Kingdom Death Monster Blind Playthrough Part 1: Setup

Going In Completely Blind

I think with the way the world works, it’s really hard to go into something like a game blind. It’s very hard to not just look up reviews before you buy something.

Today I’m sharing me going completely blind into Kingdom Death. I originally bought it for the miniatures—I didn’t have any plans of actually playing it. So I didn’t look at gameplay, didn’t look at anything else in the box. Just thought “those look like very cool miniatures to paint.”

Building the Miniatures

The Survivors

The survivors were awesome to build. High quality models, very cool sculpts—10 out of 10 on the figures themselves.

If you’re a modeler though, be aware:

• There are some gaps that need filling
• I had to use a ton of sprue goo and resin glue to cover mold lines
• Plan for 2-3 hours if you want to really gap fill
• About an hour if you just want to throw them together

The two-part bases are pretty cool—you can pop in an insert of faces (not skulls) which is a nice touch.

The White Lion

The lion had more challenging gaps, particularly on the wrists and back. I used Tamiya resin glue for gap filling throughout.

What’s In The Box

This is the box—everything except the miniature parts. It’s a very thick, very high quality box.

I’ve organized everything:

• Sleeved all the cards
• Used coin protector pages for tokens (fit perfectly)
• Put everything in a binder system
• Used the included hard card dividers

There’s a LOT of components. They come with dividers for the different boss fights, settlement cards, gear, and more. The spaces originally designed for coins don’t quite fit once you add trackers.

Table Space Requirements

My desk is 5 feet across and 30 inches deep—a big craft desk. I can tell you right now this game won’t fit on it.

What you actually need:

• About 45-46 inches wide (not including rulebook space)
• About 32 inches deep
• A 4x4 Warmachine table works perfectly
• A 6x4 definitely works

I’m going to have to move this to my gaming table.

Setup Observations

• Uses cards for monster AI
• Characters start 6 spaces away from the monster
• Movement is cardinal directions only (no diagonals)—makes the game simpler
• The first encounter has specific cards that go on top of the shuffled decks
• Once I knew what I was doing, setup only took about 10 minutes

My Opening Strategy

I haven’t read ahead and don’t really know how combat works, but I didn’t want to put all my eggs in one basket. My gut tells me to split the party up and maybe divide and conquer.

This could be a terrible mistake. I don’t know what’s better, but I’m going in blind, so we’ll see.

Transcript

What’s up? Hobby Nomicon. Day 130ish. I’m sitting here doing my work and I was just kind of looking around uh daydreaming, thinking about a problem. When were y’all going to tell me?

It was sitting right there on my bookshelf the whole time. What is wrong with me? What is wrong with me? It’s mail day and my X-Acto knife is still missing, which is crazy because I just found it again. But this right here is probably my last War Machine for a while.

My last non 3D printed war machine for a while for sure. Uh, what do we got? I took a risk on these cuz I didn’t know uh with how the auction was set up. I just didn’t know if if it was actually going to be new in box like this. But because it is new in box, I actually like this is two units of infantry with the rocket boys.

Um, one thing that suck like this privateier press classic plastic during this time sucks. Uh, but these aren’t too bad. Pretty exciting. This is the So, that’s the last bit that I needed for fifth division. Uh, these I’m really excited about.

These are like old metal models in the best way. And I’m going to be able to use these in so many things. So excited for these. And then the last thing, the last missing piece, and with all my talk of solo gaming and not worrying about list and not making lists anymore, uh I decided that for when I do play War Machine and Swiss Division cuz I just I love it. Uh I love all the models.

I’m excited to paint everything. Uh this was not what I ordered. This is not an extreme juggernaut. This is a plastic juggernaut. Okay.

Uh so yeah, I I got that worked out. I’m not going to put the seller on blast or anything. I’ve ordered from them a bunch of times. They’re a good seller. They’re going to make it right.

But this is still cool though cuz I actually like this juggernaut and I don’t have one of this sculpt anyway. So even though it’s not uh an extreme juggernaut, it’s still cool. So, I went back and I was looking at this again and I didn’t realize this before, but they gave me two two hands. So, if I and an extra finger. So, if I recast the fingers, I can Yeah, if I recast the fingers, I’ll be able to make it a juggernaut pretty easily.

Now, if I recast the fingers and this piece, that piece right there, cuz they gave me two of those and an extra finger, but I only have the bottom half of the head, and I got this a while back, so I don’t have any way of getting the head still. So, I’m going to have to figure out the head. But, uh, my jack situation is cursed on this apparently cuz I got I also I ordered a juggernaut before and they didn’t ship me the head either. So, like every time I’ve tried to get a juggernaut, something has been wrong with it. I think with just the way the world works, it’s really hard to go into something like a game blind.

Like it’s it’s very hard to not just go look up reviews, go look up what’s going on, check it out before you buy something. Uh, today I’m going to share with you me going completely blind into Kingdom Death. I originally bought Kingdom Death for the miniatures. I didn’t have any plans of actually playing it or anything like that. So, I didn’t look at gameplay.

I didn’t look at anything else that came in the box. I just looked like, hey, those those look like very cool miniatures to paint. I bought it, been sitting on it for a while. All right, cool. Sorry about the bases.

This is a two-part base and you pop it in on the all the survivors. You can pop in this insert of the skulls or the faces, not skulls. Uh, which is just pretty cool in in my opinion. All right, so this is this is part one in exploring solo war games. So, I know there’s a ton of like board game review channels and a ton of things like that.

So, my my approach to this is going to be like hands on the table actually doing it. Uh, not kind of like I don’t want to be like a listical like I I built this model. You can see I had to use a ton of sprew goo to cover this mold line in the back. And then I came back over it with resin glue. So you can still see the the crack here.

