Of Our Elaborate Plans, the End. Casting, Converting, and Kingdom Death years 20-23

A King's Man fight. Don't worry, it's just staged.

Starting off, some scenery that's been building to this point for a long time.
I love making scenery and boards, but hardly ever finish, often getting tired or distracted mid-project.

With Kingdom Death, it's been at a perfect place where it's been detailed enough that I couldn't possibly do it without casting, but rough enough that imperfect casts aren't detrimental to the aesthetic so I can experiment a bit without needing to throw out minor miscasts.

It's gotten to the point where the central dais is cast, as is most of the scatter terrain. I'm not positive I'll go beyond this, and will be happy with it if it's those elements sitting on the standard board if a completely custom one doesn't work out.

It's obviously cast from two molds four times- they warped slightly so took a little work to straighten out, but I'll be mounting the whole thing on MDF, and adding some variety once everything's locked in. (So far, all I've done is turned a miscast into a fissure on the bottom left head.)

And the other WIP section- some multipose minis I've been working on. The minis do require some real work getting them from static to engaged poses, but it can be done. The only thing, that I think was really missing is the faces all look kind of stoic an' stuff, when most of the time your little guys are rampaging or terrified, and there's a distinct paucity of yelling heads.

In order:
-Our standard "scout" build, with rawhide, cat eye (going to figure that out in painting, since I didn't like the representative head), and a bow with debilitating arrows.
-Our standard double-katar build on the lion suit (with bone earrings and not much else, as a stop-gap until the suit's complete)
-Rondo, our pudgy, heroic man-child from our first doomed settlement. Not a common build (though a guy with an axe is hardly out of place in a party), but I felt like commemorating the campaign with one model, at least.

Oh, also, in case you were wondering about the title, I was listening to some of the Doors recently, and it's remarkable how many of their lyrics fit in the chaos and death sensibility of KD. I guess drugs, emotional problems, and sex also fit.

The Final Arc of Mt. Rushmore
Returning to our irregularly scheduled program...

Year 20, cont'd
Well, we ended up getting one exciting year. Among other things, on our hunt, we ran into a scary blacksmith who gave us two super (slow) shields and one super sword, all on the wrong people, which kinda' messed up our gear grids. We also got 2 iron from mining (more than we were shooting for, now we're 1 over what we were trying to hit).

We got all the proper proficiencies we were trying to hit and then Mean Green got the perfect age event, of even more evasion. She could now hit 7 evasion easily and 8 by sacrificing a little armor. (For those just following along without the game, that means 2+ hits are 9+ or only on 10's.) We also got our beat stick up to her full potential with wider perfect hit range.

Year 21
We then hit murder. That would be said insanely defensive survivor, with 7 remaining survival, getting murdered by one of our backups for the final fight (would have been our Twilight swordsman if we didn't have weird circumstances).

We took a pass with our house rule again. (6 uses of 8 now). We're about to fight the boss of the game, and that was after a really nice year. We could have gone through it with our backup savior, but whatever. We'll live with it being slightly less "pure". Also, I kind of hate Murder: We've gotten it something like once every 5 years, being a huge statistical aberration and a frustrating one at that. At least it wouldn't have hit our Twilight swordsman, so would have been removing redundant survivors to be replaced with their slightly worse equivalents.

Speaking of our swordsman, his mentor came back to camp, and they had an epic duel, catapulting him to the optimal 6 proficiency he wanted! We were hoping for 1 and considering another fight to train him, but this was perfect.

We didn't have much to do with our resources this year, but did manage to re-invent Pottery.

During the Hunt phase, our first child and Blue Savior, Tenta, got a chance to shine. She got 1 age subtracted from her total, which put her in the ideal position to hit perfect age from the fight instead of aging out of existence at the end (as we'd expected, having never seen an age subtraction). She then had nimble hands and found the legendary Muramasa! The sword has fantastic damage and crit output but gave bleeding to the user if critting.

Then tragedy struck! The end of a beer got all over her paper info, which took a good 20 minutes to mostly clean up. Well, I guess it was bound to happen with the amount we've been playing :/

Once we were finished with that, we ambushed our quarry, a Phoenix, and got it down to 2 health before it could even take an attack. So, that was a thing. Level 1 was probably unnecessary, though we didn't need to get the resources. It was just kinda' embarrassing for the bird.

