The 12 Worst Rules in Kingdom Death (Patreon)

We've looked at the 12 Best Rules/Rulings made in a previous article, now in the name of balance it's time to look at what are, in my opinion the 12 worst rules/rulings/mechanics or rules changes which exist or have existed!

1. The Doomed Changes in 1.5

Let's be clear, the actual changes to Doomed are really well done; the problem is that not enough attention was paid to the impact that these rules changes would have.  As a consequence a lot of things were overlooked, stuff like the changes to Vermin Obsession and the Villain Role.  But also simple changes like updating the reminder text on the White Lion's trap card were overlooked.

Good ruling, poor execution.

2. The Forever Gone White Lion

I brought this one to the design team's attention long before 1.5 was sent to print.  Essentially if a White Lion Vanishes in the core game and either wounds itself with Organ Trail or is wounded by a Founding Stone (both of which can happen).  The Vanish Duration is removed from the deck and the White Lion never returns to the board.  Kingdom Death: Monster has suffered a fatal exception. Monster not found.  

When this was brought up to Poots and I suggested that the rules from Spidicules/Slenderman which stop miniatures off the board from being targeted/harmed at all should be in the core game he was inexplicably against this.  So no expansions are future proofed and will always need to contain the 'Miniatures off the board' ruling.

This isn't an issue for people with the expansions, but those playing the core game only have had problems with this.  I've seen two or three mentions of it since 1.5 came out.

*slow clap*

3. That One Thing in People of the Stars

Ok so skip on if you do not want spoilers for People of the Stars. I'm going to put the spoiler text between two images so you know how far to scroll.

Though if you hate serious bullshit, you might want to spoiler this one for yourself.

It's the Goblin card.  While this isn't exactly a ruling as such, it's an awful mechanical gotcha.  It exists for that once in a lifetime surprise and to entertain sad little masochists/sado-masochists.  Fuck that pointless constellation, we're fixing it in the CE.

4. The Lion Knight "Reward" Aftermath.

This aftermath single handedly has caused more upsets, anger and disappointment than any other event in the entire game.  While the Taken mechanic from Spidicules causes a lot of issues (like no returning survivors on a victory) and arguments (especially when no-one wants to play the lamb). It at least has the opportunity for rescue of the taken survivor and only happens every other victory.

The Lion Knight's Reward and Defeat tables are unbelievably punishing, to the point that there is almost no reason to use anything other than 4x sacrificial lambs for the L1 and L2 Lion Knights (L3 is alright, he doesn't punish you for taking part in his exercise).  I don't know why the designer of this expansion thought that this was a fun thing to do for a monster that's basically an 'optional extra'.

Honestly I prefered the Lion Knight when he'd just turn up occasionally while hunting the Dragon King.  He's a prick and his retinue are no better.

5. The Original Tom

This apparently was caused by two designers working on the DBK at the same time and when it was merged together, certain things were overlooked.  For the longest time The Old Master (Tom) was missing 1 AI card from his deck and did not have separation anxiety.  

Without separation anxiety a DBK gains the ability to magically teleport their Dung Ball to them at the start of their turn and do all sorts of other crazy things.  As a consequence fighting Tom without 3 to 4x Cheese Shield, RRoD or the King of a Thousand Battles was an almost impossible experience.  To give you an idea, just in case you think that's an over exaggeration here is a link to one of the people who took it on.  Their tank took 454 points of damage during the fight.

The updated Tom has his missing AI card and Separation Anxiety, he is still one of the hardest monsters in the game alongside the Golden Eyed God and Gold Smoke Knight (probably harder than both of those two because you can't evasion/block cheese the Dung Ball).

Honorable mention here to the Dung Beetle Knight expansion as a whole, which has one of the highest levels of typos and errors available. Small companies can be excused this, but Adam Poots Games. LLC is a multimillion dollar board game/miniatures company, not a small indie company like Activision Blizzard.

6. Dismembered Arms and Arrows

So, you can't use a bow if you have a dismembered arm (or two) but you can still fire arrows from a bow regardless of the number of arms you have.  Just one of many annoying and odd things about arrows that are counterintuitive because they are mechanically separate from the bow that fires them.

7. No Thrown Weapon Mastery and only one Scythe

Hopefully this is addressed in the next generation of expansions, but the lack of a Thrown Weapon Mastery and the lack of Scythes has made these two weapon types very undesirable.  We do have the Bone Scythe in the Death Knight expansion, so maybe our dreams will come true?

8. Retinues

Appearing during The Watcher's fight and not appearing in the Gold Smoke Knight - Retinues are a bizarre thing.  They add an epic feel to the Watcher battle (which is missing from the Gold Smoke Knight showdown) as the entire settlement is pitching in to assist in defeating their ultimate predator.  However The Watcher is too weak to be able to withstand survivors supported by retinues, so it makes the entire fight an anti-climax.  

Add into that the fact that you do not get Retinues when the Gold Smoke Knight comes and it makes everything feel really a bit off.  The Watcher feels more like the campaign's ending still and the GSK feels like an afterthought, even for the people in your settlement.

9. The FAQ and general scattering of rulings.

It has still not been updated and we get official ruling from so many different sources.  Why is there no-one on the team who has the job of collating all rulings and keeping them in the FAQ?

As the FAQ is still 1.31, not 1.5 it's a source of issues and confusion at times.

10. Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder 

There are multiple ways of interpreting this card and everyone thinks that their interpretation is the correct one. It's wasted so much time with people writing huge paragraphs about why their opinion is right.  That's what you get with a card that isn't clearly worded.

11.  The update to the Nemesis Showdown/Special Showdown rules

Something happened in the 1.5 rules update. This made people joining the game without having played 1.31 have trouble understanding that not all Nemesis showdowns are special showdowns. 

It's come up numerous times from multiple different people and while I cannot see why they are interpreting the rules that way it is clear that this is not just an isolated incident where one person misunderstood this. It's somewhat endemic, which indicates that it's the rules at fault here.

No-one in the core game only should be experiencing special showdowns apart from the ones caused by timeline events like Armored Strangers or the Heart Flute.

12. Weapon Mastery and the Seven Swordsmen

Ok so this one is more for fun (well these are all for fun, none of them are serious gripes).  Because of the way that Weapon Mastery works, the Seven Swordsmen are given Mastery before the Settlement is created.  This means that they cannot gain the Mastery Innovation, because the settlement does not exist to gain it.  Therefore all the Seven Swordsmen are Sword masters who cannot use the special abilities of Sword Mastery/Specialisation.

Easily fixed with a house rule - because that is not the intention of the variant. However, it demonstrates the lack of thought and care and attention which causes many of these problems to crop up in the first place.

There we are, in complement to the best list written last week, here are the rulings and designs that demonstrate the weaker aspects of Kingdom Death.

Because no game is made perfect (except for Go).