Monday, October 2, 2017

Crowning Achievements - Kingdom Death Dragon King and Campaign Conclusion

It nearly slipped by me I'm hitting my 500th post... well, I had to do something a little bigger for that, didn't I? (Note the 35mm model on the bottom...)

I liked the Dragon King's model, but didn't love it as much as a lot of people did when it was previewed, since it was one of the most conventional of baddies, basically just a dragon with some flare. If it had been anything resembling appropriately priced, I don't think I would have bought one during the first KS (and would have regretted that later), but it was ridiculously cheap, so I thought it was worth a small gamble.

However, I really enjoyed the People of the Stars sculpts, and it was inevitable that I tried to do something with the big guy to match him with their color scheme, and part of that was breaking up that large space on his back with some glowy bits referencing the Tyrant's giant crest thingy, which was pretty darn tricky on that large and uneven of a surface. I considered similarly patterning his wings to the other version I'd done, probably in black or darker red, but decided that it would make the model too busy.

Oh, also, you can see the base I sculpted, imitating a ruined quarter of the central dais on the KD board, most visible in the bottom right pic.

Campaign Wrap up
Speaking of things slipping by me, though, I actually did forget to ever post my final notes on my People of the Stars campaign, leaving those poor little guys forever hanging on that cliff.

For those of you joining now or who otherwise don't want to comb back through posts or anything, the previous sessions: Years 0-45-14; reset years 0-56-1415-22

And with that, the final countdown of this 40+ year campaign:

3: We fought a lion and beat it up, for things we didn't care about.

2: We fought a level 3 Butcher with our distant 2nd string team. We got some terrible luck with its 50/50 preventing damage. Also, our damage dealers couldn't hit the broad side of a berserker. And died first. I believe we did half its health. We lost all our resources, which would have been painful, but we weren't saving them. Well, there was something actually a little reassuring in remembering that you can die thoroughly, since it's been quite a while. Sean, one of our first 4 survivors from our previous settlement's First Story, who'd also founded this settlement, somehow never managed to get anything very interesting going on, but we took him out anyway since, why not? Either way, at least he died doing what he loved: blocking an improbably high number of times in a Rawhide armor set- despite starting with the least armor of anyone, he was the last to die.

This was after a reasonably substantial time, so it could have been we were out of practice, but I don't think so? Pretty sure we just rolled horribly with those Butcher saves, and were slightly underequipped. In retrospect, one of the others would have probably been a better fight since they risked less, but we had assumed we stood the best chance against a Butcher.

1: Since we had everything that we wanted already and nothing we even kind of wanted, we did the ultimate low-risk fight, took a crew of guys second-string we thought would be fun to take out, and geared them up with the best we could put together, that wasn't part of the 36 gear cards we'd earmarked for the boss fight, for a pretty bizarre hodgepodge of gear. Short of a settlement event wrecking multiple guys with a murder or something (and we had some... eh, decent, backups, and while I guess we really could have had prepped one of them a little more during this fight, we didn't), we weren't risking anything. We wanted to fight a level 2 lion, but thought better of it, because we wanted to have the best chances of getting a shrine buff for the last fight.

We ended up actually having a near-perfect fight, and managed a haul of 16 resources off a basic lion... which weren't for anything since we didn't have metal and weren't trying to make anything. Completely inconsequential, but it felt good.

Go!

It was time to fight ye olde giganto-dragon! Here goes (while trying to avoid spoilers!!)!

The battlefield was actually pretty epic, way more of a sense of story than the Watcher. We had something that allowed us to (legally) cheat and look at his move set, so we did, and there were a few lethal-looking moves there.

Actually, no, before this, commemorating the team:
Drondo of the Witch, the Reincarnated Shining Savior of the Antelope (yes, that was all part of his title), is a blender with 2 luck, 8 strength, and 1 speed. He's wearing an antelope armor set with a big ol' axe and shield. Mostly here for the high-speed luck + savage.

Xtra of the Storm, the Wise Fool of the Lion, is a berserker and master of four weapon types, with generally a really solid stat line: all but one stat has at least + 2 in it. She's wearing a Phoenix set, with a super sword (thanks, Dragon Dad!). She's basically here for her extreme movement and some pretty reliable damage.

Sploosh of the Reaper, the Wise Coward of the Phoenix, who's actually pretty vanilla. Unless you count 7 accuracy, 12 strength, and 2 speed. I do count it, but that might just be me. She's our dedicated beater, in Lantern armor.

Bringing up the rear is our insurance policy, (Un)lucky of the Gambler (that was a coincidence), Father of Words, Dingle Fool of the Lantern, who's mostly just ten kinds of crazy. He's Immortal, so his 100+ insanity is ablative armor. Also, he's striking at a disgusting amount of strength-- 132 after weapons and modifiers, to be precise (1 to damage always fails!). Given all that, he didn't need much in the way of defensive gear (just Acanthus insurance for mr. Insurance), and mostly is there to be able to field a rawhide headband and 5 of his gear slots were support items. So, yeah, insurance against just about anything- about all he couldn't do is move around very fast, what with no Dashing. This, coincidentally, is the second time I've taken someone against the boss in basically just a shield and an axe and few clothes... Guess I have a thing for the classic barbarian style.
Something like this. (With a little background cribbing from Berserk, in a time-honored Kingdom Death tradition.)
Back to the fight. So, with our A-Squad wholly intact, and basically everyone else dead, we went up to our apocalyptic showdown.

Turn 1, we did I think around 1/4 of its health, but Sploosh was hurled across the board.

Turn 2, we did another 1/3 or so health despite another hurling, but then Drondo got vaporized after his leg armor gave out.

Turn 3, we were inching towards the finish, scattered, broken, and without much damage we could concentrate, but then Sploosh got splattered into the stratosphere. And then two survivors remained, as the Dragon started beating the crazy out of (Un)lucky. Around this point, Xtra decided that she, too, must have been Immortal.

Turn 4, Down to two champions of the settlement left and no survival actions available to either, Xtra did the deed, winning the day through much stabbing and slicing. The two Immortal survivors managed to pull off a win!

Thoughts
I loved the Dragon King campaign. Way more exciting and narrative than a regular one, and the boss was hugely more exciting, both because of the absolutely epic boss size, and just a cooler fight. It lasted maybe twice as long as our Watcher fights, and did a ton more damage. Losing 2 of our 4 best guys felt just about right for the boss of the game. Really satisfying. I'll be writing a review of this campaign one of these days, but, for now, that was just a ton of fun.

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