So first of all, to everyone who has joined this year and those of you who have continued to support throughout the year. Thank you so much for your support; it's greatly appreciated - especially in such a lean time for content. We've pretty much had bad news one after another where the Kingdom Death kickstarter is concerned, I went back through it all and the last time I got new game content from that kickstarter (as opposed to stuff I had to pay extra for) was back when I was still living i...
2021-12-28 11:13:09 +0000 UTC
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First up, thank you to community members Charles and timberwolfl for supplying the details and scans of these cards so I could proxy them and get testing as soon as possible. Also, as always in these cases, this is something of an early hot take, my opinion could change. Though I think in this case it's always going to trend positive (price excluding) because of how it expands on options in the game.
We're going to look at this new stuff from two perspectives, normal campai...
2021-12-24 08:17:07 +0000 UTC
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Bards are great, if given a choice as to what class I would play in any D&D based game I would choose between a Shifter, an Antipaladin or a Bard every single time. As someone hailing from Wales; bardship is just something that is in the blood, be it singers like Tom Jones, Shirley Bassey or bands like the Stereophonics and Manic Street Preachers. Wales is just a country that produces great musicians and great actors.
Bards have been a part of Welsh history stretching all the ...
2021-12-17 08:50:34 +0000 UTC
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Not what you want to see in your bathtub.
Few expansions in the stable of KDM sit on a razor's edge between being magnificent and 'Must try harder'; most of the time they will land squarely on one side or the other of this line. However Spidicules (pronounced to rhyme with ridiculous according to Adam) is absolutely the poster child for straddling that painful line. It's the expansion ...
2021-12-10 08:20:34 +0000 UTC
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So on the discord pictures of the game contents of the second wave of the Halloween survivors was shared. For those of you who do not use discord, here they are.
I'll be doing a full review of these when my own copies arrive, but provisionally it looks like most of these are bad 'shields'. With only the Big Bite Costume (which was the one visible on the shop) offering anything very good.
I'll test them properly when I get them, but right now the weak passive, 50/50 nature of the ...
2021-12-05 10:26:57 +0000 UTC
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Several years ago, when Adam was asked what the plan was to solve the way that the Vespertine Bow dominated the games where it was crafted, he responded with the off-hand comment that he'd make it strength 1. Which of course, at the time had people feeling incredulous because such an action was an incredible overreaction due to how it would move the bow from being overpowered to almost worse than the White Lion's Catgut Bow.
Fast forward to 2021, with the mixed bag that is the “Legend...
2021-12-03 10:44:10 +0000 UTC
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Time for a fun light one because next week I'll have to comb through the Black Friday stuff and figure out what is worth commenting on.
so, after reading around on the internet and seeing a BGG post about expansion priority; I thought it would be interesting to return to an overview of all the monsters in the game and work out exactly where I am ranking them now, after both the passage of time and the 1.6 update (which I've spent the past few weeks exhaustively running campaigns of (wit...
2021-11-26 09:24:18 +0000 UTC
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Note: The power went out yesterday while I was writing the back end of this article and I lost a lot of work due to a recovery failure. I've re-written it, but something like this always seems to lose a bit of the magic on the second attempt.
I gave you guys on the discord the opportunity to vote for what you wanted the next topic to be and you almost overwhelmingly asked for a deep dive into the Frail mechanic. So that's what you're all getting, democracy in action!
When...
2021-11-19 10:32:04 +0000 UTC
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The Tomahawk is a single-handed, straight shaft hatchet which originated from the indigenous people of North America. The root of the English word comes from the Powhatan word tamahaac, but it also shares linguistic cognates with tomhikon and təmahikan. It was the Algonquians who are said to have first created the tomahawk, constructing it from sharpened stones affixed to ...
2021-11-12 08:56:02 +0000 UTC
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Society is now one polished horde, formed of two mighty tribes, the Bores and Bored. – Lord Byron
I still remain with an overall negative opinion in respect to the Legendary Card Pack, but having such an opinion doesn't mean that all aspects of the pack are worthless. As we saw last time, the Scrap Lantern, despite its simple design, is a powerful and interesting tool for any settlement. This time we're going to explore its ol...
