This month's release video left me completely floored.
The sweep it carries, the epic quality of the characters, the singularity of the troops, the scenery so dense with symbolism it almost overwhelms you…
All of it caught me off guard when I watched it!
And yet, if there was one faction I did NOT want to tackle, it was this one…
But before I tell you why, I need to talk to you a little about the Kurgans, about the Kurganov family, and of course about the Kurganova sisters…
So TURN THE SOUND UP, enjoy the video, then hurry back to find out all about it…
Who are the Kurgans? The story so far…
If you've followed Raging Heroes for a long time, you probably remember Ivanka Kurganova, among our very first miniatures, from well before our first Kickstarter The Toughest Girls of the Galaxy in 2013. Ivanka was an enormous success, back when we were still a tiny company taking its first steps in the world of miniatures. After a fair share of setbacks just to keep the company afloat, you could say quite literally that Ivanka saved Raging Heroes.
So who are the Kurgan Shock Troops, also known as the KST?
From the story of The Toughest Girls of the Galaxy, you may recall that it tells of a time when Earth went through great waves of intergalactic colonization, immense fleets leaving the planet in the hope of building new civilizations elsewhere in space. Two of those colonies sit at the heart of the story: the ones that would eventually become the KST and the Iron Empire.
The human colonists who founded the first settlements of what would become Kurgan civilization were lucky enough to find relatively fertile planets, worlds on which their society, in a sense, regressed into an agricultural culture steeped in powerful shamanic influences.
So much so that, after several generations, the Kurgans began to develop genetic mutations. And for some of them, those mutations brought the ability to transform into animals, a little in the way of werewolves.
For a long time, their civilization knew how to absorb and live with this trait. But a turning point in their history tipped them into beast-like fratricidal wars so bloody, so destructive, that they nearly wiped the Kurgan people out entirely.
It was then that one man, Alexandr Kurganov, managed to unite the Kurgan clans, bring back peace, and put an end to the murderous frenzy that was bleeding his people dry. Faced with the violence of certain tribes, he chose to ban shamanism for good, outlawing the gene and the transformations it made possible.
But of course, nothing ever goes to plan. Deep down, Alexandr knew full well that a tradition this deeply rooted in his people could never be erased by a law, however drastic.
Around the same time, the Kurgans discovered a planet holding a mineral with absolutely unique properties: Ultrium. It propelled their technological development, carrying them from an age of peasantry to one of highly advanced technology in a few decades.
Because of all this, the Kurgan people have always been torn between a shamanic past, close to the earth and to nature, and a hunger for technological progress that was extreme, and probably far too fast. Add to that the iron grip of the Kurganov family, and the deeply mafia-like web of clans forever scheming to tip the balance of power, and you get a situation that's particularly explosive.
In the release we're showing you today, I made a deliberate choice NOT to push the Kurgans' shamanic side too far forward, because…
The traces are still there…
If you're not yet familiar with this faction, I wanted to give you an easy way in, by building characters you could happily drop into other universes if you wanted to. But the traces are still there.
There's the Yaga Soul Weaver, those shamanic witches, most of whom have now been brought into the service of the State, reinforced and augmented with cybernetic prosthetics that amplify their psychic powers.
There are the giant wolf heads guarding the gates of the Kurgan fortress. And there are the bear-mounted troops.
All signs of how close the Kurgans remain to nature, shamanism and the animals around and inside of them.
Today, what I'd really love is for you to let yourself be carried away by the sheer force of these characters and the singular charm of the video.
For me, that video alone says everything about the tragedy and the epic grandeur of the Kurgan people: torn between their past and their future, crushed under a dictatorial power that was built to save a people racing toward self-destruction, battered by the extreme worlds they've settled on, and yet still carried by a tremendous breath of ambition and hope.
I think you can feel all of that in the wonderfully varied cast of characters we're bringing you this month.
Familiar faces, reimagined.
Of course, there was no way we weren't going to give some of this collection's classic characters a new incarnation.
Two of the three Kurganova sisters are here. There's Malinka, the little sister, the scandalous one, all the energy of an unhinged pop star, and adored by her people for it. There's Olga, the eldest sister: admiral of the armies, a relentless strategist and military genius.
And there's Alexandr, the father of the reunified Kurgan people.
And for those of you who already know the lore, you'll also find a new incarnation of Karmina Noxx, the sniper so feared by the enemies of the KST.
What can I say about these miniatures, except that they're a tremendous leap forward in quality, in expressiveness, in the sheer personality of every single character. It's a real joy for us to be able to take them to this level today. And I hope you'll love them as much as we do.
So why did I not want to make this faction?
After all that enthusiasm, you might be wondering why I’ve been telling you I absolutely did not want to make this faction.
When we first started mapping out our very first Kickstarter back in 2013, building a faction inspired by a World War II-era army was about the least inspiring idea in the world to me.
