It Rhymes with Ridiculous: The Comprehensive Review of the Spidicules Expansion (Patreon)

As always Spid-oilers await the unwary reader in the content that follows, if you want the spoiler lite version of this review, skip to the Why? Where? and Score? Parts at the bottom of the article.

Who?
Spidicules (Spid-ick-u-less) is a quarry monster who appears in lantern year 2, it’s a ridiculously oversized miniature that looms over the survivors, its body hanging suspended with the only points of contact being its tiny feet and creepy hands. Its visual design is for the most part inspired by the Harvestman (not actually a spooder, harvestmen are opiliones) and in general it combines a lot of the worst parts of the insect kingdom, including employing high speed vibrations to appear invisible to prey, swarm tactics, deploying its children as weapons and using living creatures as bait.

They’re pretty much everything that is wrong with the world of insects rolled into one horrible eight legged ball and they appear to have rudimentary intelligence at a minimum, but it is more likely that they are very intelligent.

So get out your rolled up newspaper, it’s time to go squish some bugs! (But please, don’t actually go hitting the Spidicules model with a newspaper, it’s a bit fragile).

What?
In this expansion you get Spidicules, six spiderlings, four survivors plus gear and the usual mix of AI, Hit Location, Resource, Fighting Art, Innovation, Terrain, Disorder, Armor set and gear cards. You also get two additional settlement events, both of which are a most welcome addition. Also you get tiles for the new terrain and the rulebook.

There is no doubt at all that Spidicules is an impressive monster on the table, it dominates the board in the way that is only exceeded by the Dragon King. Survivors fight underneath it, either in or around its limbs or sometimes directly underneath its body. The Spiderling models are also well done, they can be a little tricky to assemble, but once completed they are robust and really very cute.

The survivor models are also great, they have a unique look with their silks and turbans, and it is very refreshing to see their design when compared to the stitched together hide style that is normal for a lot of the games armor. However, I do have to admit that the models do not have very dynamic or interesting poses - there are also problems in working out what weapons to give them, because the armor set is mechanically a vague mess.

Additionally it is worth mentioning that 6 Spiderlings are not actually sufficient models. The number of Spiderlings that can be on the board at once are not limited in any fashion, it would have been nice to have some 'Additional Spooderling' tokens to cover the situations where you fight the L3 Spidicules and there are so many of them on the board.

How?
As always, the How is short for "how good is this expansion?" Well, it is no secret that I have struggled a bit to write this one, I had to work very hard to get over some initial bad reactions caused by the first time I played this expansion and then squeeze all of the good stuff out of it ready for drying, pinning and mounting in my insect collection.

We will start with the good stuff:

The Showdown
No argument, the showdown fight with Spidicules is really good. It’s one of only two (current at time of writing) fights that employ minions (Sunstalker being the other), it is a fun boss + swarm based fight that is as much about managing the Spiderlings as it is about defeating the Spidicules. In addition you also have to set about the tasks of collecting silk from the egg sacs and having a rummage around in the Silk Nest because of that 20% chance of +1 Population. 

There is plenty to do in this showdown and I appreciate that a great deal. In addition it is really exciting that Spidicules is weak to Spears, I like these weapon specific weaknesses (Antelope: Shields/Clubs, DBK: Shields/Clubs/Pick Axes etc) it’s good design.

Basically, the Showdown is the single best part of this expansion by a long, long margin.

Disorders
All three of the Disorders that come in this expansion are great. They are either manageable (Controlophobia and Tiny Arachnophobia) or just stylish and cool (Revenge, that frenzies you when someone else dies during the showdown). It’s the right balance and as such I like these disorders a lot. 

Tiny Arachnophobia actually has interactions with other items, because Silk isn't just contained in the Spidicules expansion, that's neat!

Legless Ball
This mechanic is plain awesome. If you manage to cut off all of Spidicules’ legs during a single showdown you get to roll the defeated, still living body home (which is a challenge in itself) and set it up in the settlement where it will generate silk for you. It’s a horrific fate for a Spidicules, but considering how awful these creatures are it is hard to have any sympathy for them.

Once you have this ball, you have access to some of the rarer items from Spidicules, specifically the three rings. Each of which is difficult to craft, but has a unique effect.