2021-11-05 08:09:58 +0000 UTC
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One of the items I felt had the most potential impact from the new ones released was the Scrap Lantern. This item provides a right facing blue affinity, +1 survival when departing and +1 accuracy if you have a red and blue affinity in your gear grid.
Given that Rawhide as a default provides those two desired affinities, it seems that a great place to start the exploration of the new meta builds is around the period where you have unlocked the Weapon Crafter, gained Heat and are st...
2021-10-29 15:00:00 +0000 UTC
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For Part 1 go here.
So we're going to continue this hot take, again I'll stop around three thousand words in order to keep things at a manageable length, so we'll have to see if we can get everything completed within two or three parts, but there is a lot to look at with a whole bunch of locations and changes to wade through, so we'll start with the second tier locations; Leather Worker, Weapon Crafter and Ba...
2021-10-22 10:00:05 +0000 UTC
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So the 1.6 Update is starting to arrive and as is tradition for these things I will be taking my first 'hot take' look at everything. This initial take is with only minimal testing; use of the gear in proxy showdowns + based on my understanding of the game and the previously optimal pathways through the game.
The 1.6 Update's core ethos is to provide mostly updates for the core game experience; but there are a few additional things included such as promotional cards; expansion bug fixes...
2021-10-15 08:00:01 +0000 UTC
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The Sunstalker's quarry fight is easily one of the five best showdowns in the entire game at the moment; sitting alongside the Dragon King, Butcher, Tyrant and Dung Beetle Knight as an example of what peak showdown design can be. It's also very unique among the stable of showdowns because the Sunstalker puts immense time pressure onto the survivors; forcing them to fight in a timely fashion and ensur...
2021-10-08 09:51:01 +0000 UTC
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Yesterday the first set of images of the "Legendary" (excuse me while I go have a good laugh) Card Pack were put up on discord and BGG. I'm not going to be breaking them down today, the images provided are a bit too blurry in spots to be able to see the specifics - but this is allowing me to make a few judgements already. Images are not my own, links to the source are below. I'll be replacing this all with better images when I either get them or can take my own - and then I will properly revi...
2021-10-08 07:35:09 +0000 UTC
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The Cooperative AI Boss Battler (CABB) Game genre has in recent times seen an absolute explosion of games launched through kickstarter, upcoming and released. VagrantSong is the latest in this stable, choosing to follow the cartoon styling that Townsfolk Tussle went with rather than the more standard fantastical styling of Wild Assent or Oathsworn. I guess at this point this makes the cartoon boss ba...
2021-10-06 12:30:52 +0000 UTC
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So as I hoped, I managed to hit three reviews for September, I'm still committing to doing two a month at the moment, but if I can squeeze out a third that would be great because ultimately I'd like to do between 2 and 4 per month.
The reviews that went up in September were:
Yokohama Duel:
A two player ve...
2021-10-02 07:00:03 +0000 UTC
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Last week I received a copy of VagrantSong from Wyrd Games and I wanted to give you guys a first impressions review before I write a full one for the general public next week. This is because the game is still in pre-order stage and I think you should all seriously consider getting a copy ordered either directly from Wyrd Games themselves or through your local stockist. I do not usually condone pre-o...
2021-10-01 06:08:56 +0000 UTC
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There should be no secret that resins are an inevitable part of the experience surrounding boutique games like the ones we engage with; Kingdom Death has them, Aeon Trespass has them and so does Middara.
I think it's no secret that the Middara miniatures in the game are not great; they have soft details, and some of the characters are even lacking proper faces so you end up having to free hand that on.
2021-09-24 09:00:00 +0000 UTC
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I do not often go into the hunt events in any detail when looking at these monsters while setting up for a deep dive plus visual guide, but in the cases of the Sunstalker and the Dragon King, they are just too interesting and important to pass up on. So, today, we are going to deep dive into the hunt events and look at what it brings to the game and the larger world.
