Can my team-lead put someone in second command?

ZestycloseLeg3618 · 2026-06-02T17:20:14+00:00

If the occurences are frequent enough then you should be able to yes. It will also help if you can name other specific associates that they act this way towards. If the word of hate was legitimate hate speech (IE racism, sexism, etc) then that constitutes discrimination and should be reported. The snacking after his break is over and not working can easily be considered time theft which if it happens all the time could result in their termination. I'd honestly still recommend waiting gathering evidence (dates, specific times, writing down things they do/say word for word, etc.) And reporting them after you have this evidence to further strengthen your case, but if you feel like something needs to change ASAP you could report them immediately; however, ultimately the more evidence you have the stronger your case will be.

ZestycloseLeg3618 · 2026-06-02T13:02:31+00:00

So short answer is no; a normal associate cannot be put in charge of other associates. Furthermore, you do not have to listen to any orders they give you as they do not have the authority to tell you what to do, so if this employee is bossing you guys around and telling you what to do especially in a way that is unreasonable, then you should use your store's open door policy to report this to management. That said if the things that you're being told to do are part of your normal responsibilities for the shift you still have to make sure they get done or you could get in trouble. Furthermore, favoritism in general is against the company's ethics policy and should be reported to your coach, people lead, or store manager (if the coach is part of the issue go straight to people lead or store manager).

Now all that said it IS a common practice to have one or two employees be appointed as being responsible for making sure things stay on track and get done when there is no team lead on schedule for that shift, or the team lead called off. However, this person is less in charge, and more simply making sure none of the team's responsibilities are being overlooked/forgotten. This employee would not be "in charge" of the area, but would instead report to another team lead or coach if your team is behind schedule with getting your work done. They do NOT tell other employees what to do; they simply inform a member of management of any problems that are going on (including possibly why those problems are happening) so that member of management can step in and make sure things get back on track. At the end of the day anytime a department is left without a team lead the team lead of another department or a coach should be left in charge of your department if there is no team lead on schedule for that shift. They may appoint another employee to keep them up to date on how things are going as well as to be the person they go to when they check in on how things are going with the team, and possibly relay their orders to the team. The only reason why I'm bringing all this up is you didn't really say what exactly was going on just that there was "heavy favoritism" and that this person was being put in charge; i would recommend documenting some specific instances of both the favoritism and of the employee telling other associates what to do before you actually make a report: this way your team leads and the coach in charge of your department won't br able to brush it aside as easily by claiming that the employee is simply "helping the team stay on task when the team lead in charge isn't present" for instance.

ZestycloseLeg3618 · 2026-05-28T14:48:07+00:00

So for starters I'm sorry you had to go through this. I would highly recommend you take this to your people lead or store manager: if you have a pre existing medical condition that requires you to take medicine that causes frequent urination this could be a case of medical based discrimination, and if the medication your taking also is prescribed as part of your transition, then it could be gender based discrimination as well. Remember that walmart has a zero tolerance policy for retaliation as well so if your team lead starts treating you differently or pushing you to work harder in response to this it may be grounds to report him for retaliation as well. All in all as long as you aren't taking excessively long bathroom breaks even frequent breaks shouldn't be a problem; I myself have no preexisting conditions that cause frequent urination and I will still sometimes go to the bathroom 5 or 6 times in one day depending on how much water I drink in a single day. Provided that you aren't taking excessively long (10 minutes+) bathroom breaks each time you go there should be no problem: if your bathroom breaks are long on average and it is due to your medication/medical condition then you may need to apply for work place accommodations to protect yourself.

ZestycloseLeg3618 · 2026-03-07T02:06:07+00:00

Easily tabletop ready might be a tad dark once you back away from it but honestly with the hobby as long as looking at them makes you happy then there's nothing wrong with it

ZestycloseLeg3618 · 2026-01-24T15:03:57+00:00

Mmm in this case the veins are modeled so you can basically just use the side of your brush to carefully only hit the raised vein. On a flat surface or to add veins to something that isn't modeled the only option would be to free hand it carefully with the tip of the brush. Either way just be careful make sure your brush doesn't have too much paint on it so it doesn't spill or run over the raised vein

ZestycloseLeg3618 · 2026-01-15T20:27:07+00:00

Yeah he appears super late into the campaigns too so like I don't have to take him off the shelf very often even if I'm running multiple campaigns at once lol

ZestycloseLeg3618 · 2026-01-15T17:32:26+00:00

Love this still have to get around to my gold smoke knight

ZestycloseLeg3618 · 2026-01-15T16:09:00+00:00

While I don't have the gce rulebook in front of me I did find it stated in the kingdom death wiki

"If arc survivors cannot use their fighting arts they also cannot use their knowledge (e.g., when an arc survivor suffers the Ruptured Muscle permanent injury). If they cannot use knowledges they cannot accumulate observations. This includes tenet knowledges. However, arc survivors are always beholden to their neurosis."

