Sacred Backer Updates 1 & 2 (Patreon)

Time for another hot take! I'm choosing to look at these in a pair because they're lighter in content than the usual massive text dumps that happen, and they're all the better for that. However, the more regular update schedule means it's not best for me to post something on them every single time they come out because I only post twice a week and these hot takes eat up one of those posting slots. Expect a look at Sacred Backer 3 & 4 after the 4th one is out.

Update #1

This update covered the following topics:

• Pinups of Death
• Stone Face Base Inserts
• Showdown Tracker &Website
• Crimson Croc
• King's Coin Sculpt
• Frontline Workers plastic boxed set
• Ivory Dragon Sculpt

So, first up, does anyone really use the numbered universal cards so much that getting new ones is exciting? If so, what the heck do you use them for? Woo,  we're getting more copies of the least used and useful element of the main game in Pinups III. This is the kind of thing I don't appreciate and actually want to make a small point about; because it's a waste of resources.  They're not even worth using to randomize picking a survivor... Shrug. Sleeve them, put them in a box, forget they exist...

The bikini variation of the Lantern Armor Cuirass is a fun little thing, maybe it won't have the heavy keyword which will let it be used in certain mixed set builds? We'll see how its integration rules (if any) work.

It's good that the website is getting a clean up, it's not just a mess 'under the hood' but it's a mess on the UI front as well, I am hopeful they can also do something to stop the way that products disappear "forever", taking with them chunks of lore. I would prefer it if APG would keep all the lines up there rather than having to deal with 3rd party records of the lore text, because that is not a desirable source for lore.

Crimson Crockery

Nat's work on this is fantastic, I've often said that Zeen Chin and Nat are right at the heart of of what gives KD:M its flavor and feel and deserve so much more praise and notoriety than they get. This is a huge example of this. We can see a lot of glass blowing related activities, but also an impression of how important the Crimson Croc's blood is for the crafting process. 

Interestingly this location looks more underground than most of the ones we've seen so far. We can see some kind of lantern based beaker/contraption further up that's causing a liquid to flow down and then solidify. On the left two of them are glass blowing it, on the right you can see a woman collecting the hardened substance directly by breaking it. Highlighting the brittle of the weapons we've already seen.

Frontline Workers

Whatever this ends up having in it, it's a wonderful thing that something is being done to help support the relief efforts against Covid-19. The art here looks great and I'm sure the models are also going to be wonderful looking. I hope that they're initially limited to 1 per person and then expanded out to allow for a second copy if supplies hold. It would suck for people to be denied a chance to help out and get a cool, unique set of sculpts for the starting foursome. 

Also, screw anyone who goes and scalps these. That's not the point of this release... I don't condone purchasing the stuff on the secondary market at the best of times, but in this case? Absolutely avoid it, this is a relief effort we're talking about.

Ivory Dragon

Original Pitch here.

OK, so this is the largest part of the update when it comes to the update and it's a neat spin on the original art piece 'Saturn devouring his son' by Franciso Goya (wikipedia article here).

So, what does this link between the Ivory Dragon, this art, and Saturn's actions in mythology possibly tell us? 

EXPECT SPOILERS

Well, Goya's piece depicts Saturn/Cronos/Cronus and might have been inspired by a similar piece from Rubens (here) and it depicts the event where; after overthrowing and castrating his father Uranus/Janus, he started eating his children in order to avoid the same fate befalling him. He devoured Demeter, Hestia, Hera, Hades and Poseidon before Rhea (the mother of all these gods) hid the youngest born - Zeus away and gave Cronos a rock to eat. You'd think she might have learnt her lesson a lot earlier than the sixth child... Like maybe pick a new partner?

Still, Zeus is raised by his grandmother Gaia before eventually forcing Cronos to bring back up the stone and all of his siblings from his stomach. Cronos' fate for his acts against his father and children was to either be banished with the other titans, or imprisoned forever in the cave of Nyx.

