Gosh, where to go now…

The expansions of Kingdom Death are evolving in crazy new ways so I’m reluctant to rely too greatly on direct comparisons to the first set (except for the Gorm of course). The new lot are ostensibly standalone designs but in nearly every case something exists to bind them together into longer cohesive experiences. Viewing them through that lens is a totally different kettle of fish to how the first expansions could be appraised.

Stuff like the Screaming God and the First Hero are divorced from these connections, so they were relatively easy to discuss. They are what they are. But the Frogdog, Oblivion Mosquito and the Nightmare Ram are a bit more complex… they’re all native to the Inverted Mountain. Why is that so special? It means that they’ll be filling some familiar roles in what is essentially the sequel to Kingdom Death: Monster.

I should mention that there are arguably several “soft-sequels”. Advanced Kingdom Death. The Strain System and the Campaigns of Death. The Abyssal Woods. All propose some radically new timelines with new encounters, timelines and cards for your survivors. We’ll get to them another day.

There’s no doubt though that the “People of the Mountain” campaign (made from these thematically related expansions brought together by the “Mountain Man”) is the shiniest of them all, as it replaces… well… everything. There’s no appreciable crossover with any existing base game or expansion content. It’s a fresh experience formed of fresh experiences. This has many pros and one huge con that you’ve probably already realised, but I’m going to talk about it anyway.

Lets take a look.

THE MOUNTAIN MAN

We’re beginning at the end, with what is either an excellent expansion… or possibly the worst of all the new expansions. It depends on how fiscally responsible you are.

This one’s all about “People of the Mountain” and it appears to not be usable outside of running that campaign. It’s a huge departure from even the best “People of the…” content we’ve seen before in that it goes far beyond a re-themed timeline thrown over the base game components. Instead it provides everything to run a settlement in a completely new biome of the world of Death. We’re talking a totally new timeline, with new events of every kind, new innovations, new base crafting locations… and the synthesis of the Frogdog, Oblivion Mosquito, Nightmare Ram, Gryphon, Pariah, Red Witches and Black Knight into a new basic list of nemesis’ and quarries.

But uh oh! This is another expansion that is really light on the ground when it comes to solid information, and trusting the initial blurb in full seems like a pretty awful idea considering most of them are clearly just draft concepts. The campaign will also need to have the expansions it depends on in some state of development to even begin to be developed itself. That seems a ways off, so judging exactly how far this will go is not currently possible, nor would I expect to see anything before the rest are all but nailed down. I have hopes that there will be a new set of 100 generic hunt events in the Mountain Man’s rulebook to go along with the obvious story replacements, plus at least as many settlement events as the base game has (helped along by the ones the expansions contribute). Integrating even more expansions with it should be possible although without any base game content this may be a bit wonky for some, like Slenderman or Lion Knight.

The Mountain Man itself sits at the top of the Inverted Mountain. He’s the final boss, in the same vein as the Gold Smoke Knight, though his agenda has been fleshed out a little more. He’s got gangly minions that sound like they’re going to be encounter monsters, but could just as easily jump out to ambush the survivors during the showdown itself. Whatever form the showdown takes, it’ll only be a capstone, so the quality of the rest of the expansion will need to be top notch.

If there’s anything that truly intrigues me about this one it’s the two “Visionary” and “Apotheosis” narrative miniatures included. Both of these come from existing resin sculpts that have some tantalizing scraps of lore. The Visionaries are survivors that have found incredible artifacts of immense power that motivate them towards some lofty goal, and in true kingdom death fashion, it seems said ventures are often doomed by their very nature. The Apotheosis men and women are empowered by an unknown force that increases both their power and their ego to lofty new heights but, surprise surprise, this seems to also turn out badly for them. These sound very much like the existing Twilight Sword and Savior mechanisms, so it’ll be cool to see them get a fresh mountainy take.

Of course, here comes the major con. If you aren’t buying the 7 other expansions to make this work, you’ll never buy this one and none of this should excite you. If you are, fingers crossed that this is a more than worthy successor to our time on the plane of faces.

THE PARIAH

Our first new Nemesis. This guy has a wacky gimmick that has some odd implications.

The deal goes that the Pariah will come to your settlement, kick things around and be the general major ass that all nemesis encounters are. So far so good. Nothing out of the ordinary. We can stack this up against the likes of Slenderman and the Manhunter when determining if it’s worth your money.

But after you beat him back, things get weird. The Pariah gets serious, and stops your settlement from functioning until you go and beat him up where he lives. Unfortunately, he lives high on the mountain where he uses supernatural agility and strength to run around on the roof of his lair via special footholds. So the showdown is also upside down as the survivors monkeybar their way around the place, with the peril of the long drop yawning beneath them.