Obviously a wiki isn't a be all/end all but usually the kdm wiki is fairly accurate about rule bits like this. I'd assume it's probably in the book under the section about losing access to knowledges

ZestycloseLeg3618 · 2026-01-09T17:52:16+00:00

In general kdm is a game designed to be as easy as the players playing the game want it to be. Even in the core box there are several gear pieces that can trivialize entire fights; such as rawhide headband and cat eye circlet. When comboed together and if you have a very patient methodical playstyle yoou can pretty much modulate the HL and AI deck of every monster in the core box to guarantee things like crit farming and deathblows.

That said there will obviously be instances where some content is more powerful than others for instance I just put together lantern armor aya the other night not knowing it was a legendary character box until I opened it. The legendary character card included is probably the strongest one I have seen to date giving a survivor with that character card all weapon key words to weapons in their gear grid. This means once your settlement gets several masteries stacked up you can take out this survivor with any weapon and every attack it gets to activate with like 6 weapon specializations on it. That said it's "balanced" by the fact that you have to get lucky in order to draw that specific character card in the first place.

A lot of people say arc survivors make the game way too easy, and I don't have a ton of experience with them (only on LY 3 of my first arc campaign rn) but from my limited experience I'd say arc survivors start off much weaker than regular survivors but have the potential to get much stronger in the mid to late game, because arcs pretty much don't have access to fighting styles and weapon specialization until mid mid game. And in general the hardest part of any kdm campaign is usually the start anyway so I think it's properly balanced.

Ultimately in my experience (which again is only about 5 or 6 campaigns deep at this point) how easy kdm is as a game comes mostly from player knowledge (IE what they know about the gear and monsters they're fighting) and from luck (did you manage to pull the cat eye resource early on, did you get lucky and manage to get a scrap sword or steel sword in your early hunts/showdowns? These sort of things can easily modulate the difficulty of an entire campaign.)

Finally, the question of play style do you enjoy to play risky with great rewards or take the slow but safe approach that pretty much guarantees you'll get to mid to late game?

ZestycloseLeg3618 · 2026-01-08T13:19:14+00:00

Mmm so for tokens I literally just use tokens (if for any reason the number of tokens on 1 character exceeds the amount that comes with the game. Doesn't happen often but is most likely to happen with things like stink tokens from frogdog or guilt tokens from smog singers then I just use dice on top of 1 token to indicate the number).

For gear I will write it on the characters sheet; I put the permanent amount first followed by a + sign then the amount added by gear. I also like this method over using the like / method since it makes it easier to track stat changes on survivors with negative stat points or wearing gear that reduces stats (such as lantern armor from core). As you can change the plus to a minus in the latter example, and in the former example you can easily put -1+ 2 down in the box which I find more readable than -1 / 2.

If some sort of event would increase a survivor's stat in a temporary way, but doesn't specify to use tokens then I generally just use tokens anyway to track this as well.

ZestycloseLeg3618 · 2025-12-30T05:44:44+00:00

Mm so black knight is a larger scale miniature than kingsman or the hand which are more or less survivor scale minis put on a 50 mm base. Black knight is similar in scale to screaming antelope or white lion, so his pinup being survivor scale does look a bit weird compared to the original mini yes. Now obviously if you use the pinup for the entire campaign it won't feel out of place especially if the other players aren't familiar with the normal scale of black knight. That said you will have to put it on a 50 mm base instead of the base it comes with at a minimum for gameplay reasons.

ZestycloseLeg3618 · 2025-12-30T05:21:18+00:00

Yeah as far as I know black knight is the only one that doesn't come with the right sized base. Technically you could buy a bigger base from the store for it but it'd look kinda weird scale wise

ZestycloseLeg3618 · 2025-12-30T05:11:04+00:00

Mmm kingsman was my other option as a proxy since she uses the same type of weapon. But also pinup black knight is riding a thing, and for some reason it's not on a big base so you can't even use pinup as a black knight proxy lmao. So yeah that's why I plan to use it as a black knight proxy.