Even better, the second Legless Ball automatically becomes a Grim Visage!

Grinning Visage
This little beauty is the best offensive shield in the game and the single best way to train Shield Mastery safely. The survival ability is hard to use repeatedly without some cheeky way of generating survival every turn (Abyssal Sadist or Deathpact anyone?) but it is powerful. In addition, this is a Unique that is straightforward to get and worth the effort (unlike The Weaver, which is mediocre at best).

Harvest Man Fighting Art
This fighting art is just as cool as heck and I’m always happy when I get it on someone. Additional movement is a hard thing to get your hands on in this game and Harvestman provides a huge boost with an interesting drawback. It is very surprising how powerful additional movement is in this game, in particular when it is delivered in a fashion that is balanced.

New Terrain
The two new terrain pieces included with this expansion are top notch, each one of them has the right level of risk and reward. Busting open Egg Sacs gives you Web Silk which is usable as a generic strange resource even if you do not have Spidicules in the mix, but it has the drawbacks of spawning a spiderling and possibly knocking you down/giving you the priority target token. 

As mentioned above in the Showdown section the Silk Nest is something that everyone searches once per showdown because the rewards are too great to ignore. Also the Silk Nest is interesting because it clogs up the middle of the board, putting an obstacle in the dead centre creates some unique tactical situations.

Spiderlings
These guys are great, not only are they fun to use, but they can turn up in non-Spidicules showdowns. They add a little extra challenge without bogging down the game in lots of extra bookkeeping. However, as mentioned before, there are not enough of these, and there is no way to easily purchase more babs - so you will have to use tokens at times.

Additionally, some people have had problems putting them together!

Silk Surgery and the Silk Surgeon
You’re almost never going to see a Silk Surgeon in the typical game of KD:M, however they are one of the cooler aspects of this game (how you get one is as cool as hell)! Instead, you are more likely to see Silk Surgery, which is a crazy event that potentially lets you keep your preferred survivors around by stealing parts from other survivors. It’s a lot of fun and one of the better new mechanics added in by Spidicules.

Amber Edge
This weapon is just, wow. It’s very powerful, and cheap to boot. It is a 1 speed slow weapon with 6+ accuracy and 4 strength. At the end of each attack, if you wounded the monster you get to attack again. Then do this again, over and over until you miss. Sounds crazy right? You’d expect it to be expensive? Well it costs 1 bone, 1 organ and 1 chitin (which is a standard Monster resource for Spidicules). That is really cheap considering how powerful it is.

However this weapon is balanced because it is a scimitar and that means there is no mastery for it in the game. In addition it does not have deadly, so every wound it deals means one less chance to crit for resources. This is a solid weapon and will carry you through the early and mid game if you don’t mind the downsides. Perhaps this is something you want your Fist and Tooth or Shield survivor to wield?

Amber Poleaxe
This one is notable not because of its stats (which are fine for an early game weapon), but because it is an axe and a spear. There are precious few early game axes (apart from the Gorm ones) and the only spear is the King’s Spear. The Amber Poleaxe is more expensive than the King’s Spear, but it is also strictly better. This weapon really comes online when you have a Spear and Axe master in the settlement, unfortunately its stats are not strong enough to keep it relevant that long.

However, its ability is utterly broken and that will get it a mention in the 'bad' section.

Green Ring
The Green Ring is the single flashiest and most impressive piece of kit you can get in the Spidicules repertoire. Combined with a Gloom Hammer and some other parts you can create a tank that is monster controller most of the time and gains massive amounts of armor as a consequence. But that is not all, you can instead place this on a Shadow Shawl support survivor and create a support/light armor damage character who rarely has to worry about dying because of the combination of sudden gains in armor plus evasion. It’s an absolute powerhouse and the only shame is it is unique.

Blue Ring
The Blue Ring is not as showy and impressive as the Green one, but it is still very powerful, filtering through the monster’s AI cards is a way of removing some of the most dangerous attacks from a monster. With a Blue Ring and careful Rawhide use you can make sure that the Lion God never Impales anyone or a Dung Beetle Knight never unsheathes its sword.

Do not underestimate how much damage an active Blue Ring will mitigate. This one is a doozy.