Before we start the three 'rules' of hunting the Sunstalker are:
- Consider all soluble gear as disposable if ...
2021-09-17 06:55:25 +0000 UTC
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We've previously explored just how incredible and game expanding the cycloid scale armor can be, but as I wrote in the previous article the Sunstalker is a triple S platinum expansion extrodinaire because not only is the armor amazing; but there is not a single bad piece of gear in the entire crafting list. That's what we're going to explore here today, all of the various weapons and items you can craft – and I am so thrilled that I can say there's not a single duff piece among them. Every ...
2021-09-10 08:29:22 +0000 UTC
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The Sunstalker is one of the strongest, most interesting and exciting creatures in the entire range of Kingdom Death's monsters, capable of holding the focus of anything up to ten lantern years worth of hunting with its wide range of different gear cards. It's also unique in that the Sunstalker is the sole monster in the game without a single bad gear card, some of them are situational, but none of t...
2021-09-03 07:45:33 +0000 UTC
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This month I got two and a half games written up into review; which is a nice little push towards getting at that one game a week schedule I'm trying to reach. The games which did get published onto BoardGameGeek are:
The Binding of Isaac: Four Souls (as voted for by the discord community)
2021-08-31 06:47:53 +0000 UTC
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We're going to start off our deep dive into the Sunstalker with an extensive look at its physiology, the real world inspirations behind that and its lifecycle. The Sunstalker is one of three monsters we know a huge amount about and one of two that we know just about all of its lifecycles in extensive detail alongside the Gorm. In fact, we know probably more about the Sunstalker than we do the Gorm, a...
2021-08-27 07:10:46 +0000 UTC
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So, they finally arrived in the post and as it has been a long time since I've had a game content Kingdom Death Product in my hands I wanted to give these an immediate spin.
Survivor tokens are something which was thought up by the community initially and it is only fair to start there. We have seen several different version of these released over the years. Most famous of them are Klutz's surv...
2021-08-20 13:04:43 +0000 UTC
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Fore note: I wanted to write more about this and tidy this piece up, but I got my second Covid-19 vaccination yesterday and it came out swinging like Mohammad Ali. So if there are unfinished thoughts or bits that could have been expanded on further, please forgive me. This is actually a super interesting part of game design and it's something that the video game industry is well ahead of the board game industry in understanding and constructing around.
So before we get off into...
2021-08-13 08:36:13 +0000 UTC
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Hello everyone, a little bonus content today. Friend of the patreon, member of our community, amazing artist and superb gamer (seriously, his ability at Spirit Island is staggering) Trent 'Big Deno' Denison has kindly allowed me to share the playlist of his Kingdom Death playthrough which he is slowly releasing onto YouTube.
The production level is fantastic, the miniatures are gorgeous and Big Deno's play is tight (he's also great at rolling tens). The link above leads to the master li...
2021-08-12 08:35:42 +0000 UTC
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As per the link above, it took a bit longer than I hoped because it's around seven and a half thousand words. If you are at all interested in reviews of the expansions, which would be shorter, punchier and more targeted, please let me know in the comments below.
It's still awaiting full approval through the moderation process, but you should be able to read it at the link at the top of this post and if you enjoy it, please do give it a thumbs up and/or comment as that helps more than an...
2021-07-31 07:39:52 +0000 UTC
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This is part of the terrain series, other entries can be found at the contents page here.
3D Terrain can be ordered from Emporium Miniatures (Not this as that would be illegal).
Link: https://www.etsy.com/shop/EmporiumMiniatures
- Number: 1
- Size: 2x2
-
2021-07-30 09:19:55 +0000 UTC
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This is part of the terrain series, other entries can be found at the contents page here.
3D Terrain can be ordered from Emporium Miniatures (Not this exact print).
Link: https://www.etsy.com/shop/EmporiumMiniatures
- Number: 1
- Size: 2x2
- Passive:
2021-07-30 09:00:03 +0000 UTC
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