Have you got the big Kthones?

I do, and no that's not a typo (for those wondering what I'm gibbering about http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Cojones).  But for the purpose of this blog Kthones are one of the kindreds for the Darklands game by Mierce Miniatures and at present they are all large based (monsterous infantry and up).

Obligatory faction symbol

As everyone who knows me will be well aware I'm a bit of a gaming magpie and suffer considerable 'ohh shiny' syndrome.  And this is exactly what the games industry and particularly Kickstarter loves.  I've rambled on about the many games/models/paints sundry whatever I choose to do as a hobby in the past and Darklands has come up a couple of times but never as anything particularly concrete or specific.

It's all in the name yo

Well as it happens I know a few of the guys involved in the playtesting of Darklands and got tempted into the last couple of Kickstarters for the game and that started to ramp up my level of enthusiasm.  As part of this I got suckered into parting yet more hard cash to pick up a few more models for one of the kindreds I'd looked and actually had a handful of models for already rather than wait till my Kickstarter came through.  The reason I'd picked up some Kthones was to use as an alternative-mini Ogre army but WFB changed and I lost any real interest in starting ogres for them.

Gorgonar Unit (Mierce Website image)

I still had these lovely models - Gorgonar (they're snakemen) and a bunch of folk bending my ear about this Darklands game, what the hell says I I'll just paint up what I've got and get chatting with folk... Umm ok that spiralled quickly.  I'm now at least £250 more invested than I was (which probably takes me to about £750 in total) in a game I've never played, doesn't have final rules and could be utter guff...  But I do now have some painted models, that's a good thing right?

Gorgon Wizard (Mierce website image)- funky name I forget

What was used to hook me in further was one small comment, "those Krokodar guys are really good".  I'd seen the models and thought how lovely they were but at £100 for the unit and not available on the website at present I'd left it at that.  But then someone pointed out because I'd been in on the Kickstarters I actually had access to them through a wonderful thing they do (encourage backers to spend yet more money) so down went my cash and through came the models for the Krokodar.

Krokodar character - weapon conversion

Until the recent Kickstarters Mierce have done all their models in resin, it's very high quality resin too and the detail is fabulously sharp and what I've recieved has been very light on mold lines and casting issues.  As with all resin it's a bit more fragile than plastic but them's the breaks.  What this means is the detail is really crisp on say (to pick an area at random) scales and as a result that means that scaly monsterous creatures like crocodiles or snakemen have fabulous scales that take paint wonderfully well.  Specifically and this is very important to how I paint, they take washes like nobody's business.  Therefore painting this kindred is actually a sinch, you'll get good outcomes from a tidy basecoat and a wash alone.

Krokodar Unit

For this reason alone I think this will make Kthones the starter army of choice for many people.  Large & cool monster models, actually quite easy to make look good without loads of effort and (from what I'm lead to believe) actually really effective on the table too (if such things matter to you, who am I kidding of course it does).

Also there is the background, per a Mierce Interview I lifted this:
"The Khthones are the once-slaves of Atalantia, a race of reptiles bound by cold blood to destroy their creators and enslavers, the Atalantes, and to find lands of their own in Europe. You will know Atalantia as Atlantis, situated off the coast of Ireland and Britain in the lands of darkness.

I read that and thought 'cool'.

Gorgonar Unit

Earlier I commented that the rules or more accurately the units/points aren't quite locked down for the game as yet but the target game size appears to be around 2000 gold (the games points).  The most recent list I've written for that contains 12 models.  I'll let that sink in, yup no painting hordes and hordes of infantry, you just need a few cool models and you're ready to go.  Again word of warning here,  you can make much bigger forces I'm using a load of really points expensive stuff in my list so it's super small.  Plus those models are big and have a related £ price point compared to smaller stuff too, so it's not a particularly cheap way into the game but a lower hobby entry point.

Kadamaster (Mierce Website Image) - Mahoosive Krokod

I have the guy pictured above on order, can't wait for him to come.  600+ points of pure unadulterated badass monster and a beautiful model too.  I'm not entirely sure of scale but tip of snout to back legs is something like 120mm, so it's pretty massive and no doubt horribly intimidating when assembled but I'll just be using the same technique I've applied on my Kroks above and see how it goes.

So there we have it my first faction review for Darklands, as I think I've mentioned previously I've also got Erainn and Albainn coming from the Metal age Kickstarter so once I've had those through and had some time to put paint on them I'll do a similar write up for those Kindreds.

As I say I think this faction is a real draw for the game, seriously cool looking monsterous infantry, low model count, simple enough to paint oh and the one bit I've not mentioned before most recently it's expanded into having smaller guys too in the form of lizardmen who look pretty cool too if you want to diversify the force.