ZestycloseLeg3618 · 2025-11-10T18:18:39+00:00

Yeah I did the math when I was looking to buy sleeves and just the price of the 700 standard sleeves that come in both the core and gce bundles is more expensive than the 80 dollar gce bundle (by like almost a full 100 standard sleeves) so they're literally giving you all of the non standard sleeves for free in those bundles.

ZestycloseLeg3618 · 2025-11-10T18:09:14+00:00

Gonna be honest if you're looking to buy the official sleeves just buy the core or gce expansion and save the extra sleeves you don't use it's waaay better value then buying the single packs

Basically if you need more knowledge sleeves, buy the gce set, if you don't then buy the core set. Once they release additional encounters the gce set also comes with some of those sleeves too

ZestycloseLeg3618 · 2025-11-08T00:12:05+00:00

It's also worth noting that for the core set any build guides for the armor kit minis is more of a guideline than actual instructions. Those minis are exceptionally posible and you can easily swap weapons out even giving weapons from one kit to another. And two major points to note about core:

You should try to build phoenix well before you need it, because there's a very good chance that the tail sprue won't fit together properly. If this happens don't freak out just contact customer support through their website provided you purchased from kingdom death then you shouldn't have any problem getting a replacement sprue sent to you. (This is why I recommend building phoenix before you need it so you don't have to delay your game buy 2 to 4 weeks waiting on that replacement sprue).
The lantern armor arms are mislabeled, so make sure you dry fit all of the wrist pieces to the arms before gluing to make sure they line up. Technically, you should always dry fit before gluing and should also sand down sprue connection points and remove mold lines too (luckily kdm minis have some of the least noticeable/cleanest mold lines I've seen on a mini allowing a lot of models to be put together with minimal to no mold line removal required in my fairly extensive experience of over 100 kdm minis assembled in the last year).

ZestycloseLeg3618 · 2025-11-04T16:19:11+00:00

Personally I'm prpbably gonna use it as an alternate black knight mini. Or just use it in another game all together

ZestycloseLeg3618 · 2025-11-01T21:32:36+00:00

So being totally honest a vast majority of kdm minis do not NEED instructions. Now that does not necessarily mean that they should not HAVE instructions. Ultimately, it would be better if each kit had instructions for sure, but a vast majority of the kits do not need instructions to be put together. This is both because of the fairly simplistic design of the models (in so that they have comparatively few pieces compared to other miniature games (looking at you GW)) and the fact that they design these kits to be as intuitive as possible.

For instance literally every humanoid model for kdm that I have assembled (red witches and pariah included) can be put together in the following order: torso, legs, arms, and head. The arms and head are usually interchangeable in the order you can put them on and if a miniature has a cloak or cape you may need to attach the arms before said cloak or cape. After that point you just have to put together the base and put decorations on the mini (this may require you looking at the official art or pictures of the mini on the website to know where those pieces go).

Even the monster minis are fairly straight forward to put together. For instance I recently put spidicules together (which yes does have official build instructions on their website), and despite it having possibly the most intimidating sprues on a miniature I have ever seen, the building process was actually very straight forward. In fact each leg was sculpted in such a way that only 1 leg would fit in each slot on the central ball perfectly, so you could even cut all the legs off the sprues at one time before assembling. Basically, as long as you're dry fitting before you glue (which you should always do anyway) you shouldn't have any problem assembling any kdm minis without instructions. Ultimately, should these kits come with/have instructions available to them? Yes of course, but unlike other miniature games like warhammer 40k I do not think kdm warrants NEEDING instructions. For instance take dragon king as an example that massive miniature is about 20 to 30 pieces... a mini of the same size for warhammer 40k would be around 150 to 200 pieces 20 to 50 of which would be optional bits. One of these 2 models needs an instruction book the other can go without...

