Kingdom Death Lion Kit Evolutions and some Twisted base inserts WiP

 Our Kingdom Death Monster Survivor settlement has grown to 30+ members... just in time for the Armored Visitors event which measures the population, helps if it is too small... culls if it is too large... the cutoff for too large was 9 or more survivors... DoH!

We chose to resist the cull which precipitated a visit by the Kingsman.  The Kingsman is a real pain to fight and has a lot of wacky mechanics... plus he's only partially painted at the moment!  Have to get cracking on that!

 These models show some of the tech improvements the settlement has Innovated.  They are a mix of White Lion, Bone, and Rawhide.  These materials are largely unimproved in terms of color etc... as dyes and painting are yet to be unlocked... although the survivors continue to expand the use of Blu/Black ink and to refine the pictographs. 

The spear is a big improvement as the White lions have become crafty and it is dangerous to close with them.

 Here you can see a survivor that has harvested the eye ink and turned it into a hair product and a medium for expressing the pictographs on his linen.  He is important because of the pick, which allows the group an opportunity to harvest some minerals, and the bone dart to defend a poor, unarmored, craftsman as he collects the critical ingredients he need for his trade.

I'm of mixed opinions on this pose.  I like the effect of the model peering over the top edge of the pickax while hefting a bone dart but I also don't find the pickax as shield idea very convincing... It does, however, clearly demonstrate who is carrying the mineral mining supplies.

I'm practicing this patterning thing and trying to get the  right sequence for highlighting and shading.  I think I need to underline, or accent, some of the patterns to make them a little more depth.  The ink color is mostly Nightmare Black (Reaper).

 The Watcher has been seen in dreams and the "watcher's eye" motif is popular in the settlement.


The bone materials are worked up from the Bone Triad (Reaper) and you can see the difference between the bone areas and the "shroud cloth" which was worked up from the Menoth White group (P3) with the aid of Military Shader (Warpaints) diluted 1-1 with Glaze medium (Vallejo).  I've been using the glaze medium quite a lot lately. Its handy for blending and reduces the vigilance required to prevent tidal pooling of washes and inks. It also just slows down the paint drying process and extends the amount of time I can work out of a dry palette.

 There are two sorts of skull helms in the parts mix.  One is a scary, horned, toothy predator creature and this human skull converted into a fashionable bit of war gear.

She also has mixed kit with Bone, Rawhide, White Lion and unarmored. She's experimenting with some red pigments and the survivors should get a bit more colorful as the settlement grows and innovated new ideas and motifs.

I'm hoping the addition of ranged weapons will help reduce the insanity level of the survivors.  The Screaming Antelope is coming soon and extracts a high price from the most insane survivors.  Our most experienced and effective hunters are completely bug nuts so we're trying to rotate some new blood into the hunting party. Fortunately the settlement's children are arriving with some perks to their skills which should help with getting a viable, low insanity, group together.

 Two survivors in full White Lion Kit.  One is sporting a pair of the Butchers Cleavers although the settlement only has one at the moment... I'm anticipating the arrival of the next one!

As the armor gets more advanced the occurrence of lanterns on the models declines.  In the White Lion set I decided that the curing process for the White Lion hides would leave them faintly luminous which makes the hunters equipped with that gear looks a bit like savage apparitions.

 Of course being a faintly luminous hunter in a land of gloomy twilight punctuated by regions of absolute darkness isn't terribly stealthy... but they seem to be working on the bait plan anyway.

To separate the Bone White from the Lion White I'm using the Reaper Bone Triad and Seraphim Sepia (GW) for the Bones and P3 Menoth White Base and Menoth White Highlight with Secret weapon Storm Cloud for the Lion Leather.  I also use the P3 Menoth White for the shroud cloth but process it differently using Warpaints Military Shader and retouching with Menoth White Base.

Its been interesting working with limited color palettes and getting them to show some texture and detail at tabletop viewing range.

 We had a "Savior" born to the settlement which we were very excited to see but... it turns out that these saviors don't last very long as using their abilities seem to 'age' them very rapidly.

This guy will probably represent our first savior... for as long as he lasts...

Rost the Elder got cursed with the Twilight Sword in the last session so I'll need to spin up a Twilight Knight themed model soon. Our fearless (literally) leader Dlenn was also cursed with an armored pelvis that destroyed her reproductive ability but is a sturdy bit of gear.  She just has to somehow avoid picking up the full set and transforming into a Kingsman. 

So the taint of Chaos begins to come home to the survivors.

 On the bench I'm working on the Steampunk themed bases for Twisted.

The base inserts are laser cut on a very fragile and fibrous sheet of cardboard composite.  Its spongy, flexible, and easy to get the bits separated without damaging them after which they recommend a combination of super glue and PVA for assembly.  Once dry very thin superglue is dripped over the material to firm it up and strengthen it.

In practice I omitted the PVA entirely and super glued each layer into position and then drip saturated it and allowed it to dry before moving on to the next layer. This has worked out well, if a bit superglue intensive, and the result was some very strong bases that are sand-able where required.

I'm generally happy with the results so far but a couple of things come to mind about it.








The main downside is that the cardboard sheet of nine base inserts is a bit on the spendy side and the cost is basically identical to, or even a bit higher than, resin at $18.00 for 8x30mm and 1x40mm inserts and the layers are designed to fit together in very specific ways.

With a little more work the layers can be recombined, or combined with additional materials, to get some additional patterns but it would have been a nice touch to make some of the parts a little more universally useful by doing things like making the cogwheel layers as a complete layer so that it could be turned a bit for different views of the worky bits.

Back to the desk... there are Monsters to paint!