So, what we have suggested here, is something that looks very familiar within the world of KD:M already. I'll drop the lore text right now (SPOILER COMING):

The Scribe is the power behind the Kings and their armies. To men, he is a god made flesh, appearing in repose atop his throne with his tome hoisted by a grotesque tableau of slaves. In his book his words are writ into reality, sewing the seeds of small human settlements into existence with the stroke of his quill. Once the humans grow and reproduce the Scribe will return to harvest his crop -- The Scribe Lore

In the original KD:M timeline, the settlement was to progress beyond the Watcher to facing a King and eventually the Scribe himself. So the Scribe sews out his crops of newly inked survivors, these are the survivors who start the stories of Lantern/Sun/Stars; and as they grow, eventually the intended fate of them is to be devoured by the Kings and the Scribe. However, sometimes other monsters take advantage of this ready food source, such as the Watcher directly, the Sun indirectly or the Tyrant who subverts the trope by turning them into Dragon Kings instead of making them food.

We know from a previous update that the Ivory Dragon is also capable of spawning small, incomplete copies of itself, in the form of the Starting Survivor Satans. This is turning into its own campaign (release date probably post 2030 at this rate), and the sculpt/art seems to depict the Ivory Dragon devouring one of its own spawn while birthing another one. 

Now given that all of the stories in KD:M are based on ones written elsewhere, but then given their own unique KD:M spin. I think this is a strong starting point for how the campaign is going to unfold, but it also suggests that this is the place where the abortive Lantern Festival story is going to return - with the Ivory Dragon taking the place of the Scribe in the narrative. (Just my speculating on this might be enough to get the story changed.. :P )

The model itself is the largest one we've seen from KD:M so far, but it still seems smaller than the CMON Cthulhu. Currently it's sitting on a 4x4 base, but that is too small for the model's height on a practical standpoint and I'm wondering if it'll hit a 5x5 in the end or be scaled down during production. 5x5 represents the upper reasonable limit of how big you can make a monster before having to change the concept to either a static one or a showdown where you fight the entire board. I've tested out 6x6 and losing 36 squares on the board means that the monster is practically always in range of the survivors and either tramples them down a lot or just doesn't move much (depending on AI design). It'll be interesting to see how this works out, but I hope the Ivory Dragon has a quarry version of it unlocked when you complete the campaign the first time, because it's too impressive and interesting a model to be wasted on a single fight in a single campaign. We've already got that problem with the Watcher and GSK.

That's about it, except it's worth mentioning that the model has the same wing design as the Phoenix (different sculptor, this is Thomas David, while JAG sculpted the Phoenix). So given that these pieces of art direction do not happen by accident.. We might see a link between the Phoenix and Satan coming? We'll see. 

Update #2

The second update covered:

• Pinups of Death
• Stone Face Bases
• The Generic Hero "Devil/Satan" sculpt
• The King & Death Armor
• People of the Dream Keeper
• The next Vignette

The new assets we see in the PoD stuff here are interesting, I'm very happy we're getting official action trackers, now can we get official reference cards for disorders/fighting arts/abilities please?

We're also getting either variant art or alternative versions of Traits for the pin up monsters, from this update we know that the DBK/Ball and King's Man are getting some, we can assume that the Manhunter will also be getting the same treatment. Isn't it a shame that the Lion Knight didn't get a gender swapped (female with 3 male scholars) version also?

Unlike the universal numbered cards, these are game assets I think are useful (depending on what the traits/AI cards do in the end). 

The new Stone Face Base inserts rock, I wish they had been present from the beginning and it looks like these are the first time I'll actually go back to the pledge manager and add something else. I passed on the original bases because they were not interesting enough. These ones are.  Though the vine covered one looks like a nightmare to sort out.

So this model is the one pictured in silhouette on the Swashbuckler box art. 

It's straight up a homage to Tim Curry's performance as the Darkness in Legend. Here he is in all his glory.

While the design has been given its own KDM spin, you can see how it's changed. Given that the Swashbuckler and other generic heroes come from a different timeline/alternate universe from the main Monster one, one can speculate that this might be the form Satan takes in that world as it's a more traditional appearance.