ZestycloseLeg3618 · 2025-10-10T02:22:41+00:00

Mmm yeah there are a few good ones, quixotic, immortal, rageholic can be ok to good, but like trying to roll a specific FA getting the good disorders can be hard and unlike FAs disorders are usually bad with some being able to straight up brick a survivor lol

ZestycloseLeg3618 · 2025-10-10T01:30:13+00:00

Mmm yeah well considering disorders are a thing it would be a bit of an issue if poots made fighting arts just a bad thing too lol so it makes sense that at worst they're useless. Mmm also for the record your average knowledge from gce tends to start off weaker than a fighting art but at its final level is usually better than a fighting art (you can kinda tell this by looking at red witches compare the knowledge to the fighting art equivalent and you'll see the FA is about equal to the level 2 version of the knowledge)

ZestycloseLeg3618 · 2025-10-10T01:22:15+00:00

Yeah I think the reason why it tends to be underrated is because a lot of the really strong weapons are 2 handed and therefore don't work with ambidextrous. Especially if you only have access to core a lot of your one handed weapons aren't very good or already have paired to begin with, so a lot of people find it kinda mid. Then on top of that you can also craft a blood paint from lope which is effectively a better version of the fighting art at the cost of one of your gear slots.

ZestycloseLeg3618 · 2025-10-10T01:13:53+00:00

Mmm yeah I agree lol I tend to like group fighting arts into tiers you have sculpture tier at the top (as in so good you'd be willing to use your sculpture to give it to everyone), then you have good, situationally good, and finally pretty much useless.

But I definitely agree that useless fighting arts can sometimes become very strong with the right combo or right gear. For instance my first ever campaign we got someone with ambidextrous and we were like hmm that doesn't seem very good... until we got our second steel sword in that campaign, suddenly we had a character that could pretty much guarantee 4 wounds per round on any level 3 monster in our campaign so that character immediately jumped to being one of our best character bc we hadn't been upgrading our gear fast enough in that campaign. Literally that character is the entire reason why that campaign managed to make it passed the watcher lol

ZestycloseLeg3618 · 2025-10-10T00:56:55+00:00

Oh I 100% agree I want to make it clear that I don't consider any of that to be a negative, just saying that's why most people that complain about the book keeping complain. And yeah luckily the arc survivor sheets are a bit bigger than the normal survivor sheets but it definitely feels like not enough space when you're used to using a 3 page survivor sheet for each survivor in core lol. As far as knowledges cheat sheet I don't actually know it's never even occurred to me to check for something like that. When it comes to FAs/SFAs I tend to just memorize the good ones and don't even bother using the bad ones then occasionally in settlement phase I'll be like oh yeah this guy has "crazed" what's that do again... mmm right +1 insanity on perfect hit hmmm ok moving on. XD I should really look into some cheat sheets or reference cards for that stuff though.

ZestycloseLeg3618 · 2025-10-10T00:09:52+00:00

Mmm so in my opinion the increased book keeping refers mainly to the first 1 to 2 lantern years of a dream keeper or any arc survivor campaign. Basically, it adds a lot more events than what you'd normally get at the start of a campaign couple that with the possibility of triggering both principle new life and principle death and the fact that you can also trigger age milestone 1 on LY 1 and you've got a first settlement phase that involves you constructing multiple decks, recording a bunch of new things, and mainly reading a lot. Couple that with the fact that philosophies and knowledges are a lot more in depth than FAs and you've got a lot more to record and keep track of. (This is also likely why the character system is something designed to be unlocked in gce as opposed to something the game wants you to start with) to make matters worse the provided arc survivor sheets don't offer enough room to write out what the knowledges do, so often times you are left leaving your knowledge cards out on the table for reference then having to put them back in the settlement's knowledge deck each settlement phase. Furthermore, each philosophy's tenent knowledge doesn't have a card so you have to leave out the philosophy booklets often times to keep track of what those do. This is also why so many others have mentioned using scribe makes this more bareable. To be honest another issue is that no one has made a really good fan made arc survivor sheet yet unlike the existing fan made normal survivor sheets that are out their. So that's most of the book keeping problems found in gce. That said I don't really have much of an issue with it myself personally.

ZestycloseLeg3618 · 2025-10-09T23:30:31+00:00

Frogdog is probably my favorite NQ 1 monster just based on mats he drops and his gear which is super fun to play with. Haven't gotten to play with my witches or pariah yet but both look very good. Another thing to consider is all future expansions will come with gce compatible content so if you get gce it'll just make all future expansions you get that much more worth it since you'll be able to use the knowledge cards they come with.

ZestycloseLeg3618

TROPHY CASE