That was the last time we would ever see that item in the game. Until it wasn’t. And it’s owner promptly died for other reasons.
Or, the settlement event that forced a specific disorder on all departing survivors. Yet, somehow in that hunt, we found the one in a hundred event that, after choosing one way to proceed, had one result canceling the disorder.
Frequently and with such speed as to feel causal, the game gives something and then takes it away. It also manages, as you show, to present the impossible and then offer a chance to succeed.
Are more diary entries coming? Eagerly waiting on further thoughts on the game…
Agree this game is good at generating patterns in randomness. For me, when I fought the King’s Man only two people survived the fight. One of the remaining survivors then promptly Murdered the other one who struck the killing blow, trying to contain the fallout from the implications of the final blow. Unfortunately, the other villagers didn’t see it as an act of mercy and killed him in return. So, nobody really survived the King’s Man fight. The settlement gradually lost all of the few remaining people shortly after…
it’s definitely a tough, tough game but I find it strangely appealing, its imbalances and randomness and all.
Yes, asbolutely? I’m in this for the long haul. The current bottleneck is that I need to build the Phoenix. All those little hands are pretty daunting.
Excellent way to put it. The randomness never feels arbitrary because it’s adroitly built into a narrative.
-Tom
After a couple weeks of miniature building, finally played some this weekend. I love how even only a few lantern years in, the narrative is so distinctly shaped by deaths, injuries, and misfortunes.
Woe to the doomed union of Grace and David, whose love we hoped would bear our meager settlement’s first child, but who instead descended, despairing, into the darkness to die rather than doom a new soul to living in this world.
Lament for poor Lydia, the heroine who tore off the enraged and grieving mother lion’s shimmering and unnatural mane, but paid for it with her leg and her life, showering the hunting grounds in a geyser of her blood.
Wail on behalf of Laurel, who heard the screams of the antelope and fled madly into the shadows, tripping and shattering her jaw. Now she mutters unintelligible horror stories under the lantern light as the settlement’s only child listens, enraptured.
Good stuff.
Damn it why is this game so freaking expensive. I want it pretty badly, but keep having to ask myself why it is worth the cost of literally four or more other big box games. I know, the minis, but let’s be blunt, the minis aren’t that amazing.
But still I keep thinking about the damn thing.
EDIT: And now I find that I just missed the once a year sale that apparently brings it down to $325. Ugh.
You can try it on Tabletop Simulator if that is your thing
Being honest, I have Tabletop Simulator, but have never been able to really figure out how it works.
Also, last time I looked, KDM wasn’t fully updated to 1.5 there.
There is definitely a learning curve - but I’ve found Mage Knight to work GREAT, and Gloomhaven to be fairly decent as well.
I downloaded the KDM module and opened it, but didn’t have the energy to figure it all out. It looked comprehensive to me at least, but it is a bummer that it hasn’t been updated
Yeah, I tried downloading Spirit Island. I think the main issue is that Tabletop Simulator doesn’t really have good instructions or tutorials (I know it has some basic tutorials, but they frankly kind of suck), so it makes the entire thing a bit difficult to figure out for me.
KD:M loves certain holidays. Black Friday seems like the biggest one. I did my annual look at it this Black Friday…and passed. The numbers are HUGE when you start adding it all up. Like $1000s of dollars huge. And that is not for useless cosmetic stuff. That is actual game expanding content beyond the basic near $400 box.
My real issue is I have the core box, but for 1.0. I wished I could get the 1.5 upgrade pack, but it is nowhere to be found. I saw it briefly for Cyber Monday, but balked at $75 for an analogue game patch.
I waffle all the time between just selling my 1.0 for whatever I could get, or going all in from whatever shopping source I can nail down. This is an ongoing multi-year debate. My true campaign with KD:M is whether I need to collect KD:M.
Yeah, pricing outside of KS is stupid. And I don’t think we’ll see a new KS up until 2022.
For those wondering a gameplay all-in goes for over $2000 at sale price. It’s insane. (Also insane, over half of that you get with that is not yet out. Current published game + expansions is $900)
Yeah, I feel bad complaining that the one new expansion I want, the Campaign book, is $180, considering that I’ve made something like $200 for owning KDM. I got an early bird pledge on the original KS with all the expansions, then sold off all the extra minis for $700, then only upgraded to 1.5 in the second KS instead of expanding further. But still $180. That’s ludicrous. Yes, it now includes minis. Yes, I could probably sell them for something to bring the price down. No, I’m not paying $180 for a book. Period. That’s like college-textbook-level robbery.
It’s not just a book. Its the rulebook, the cards for all the existing expansions so they fit into the node system, and what looks like at least 6 new monsters (and associated gameplay cards). Price wise it seems like the best-value expansion so far.
The Gambler’s chest, with 5 monsters, the scout system and specially the encounter system and associated mini-monsters, looks like a better addition, but the price is stupidly bloated now by all the unnecessary player minis (although yes, you could make some money back selling those).
Thankfully the card pack will at least be free (excluding shipping).
Wow. I’m getting chills reading this, remembering the time I somehow survived a showdown with a Level Three Antelope.
Thanks for sharing, Tom! And if you ever get around to writing more about your experience playing Monster, I’d love to read about it.