I would love to see this one as a dream based nemesis monster white box, or a vignette with nothing to do with the main game at all. But we'll see what happens to him.

The King

So, the king is either a big plant, or uses big plants in its costume! Who honestly saw that its pauldrons were not metal/bone sheaths, but a plant leaf?

Honestly that's pretty cool, it looks like a long, coiled piece of seaweed, but it also highlights how badly in need of a refresh/resculpt the original King model needs. Given that the quality, scale and designs of all the newer stuff has come so far since the early days. I feel that we're just waiting for a "surprise" update with the new King sculpt. I love Thomas David's sculpt work, but the quality and size of the original is not on par with what he can do these days. I hope he gets the chance to revisit this character, because it's become such an important part of the game's brand and it deserves to look imposing.

On the weapon/gear front, there are some interesting things to look at, outside of the designs themselves, we're seeing the following weapon types:

• Sword
• Long Sword
• Lance (Spear/Grand maybe?)
• Sceptor (Club)
• Shield
• Dagger
• Spear
• Tabar (Hammer/Axe)
• Flail (Should always be Club/Whip imo)
• Flash grenades

We can see in the revealed sculpt that the Tabar is being wielded by the survivor, so that suggests we're getting a Club/Axe hybrid weapon. There's a bit of synergy between these two, but more hybrid weapons are very interesting. Likewise the Lances, if they make it in, are super interesting, Lances/Gun Lances in MH:W are fantastic, impressive and interesting parts of the game. They seem ideal for hunting large monsters as a frontline hunter. So I hope they make it in.

The Flash/Sound Grenades are currently the least interesting part of the stuff revealed. This is not because the concept is bad. It's good, but the mechanical implementation of bombs in KD:M so far has been an almost complete failure. The Silk & Musk Bombs are two of the least important, interesting or used pieces of the game. So I hope that Bombs get a revision in their core design philosophy, otherwise these grenades will have to be super OP to even merit a second look.

Last of all to discuss, there's the Vignette; we know that it'll include these two survivors:

On the left is Aya, on the right is an individual apparently called 'Brave'. 

Aya's appearance here is around the time of (or before) Before the Wall - she still has her Nightmare Ram lantern from the core book comic. We'll take a look at how her appearance progresses.

Aya Post Nightmare Ram

Aya the Survivor

Aya Before the Wall

Aya Beyond the Wall

We don't know exactly where in Aya's timeline "Aya the Survivor" fits, but we know that the Post Nightmare Ram is the first of her appearances, and that Beyond the Wall sits after Before the Wall. However, we can see for sure that she doesn't have the Nightmare Ram lantern in any of the pieces apart from the very first one.

So we know that this vignette should be taking place before any of the other pieces of art, because of that change in lantern. So this might be one of her earliest encounters with a creature. 

As for the creature itself, the main front runner for this would be the Screaming Antelope, because Aya's 3-19 scenario story (located here in the 3-19 book still available on the KD:M website) has her recovering her necklace from a 'Greedy Screaming Antelope'.

That scenario is a really odd one, it barely matches anything previously released, with it being just a straightforward, avoid line of sight and get to the necklace objective experience. It's a curio for sure because of how it works, it's basically an entirely different, simple, game that shares only the theme in common with the main game and it's completely solvable. 

As for Aya herself, here  she has a paired Sword & Spear, along with her lantern and she can Dash. She also suffers from the Hyperactive disorder.

In respect of Brave, all we know about him is what he looks like (another Allister style clone); his name, and that he has a "hero complex". We'll find out more once this delayed vignette is released. But I hope it's delayed for quite a while, because the previous vignette is HUGELY problematic and needed a lot more testing than it got... Design &Testing resource I'd rather see deployed at solving the GC delay issues rather than giving us another vignette.

And if/when we do get one, we'll all have to cross our fingers and hope it doesn't break the AI the way that the Gigalion's AI can get broken by its new trait... Please errata Vicious APG.

PLEASE!