The Final Push - Lawnor approaches 100% painted

Models remaining:
Batch: 0, Normal: 6, Luxury: 7, Modular: 0, Bits Box: 3, Terrain sets: 11, To Ship: 80+

I’ve had the last week off work.  I had adulting things to do, but I also had fun hobby things I wanted to achieve.  I had a list in my head of set goals and extras if there was time.  Here’s what I was thinking:

• Finish off my Kingdom Death campaign.  I only had 9 fights to go
• Start playing Gloomhaven: Jaws of the Lion
• Paint the high parts of the walls on the stairs I couldn’t reach before, but now I have a roller on a stick
• If there’s time, repaint the hand rail and skirtings too
• Put the final touches on the The Walking Dead minis I almost had done
• Start and finish any other mini painting project
• If there’s time, paint up my Mantic walls
• Visit my friends for a weekend of regular Gloomhaven
• Make my first Vegan Pasta bake
• Rearrange my room to install monitor shelf

I suspect this is going to be a double entry this week.  I think I’m going to work through this in the order I think it played out.

Weekend starting 14th October

I had this day off too.  I have to travel and arrive during the day to visit my friends for a weekend of Gloomhaven so I usually book the day off.  This means the morning is free.  Recently I have used this to play some Kingdom Death, but I was feeling lazy and used it to put the final touches on the TWD minis I’d been working on all week, and I was able to get them all but varnished before I had to do sensible stuff, like shower and pack my bags and head to the station.

We got in 5 games over the weekend, and played a little of Haba’s Mountains with the kids too.  We are right at the end now.  One of the three main plotlines appears to be blocked off to us.  Another just requires a choice to be made, but we can’t really tell what the “good” choice is supposed to be and we’re trying to be good guys.  The main plot line requires us to kill 3 bosses before we can face the final boss.  We killed our second sub boss, leaving just The Horseman for next session.  He’s a major pain in the ass.  We’ve tried him a couple of times before and he seems broken.  Googling for advice and tactics, everyone seems to forget he’s immune to every status effect.  No one talks about having beaten him following all the rules, short of perhaps a lucky all-in strike with the Lightning Bolt character who can pretty much one hit kill most bosses if he gives it his all.  Last time we faced him I had the 2 mini character, who was a major liability in a fight like that so hopefully now I have a new character we can do better.

I got home mid afternoon on Sunday and was able to varnish the TWD minis before our D&D session was due to start.

• Put the final touches on the The Walking Dead minis I almost had done
• Visit my friends for a weekend of regular Gloomhaven

Monday 17th October

This felt like my first day off and I wanted a day to myself.  Those walls were staring at me but I chose to ignore them for now.  I had Tescos delivering food today.  They arrived an hour early, which was nice.  He rang the doorbell mid pee though which was not as nice.  Do I finish off, or do I try and cut off the stream and rush to see who’s at the door?  or do I panic and try both at the same time?  Ahhrgh!  I managed not to wet myself and food arrived.  They did deliver everything I needed for my Pasta Bake, except the sauce.  Did you know most pasta bake sauce is not vegan?  I can’t just pop to the corner shop and buy what they have.  I finally have my first pack of vegan cheese though which should melt well enough.  We will see, once I pick up a jar of sauce.  I hope its not a huge inedible mess.  I miss pasta bake.

• Make my first Vegan Pasta bake  – Failed
• New goal – Don’t piss myself or the floor – Success!

I got to spend the rest of the morning working on my Orcs though.  They’d already had their flesh painted on.  I’d base coated them last time the airbrush came out, and the rest of the work was mostly washes so I’d been doing that across the last week or so as it’s a quick job with long drying times.  Ideal for setting up before doing something else, like sleeping or painting another project.

In the afternoon I played two games of Kingdom Death.  the watcher was dead so I was on the push towards the Gold Smoke Knight, doing whatever I could to power up my 4 ageless super survivors I’ve been working on buffing since I time looped to avoid the GSK last time.  Ever since then, any time I could give someone a stat buff, I’ve given it to them.  I’ve been chasing vermin for cooking every chance I can.  I figured with Toughness 27 as my target number, with a Dragon Slayer sword Strength 9 + 2d10 averaging at a result of 20, I needed strength 8 to hit with an average roll (Weapon strength + survivor Strength + dice roll must equal or beat toughness).  I had  beaten this with 4 survivors, but every extra point helped, and I also wanted their evasion to increase so they could avoid being hit where possible.  On my last pass through the timeline my highest strength was a 4.  Each of my survivors is born with a Strength of 1.  Gaining stat points is rare.

