Female representation in wargaming

When properly armored, you should not be able to tell whether a model is male or female.

Our post about sexism in Kingdom Death prompted a reasonable amount of discussion, and made us realize that there was more that could be said about how women are represented in miniature gaming. When seeing a game which objectifies women as much as Kingdom Death does, it is easy to look at other games which don’t portray women as egregiously, and give them a pass. In reality, all of the popular miniature companies today have issues with female representation.

Dragged into Turbolasers Episode 14: Blood Bowl Returns!

Blood Bowl is back!

We start the episode by touching on the success of Adam Poots’ new Kingdom Death kickstarter campaign. We spend the rest of the episode talking about Games Workshop’s new releases, with a focus on the new Thousand Sons’ models and the reenvisioned Blood Bowl.  We talk at length about each of the new Thousand Sons’ kits, including Magnus the Red and the fantastic new Ahriman.  We then move to discussing the component quality of Blood Bowl, and our general excitement to be playing the game again after many years!

Kingdom Death: Percival

The Black Knight towers over Percival.

After being in the works for years, nearly all of the Kingdom Death Kickstarter releases have been produced, and Adam Poots is working towards introducing new things to the game. For one thing, he has started to produce plastic versions of some of the older, limited resin kits.  While many of these are seedy pin-ups, one that stood out to me was a fully armored female knight, reminiscent to the Black Knight that I assembled earlier this year.  Along with being in plastic for the first time, this knight, Percival, came with a few cards to use her in Kingdom Death: Monster.  With these things in mind, I decided to purchase the model and put it together and wanted to let you all know what I think of her!

Kingdom Death Multi-part kit challenge: Bigbossredskullz Amazon

Amazon by Bigbossredskullz 

At the end of last year, we started the Kingdom Death Multi-part Kit Challenge to see what other hobbyists could do with the wealth of plastic pieces from the Kingdom Death boxed game. We were not overly impressed with the multi-part kits, but were confident that something special could come out of them given the proper talent. So, after building a single model from the kits, we sent them away.

Dragged into Turbolasers Episode 5: Deep Wars, the state of GW and supplements, and the decline in Malifaux model quality

Deep Wars is back!

Kingdom Death: Assembling the Black Knight and Flower Knight

The Forest wants what it wants.

Just as I was coming to terms with (and assemble!) all of the models and rules included with Kingdom Death: Monster, its creator Adam Poots started to ship out the game’s many expansions, each including a new monster along with the cards and rules necessary for using them in your ongoing campaigns!  Honestly, the Kickstarter was so long ago that I had forgotten what expansions that I had selected, but was pleasantly surprised to receive: the Flower Knight, Slenderman, the Dragon King, and the Dung Beetle Knight.  And while I have slowly been filming unboxing videos of each of these expansions, I thought that I would do a post talking about the assembly of the Flower Knight.  And for good measure, since I had been working on it at the time, I will show you the resin Black Knight too!

Kingdom Death: Multi-part kit challenge - Model complete

Born of strife...

As 2015 came to a close, we looked at the multipart Survivor models that came with the Kingdom Death boxed game.  We were not too thrilled with the models, their proportions, the level of detail, and cast quality were just not as good as many of the other single pose Kingdom Death models.  These considerations made us uncertain what we should do with the models; it just did not seem like it was worth our time and effort to try to assemble them.  We ended up deciding to make a single model out of all the sprues and then send the rest off to another hobbyist, with the hope that they will continue to pass the models around to other hobbyists to see what they could create with the parts.  The Muli-part of Death Project was born.  In the last post, we showed you the model that we came up with.  I found some time to start painting the model last month and am pleased to show you the finished model!

