A Healthy Glow - Kingdom Death Alison the Twilight Knight, plus mini-materials review

I am really goddamn excited about Kingdom Death: Monster finally arriving any day now.

I just finished painting my first of their new plastic line's promos which arrived ahead of the core game, and I think Alison the Twilight Knight is one of the best models I've done recently.

The plastics are cast by Wargames Factory, the same guys that do the plastic Malifaux line, among others, and the same attention to detail shows (which does occasionally mean irritatingly tiny pieces to avoid barely noticeable undercuts).

These are some of the nicest plastics I've worked with I think I might actually prefer the plastic line to the resin one- while the resins are still objectively better, I think the plastic's slightly larger details actually makes it easier to paint the models. I definitely like the plastics more once you factor in the price.

They're not "blow-the-competition-out-of-the-(proverbial)-water" good, but they're certainly running with the pack at the top end of what's available.

My only real complaint is assembly: some of the models have taken staring at the previews of them for what feels like 10 minutes to figure out that there's a tiny depression somewhere or other which is where this stick thing is supposed to attach (maybe?), which is exacerbated by occasionally less-than-perfect connections even once you figure out where those pieces go.

Also, a comparison to the PVC from a few years back:

I think the detail's where it most obviously shows (looking at the leg and arm armor, for example), but you've also got none of PVC's signature bending and shrinkage issues. I'm very happy that the models are fun to put together instead of needing to slog through fixing and cleaning PVC (which would have probably been worth it, but still...).

The newest Twilight Knight looks like a real ass-kicker. I think she hits exactly the right mark on the Kingdom Death spectrum, a touch of cheesecake/style over practicality, but mostly moody fantasy/horror. And in this case, I feel like my own time/experience has shown a lot of improvement from only a year ago. Similar to the PVC comparison, it's not like the earlier one wasn't sufficient, but it wasn't anything special, either.

I also pushed myself back into a realm I haven't explored in ages, and started learning a few plaster/casting techniques because even though I can do those heads on the bases by hand, doing that in any sort of bulk was obviously not going to happen, so this is my first photo of a base cast from plaster and then carved a bit, think it took around 4 attempts to get it right?

So... yeah. Expect to see a lot of Kingdom Death here in the coming months.