What gets me is the vagueness of this concept. The clearest part is that this is the Inverted Mountain’s Butcher analogue. He’s currently slated to start appearing a year after it would though. A special showdown in a regular campaign then? I could have sworn Poots said he hated those. It also seems like you might only fight him twice a campaign, once in each form. Maybe he’ll stick around after being “defeated” though… if I had to guess I’d say this will be the case.

Reason being, apparently new innovations and arts must be developed to tackle the Pariah. Normal survivors aren’t known to run upside down or swing around from the ceiling, so the necessity of this may be absolute. The kickstarter doesn’t outright state this though. If it is, I imagine that in the wake of the Pariah’s first appearance at least some of the process should be kicked off by added timeline events. Kind of like Hands of Heat. Considering that fighting arts are slated to completely disappear in Advanced Kingdom Death, that part may just be “nice to haves”.

The pause that his next appearance allegedly puts on your campaign would be completely untenable if you had to rely on dumb luck to get the innovations necessary to defeat him. The choice should therefore come from how much investment you put into those tools, and the Pariah potentially sticking around a bit longer would make this feel a bit less of an investment you are forced to make for a single fight that then uselessly hangs around like an tagalong friend.

I’d like to think that climbing related innovations would have a wider impact on the Inverted Mountain campaign, but this also has to stand on it’s own merits… hmmm. We’re getting faaaaar into the realms of speculation here.

I don’t know. This is all a very generous interpretation of what little we have so far. It has all the potential to be hamstrung as an expansion by a couple poor decisions (here’s looking at you, Spidicules) if this pause thing turns out poorly. I can only hope that’s not the case.

THE RED WITCHES

Another nemesis that both excites me greatly and draws my ire. This is the Frogdog of part 2.

Let’s get my grievances out of the way first. I don’t like pinup models. I don’t begrudge those who do though, and I was happy to see they are adding some males into the mix.

The Red Witches mostly look like pinup versions of something else. In the vast array of thematic draws that help KDM aspire beyond the love letter to Berserk that it so clearly is, the softcore art of scantily clad babes, each with thighs larger than my entire being, I’ve found to be the most out of place. The Witches are by no means the worst of this, and the White Speaker aesthetic is pretty cool when they use it right (like, oof, that Slenderman intro…), so I’m not too pursed-lips prude about it. But, especially compared to every other Inverted Mountain offering… it’s a lil bit incongruent.

Enough pearl clutching. The concept of the witches is really freakin’ cool. Three merciless treasure hunters out to kill the Pariah, and for whatever reason, your dudes as well. Three fully fledged nemesis on the board at once. I am so keen to see how they pull the AI/HL deck off with that. A whirlwind of carnage from all three Witches doing something each turn would be sweet, though it does seem like a balancing nightmare. Poots says that it may be an escalating affair with the Witches showing up sequentially for each level of the fight, but also that there was no solid idea in place at the time of the kickstarter.

There’s been few hints about how the mechanics work subsequent to that either. All we have are concepts, though they are quite strong and unlikely to be hamstrung by design constraints like the Nightmare Ram was. The Witches can swap places on the board using magic from their cloaks, and each appears to favor ranged combat (though one of them is clearly carrying a wicked looking dagger). They also have a mix of supporting actions and offensive actions so that they’re all constantly present in the fight but not necessarily always on the offensive. I hope each has a distinct personality when it comes to how they fight, as it would be a bit disappointing if they just had interchangeable AI cards. There may also be appearances from neophyte white speakers though the sentence describing this is too vague to be worthy of too much scrutiny.

The cloaks seem to be the predominate spoils of the fight as well, though with the caveat that they are mildly carnivorous. You’ll supposedly need Gryphon spit to craft the protective gear necessary to wear a cloak without being eaten. This is… a bit worrying. Is this fluff and this expansion will have some means for you to collect it built in? Or is this fully fledged cross-expansion integration? It was a question many had at the time that remained unanswered, though Poots has said that he did not intend every expansion to work fully on it’s own. We’ve just covered the Mountain Man which is perhaps the ur example of that design philosophy… but the level of potential interaction here is so mild by comparison that it seems unreasonable to ask someone to shell out for another whole expansion they may not want, let alone one as expensive as the Gryphon will be. He could always just change it to something more commonly available, but the armor concepts have been complete for a while.

This trend continues with another great concept with dubious execution, though I am far more positive about this one. The witches are hunting the Pariah, and the expansion has a mini campaign that allows you to enact that quest. Playing as the Witches sounds super fun and the campaign is short so taking it out for a spin is not as big an investment as integrating a regular expansion into a full campaign. However, you need the Pariah. Stands to reason, but more and more of the features here are being walled off by these costly necessities. I’m getting them all so it doesn’t affect me, but it will affect someone.

