Lonely Tree
| Assembly: 5 hours | Gap Filling: 5 hours | Painting: 20 hours |
Lonely Lady
| Assembly: 30 minutes | Painting: 3.5 hours |
This is the first miniature I ever painted! I present the Lonely Tree from Kingdom Death. (It should be noted, however, that I came back later to do some touch-ups, after I gained more experience painting).
Before this year, I’d never had a real interest in miniature gaming. Not only did I not have a group of friends that were into it, I didn’t see the appeal. It wasn’t until the Kickstarter for the Dark Souls Board Game appeared this year that I realized–tabletop RPGs don’t need a dungeon master. A complex deck of cards, unique to each enemy encounter, makes for an experience that is entirely cooperative (instead of one vs group). It also adds a real sense of accomplishment, knowing you’ve experienced the same, static difficult boss fight as everyone else, and that you didn’t win because your friendly, neighborhood dungeon master decided to be flexible.
I began to do more research. And that’s when I discovered Kingdom Death.
The miniatures looked incredible, to the point that I became excited by the idea of learning to paint. And the game system went beyond anything I’d ever thought possible for a board game. There were 50-80 cards for each individual monster (adding up to over 1000 cards in just the core box). In addition to fighting monsters, you would use resources to develop your settlement over the course of the campaign. The core campaign is 25 sessions long (at 1-3 hours per session)! It already had 12 expansions. It was brutally challenging. It was…
It was completely sold out. They’d thought they’d have enough to last a few years, but their copies were gone in 4 months. There aren’t yet plans for a reprint, so I probably won’t get to play for a long time.
But the wait will be worth it. And in the meantime, I can start learning to paint. I bought one of the expansions: The Lonely Tree. Not because people said it was a good fight, but because it looked awesome.
Most people I’ve seen on the internet have painted their leaves green. I wanted to do red. A deep red. Like blood. Learning wasn’t as difficult as I thought it would be. And it was so much fun!