October 2024 – Aella13 Miniatures Painting

This model is the first I’ve painted from the Midknight Heroes range (Sakura). I’m using her to represent my homebrew Hero for Super Dungeon, the Changeling Infiltrator. I was inspired by the black and white look of the Changelings from D&D so I tried to implement a monochrome colour palette (excluding her creepy eyes). It was hard to get the camera to pick up the different grey tones, so unfortunately they look very similar in the picture.

I picked this model because of her cute mask and the fact that she is unarmed, but I did need to use putty to fill the hole in her back where she would normally have two sword scabbards.

The character concept is a Hero that blends in with the monsters to cause trouble behind enemy lines. She’s weaker than the average Hero, in fact she can’t even do basic attacks; and if she gets sprung there’s a high chance she could die, but the mischief she can get up to makes her worth it. No basic attacks means you will need to plan her turn out carefully to get the most use. She can use the monsters to kill each other, otherwise she will have to rely on a treasure card offensive action, or Mastery to get some firepower. She can avoid enemy attacks to deep-strike behind enemy lines, she won’t get bogged down in doorways or jumped by surprise spawnings, she can simply ignore the enemies and they will ignore her. She has an offensive action that can target spawning points and this action can use any offensive stat. This makes her useful for collecting spare equipment, and even respeccing by switching gear midway through the game. She can compel Heroes and enemies, and she has a weaker version of Sweetheart Candy’s Love Arrow ability (Candy’s range is 8 vs the Changeling’s 2 and metamorphosis requirement).

She’s been play-tested a lot, in fact this is her third iteration, but I think she’s nicely balanced at this point. We’ve had some fun moments, such as getting a Boo Booty to destroy a spawning point and using Mastery to borrow the Virtuous Blade’s Rallying Blade action to prompt her allies to fight in her stead. If she cannot get into position for Mastery her equipment can feel like a waste and when she breaks her metamorphosis she draws a lot of enemy fire. I think she gets the most benefit in a larger game where she can fill a “flex-slot” and have more options for Mastery.

I also made some homebrew Challenge cards for The Destroyer dungeon boss. The older Legends bosses didn’t seem as strong as the more recent releases due to the lack of a Challenge deck, so, I’ve made my own. The themes for The Destroyer are: no heals, respawns or armor increases; only damage and more damage. I used another hard-hitting boss as a starting template and modified the cards to reflect The Destroyer’s Explore-mode abilities. We’ve done a few playtests so far and while the difficulty is higher than without them, I think it is still in line with modern bosses such as Elrik the Lich King and Professor Cackle-Clink.