Silk Body Suit
Now this is an item that is worth hunting a level 3 Spidicules for. It’s a huge decrease in damage taken from hits with the drawback that you cannot wear metal or heavy armor. It lands in that category of gear that I adore, the ones that encourage you to build around them. In this case you need to wear light armor. Now I know that early on in the game it seems a bit worthless to wear an item that reduces damage to a minimum of 1. But as you push on towards bigger and nastier monsters all of a sudden having damage dealt to your support character dropping from 3 to 1 is a massive benefit. In addition, Dung Beetle Knight plates are not armor, so they work with this gear to create an impressive tank.

Settlement Events
We get two new settlement events, Silk Storm is the more interesting of the two events when you are playing with Spidicules, but to be honest, the fact that it has only relatively minor impact when drawn without Spidicules around is very welcome. More Settlement Events with minor impacts is a good thing. 

When you do have Spidicules present this provides a way to generate Bladders for Blood Paint when you don’t have the Screaming Antelope as part of the game. That’s huge, Blood Paint is one of the best items in the game for many one handed damage dealing builds (Denticle Axes and Digging Claws for example). 

Also, the Silk Net option on this card is incredible, you have a Special Showdown with a monster of your choice for 4 Silk + 3 resources. That’s an extra monster with no need to hunt it, you can use this to trap something that is usually dangerous to hunt, gut it, spend the resources and then go out on your actual hunt for the year. Hypothetically you could even use this to chain hunt Spidicules because you will get some Silk from a Spidicules fight – now it is impossible to go infinite on this, but a settlement with a bit of silk stored up could conceivably fight 2 or 3 Spidicules in one year plus have a normal hunt. That’s huge!

Season of the Spiderling I’m not so keen on, in general terms you want to throw disposable survivors at this encounter because it is too dangerous to allow anyone of value to get involved. But I do appreciate that the card gives you options and lets you manage the risk/reward rather than just straight up punish you with no options. It's a decent addition.

Now onto the bad:

The Model
Simply put, the Spidicules model is over-engineered and over designed. Spidicules is mechanically a 2x2 monster that ‘floats’ in mid-air. Despite the hands and legs sprawling out across the board they have no relevance in game. All that matters is that little 2x2 space where the body casts its shadow. On top of this immense amount of excess ‘show’ plastic, Spidicules has a wonderful design flaw where it’s tiny, easily broken, extra tendrils hang down into the very space where survivors really want to stand. Breakages will happen.

I spend a lot of time looking at the model while trying to figure out how I can engineer it to take up less room and fit 4 survivors underneath. It’s a disaster of a sculpt. But it looks cool!

Young Rivals
The first time this happens to you it is not going to feel good unless you are a glutton for punishment. I am sure there are some people who laugh uproariously at this story event when it happens, but that is not the groups I have played with. Instead we have sat there while one person has been forced to scrub their shiny new survivor off and reach for a new one. It’s a horrible gotchya moment the first time you encounter it (one of the two cheapest and weakest mechanics in the game) and it really has no place being sat here so early on in a campaign.

Fortunately, because the design of this event is kind of garbage, you can avoid losing anyone by just ensuring that you only have one male survivor with hunt exp. You cannot select two male survivors at that point, so no-one dies.

I am of the opinion that this hunt event should trigger on two males regardless of hunt exp, it's mechanically smoother and more interesting to do it that way.

Replacing the Antelope
I get it thematically, its fine and it's sort of cool – Spidicules eat antelopes so areas with Spidicules in them will have no antelopes as they are scared off. That’s great. Well, at least as long as you do not think too much about that, it makes sense. When you think about it too much however, it makes absolutely no sense at all.

Having alternative monsters that replace core campaign monsters is an interesting mechanic. However, the job where Spidicules is concerned is half assed at best, if you are going to replace the Antelope you should be providing viable alternatives for the things which are lost. Why is the Silk Mill not a replacement Stone Circle? 

Why do we not have an alternative Barber Surgeon (aka the Silk Surgery?) Why is there such a strong focus on gaining cooking ingredients in the expansion but then cooking itself is neutered. Why does the expansion synergise so well with the Antelope when it is intended to replace it? The questions just go on and on.

