Anyway, I have some bits and bobs of updates, firstly I have my Wave 2 from the Super Dungeon Explore Forgotten King kickstarter. Why no Wave 1? Because they messed up and haven't sent it yet, I was going to wait until that arrived and do the whole lot in one go but thinking about it it may be better done in smaller sections.
Here's what I got in my box of wonder! I couldn't afford to get everything from the KS so had to pick strategically, I dropped things like the Deeproot Wolf Rider, Goro or the Stilt Town Zombies Warband, as they were the ones that (aesthetically) appealed to me the least. I will get them in the end as I'm a bit of a completionist nutcase but I'll wait for them to hit retail first.
Emerald Valley Warband
I love the sculpts for Glimmerwing and the Silver Chevalier! Plus the Chevalier fits my play style perfectly, she's a wonderful little tank for defensive play. I'm not a very aggressive player so being able to play defensively (something which hasn't really been an option in SDE until now) is nice.
The monster models are nice, I think I like the boars more than the 'shrooms but at least they should be quick to paint!
Claws of the Wyrm Warband
Can I say straight off the bat, the Dragonblade looks epic! I think its the cape, but either way he's bar far one of my favourite sculpts in SDE to date. The Kobolds are all decent sculpts, nothing amazing but a mounted enemy is a nice change of pace.
It will be nice to throw these in with the Base Set Kobolds to give them a bit of variety. I think my group have gotten bored of fighting the basic guys.
Wym Claw Templar aka Ser Snapjaw
He's a brute of a model, quite a bit chunkier than the armoured humans, even more so than the base sets Ironscales which had a nice presence to them. The option to use him as either a hero or a Miniboss is nice, I like the idea of the Dark Heroes but it does now mean I'll need to get 2 copies of each as their colourings are slightly different so I will have to paint one in each colour. Damn my OCD!
Kingdom Death's Twilight Night
Camera decided to focus on the box instead of the model... Oh well. As you can see I've started to paint this one, when a Survivor Candy & Cola appeared in the Kingom Death: Monster Kickstarter back in June 2013 it was almost inevitable that one of the Kingdom Death Models would make the leap to one of the Soda Pop lines and really it was never going to be any other than Alison, the Twilight Knight. I'm glad she made the jump to SDE as opposed to Relic Knights though as I feel an RK version would have been too similar to the hard plastic version available through the KD:M Kickstarter.
Anyway, sorry, rambling a bit there. The model is really good, the pose works really well and conveys a sense of movement that can sometimes be lacking in the SDE stuff. She'll get a full show once I've finished painting her, which should be soon.
Tabbybrook Mage
She's adorable! Its a really cute sculpt and matches the artwork really well. On the table she's a bit of a mixed bag from what I can tell off her card. She's got some good ranged magic abilities but you'll want to get defensive gear on her ASAP or she'll go down far too easily.
I suspect she was designed to give a second Ember Mage to a group that really wanted to focus on ranged damage, and she sortof works but lacks the Ember Mage's devastating AOE attacks. But she's a cutie so we can give her a bit of leeway!
Von Drakk Manor/Ghosthouse Tiles
More variety in tiles is always good, and its been something we've been asking for since the Caverns of Roxxor expansion. I like the redesign of the tiles, areas of difficult terrain now have little symbols to make them easier to spot and other tile effects similarly have a small icon in the corner of the square they effect. I'll be glad when I have the standard Forgotten King tiles too as it will give my group some nice variety of dungeons to raid.
It also comes with a batch of Rattlebones, which is cool. Can never have too many mindless undead minions.
Overall I'm happy with what I've got. There's a few bent swords/spears but its nothing a hairdryer and some ice water wont fix. The sculpts are clean, mould lines are minimal, and they've been put together pretty well (unlike the Cavern of Roxxor which I had to prise apart and put back together). All in all if your into SDE and missed the Kickstarter, I'd say these are worth getting. I'll save a review of the new rules for new players until I actually have them in hand.
Kingom Death: Pinups of Death Box
I've always liked the Kingdom Death stuff (well, apart from the Wetnurse, that shit gives me nightmares), but I always seem to miss the limited runs of resin models they do. Which is a shame because then they end up going for silly money on Ebay. So as I mentioned above I got in on the Kickstarter (for far more than I could really justify too) and as we're still waiting for the rewards to ship I figured that I would pick up the Pinups of Death box.
The Pinups, for those of you that don't know are some of Kingdom Deaths more iconic (and less wierd) models. There was a massive hoohaa at the time of the KS as to weather the designs are sexist and objectifying, and I'm not going to bring that here, I personally don't have a problem with them and thats that.
The Pinups box is a collectors set of hard plastic versions of the previously released resin pinups. I was a little worried (having seen how the Relic Knights hard plastic went) that alot of the soft details would be lost, especially as they are not big models.
The set comes in a nice little presentation box, I'm honestly not sure what use this will be once the models are built but I'm somewhat loathe to throw it away.
Everything neatly packed. Envelope looks ominous...
The envelope contains some small art cards, a thank you card from Adam, the creator of Kingdom Death, And a special Item and Scenario for the upcoming KD:M which effectively swaps your characters gender... interesting, sorta.
Here's a few random sprue shots to give you an idea of the detail. Its all really crisp and ever the fine details have transferred well over to plastic. I'll give each of the models a full review as I build them but they all look really good and should be a pleasure to build.
Squats
I haven't forgotten my other pet projects. After much deliberation on just what I was going to do about equipment for the little guys my command squad is nearing completion. The Lascarbine ones need new hands greenstuffing and some bits of extra equipment but I'm happy with where they are.
There's only the Vox Operator with the hammer who I've still got some reservations about, and if I'm honest I'm not entirely sure what it is about the model that isn't sitting right. Any suggestions?
Thats all for today. Until next time!
