Surprise Update! - Kingdom Death x Wrath of Kings Crossover!
Update #76 · Sep 3, 2013 · 16 comments

( We have a very crucial week here at KD and will be back to update everyone with our monthly progress in 1 week. Thank you very much for your understanding. )

Hello Everyone!

Today I have something a little special to share. My friends at CMON lent us a hand getting the word out about our campaign and it's time to return the favor! They have been hard at work on Wrath of Kings for the past few years. Working with some of the best ex-Rackham/Confrontation talents to bring their unique vision of fast paced skirmish to life. Personally, I am a fan of the Hardross who have this neat Zora ( yes from zelda ) meets marine knight vibe.

Of course… I could not resist the temptation for a special miniature! As a hobby community kickstarter has really helped us support new projects and ideas and I just love the collaborations it brings forth.

I worked with CMON and our talented Lokman to create a special Wrath of Kings version of the female Twilight Knight. Their writing team even put together a little fiction for her!



“Dame Allison, Twilight Knight Sail far enough from the Arikanian mainland, and the mists close in. Chronometers fail, compasses spin, and finding the sun is nigh impossible. Yet, there are lands beyond. Ancient King Arikan himself made the journey, and, on very rare occasion, ships from foreign lands appear on Arikanian shores. The city of Nareh sits on Arikania’s northern shore, beyond Telloria in the hinterlands as yet unclaimed by a Scion nation. Fishermen and traders from this small community often find debris, bodies, and even shipwrecks along the northern coasts. Some have made a business of scavenging the debris. But, perhaps once or twice in a generation, they find a survivor.

Dame Allison hails from a land where the realm of humankind is on the brink of extinction. She belongs to a mysterious order, charged with keeping and defending the devastated kingdom’s accumulated knowledge. In their few remaining archives were vaguely detailed legends of Ancient King Arikan’s adventures, and she attempted to retrace his journey in the hopes of finding an unspoiled human land, where she might gather allies and reinforcements. In this, she has succeeded, but, alas, is now trapped on Arikania, and embroiled in its own troubles. Her diplomatic efforts have as yet yielded no fruit.

She owes no allegiance to any Scion nation, but she offers her services to any side that can meet her price. Sometimes she needs gold, sometimes archive access, and sometimes she sees a wrong that needs righting. In battle she is most at home on the front line. Her strange training and enhancements are unknown in Arikania. Magic assaults slide off her, and her light armor gives her the mobility to avoid even the mightiest blows.“

This limited edition miniature comes with rules for Wrath of Kings and is available with your Wrath of Kings kickstarter pledge. She will not include any rules for Kingdom Death, but I totally reserve the right to post unofficial rules sometime in the future once both games have been released into the wilds!



Thanks everyone, and thank you CMON again for believing in Kingdom Death when it was just a tiny range with a pair of resin miniatures!

 tre manor wrote:
somebody needs to get some prozak in the KD:M world STAT! All the chicks look like they are about to cry....even when they " cross-over"!

 OrlandotheTechnicoloured wrote:
What CMON have posted in the update (restrict yourself to one per faction starter)

suggests that you MAY need to get a faction to get her (not just use the a la carte option)

but it's not clear

Tom about 20 hours ago

Maybe Poots can confirm if the Kingdom Death - verse has a sea? I wonder where all the water goes? Survivors gotta eat 'n' drink!

I actually quite like the idea of KD being on an endless plane of black sea. (With a food chain of sea monsters!) Perhaps it is possible to fall off the edge of the world.

Creator Kingdom Death about 18 hours ago

@Tom, that fiction was written for WOK. It is not cannon to KD. Does Kingdom Death have a sea? You know me, not only do I not like spoilers, but I am also totally obsessed with how things in the world are presented. So... I will just have to say... we will have to wait and SEE!

( sorry i couldn't help myself! now I must finish my china battle suit for when i fly back out to do quality control )

 Baragash wrote:
The angle I think the artist is going for really exaggerates those thighs!!!

 Breotan wrote:

 Baragash wrote:
The angle I think the artist is going for really exaggerates those thighs!!!

It's that way with all KD women.

