Super Kingdom Death Explore!

[odinsgrandson]

So I really like board games with cool minis. Two of the board games that I’ve spent the most time playing are Kingdom Death: Monster and Super Dungeon Explore! Both are great games with fantastic minis- although the tones each use could hardly be farther apart.

The developers of these games know each other, and When both games went to Kickstarter, they took the opportunity to do a cool cross over. So means that we got a really cute chibi of the Twilight Knight.

She makes a great mini, and I’d have been happy to leave it off there, but the fluff on her card implies that if those super cute Super Dungeon characters go into the Nether Rift in their seting, they end up in the brutal and bloody hell world of Kingdom Death.

So I got to thinking about this, and decided that I really needed to expand on this idea of the cute little chibis on the Planes of Faces.

Yes, these are all playable, and I'm going to continue to create Chibi versions of Kingdom Death monsters.

[odinsgrandson]

Continuing my project to create a set of Kingdom Death: Monsters using chibi minis, here is my Screaming Antelope.  I find that I really enjoy mixing the brutal nightmare setting of Kingdom Death with the cuteness of chibi minis.

He was created using mostly parts from Impact! Miniatures- the head started out as a chibi beastman, and the body came from a nightmare (one of the largest of their chibi pony miniatures).  I sculpted the mouth and teeth in the belly, and moved the legs around to turn it into an antelope (and sculpted most of details to make up the difference).

I'll be posting up some of the nemesis monsters soon.

[odinsgrandson]

For Thanksgiving, we finished off our Kingdom Death Monster campaign with an epic battle against the Watcher.

It was pretty glorious.  We played with all the Chibi conversions of KDM minis I've made, and the survivors were all heroes from Super Dungeon Explore.  Princess Ruby was pretty awesome with her bone darts and monster tooth necklace.

Now that I've admitted to finishing off more Kingdom Death Chibis than I've shown off, I figure I'd better get to posting them.  Here's the Butcher:

And if you don't know what Kingdom Death: Monster is, you should probably have a look at the outstanding Kickstarter that they're running right now.  The fact that it got to 3.5 million overnight is not overstating the quality of the game- it is fantastic on pretty much every level- brilliant minis, fantastic rules set, terrific art, crazy loads of fun.

[odinsgrandson]

Here is the Kingsman Nemesis:

And here is the Messenger of Humanity.  The role of this mini in the game is a little odd.  He was part of a set of scenarios that Adam Poots decided weren't working after a beta run.  During the 1.5 Kickstarter, one of the promises made is that new rules will be made for all of the messengers.

Until then, he's being used to represent a survivor.

 

[odinsgrandson]

This is my ‘conversion’ of Kingdom Death’s monster “the Hand” in chibi form.

I put those quotation marks there because I'm not sure at what point I'm crossing a line between conversion and original sculpt.  I started out with a Tanchyo Yajiri:

I cut and reposed the legs, hollowed out the head to sculpt the brain and crown, and sculpted the helmet over the remains of the head.  I was planning to use those ears for the crown, but it didn't work out, so they got removed completely.

I also removed his arms and resculpted them completely.  I sculpted the cape, and added the sword from another Kingdom Death mini.

I was planning on keeping the breastplate, but in the end I cut it out and re-sculpted the whole thing.

In the end, only a small portion of his pants and belt came from the original mini.  I basically just had an elaborate armature underneath there.

I entered him into Reapercon's Open competition, and he got a gold medal.

[odinsgrandson]

I've been showing off the conversions from my Chibi Kingdom Death set for a while now- but I realize that I've neglected to post up good pictures of the survivors that I've made.

Here is a group of them.  Since this is an ongoing project, I'll be continuously making more, so there will never be a final "all of them together" post.

The conversions range between custom basing and extensive resculpting.

Alistair uses the head from Sebastian Cross- I had an extra since I used Cross' body for my Kingsman.  His body comes from a Mistmourn Shaman, with his skirt sculpted on, and his weapons come from Kingdom Death sprues.

I really liked the idea of painting his eyes to match the prologue, even though he's clearly a Lantern Year 2+ survivor (since he's not barefoot, and has a bone blade).

For Zachary, I wanted a survivor that was a little more muscular than scrawny Alistair, so I used the body from Yokozuna (I still have the head for making a Sun Priest later).

Rail Raiders Infinite's Rhinestone took me by surprise.  She just looked perfect for Kingdom Death, and just needed a color scheme that would work with the set.

It seemed wrong not to make a version of the crossover Candy and Cola for my Chibi Kingdom Death set.  The head comes from Candy, and I found the best body to start from was a Shrine Ninja Kunoichi.  Much of her skirt is sculpted on.

I would have put Cola on her skirt, but I got to thinking that he should be his own survivor.  I haven't finished his conversion yet, but I'll make sure to share it.

The Plague Doctor doesn't seem like the most natural mini to make for Chibi Kingdom Death.  I was looking through my bits box one day, and I found an old Rackham goblin, and I could see all of the conversion that I'd need to make.

For his color scheme, I decided to make a tribute to the Shovel Knight villain/hero Plague Knight.  I'll probably do a couple other Shovel Knight characters as well (Specter Knight would make a good survivor as well).

[lusciousmccabe]

That is one unsettling doctor. Love the purpley-swirly glow jar. Think it's particularly good. 