And you can still see the uh like there it looks like there’s a gap here, but there’s not. And it’s just cuz I used clear resin right there. Uh same thing. There’s a gap here in the wrist. Uh gap here.

So, if you are a if you’re a modeler, and again, I’m not really a board gamer, so I’m not I’m sure for board games, these are high quality miniatures. The plastic is great. Very high quality material, but there’s some gaps on this bad boy. Uh, you’re going to spend a lot of time building this. The survivors were awesome.

Uh, this guy on Oh, I just uh popped him off his base. That’s not good. Interesting. I’ve used plastic glue, so maybe these aren’t good with plastic glue, but I uh again, I gap filled with Tama resin resin glue. There’s a pretty hellacious uh gap right there on the arm.

But the rest of these very high quality models, very cool sculpts. So, 10 out of 10 on figures themselves. Really of the initial survivors, I think they’re called survivors. Uh really only this guy that I just popped off the base was the only one that gave me trouble and it was just from the gap in the arm. So, let’s get him glued.

I’m gonna glue the tiger. I’m going to glue the lion to the base and then we’re going to get started. All right. So, again, uh at this point, just building that, you’re looking at like 2 or 3 hours if you want to really gap fill. Uh if you just want to throw them together and don’t care about gaps, probably an hour, uh if you know what you’re doing.

Now, this is the box. This is everything except the miniature parts, which is crazy. like it’s a it’s a very thick box, very high quality box. To give you setup reference, my desk that we’re on right now is 5T 5T across and 30 in back towards the wall. So, it’s a big craft desk.

I’m going to get this laid out and we’ll see just how much space you actually need to look. >> Don’t want to do that. Just wanted to read that pages. So, what what this tells you too is that’s the prologue. The story picks up after four survivors awaken.

You can play solo with four people or you can have four people playing a survivor. Love this kind of anime inspired art. You first step assembling and starting miniatures, which I did. Uh I don’t have that base insert, so I don’t know if that’s like an upsell or something, but I definitely don’t have that. Uh but I did have the the faces and that’s where my bookmark is.

So now uh we create our survivors. So what I’ve already gone ahead and done and I’m just going to move through the rule book. So these these are actually coin protector pages. Like if you’re collecting coin binders and they I don’t I won’t actually use the fourth row or these bottom two. You only use nine slots, but I I felt it silly to cut it.

I put these in the slot positions based on how the rules told me to. Let me and also I the big the big time consuming thing was I sleeved all of the cards and I again same chrome tractor binder I just put a screw through here. This is all the other things. So there’s rare gear here that is just you’re not supposed to see. So I kept that sealed.

Um this is like terrain here. There’s also all of these things. So again, under that like coin, same thing. Coin protectors that fit perfectly inside little plastic coin protectors. So I did all that.

Put those in here. Don’t I don’t I don’t know what this stuff is for. Again, I’m just showing you like there’s a lot of components. There’s a ton. They come with dividers.

So, I’ve sleeved all these cards up, but like gold. So, gold smoke knight, they give you a hard hard card divider for the cards. So, I’ve sleeved all of these, just put them in their section. So, these are all the different boss fights. Um, these cards here are related to your settlements.

So, again, I I just got sleeves for all these, sleeved all those up. These spaces here were originally for the coins, but after you put trackers in, they just they just don’t fit anymore. Uh the the dice, more dice. Uh wound I think these are wound trackers. And then I think the other stuff over here on the other side of the box when you get expansions, you can fit them in here, but they don’t account for sleeves, I don’t think.

So that’s where we are. Let me get the actual full board set up so we can really see what we’re >> Okay. So, I I just had the actual board game out and I can tell you >> tell you just from that that I’m not going to be able to play this on this desk that’s 5 ft by 2 and 1/2 ft. I’m going to have to move it to my 6x or my 8x4, but I’m going to have to move it over to my like real gaming table. Uh, so that means I got to move I got to put some stuff away again because I just like to junk that table up.

I just found that head. Wa! Look what else I just found. Me and that table. I got to stop jugging it up.

This is my commit. I’m going to That’ll be the kingdom death table from now on. I’ll stop jugging it up. I promise. Okay, we just got set up.

In terms of what’s actually on the table, it’s it’s 45 46 in. Uh not including the the room you need to put the rule book down. And then in terms of like how deep a table you need, it’s right at 32 in. So, that’s to give you an idea of how much space. If you have a 4x4 for a war machine, you’re going to be good or definitely with a 6x4.

Um, uses cards for what the monster does, I guess. I just have I did end up cutting these cuz they fit on the dashboards. And then these are the character sheets on top. Monster is there. I now it’s time to put the heroes on.

They according to this, they start six spaces away. Um, and also it’s it’s cardally, so not diagonals. They only move in cardinal directions. cuz they don’t move diagonally. Uh, I think that makes the game a lot simpler.

So, 1 2 3 4 5 6. Shuffle these decks, but they tell you on the first encounter, you have to place those cards on top. So, when I get into actually playing and I’ll get better lighting and actually get my camera set up. So, now I’ve set up time. Again, I’m reading the book and now I know what I’m doing.

I don’t know. It really only took me like 10 minutes to get to this point, but I think the setup and and tear down time is like the settlement part, which which I haven’t gotten to yet. But getting here was very very quick. Okay, so I was thinking about it and and I haven’t read ahead and I don’t really know how combat works or anything, but I didn’t want to put all my eggs in one basket. So, I thought it might be better just to split the party up uh and maybe divide and conquer.

So, I I don’t know. This could be a terrible mistake. Uh two, three, four. I just making sure. Uh so, this could be a terrible mistake.

Uh maybe it’s not. I don’t know what’s better or not, but we’re I’m again I’m going in blind, so we’ll see. But my my gut tells me to do that.