Tuesday 18th October

I got off my fat lazy ass and painted the walls on the stairs today.  I’d painted them on my last week off, but the ceilings are high and there are limited places I can safely stand a ladder so there were parts I couldn’t reach.  I’d now got a roller-on-a-stick and was able to finish the job.  I applied a coat, played a game of KDM while it dried, and applied another coat and went back to KDM.  I painted the orcs around this too, aiming to get a wash on before going off to do something time consuming.

Wednesday 19th October

I thought I’d get a day with the orks and with KDM, but early afternoon the sunlight hit the walls just right to reveal an area of paintwork to be quite patchy when it looked fine under all other conditions.  Damnit!  Time to get the roller out again.  More progress was made on the orcs and I did get two more games of KDM in.

Thursday 20th October

I should have got on the bike and gone to buy some gloss for the skirting, but I told myself I should wait for the light to be right to see if I’d fixed the patchiness, so I talked myself out of all adulting today and got 2 more KDM fight done, leaving just the Gold Smoke Knight.  I figured I would probably need a few attempts to learn that fight so I created a save state of the game (Pics of everything so I can undo things if it goes horrible and try again.  I don’t mind losing, but I don’t want to lose because I don’t yet understand the rules or mechanics.  I want a fair fight, and I want a chance to learn those mechanics for next time).  I’d come back tomorrow and spend the day dealing with him.  The rest of Thursday was spent painting the Orks.  The sunlight revealed that my walls looked better, at least.

• Paint the high parts of the walls on the stairs I couldn’t reach before, but now I have a roller on a stick

Friday 21st October

Where has the week gone?  I should go buy that Gloss now, but its raining bad and I really want to finish off KDM.  I ordered it almost 2 years ago.  It arrived last December and I spent 3 months painting all the core minis and most of the year since working on the modular survivors.  I started playing at the start of June.  I’m 3.5 months and 69 games in.  I’m damn well going to finish it today!

I spent so me time staring at everything, making sure I had the best team with the best setup I could.  My evasion was high, but not perfect and the GSK has attacks that avoid evasion.  Some of my guys would only not would on a roll of 3 or less on 2d10.  I had an archer who couldn’t beat his toughness, but had an 8+ modifer to his luck rolls, meaning he crit on a 2+ on a d10, doing auto critical wounds to any hit locations with crits on them, which was about 55% of the cards.  He could also swap out one of those cards if he didn’t like them.  3 of my team could do that.  Turns out it’s a huge help in this fight.

I drew the Dead Monster terrain card, which normally lets the Survivors go first, but the GSK go first no matter what.  It did let me start anywhere on the board wanted, though which was interesting.  He does a guaranteed huge AoE at the end of every attack, and sometimes also during his attack.  I was able to spread out to control who it could hit and be in a position to react straight after.

His toughness 27 had terrified me.  It’s a huge step up from everything else.  However, I had prepared for it, perhaps a little too well.  I was able to kill him in 3-4 rounds on my first attempt, and I don’t think he’d successfully done a serious injury on any of my survivors.  If I’d faced him on my first time through the time loop I’d definitely have lost everything.

I have backed up everything from this campaign and I’m saving it.  There’s more content coming I believe I’ll be able to bolt on to the end of this later.  I’m really looking forward to trying this again, even without the expansion, which I’ve ordered.

I spent £273 on this new, thanks to Poots not being clear on the VAT situation and soaking up his mistake.  Very generous.  I have played 70 games, which is about 175 hours of play I’d guess.  That’s £1.56 per hour, or £3.90 per game and that’s ignoring all the time spent painting, and spent planning and thinking between games.  That makes this a very cheap game.  Especially as I plan on going back in.  Even at £400, that’s £2.29 per hour, or £5.71 per game.  KDM does cost a lot, but if you enjoy it you’ll definitely get your money’s worth.  Throw in that it keeps it’s value on the second hand market and I’d say its definitely worth buying if you’re curious.  BTW the core campaign is supposed to be 31 fights at minimum, if you don’t time loop or unlock any extras which doesn’t happen often.

• Finish off my Kingdom Death campaign.  I only had 9 fights to go

I’ve ran out of space here so I guess I’ll have to start a new entry.  See you over there in a minute.