 Hey everyone, it's Kyle Atmantic and I'm here to bring you another video in the Twilight Kin Design Diaries. Today we're going to take a look at the Corsairs and the Void Touch Mutants. I think it's really important in a fantasy setting that your core infantry represents the faction well in the sense that you are telling the story with them, you know, it just did a glance. So when looking at the Twilight Kin we knew that they were a seafaring people and a void-faring people. So they both have a presence on the seas of Pamathor, things like Armada, and then they would also be representative of the ships that they sail through the Void and how they navigate that really twisted place. And that led us naturally to, you know, coming up with Corsairs, a core infantry that would be represented by the Twilight Kin that make up the boats and the parties of raids and that sort of thing that were on those ships. And they would be the most numerous of the representation of the faction. And so we took it from there to come up with a Corsair kit and one that would be, you know, one hard plastic frame that could represent multiple different unit types. So it became very important to understand what those unit types would be and then how we would essentially make the kit work for all three. The first round of concepts that we got back were really fantastic. I felt like they represented what a dark elf would be in everyone's mind. So Noemi is our concept artist and she came back with these, you know, great examples that we essentially look through and have to pick. You can see on the art that they have lettering on them to help us understand, you know, which ones are we're going to go with and what direction we're going to continue to push further. And one of the early discussions that we had was that we felt like they looked very dark elf, but maybe not necessarily as, you know, seafaring or bucking your pirate in that element of the design. So when looking through them, we tried to find ones that were and then we essentially go back and go through a second round of concepts that take you to the next step. So you choose the ones that you like and then you take them into the next more developed stage. And at that point, you know, we had really good options for what we were looking for. We started to push the narrative of seafaring a little bit more, and we were getting to a really good place where we knew now we could maybe go on the sculpting. One of the challenges that you don't really think about is, you know, once we got into sculpting, I remember seeing the initial passes of what we had done and it looking like the elves themselves didn't look elven enough. And in talking to our sculptor, you know, we sort of found that we had a human base sculpt that was used that then, you know, was being addressed with elves as well. And, you know, in a fantasy setting, anyone that's gone through art classes or otherwise, they know that elves are a little bit more stretched. They might have a shorter torso, but longer legs. And we couldn't, you know, at first put our finger on what was not feeling elven about them. But when we discovered that that was the case, we had to, you know, let Luigi know that we needed really a new elven form. And it set a little bit of a delay. It's one of those things that you don't expect, but it becomes really important when you're looking at this and understanding that if you get the elven shape right and the proportions right, then you can really go forward with a lot more from there. When you look at the concept art, we had initially a male and female representation that was going to be a part of the corsair unit. And something that we ran across that we really didn't expect is that when you do that with sculpting and hard plastic, there's suddenly the issue of having interchangeable parts. You know, if you have a male, male body that needs exclusively male arms or otherwise it, you know, they become too thin or that sort of thing, it doesn't exactly work. And with a hard plastic kit and having interchangeable heads and weapon parts, and especially if we want to make a hard plastic that is going to represent three different units, it really limits your options on what you can do with them. And so looking at them, we decided to go with the female route exclusively. I think that we have a lot of pride in what we do at Mantic with representing female models and all of our factions, and it was important to represent them here because if they weren't here, they weren't really going to be in the faction. You already had the impalers, which were these large, masculine, intimidating sort of presence. And so with the corsairs, it made a lot more sense to have this more elven form that was female. And the direction that we decided to go with it ended up, you know, permeating through the rest of the faction. It helped us develop the story. You know, we've talked about the corruption and that sort of thing, because it was really cool to have this dichotomy of a large grotesque, you know, over-the-top male and then this more lith and graceful female form. So you had that beauty in the beast dynamic that I thought was a really nice visual representation and it gave you the elves that we were looking for. Part of the story that we were telling is that the twilight kin can take the energies from the void and go a little too far with it. And that led to a unit called the void-touched mutants. And this is a unit of elves that essentially have been exposed and have embraced the blessings of the void just a little too much and weren't able to control its vast energies in the ways that something like an impaler would where it helped them. This is where they've taken it too far. And the idea behind them is that they would essentially be possessed by the Nightstalkers. The Nightstalkers flip the script and sort of take over what they are. And so there's lots of elements in their design that would have this heavy corruption and heavy Nightstalker influence. We took bits and pieces from Reapers and Butchers and everything that we had sort of done before and tried to mash that together with what we had come up with with the Corsairs and these basic elven forms. And so you get these really mutated looking basic elves. And from a gameplay's perspective, we knew that we couldn't do a hard plastic cavalry kit. And we wanted to have a unit that represented what a cavalry could be. And we thought, well, the mutants are perfect for this. They're going to be on a heavy infantry base. And when you put that down on the table, it's the exact same size as cavalry. So when they when they work on the tabletop, you're going to see them that they function extremely similar to what a cavalry unit does. And they are very good at it. They're an extremely glass hammer kind of unit. Lots of speed and variety to it. And they hit hard and they can get to their destinations. You really got to watch out for these guys. So we thought that they would be these crazed sort of frothing in the mouth possessed twilight kin elves. And, you know, from a gameplay perspective, it just made perfect sense to go that route. And it all matched up and worked out extremely well. With the mutants, we also wanted a unit type that would represent a magical ranged unit. So we figured that these guys would be completely engorged with those energies, wouldn't be neat if they could find a way to channel it and kind of funnel it into these magical ranged attacks. So it gave us another option for that hard plastic kit to have some, you know, arm swaps that could just have them hurling fireballs or lightning bolts just right out of their arms. So it was just a cool idea to have a different unit type that wouldn't just be, you know, bows or crossbows, but actually magic attacks. Hopefully you guys are as excited as I am about the twilight kin. We've got one more design diary to come up as we lead into launch. And I'm sure we're going to get ready to show you all kinds of previews for the rules and how they play on the table top, and then some ideas of synergies and strategies for how to take advantage of this new faction in Kings of War. I think that you can kind of see the direction that we're going with it. You essentially have the corsairs and the void touched. And then obviously there are night stalkers that are a part of the list as well. So there's three distinct directions of what you can do to build an army and different synergies. And they work together just absolutely beautifully. So hopefully you're as excited as I am. Let's get going into this twilight kin launch as we head into October. Thanks guys.