Oh, there’s also some interaction with Fade but like, how big could that possibly be?

Maybe I’m splitting hairs considering the $400 baseline entry cost to KDM… but still, these are unprecedented cross-expansion requirements and I do not think that should be the norm.

A contentious expansion to be sure, but also a bit more intriguing than usual for it.

THE BLACK KNIGHT

Finally, a nemesis expansion that only has mild controversial elements!

Already a fan favorite in the resin range, the Black Knight has another leg up on the competition in that the showdown concept is far along in development and received some very positive feedback when it was demo’d at Gencon last year.

The Knight is a sleeping behemoth in a ruined hall who is tended by an underground society of young squires. Many of the statues that surround the knight’s resting place have been extensively repaired with “elastomer” (which seems to be the proper term for the “Gryphon spit” in the Red Witches expansion). This has not only restored them but made them quite… springy. When slammed into the statues, the survivors are unceremoniously thrown around the room by the snap-back.

It honestly looks like a lot of fun and I’m sure we are going to be hearing many stories of crazy campaign-destroying ricochets.

I mentioned that there was some controversy though. You may end up only fighting the Black Knight once a campaign, and the trigger for this is succeeding… which is the point of the game. While it will escape to fight another day in any other circumstances, once you know the score getting only one new fight out of the 25-35 you’ll do over your campaign may not really be worth the price of admission. He does drop materials to provide a selection of craftable armor sets but it is not the full fledged offering that a quarry would have and merely seems to be a mild twist on the normal nemesis payout. The overall package is shaping up to be a cool showdown but it may well be on it’s way out before you’ve really had time to appreciate it.

Thankfully it’s got a built in saving grace to reach the level of content one might expect from a top tier KDM expansion. A standalone mini campaign, playing as the squires of the Knight. Unlike the witches this one will work out of the box with no further investment, so while it may not match the hype of playing as the “monsters” it doesn’t require you to shell out extra cash just to use it.

All things considered, this is probably going to be the best of the nemesis expansions for someone not going all in on the Inverted Mountain. Aesthetically it fits with some of the popular first wave expansions too. Custom “All Knights all the time” campaign anyone?

THE GRYPHON

After 4 nemesis in a row the settlement is in dire need of supplies. Lets nab ourselves a quarry!

But oh shit, it’s the Gryphon. We know basically nothing about the Gryphon itself. Not even what the model will truly end up looking like, since it’s slated for a rework. Probably not a drastic one, but right now no one knows but Poots. He also said it may instant-kill survivors by throwing them off the mountain but that’s nothing we haven’t seen before.

It’s going to have it’s own campaign though, which means that we can use some past standards to work out how this will pan out. People of the Nest involves survivors who have fallen under the sway of the Gryphon’s hypnotic musk. They work to build it’s “nest”, a grotesque conglomerate organism. I can smell the depressing outcome from here. Interestingly, this musk also works on other monsters, so there may be some cool interactions with that. Monstrous allies would be groovy, even if it’s only in the form of coexistence within the horrifying “settlement”.

There’s nothing beyond the Gryphon in the expansion though, so this is probably going to be closer to People of the Sun than People of the Stars. Sunstalker and Dragon King have their downsides but are often counted in the top 3 expansions in the game, so the Gryphon following their example is unlikely to miss the mark.

Where it fits into people of the mountain is somewhat more difficult to place. There are basegame analogues to the rest of the campaign. Frogdog is the Lion. Mosquito the Antelope. Ram the Phoenix. Hmmm, we’ve run out of quarries. Where does the Gryphon fit then? Well, many people add in an additional quarry beyond the Pheonix, such as the very popular Dung Beetle Knight. It adds a further notch on the progression of the core campaign that many feel should have always been there. I imagine the Gryphon is a more thematic and accounted equivalent of doing that.

The Gryphon is another standalone campaign expansion first and foremost so there’s a lot of value in that alone. It’s on the podium with the Frogdog and the Mosquito for sure. It’s just a shame that this has to be an inference, rather than based on some hype previews. Retooling the model for production may have put this one behind the development curve.

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So that’s it. Very ambitious. One thing I didn’t mention is apparently Anna is the head dev on the Inverted Mountain, and she’s done some excellent work on the first set of expansions. I think that the quarries are going to find love as solo expansions, but I’m not quite sold on the nemesis encounters. It’s also a metric assload of money to actually play the full campaign. For those who have a lot of dosh to spare, but maybe not quite enough for 8 complete expansions, there is another full-replacement alternative that I’ll be discussing next time…

See you all then!