Expansion Combinations and Synergy - Part 4: Variants (Patreon)

OK so we have our parts and it's time to look at what works well together and what doesn't.  The very first thing to consider is that we have 3 campaigns and a few variants to those campaigns.  I'm going to touch on People of the Skull, People of the Bloom and The Seven Swordsmen first and because it turned out I had more to write about these than expected..

People of the Skull

So in this variant you can wear bone armor, wield bone weapons and use any type of item.  This means that quarries with bone weapons and armor sets are more useful than most, but also quarries with powerful utility items and accessories are also very useful.

This means for example; that the Gorm is a great source of weapons and utility items, but the Dragon King is a relatively poor choice because it has three bone weapons, one bone helm and it's utility items are usable only with non-bone items.  I'm going to quickly give you a count of what's usable.  

The numbers are as follows weapons/armor/utility

• White Lion - 2/1/3 (Zanbato counts)
• Screaming Antelope - 2/1/5 (not including barber surgeon)
• Gorm - (3/0/8)
• Spidicules - 0/0/5 (but those utility items are all the reasons for playing Spidicules anyway)
• Flower Knight - 0/0/4
• Phoenix - (1/0/4) (and most of those are not good)
• DBK - 3/5/4 (basically everything in this expansion)
• DK - 3/1/0 - non of the utility items are useable as they are linked to non-bone weapons
• Sunstalker - 0/0/3
• Butcher  - 0/0/6 - I've included the Maskmaker here
• Slenderman - 0/0/5 - The useable stuff includes some great ways of gaining armor.
• Manhunter - 0/0/5 (everything, plus this makes bone tools better)
• Lion Knight - 0/0/2 (curse masks count as useful here)
• Lion God - 0/0/9 (basically everything is fine)

In most cases the bone armor tends to be in the head slot and the best body piece is the White Lion's Lion Skin Cloak.  However the clear winner is the DBK expansion, the only issue it has is when you calcify digging claws for some reason they lose the bone keyword.  This seems to be a design omission by accident rather than deliberate because all other calcified gear keeps the bone keyword or gains it (Calcified Juggernaut Blade).  I would probably house rule that calcified digging claws are bone weapons if I were you.

I'd also recommend that you houserule that the Gorm resource Handed Skull has the Skull keyword (same as the Phoenix one) so it mechanically works with the Ritual. 

Ultimately I feel that the best monsters for People of the Skull are: 

White Lion, Slenderman, Butcher, Lion Knight, Lion God, Screaming Antelope, Spidicules (mid game), Manhunter and of course the Dung Beetle Knight.  

Plus there is one Quarry more of note. Because the new Crystal Skin is really good in this campaign mode, get Pickaxes early and then hunt the L1 Flower Knight so you can get a Crystal Skin survivor (it's the safest way to Mineral Gather after Overwhelming Darkness) and breed it onto your entire tribe.  There is almost no other synergy with the Flower Knight, but this one is a good one.

Seven Swordsmen

OK so this variant is... well it's an odd one. RAW the Seven Swordsmen are Swordmasters but they do not have the innovation in the settlement, so they don't get anything other than the specialisation ability.  It's clear that they are supposed to have access to the mastery in their settlement, so that's an easy fix.  

Outside of that the Swordsmen have Ageless and bonuses using Swords. But you will want to diversify with them, so mostly what you are looking for is ways of avoiding permanent injuries, good swords and cool hybrid swords.

As such, the best campaign for the Seven Swordsmen is straight up playing with the Green Armor + Slenderman. The Lion Knight is going to be an issue, but the other expansions give you cool swords and durability options (DBK, FK).  Slenderman removes the King's Man from the campaign (apart from in People of the Sun) so it's pretty essential otherwise you have to get Crystal Skin or sacrifice one of your Swordsmen forever to the curse.

As an aside, I recommend house ruling that the Seven Swordsmen start with Survival of the Fittest as their birth principle, so you have 7 lifetime rerolls to use and they're all a little bit more durable.

Phoenix is fun to hunt in this mode as you are already ageless, but watch out for Deja Vu, because it'll "kill" 3 of your 7 swordsmen.

People of the Bloom 

WHYYYYY YOU NO HAVE OUTFIT AND MATERIAL KEYWORDS? 

This one might as well be called People of the Critical Wounding Bow. Because essentially that's what you're going to be doing.  Anything that's dependant on Red Affinities sucks in this campaign, but Arrows are great.

The main expansions I recommend here are Green Armor for the Shield (you can't build the full set because you don't get access to True Blade or the Flower Knight Badge), Sunstalker for Cycloid Armor + bow/arrows/quivers.  DK for quiver/arrows.  Phoenix for Bow/arrows and so on.  I've played this variant a few times and honestly it's a bit boring because it's hard to activate the Replica Sword (which is why I recommend Cycloid) and the Helmet is pretty bad because of how it breaks up sets.  There are some interesting hybrid things you can do with the helmet though btw.

This one ran a lot longer than I expected, so we'll leave the final part (campaigns and combinations) until next time.  I'll write about People of the Sun, People of the Stars and give out those expansion combinations I enjoy.