Dragged into Turbolasers Episode 2: Fyreslayers and Mantic Games' Walking Dead Miniature game

Kingdom Death multi-part kits: their place alongside the other KD models and miniature gaming as a whole

In addition to creating the single-pose starting survivors and the monsters for them to battle, one of the main drives of the Kingdom Death Kickstarter was to design multi-part plastic kits for creating new survivor models. After defeating each of the different monsters in the game, your survivors are able to craft new weapons and equipment with the remains of their slain foes. To represent this in model form, they created a range of different multi-part sets with different weapon options and armor types that could be crafted in the game (Rawhide armor, Leather armor, Lantern armor, White Lion armor, Phoenix armor, Unarmored). This system was designed to allow players to continually build new models of their survivors as they progress in the campaign.

A look back: The miniatures of 2015

Looking back, it is clear that 2015 was a fantastic year for the miniature wargaming hobby.  And while many companies have had a strong year, I do not think that any miniature company can compare to the frantic release pace of Games Workshop.  Warhammer is gone to be replaced with Age of Sigmar, the Adeptus Mechanicus finally have models, and the Horus Heresy is no longer restricted to resin models.  With the year coming to an end, we would like to take some time to look back at some of the fantastic models released over the year, from Games Workshops, as well as some companies, talking about our favorites.  Finally we will reveal our overall favorite model of the year.  On to the models!

Kingdom Death: What will elevate the Showdown phase, and a Contest!

The Night is Dark and full of Terrors.

In my last Kingdom Death post, I suggested that the Showdown phase (where you fight the monsters) felt a little pedestrian.  After some additional reflection, I think that some of this dullness might come from the initial monsters the game sets up against. They are all creatures that function upon instinct alone, and don't base their actions on some higher intelligence. Presently, I have fought against the White Lion and the Screaming Antelope.  And as horrifying as the antelope is due to the gaping maw on its belly, it is still just a beast, driven by base instincts rather than a malevolent intelligence.  The hulking armored Butcher, on the other hand, is actually a person, with their own motivations, which got twisted with cowardice and rage.  Now they stalk the nightmare realms of Kingdom Death murdering other humans, and stretching their faces over their fallen lanterns.  I am hopeful that the cold, calculating menace of such a being will add the tension and motivation into the battles of Kingdom Death.  And honestly, it was weird knights like the Butcher that originally attracted me to Kingdom Death in the first place, not the lions, scantily clad survivors, and certainly not the pin-ups.  With that in mind, I began to assemble the humanoid monsters that were included in Kingdom Death: Monster.  I wanted to use this post as an opportunity to show off some of these figures; and to celebrate these excellent models, I would like to hold a contest.  My Survivor Kickstarter pledge gave me a few extra Kings Men models, and I want to give some out.  Leave a comment below, and on November 15, I will randomly pick two winners and send them anywhere in the world!

Kingdom Death: Initial game impressions

Overwhelming Darkness.

Having finished assembling the first four survivor models, and the first adversary, a gigantic white lion, I was pretty excited to start actually playing Kingdom Death.  Curiously, in the long  2.5 years since the Kickstarter, relatively little had been revealed pertaining to the game mechanics, so I started to read through the rules pretty much immediately, while working on the initial models.  As of writing this, I have played two games of Kingdom Death, the first being a slightly “on rails” game they walk you through in the rulebook, while the second was a complete game.  Although I still need to play a lot more games to have a final consensus on Kingdom Death: Monster, I wanted to give some of my initial impressions!

Kingdom Death: Assembling the first survivors

Kingdom Death's four starting survivors, ready to face down terrible foes in the tenebrous darkness.

After opening the massive Kingdom Death: Monster box and marveling over the excellent production values of all the game components, I was pretty excited to give the game a try, and see how the many ideas and mechanics came together.  But before I could do that, one major hurdle still had to be surmounted.  The models needed to be assembled.  This looked to be a daunting task, with the box containing a veritable sea of miniatures scattered across countless sprues. Thankfully, the game is designed such that you are only fighting a single horrific monster at a time, allowing you to assemble models as you go.  The first game session only requires that you assemble 4 survivor models and the first opponent, a White Lion.  Having just assembled the initial 4 survivor models, I wanted to let you know my thoughts about them, how they went together and their general quality.