I just didn't feel any real affinity with the uniforms or the characters of that period. And the KST were, without a doubt, the group that spoke to me the least.
Yet the success of Ivanka showed us that the community was longing for that. So I dug into a huge amount of research: on Russia, on Slavic culture, on Soviet culture, etc.
And I did manage to give them a color, a story, a spirit of their own to a faction that, at the start, was a long way from my own personal taste but quickly became a dearly beloved one.
However, I always felt as if they were missing a special spark that would bring them closer to the vision I had for them.
And today, when the time came to return to the KST, I knew the team I have now was ready to take this faction so much further.
Yet once again, to my own surprise, this month's work turned out to be especially hard. I won't go into the details here (this post is long enough as it is), but characters that looked fairly simple to shape at first turned out to be far more challenging than we'd ever expected!
A word about the team
Once again, the whole team poured themselves into these models far beyond anything reasonable. The work that went into the scenery, the heroes, the troops, the vehicles, is nothing short of phenomenal. And every month, I struggle to understand how we manage to produce this many miniatures without ever once letting go of quality.
And once the sculpts are finished, and I see the final miniatures staged in the video, I'm completely dazzled by what this team pulls off.
And dazzled, too, by all the work behind the scenes that you don't get to see: customer service, logistics, the whole technical effort it takes to get each release out the door, the sheer number of files to process, to check, to upload, to support. It's absolutely colossal, every single month.
We often get messages, always kindly worded, asking whether we might do certain things differently: add a few more elements to the releases, offer variants, or build a more efficient file-management system.
I want to be clear about something: please know that we are listening, and that we are working on a lot of these things.
But every addition that looks simple from the outside has a real, considerable impact on the entire production chain. Launching the Sovereign tier last year, for instance, was both a great success and a new challenge on a scale we hadn't anticipated at all. The amount of extra work that goes into producing the Sovereign section is well beyond anything we'd imagined. And here again, if we pull it off month after month, it's thanks to the efforts of this team.
To them, I take my hat off.
What a result!
And once again, watching this video really did send a shiver down my spine.
The Heroes are extraordinary and the Troops are every bit as incredible:
- the Cossacks on Jetbikes, which I find completely unlike anything else with their acrobatic poses inspired by traditional Cossacks horseriders,
- the Red Tundra Commando in their hussar jackets, with a sergeant that looks like a full blown heroine,
- the Enforcers looking like flying dieselpunk Robocops, cool as f… while raining fire from the sky…
And among the Heroes, I wanted us to have things that truly break out of the ordinary.
Like Ivanov, the Working Hero of the People, a simple worker who has turned his working equipment into a weapon of liberation, comes to embody the hopes of an entire people in a single figure.
The Snow Lion was inspired by Dolph Lundgren in Rocky. I wanted an infiltrator you could picture prowling the forest alone, completely impervious to the cold, fighting like an animal. And I think the miniature really lands… which matters, because it's always so hard to make a simple, stripped-down character feel truly powerful. And I believe we pulled it off.
Then there are the Vehicles, which are simply incredible. What is there to say? I'll just let you admire them. I don't think we've ever produced vehicles this breathtaking.
And finally, the Scenery
This scenery draws heavily on the statuary of communist propaganda, but also on a great deal from Art Deco, and in particular, the façades of certain great American buildings.
And of course, on top of that, I added a heavy dose of brutalism, a style that never stops inspiring me. All of it comes together into a Fortress that's absolutely striking.
Watching the final shots in the video, I couldn't take my eyes off the great Main Gate of the Fortress, with its two enormous wolf-head statues, and those colossal bronze figures of Kurgan officers.
→ This is what I'm always reaching for with the Scenery in every release: to carry you past the world of miniatures, and tip you fully into a cinematic universe, one with architecture rich in references. Looking at these shots, I believe we got there.
A homecoming, and a dedication
So here we are. Today, I'm telling you about the very army that inspired me the least back in 2013, when I first started thinking about it. And today, I'm deeply moved by the distance we've travelled, and by the quality of the miniatures that came out of it.
Claudia, our graphic designer who edits the videos every month, is a huge fan of the Kurgans. They're her favorite faction at Raging Heroes. So of course, this release is dedicated to her, especially knowing all she had to go through this month.
And I hope you'll be as moved as she is by these Slavic-inspired people, moved enough that you'll want us to come back and pay them another visit in a future release…
→ Over to YOU!
As always, I'm counting on you, and on your feedback. Tell us which miniatures are your favorites, which ones inspire you, which ones you're going to print first.
Tell us how you're planning to bring them into your games.
It's brutally hot in Europe right now, and that’s coming to parts of the US in coming days, and perhaps wherever you are as well. May the Kurgans bring you a little fresh air with their Red Blizzard, and that they find a place all their own in your next adventures…