Nice idea on the Sebastian Cross head. Think the conversion gives his expression a whole new meaning. 

[odinsgrandson]

Thanks.  I have another Cross that I didn't convert.  The facial expression changes so much from the eyebrows, they don't really look like they started out as the same sculpt.

[Treehouse]

I love those minis!

[odinsgrandson]

Here are a couple more survivors- modeled after some of the various armor kit options.

Also, my bow characters spend so much of their lives standing on giant stone faces that it just seemed right to include it.

[odinsgrandson]

My entry at this year's Reapercon was the Tyrant that I made for Chibi Kingdom Death.  The Tyrant is probably my favorite Kingdom Death character (at least so far).

His construction was fairly complex, using a combination of quite a few parts from various different minis, but none of them were prominent enough to be a "base mini" for the conversion.

While I was making him, I went back and forth on how to portray the markings on his head.  On the official mini, they're sculpted in relief, and I've seen them painted as scars, tattoos or even gold inlay.  I actually started sculpting them on my tyrant, until I decided that they'd look best as freehand tattoos across his head.

Overall, I was quite pleased with how he turned out, and the judges at Reapercon gave him a gold award.

[odinsgrandson]

I usually see Chibis as fitting with a sort of old JRPG aesthetic, so when I'm doing larger minis, I often think they can just work as is, or they can use a little bit of conversion on small portions that should have chibi features (like the race inside the phoenix mouth, or the corpse on Spidicules' lure)  I also made the phoenix's eyes a little larger, but not huge.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Gorm and Sunstalker really didn't need any changes to them.  I simply painted them to help them fit in a little bit better, and I think this worked quite well.

 

[odinsgrandson]

The Watcher and White Speaker Sword Hunter are not from my own set.  I created and painted these two conversions for a client.  I do have my own watcher in the works, and it is pretty similar, although I'll be going with a different color scheme.

 

 

[Butch]

On 9/19/2018 at 5:22 PM, odinsgrandson said:

His construction was fairly complex, using a combination of quite a few parts from various different minis, but none of them were prominent enough to be a "base mini" for the conversion.

While I was making him, I went back and forth on how to portray the markings on his head.  On the official mini, they're sculpted in relief, and I've seen them painted as scars, tattoos or even gold inlay.  I actually started sculpting them on my tyrant, until I decided that they'd look best as freehand tattoos across his head.

Do have pictures of the unpainted miniature? Some where you could see the conversions.

 

I always thought you paint these out of the box.

[odinsgrandson]

I don't take pictures of them when they're unpainted very often.  I did get some pictures of a Flower Witch that I made for someone else to paint, so I'll get those pictures up in a bit.



The Sunstalker campaign features the People of the Sun- an alternate group you could start out with that have some nods to Japanese clothing styles and weaponry. They’re quite distinct from the usual Kingdom Death survivors.

These people live in the shadow of an ancient Sunstalker and raise its young in a pool of colorful liquid. I really love the campaign, and I thought that they would make an interesting subject for some crossover minis.

Most of these miniatures started life as a Tanchyo Warband for Super Dungeon Explore. The number of alterations I made to them varies quite a lot- some of them seemed like they would be perfect without any changes, while others needed quite a lot of sculpting and conversion.

[

The minis above all work perfectly as Kingdom death survivors, but in order to play this group in either Ninja All Stars or Super Dungeon, they need an Oni.  I considered a few different (easier) ways to go about this, but in the end, I couldn't resist sculpting my own infant sunstalker for them!

[odinsgrandson]

I created this mini a little while ago, but for some reason I missed showing him off.

This is my chibi version of the Manhunter nemesis monster for Chibi Kingdom Death.  The core mini started its life as a cowboy robot from Rail Raiders Infinite, so he's come a long way to get here.

For the base, I wanted to create a chibi version of a base that I had previously made for the proper Manhunter mini.

[odinsgrandson]

I could describe these next ones, but I think we just want to skip to the pictures anyway.

[MLFabrications]

The DBK is adorable, is it from a preexisting sculpt or did you kitbash it?

[odinsgrandson]

10 hours ago, MLFabrications said:

The DBK is adorable, is it from a preexisting sculpt or did you kitbash it?

I made it.
 

I started out with a Frog Champion from Dark Sword, cut off a lot of pieces, and did a lot of sculpting.  The insect legs were taken off of a Reaper spider, and the sword is a Kingdom Death piece, but most of him is my sculpt.

The dunb ball is 100% apoxie sculpt/green stuff.

[MLFabrications]

Is that the DBK armor kit sword hes holding?

[odinsgrandson]

Yes it is.

[odinsgrandson]

I've got a couple more.  Neither of these are super new, but I hadn't realized that I missed posting them.

The Warrior of the Sun has always been one of my favorites:

And while Cola's presence in Kingdom Death is usually as an accessory to the Candy miniature, I decided that he'd do fine as his own survivor.

I've got more to post, I just need to get all the photos sorted out.

[odinsgrandson]

This is the Flower Knight

[lusciousmccabe]

Awesome stuff. Fair play for keeping this project up so long. 

 

[odinsgrandson]

Thanks. I plan to keep it up quite a bit longer as well. It just goes off and on, since I'll also stop to paint something else in the mean time as I go.