Till Death Do Us Part: A Review and Analysis (Patreon)

Inspired by the long running BBC Sitcom Series Till Death Do Us Part, this Valentine's Day release is a ground breaking release for Kingdom Death in a number of aspects.  Not only does it mark the introduction of the Intimacy Couple as starting survivors (as opposed to the versions that come in the core game who have steel swords), but they are also the first photoresin miniatures put out for wide release by Adam Poots LLC, one of the first ones to contain prototype material and most importantly of all, they are one of the first non-white box items to be brought back into stock over and over, which means this this is the first item where the scalpers have taken a serious punch to the gut.  I don't directly have a problem with scalpers as such, but the markup that the KD:M breed aim for is pretty disgusting.  They've pretty much stopped me finishing my Infant Sunstalker homebrew over and over by denying access to the model, so I'm a little salty about that.

So, after a rough start, where the models sold out in under 20 mins, we've had Till Death coming back into print over and over, which I thoroughly approve of and want to give Adam Poots LLC props for.  This is good, this is how things should be; limited time, scare items are bad for consumers -especially when you have a product in a market that contains more than the average number of completionists.  I'm very much against limited time products, loot boxes and similar as they are exploitive business tactics.  Adam sort of fell into that model of selling by accident (due to supply issues I believe); but his behaviour here seems to demonstrate that it's not something he's been doing by choice. So, thumbs up for turning what was an absolute mess into something promising.

Onto the contents!

The art cards are rather nice, standard sizes and almost completely useless, they have joined the pile of other ones I have, which I will amass up until I figure out what to do with them.  Perhaps a scrapbook or expensive kindling.

As you can see, you get three bases, which is great because you have choices, you can mount your two survivors separately, or together and whatever you do, you'll have some spare bases.  This is amazing, because most of the time you don't get enough bases *cough* Armor Kit set, Forge God, The Scribe, The King *cough and these special bases are unique to KD:M and are absolute gold dust to try and find.

Also, I found a hidden message in mine. Perhaps the truth behind everything?

I'm in a disney trying to figure out what this means, perhaps it's just taking the mickey?

Onto the models themselves. As mentioned above, they are the first general released photoresin models, we've seen the Easter Twilight Knight teased in photoresin before and TWIST Gaming are giving away the Halloween White Speaker in photoresin (details here) as part of their subscriber drive. This set however is the first time we've had this stuff in general release. 

So what's it like?  Honestly, I prefer it over the resin they have been using before.  Like a LOT.  It's not perfect, in fact there are limitations caused by the 3D printing process, but I would prefer all new models to be released this way.  

Here are the two models as they come.

As you can see, there are a lot of artifacts left hanging from the printing process. In fact there are loads!

They come off very easily and the models clean up very nicely. Cleaning and assembly was significantly easier than any of the resin models released before.  They also feel more robust and the details look nicer.

However, there is a slightly rough feel to the models because of the layering process and if you hold them up to the light from certain angles you'll see the issue.

That shine, and the way it is striped is because of the printing. I'm not sure what it's going to be like to paint these models...

Assembly was a joy, it took less than 2 minutes per model and as you can see, they look great already!  

They also feel more solid and robust than any of the resin models that have been released before. I really feel like I can play with these ones.

However, it's worth noting that they are part of the KD:M Survivor scale creep club.  While they are not as huge as the ridiculously tall Easter Twilight Knight (who's approaching 9ft when you straighten her legs), they are taller than normal.

His legs are very, very bent here and he's still as tall as this unarmored survivor.

So I think that we're going to see more scale creep in the new expansions. It's just part of the art direction.

So that's the models out of the way, some things good about them, some things bad, but overall they are a huge improvement on the current resin models in my opinion. So I'll take the one negative (odd surface) because all of the positives outweigh it.

Onto the Partnership Card!

As you can probably see, it's HUGE, it's the size of the Settlement Event cards and it's a two sided affair.

These sides provide alternative styles of Partnership, which is great because the current one isn't very nice. Now, of these two choices Enduring Legacy seems to be the clearest and most interesting.  It encourages you to take your best survivors, partner them with someone and then pass on bonuses to their conceived survivors or adopted unnamed survivors.  It's a great way to encourage the 'generations' style of the game which Poots wants people to play (but is discouraged from being used because of the Weapon Mastery system). If we could get an improved version of Family which turns up through a timeline event instead of randomly from the draw deck then we'd be onto a new way of playing!

It's powerful, it's fun, it's thematic and it's not too badly worded.  It's just not clear what 'When partners have 3+ children, their family is complete. They retire and stop having children forever.' means from a mechanical standpoint.  You can sort of get the gist of the concept, but it's not clear if this means 3+ surviving children or 3+ children total and 'having' children is not the same as 'adopting them'. So it's a little unclear at this prototype stage.

Devoted Union on the other hand is a mess. When you compare this to Synchronised Strike it is more powerful but impossible to parse under the rules as they stand.  You do not have an activation outside of your act unless you surge and even if you do surge you have to spend it immediately.  So how do the partners both get access to their activation?  If one surges, the other one cannot because you have to complete a survival action before resolving the next one.  So it needs to be during one Partner's Act, but then the surge has no window to work.  So... It's a mess. 

You can sort of see the rules as intended, but there are multiple interpretations.  One is to abandon the rules structure, move both survivors and then make the combined attack instead of them having activate separately. But another one is to assume that the way this combined attack works is that each partner is gifted an activation by the combined attack ability and gets to make it (In addition to their normal activation).

There are also a host of other odd things that happen with the way that these cards are drawn and resolve.  It's also not clear how the Trap interacts - does it cancel everything or does it just affect the partner that it is assigned to?

Basically this side is going to be unplayable without heavy house interpretation and while it is a prototype it does concern me. Because this kind of wording should not reach the public under any circumstances, Enduring Legacy has the kind of ambiguity I'd expect from a released prototype; Devoted Union is so troublesome that it should just be smothered in its sleep.

So, was all this worth $50?  I'm a sucker for these two characters, so for me, yes. But you might want to wait on it and just get the content once it's finalised and less of a mess.