 DaveC wrote:
Confirmation that the WoK twilight Knight must be bought with a starter minimum

Leif Paulson 1 minute ago

We have gotten a ton of questions about the Kingdom Death crossover miniatures. To be perfectly clear they are tied to starters, If you want one you have to purchase a faction starter. If you were a KD backer, you can access an additional one. It is tied directly to the number of faction starters you get, so if you are pledging at the Ancient King level, you can buy 5 if you really want. Hopefully that makes sense. So no a la carte menu, you cannot buy them individually. Been working this out for a while now, soonest I could get the info to you.

 Dentry wrote:

 DaveC wrote:
Confirmation that the WoK twilight Knight must be bought with a starter minimum

Leif Paulson 1 minute ago

We have gotten a ton of questions about the Kingdom Death crossover miniatures. To be perfectly clear they are tied to starters, If you want one you have to purchase a faction starter. If you were a KD backer, you can access an additional one. It is tied directly to the number of faction starters you get, so if you are pledging at the Ancient King level, you can buy 5 if you really want. Hopefully that makes sense. So no a la carte menu, you cannot buy them individually. Been working this out for a while now, soonest I could get the info to you.

Boo!

I don't really understand that decision. Heck, I'd buy a faction starter if any of them appealed to me. The Hadross are nice but not enough *cough* Kingdom Death flavor for my taste.

Consider my pledge cancelled, good sirs!

 Dentry wrote:

 DaveC wrote:
Confirmation that the WoK twilight Knight must be bought with a starter minimum

Leif Paulson 1 minute ago

We have gotten a ton of questions about the Kingdom Death crossover miniatures. To be perfectly clear they are tied to starters, If you want one you have to purchase a faction starter. If you were a KD backer, you can access an additional one. It is tied directly to the number of faction starters you get, so if you are pledging at the Ancient King level, you can buy 5 if you really want. Hopefully that makes sense. So no a la carte menu, you cannot buy them individually. Been working this out for a while now, soonest I could get the info to you.

Boo!

I don't really understand that decision. Heck, I'd buy a faction starter if any of them appealed to me. The Hadross are nice but not enough *cough* Kingdom Death flavor for my taste.

Consider my pledge cancelled, good sirs!

 kilcin wrote:

 Dentry wrote:

 DaveC wrote:
Confirmation that the WoK twilight Knight must be bought with a starter minimum

Leif Paulson 1 minute ago

We have gotten a ton of questions about the Kingdom Death crossover miniatures. To be perfectly clear they are tied to starters, If you want one you have to purchase a faction starter. If you were a KD backer, you can access an additional one. It is tied directly to the number of faction starters you get, so if you are pledging at the Ancient King level, you can buy 5 if you really want. Hopefully that makes sense. So no a la carte menu, you cannot buy them individually. Been working this out for a while now, soonest I could get the info to you.

Boo!

I don't really understand that decision. Heck, I'd buy a faction starter if any of them appealed to me. The Hadross are nice but not enough *cough* Kingdom Death flavor for my taste.

Consider my pledge cancelled, good sirs!

Really? You don't understand the decision to encourage people to support the actual Kickstarter and it's goals instead of just having people pay money for a KD tie-in? It would be a waste of time and money to just allow people buy the mini a la cart instead of tying it to starters which is what they really want people to do at a minimum. The addition of the KD mini was to push fence sitters towards backing.

Slowing down for Quality
Update #77 · Sep 8, 2013 · 10 comments

I am delaying the project.

This has been an incredibly hard decision to make. Sticking to the timeline and fulfilling the entire project on time was paramount. The backers (you guys!) would be thrilled and the final product would be just in time for new buyers during the holiday shopping season. And I think we all know, that is a big deal for the future of KD.

Kingdom Death fans have been supporting this project for a long time, we consistently sell out of our resin stock and not only did they push me with emails everyday to run a kickstarter… once it was live fans became backers and smashed thru every previous record. During the course of the kickstarter campaign we expanded the planned game from a single 12" x 12" box to a 12" x 24" box, 11 game expansions + over 21 single figures! That's HUGE!