Year 22
Our blue Savior then, just like Mean Green, got an age buff in the same vein she was, so she went from a non-pick we were throwing into the fight for fun, to one of the final four!

We finished out our Phoenix set, and fine-tuned a little more gear, and then went to fight the Watcher.

The final set was:
Tenta, the first child of Mt Rushmore, and a blue Savior, armed with the legendary Masamune, in Leather armor, with a ring made from a halo, preventing poor repercussions.*
Beak Georgev, (level 6) Twilight swordsman, second to wield the cursed sword, mad as a hatter (24 insanity?), in Phoenix armor. Tasked with this goal since day 1 (he was given the sword by his mentor on returning from his first fight).
Georgie Georgev, mother of Beak, master of perfect hits and generally pummeling stuff into oblivion, in Lion armor, with her signature tooth katars blood paint, and a backup great axe.
Mean Green Manzi, green Savior, daughter of Li'l Green Manzi, our older green Savior, with a complete hodgepodge of armor, monster manipulating gew-gaws, grease, and a healthy green glow of self-confidence.

*This gear combo was illegal, but we weren't in a state to notice that at the time. In fact, we should have probably waited until we were fresh for the boss, rather than slightly inebriated and overtired. Our originally planned set of gear would have done about as well (possibly a bit better, depending on luck with a lower-case "l"), and, as you're about to find out, her weapon wouldn't have made the difference.

So, we exceeded our goals, and actually had the resources to make the bow we were shooting for (no pun intended... well okay, maybe a little).

The Watcher had a ton of terrifying rules, but we ran right in.

As always, some potential spoilers though I always try to avoid them.

Tenta took the first swing, and we barely avoided breaking her sword right off the bat, and even did some damage before getting buffeted away.

Beak charged in to the fight he'd been been training his whole life for. Well, actually, he did this crazy loop to charge sidewise and hit it in the back. Kind of like one of those pull-back wobbly toy cars. He hit once, taking a serious chunk out of the Watcher, then got bonked back.

Georgie, seeing how ridiculously tough the Watcher was, used her backup axe and hoped for those perfect hits that bypass armor... and rolled two misses and a 10, which caused another roll... for another 10... and than another! The long shot took a big chunk off of the Watcher.

Mean Green did her deck manipulation thing, got in position to take a hit where everyone else would be able to retaliate, and took the hit like a champ.

Then Beak did his thang a second time. He was apparently warmed up this time, 'cause this time he landed a flurry of blows... and the Watcher went down at the top of turn 2. We actually got an overflow of 4 wounds.

...And that was that.

Everything went as perfectly as we could have hoped. Everyone fulfilled exactly their role, except Georgie, who did masterfully with her backup weapon we'd taken as insurance, and Tenta, who could nearly got really unlucky with her weapon choice, but didn't.

It was kind of a shock that the game ended that quickly, but it felt pretty awesome.

It was also very reassuring that the boss wasn't that horrible (at least without a chance to attack much). We'd stalled out in the middle but we managed to pick up the pace to the point that we thoroughly beat down the boss. It meant the game had more room for error than we thought. For instance, we could've ignored our last house rule avoiding death, and we still hadn't built two of our possible locations and a handful of innovations.

I want to look back at those rules, but we're currently thinking of removing our anti-death house rule and only keep the one rule of the space past Starvation be a space that monsters can return from.

So, now we're on to boss rush mode in the post-game, until we die out.

Smells like... vict'ry. Also, ginger and carrot.

Year 23
...That was going to be the transition to our exploits in the wasteland of the post-game. We expected to live 3-4 fights, and started in backwards order with the toughest quarry (Phoenix) first, with the assumption that the stacking buffs would even out, more or less.

First thing that happened was our survival expert/deck manipulator got scared and lost all of his survival, and then he was blown off the rock he was aiming on, making him useless, so we were fighting essentially a 3-man fight from the top of turn 2.

We managed to get through 2/3 of the Phoenix's health before we were all dead, and that was that.

...And then we rebooted the same night. Off to fight a puny Lion!