Unboxing Kingdom Death: Monster

Earlier this week I got my pre-ordered copy of Kingdom Death: Monster.  I had planned to do this blog post earlier this week, and then have a painting post for the weekend, but I ended up being caught up in painting the miniatures that I got side tracked.



The box is HUGE!  Weighing in at 17+ pounds, and measuring 26" x 16" x 6".  There is a lot of heft to this box, and the cardboard holding it all together is very sturdy.  Taking the lid off the first thing I see is a rectangular box fitting just inside the top:



I'll look at the miniatures later.  Underneath that though was the gameboard:

 

When I saw the kickstarter (couldn't afford to get in at the time) it had a picture of the gameboard.  For some reason I figured it'd be really small, but it turns out that the thing is HUGE!  3ft by 2.5ft (roughly).  It takes up a good amount of space, and I admit it was a nice surprise.  Under the gameboard was a cornucopia of cards, smaller boards, and the rulebook:




The cards and markers all look to be of high quality, and have a good feel to them.  I've left things in their containers for the time being until I'm ready to play.  The rulebook is paperback, which was dissapointing.  224 pages long and I'd like the covers to be more durable, but they're just like the internal pages.  The upside is that the rules is in full color.  Glancing through it you have a very engaging intro that introduces you to the game, and then you start in on simple rules, and it appears to walk you through the Prologue, which is the survivors vs The White Lion.  I didn't get to read too much, but I definitely see it being easy to read.

So let's get to the miniatures.  At a glance the box for the miniatures doesn't look like it's going to have many in it, but I was easily fooled.  There was a good number of sprues inside waiting for me:



 In addition to the sprues there were also bases:



There was a bunch of 30mm and 50mm bases, but also a single 100mm base.  There's two different inserts for the bases.  A generic textured base for the 50mm and 100mm, but the 30mm had these plus ten that were made to be similar to the board games look.  I'll end up using the ten inserts, but am not sure if I'm going to sculpt anything for the rest of the bases or use some existing bases I already have:



I like the horror aesthetic of the game, and the bases you see in the pic above (right-hand side) are the ones I'm leaning towards using.  The 100mm base is going to get something sculpted on it though.  I don't like the idea of having a large and fairly major piece (The Phoenix goes on the 100mm base, and I'm already anticipating it being 20-40 hours of work) sitting on a generic textured base.

I can group the sprues into several sets.  You have the base game pieces which include the 4 survivors, and then all the monsters to be faced off against during the game. 



The above sprue has the 4 survivors, the White Lion, and the Butcher.  The very beginning of the game has the survivors pitted against the White Lion, so I got those assembled first:





The other sprues are sets of 4 survivors decked out in various sets of armor, most of which reflect the monsters that they face off against.  As of this writing I've gotten two of the survivors painted, and while I'm eager to show them off I'm also eager to keep painting.  Next week, if I'm lucky, there'll be four fully painted survivors to show off!  I also need to set time aside to read the rules so I can start playing the game.