I decided long ago to match fans enthusiasm by offering my absolute best. Today that same decision has led me here. To ensure that the entirety of the project is the absolute best I can offer, I must delay it. Additional time will be spent on play testing, expansions, and plastic production. This includes a return trip to China to oversee the final 2-3 weeks of production in person.

If there is any one to blame for this delay, blame me and my absolute refusal to compromise the quality of Kingdom Death. A brand built entirely by fans and now thousands of backers. I have never before rushed anything to market or compromised the vision for this project.

This kickstarter has been an amazing opportunity for Kingdom Death and we will not squander it by simply rushing to the finish line.

Plastic
After touring and evaluating many options, a deal was struck with an incredibly talented factory and we decided that Kingdom Death deserved the best. Essentially, hard plastic kits on sprues, just like GW and many other companies.

The factory is so impressed with Kingdom Death, they are treating it as a true portfolio piece. Not only has no expense been spared, including staffing up their team and buying a new half a million dollar machine to cut finer mold detail. Their commitment is the real deal, they are pushing themselves to their creative and technological limit to produce these minis and I would have it no other way.

A part of this very time intensive process includes scanning every single precious hand-sculpted miniature and painstakingly re-touching them with digital tools to optimize each sculpt for plastic production.

Of course I have photos to share! But please keep in mind that they are not final and still open to more scrutiny and mastering.






Hard plastic costs considerably more than PVC, both in mold and unit cost. The core game has swelled in size so much that the retail value will rise quite a bit to reflect the value added. When the game is released it will be in the $150-$200 range. That is simply the reality of covering costs on the much larger deluxe box, nearly 700 game cards printed with premium materials, record sheets, game book, two game boards! ( the showdown & hunt board ), tokens, and the huge number of hard plastic miniatures on sprues inside the box.

Some of the larger monster, Lion God, Sunstalker and maybe the Gorm. Might still be best kept in PVC. A direct benefit of the delay is running even more tests to determine which material would best suit them. A hard plastic Sunstalker would be dozens and dozens of parts and spread across a stack of sprues!

Art Upgrade
During the campaign, many backers requested that we come up with an icon for every monster to help further distinguish card types from each other. Instead of making just an icon, we went ahead and designed a full gorgeous crest for every single monster in the core game and every expansion monster. The crests will grace the back of the monsters unique decks and will also appear as an icon on the front of their cards. And yeah, I am totally making a t-shirt of the butcher crest.

Story Events

The story event system and the new timeline have been so well received by play testers. We are refining it further and adding more. The originally planned 19 full page illustrations for the game book has blossomed to well over 30. ( maybe around 40?) Many of the expansions are getting an art boost too. Details will come down the pipeline later. Here are some quick WIP shots ( these actually just came in 5 mins ago! ) of some of the additional illustrations going into the core game book :



Core Game Miniature Upgrade
Because of the delay, A few more things have been squeezed into the game. Hector Moran has treated us with a physical version of the masks from the mask maker shop. Originally we never planned on sculpting these, since they are neither weapons nor armor... but they were just so cool I couldn't resist! These large masks can be added to your survivor kits or used in hobby projects. I'll post the rest when they are finished up.


Oh that reminds me, I don't think I've shown the artwork for the Mask Maker yet! Here it is below.


How long is the delay?

Initially fulfillment was planned for Q4 2013, with operations beginning late November. Now we are looking at Q1 2014. I will have a firmer date once everything is loaded onto cargo boats and headed for our warehouse.

Poots' Crappy Painting!
Part of the process of quality checking the plastics… is actually taking a brush to an assembled kit! I want to ensure that the details are not too soft and get obscured by paint too easily. I am in no way a good or even great painter, but even I can tell the difference between a challenging detail and one that not polished enough on the manufacturing end. Faces need to be crisp and edges need to be sharp! Here is a photo of my WIP hard plastic dragon sacrifice that I have shared with the factory. Maybe when I finish It I'll share it with you guys again.


I appreciate everyone's tremendous support. I'm still very grateful for this incredible opportunity. It has been a little crazy at times and it certainly has had its challenges. Doing right by the brand and keeping the quality high is the right choice. By popular request, we will be updating more frequently with smaller updates so we can bring everyone along with us as we wrap up.

!!!

Thank you,
- Poots