Disclaimer: I will not be releasing the files for this print n play due to legal reasons. Sorry!

Ever sense I started painting my Zombicide miniatures for my last post, I have gotten a little bit interested in games with awesome miniatures. As some of you may be able to guess, miniatures in tabletop games are prized over almost everything else. A great game could be put down simply because the designers chose to use miniatures and maybe they weren’t the best sculpts in the world. The inclusion of miniatures in a tabletop game also increase the price of the game significantly, but usually with good reason being that the miniatures add the atmosphere and add to the theme of the game. Such is the case with the game I have become completely obsessed with recently: Kingdom Death: Monster.

Kingdom Death: Monster is a tabletop game with miniatures and RPG-like mechanics; at least that is how it’s creator Adam Poots describes it. In layman’s terms, Kingdom Death: Monster is a cooperative board game that has it’s players controlling four survivors that wake up find themselves in a dark world with no memory of who they are, where they are, or what their purpose is. Before they even have a chance to look around they are attacked by a large White Lion that begins tearing them apart. One of the survivors, desperate to not go down without a fight, grabs a loose, sharp piece stone from the ground to arm himself. A few more survivors join him and so the game begins. Here is a link to a narrated version of the official story introduction.

Kingdom Death: Monster has three different phases that players will go through: the Settlement Phase, the Hunt Phase, and finally the Showdown Phase. The Settlement phase is after players complete the prologue (fighting the White Lion and winning) they create a settlement that will serve has their base of operations. They can build new buildings that will allow them to craft new gear and weapons. The Hunt phase involves hunting down whatever monster is on the menu and trying to survive random events that happen along the way that are resolved through rolling 2d10 (two ten-sided dice for all you muggles out there) and referring to a table of events. At the end of the Hunt, the survivors will have a Showdown with the monster they are currently hunting played out like a miniatures tactical game. Overall the game is played over 25 game sessions or 25 lantern years.

Sounds like a great time right? Now here is the kicker: this game retails for $450. Surprised? It gets worse: the game is currently out of print and sealed retail editions go for upwards of $1000 on eBay. Yeah that what I thought when I found out; an amazing concept behind a tabletop game and yet can not play it due to it’s high price tag. There is one alternative however. There is a Tabletop Simulator mod that allow players to play KD:M on their PC over the internet. While this is a great alternative for players to get a taste of the game, this method does not work for me. My gaming group (my sister, and my grandma) do not have PCs or does not know how to use a PC. So began my crazy ass thought that is driving this project: How hard can it be to make my own copy? A little bit difficult I found out.

Now KD:M has upwards of 1000+ cards to keep track gear, events and the monster AI cards. Fortunately, I was luckily enough to find full scans of every card that some one had posted to help people create the Tabletop Simulator mods. These scans where layed out by each scan being an individual card. Now I am no print designer but I thought “How hard can it be to layout 1000+ cards to print?” It has not difficult or hard, from the technical perspective. I started by creating a template with grids in Photoshop and opening and dragging each and every card on that template, usually nine cards per page. This took me about a week to due with an actual work time of about 15 hours. As of right now I have all the cards ready to print and cut, but what’s shown in this post is what I have printed and cut so far, it’s a well under half of all the cards. Yikes. I will keep you guys updated when new miniatures come in and cards are printed and cut. Once it is complete, I will post a review of this glorious game.