A happy new year to you.., again!

Bogstop has been steadily pushing along and I am already (mostly) set up to put out stuff for a few more Lantern Years. I had expected for the sale to happen a little earlier in the week, so I wanted to hold off until after the update happened. Thus, here we are…, of course that is not what I wanted to talk about today.

We are 1 month into the new Lantern Year for KD:M and with that we just got our first sale of the year!

Going by recent comments on Kickstarter we already had a good idea that we would be getting another larger update concerning the timetable of the upcoming releases in February so there wasn’t much to expect from this month in regards to new information honestly. Still, we got a nice little preview of the Pariah expansion – the upcoming Node 1 Nemesis of the Inverted Mountain – in this month’s Kickstarter Update.

From what we know so far about the Pariah, this Nemesis monster will make its way into our settlements, promising to be a helpful power for us to lean on, presenting us with powerful weapons made of blood (definitely not whole people) that surely will not have any drawbacks for us.., absolutely none.
It will gladly teach us the ways of the darkness and help us understand the world, or at least pretend that this is what is doing.. as it waits for more unwitting food to arrive as the White Speaker cult eventually learns of our existence.
Before longs its schemes eventually will be revealed and whatever ruinous bond has been formed between it and the settlement will be the shackles that bind those survivors in their fates as they struggle against it – be it against the Pariah or the Red Witches – enforcers of a different power.
And just maybe, if we are able to banish it from our settlement with violence, it will flee up the side of the Inverted Mountain, where it will wait for us and present us with a final showdown unlike any other.

A lot of the cards we can see in the larger images of the update had already been shown during Gencon, but we get a few treats hidden amongst the bulk of the lined up contents – like a partial preview of a new settlement event. Of course, a lot of the shown text is kept too blurry to be easily read at this point in time.
As gameplay stuff is kept somewhat hidden from us still, my focus quickly redirects towards the minis. And ever since the upside-down minis were first shown off I had been wondering about this aspect of the fight in particular and it seems to be finally coming together, and I can’t wait to see how that part of the level 3 Pariah specifically is going to play out.
Plus the idea of this monster having a more (mis)guiding (/manipulating) quality to it will give it a lot of depth and surely many opportunities to mess with our settlements. Both in theme and gameplay it will VERY different to the Butcher – that much is plainly obvious.
This whole idea of it being a trickster and master manipulator in particular is also the reason why I initially thought that the Pariah (serious mode) could be the Inverted Mountain’s Core monster, whilst the ominous Mountain Main might serve as a Finale monster. It would fulfill a lot of the qualities a Core monster typically has, being able to guide a settlement’s growth and protecting it to a degree. But, alas, it doesn’t seem to be that way, with the upside down Pariah locked into being a NN1 Lvl3.
Again – I wasn’t too hyped about the Pariah at first, but the more we see about it, the more interesting it looks to me and the more I am looking forward to its release.
It’ll be interesting to see if my perception of the Nightmare Ram and Gryphon are also going to shift like this once they draw closer to being released.

The unwelcome quick reality-check:
Sadly, it should also be noted that there has been no talk about anything being ready to ship as of yet or leaving production at least soon. Last year in January we had direct confirmation that the Black Knight would be going to start shipping in February. So it is likely going to still take a while for all items of the “remastered wave 1” to make their way into the hands to backers, not to mention the other folks wanting to buy any of them via the shop.
And if the team are trying to actually ship all the items set to be in this wave together – I mean, yeah, duh, that has been the proposed plan – then this feels to me like something that is happening in summer at the earliest.
In any case, CNY should be in full swing right now, so production should be at a stand-still in China, for what its worth.

So, about that sale.
Looking at the shop for new releases we have the Lunar Twilight Knight – male front and center with both a mini and an art print going up for sale.
Quickest item to sell out this month was a painter scale Sen (the one with the giant fan weapon).
For gameplay we got Jackel, who comes with an Age 2 seed pattern for a spine-whip that has 2/7+/6, Barbed 4, Reach 2, Unwieldy (suffer 1 damage for any 1 rolled during an attack roll) and the ability to take LCK, SPD or ACC tokens from monsters and transfer them to the wielder on a perfect hit. She also seems to be wearing an alternate version of the Count set from the Black Knight expansion.

For people playing on the Sim we had the Frogdog release digitally as well. A chunky expansion well worth getting.(I did also notice I had been seeting up the dog slightly wrong by the looks of it. Go me. There’s always mistakes to make when playing KD:M.)

And that is all for this month by the looks of it. For now I am left with the question if I should pick up some of those beautiful Golden Bat dice and maybe Lenore and/or Xell, or pick up a Jackel and something else more EU-shipping friendly. Decisions, decisions..

Meanwhile the People of Stars campaign I started just about 2 weeks ago had a great second session, defeating not only the Tyrant in their first sparring match, but also heading on over to the Abyssal Woods, ready to fight a few Flower Knights. I really enjoy that monster and its been a treat to hunt it again after quite a lot of Frogdogs.
2 FKs and an antelope later the Tyrant is thinking about going for a round 2 soon.
Now they just need to start ascending..

As always thank you so much for your time, I hope the wood snake will treat you well,
Amathul