Unboxing: Kingdom Death Monster

All 22lbs of Kingdom Death, inside a custom printed shipping box.

After almost 3 years of waiting, and becoming increasing frustrated with Kindgom Death’s portrayal of women in their Pin-up side project (which admittedly has not bearing on the game itself), I had almost resolved to just sell my copy of Kingdom Death when it arrived.  Upon receiving the box, I decided to give the game a chance, figuring I would likely never get the opportunity to see the game again, due to its impressive price tag ($400 retail, substantially higher than the Kickstarter price).  After spending some time with the game, going through the contents of the box and reading through the rules, I am happy to have decided to keep the game.  Not only does it have the highest production values of any boardgame that I have ever seen, it also treats its subject matter seriously, without any of the objectifying of women present in their pin-up line of models.  I thought people would appreciate seeing some pictures of what is in the box, to get a sense of the quality and to determine if it is something you are interested in.

Kingdom Death: Marred by Misogyny?

Miniature-based wargaming has long been a male-dominated hobby, one that has partially been kept that way by the portrayal of women in many of the games (well-endowed and often scantily clad women in provocative poses, etc...). Anyone who has had any involvement with the hobby can doubtlessly come up with plenty of examples of this, but today I want to touch on one of the newer offenders, Kingdom Death. After over 2.5 years since being successfully funded on Kickstarter, the base game for Kingdom Death: Monster is finally in the hands of the over 5000 project backers. For those unaware, Kingdom Death: Monster is a survival horror boardgame which puts you in control of a band of human survivors awakening in a nightmarish realm of endless night, beset on all sides by cohorts of horrid creatures. The imaginative and unsettling creatures that populate the game take heavy inspiration from Kentaro Miura's fantasy-horror epic, Berserk (Bruticus over at Ex Profundis has an excellent compilation of artwork from  the manga if you are interested). To complement this unique theme, all of the survivors and monsters have been skillfully realized in game terms as finely detailed miniatures. The theme and accompanying miniatures would have been enough to support a successful Kickstarter campaign (back in late 2012, Kickstarter was not as inundated with miniature games). However, one of the primary things used to promote the game were "pin-up' versions of many of the human survivors. All of these pin-ups are female, generally very sparsely clothed, and often in suggestive poses. Just a glance at some of the concept art for these pin-ups should give you a good idea of what I am referring to:

Kingdom Death: Plastic or resin?

Just how well do the plastic Kingdom Death models stack up to the resin ones?

Before the Kickstarter campaign made Kingdom Death a common name amongst miniature wargamers, and before there were widespread claims of it having sexist aesthetic design choices, Kingdom Death was only a small collection of models and a vision of mind-numbing horror. A few years before the Kickstarter was launched, I saw their Forsaker model, with his frightening height, segmented armour, and antlered mask, and was captivated by the baroque design, one that seemed to be mimicking Kentaro Miura's masterwork graphic novel/manga series, Berserk. When they released their King’s Hand model, I was convinced that it was strongly influenced by Berserk. With the exposed brain design on the King’s Hand’s helmet, the creepy porcelain faces, and the grasping hands, I felt that I was looking at the spiritual successor to the horrific and unknowable evil that is the character Void of the God Hand from Berserk. This strong visual connection to one of my favorite graphic novel/manga series convinced me to try to get a few Kingdom Death models. This was before they started to experiment with casting their models in plastic (one of the primary goals of the eventual Kickstarter), so all their models were in extremely limited production runs  (~450 or fewer), making many models highly collectable and inaccessible to fans (you would find yourself continually checking back to their site and/or coolminiornot hoping to find the small window when the models were available). All of these models were hand cast in white resin, and came in a little cardboard collectors box, with a numbered certificate and art print. Recently, due to the success with their Kickstarter campaign, they were able to release a selection of their models in plastic. With the release of this kit (Pinups of Death - Hard Plastic Collection), I thought it would be a great time to look at some of their models, and examine the strengths and weaknesses of their resin and plastic models.