Basically, this was a good idea, but poorly executed, even many of the Spidicules supporters have admitted that they add Spidicules in later on instead of replacing the Antelope. Because it’s just a broken thing at the moment, especially when you consider the changes which have happened in 1.5 that have made the Screaming Antelope an integral part of the game experience (You cannot get the Barber Surgeon location without a Screaming Antelope and Spidicules does not have an alternative mechanic for making that location appear, which is mind boggling when you realise the surgery slant that Spidicules has).

Taken
This one has actually ruined campaigns and almost destroyed friendships. It’s a horrible mechanic that starts off as another one of those ‘gotchya’ moments and then later on ends up with one player (in a 4+ game) having to take some disposable sod who's fate is to be snatched up at the end.  This doesn't even make sense if you consider what happens when a single survivor returns - work that one out!

I can think of a whole host of better ways to deploy this mechanic, punishment leads to avoidance – this is one of the big reasons why Spidicules is not well liked, it doesn’t just make bad things happen to you, it asks you to run into a big stick repeatedly.

On top of that, the actual Taken event contains another ‘gotchya’ if you don’t get back out there and rescue the lost survivor and even if you rescue the survivor there is a chance that Taken will just trigger on someone else instead.

No two ways about it, this whole mechanic is dumb and probably the worst part of the expansion, I've deducted a whole point from my final score because of it.

Silk Turban
I have nothing against the item itself, but I do not understand the design decision to stick this thing behind the level 3 Spidicules. It’s not good enough to deserve being sat behind

Silk Armor Affinities
This is a relatively minor niggle as I’m sure it is an intended ‘feature’ but there are precious few ways to organise the Silk Armor and get the affinity abilities all active. You either need to go out of your way and get certain items to fill in spots or you set it up in the following layout.

Arms   Blank  Blank
Body   Head   Legs
Blank  Blank  Feet

That activates everything except for the boots. But it’s not really desirable. The only other way to do it is as follows.

Blank  Head   Legs
Body   Blank  Blank
Blank  Feet   Arms

But you still need to source a down red/right Blue, an up red, an up green and a left blue/down green set of gear to get everything active. I can’t even recall if that is possible right now. There are precious few Blue/Green affinity gear items in the game.

However, it must be said that individually these items work well in piecemeal sets (Rolling Armor to the rescue once more!).

Throwing Knife
This one almost doesn’t make it onto the bad list. Almost. The main issue is this weapon lands in the ‘high speed, low strength’ category, which because of the reaction based design of monsters in Kingdom Death means it’s a huge risk to use. There are some borderline uses that it has in combination with timeless eye but on the whole I’d rather use Bone Darts over this one.

It is however cheap to make and can give you accuracy tokens to use with other weapons, but the thing is, we don’t really have any low accuracy super hard hitting weapons that this would help support. Perhaps in the future, if a 1 Speed 9+ Accuracy 15 STR Deadly, Devastating grand weapon comes out then this would be something worth revisiting. But then again, the Chakram from the Dragon King is a somewhat superior version of this card as –Evasion on the monster is better than +Accuracy, so maybe not. Also, bows + arrows are a thing and they get a mastery.

Ultimately, the fact that Thrown Weapons STILL do not have a mastery puts this one on the bad list.

Silk Bomb
Resource intensive, single use, mediocre effect. This thing is a waste of the card stock it is printed on. It’s OK to have situational cards in this game, but finding a situation where ignoring knockback and bash for one round in exchange for a gear that takes up 1 slot that costs 2 resources + 2 silk? I can’t see people lining up round the block for this one.

Silk Whip
At the moment Whips are pretty mediocre weapons. A Silk Whip is not much better than a Rawhide one. It’s easier to make overall, but no-one is lining up to get their hands on whips. However, it is worth noting that the Silk Whip is borderline amazing in the hands of the right survivor.

Hooded Scrap Katar
This one is almost a decent weapon; however, when you compare it to the Lion Beast Katar you’ll find that exchanging deadly for +1 STR and a Paired ability which is very difficult to trigger is not worth it. I look at this and then I look at other automatic wound weapons like the Counterweight Axe (Weapon Crafter) and Acid-Tooth Daggers (Gorm) and I don’t like them at all in comparison.

In order to get the ability to deal an extra wound to trigger you need to wield two Katars (which is bad, because that’s an extra gear slot lost just to gain +2 Speed), and hit with at least 4 attacks. You then have to weather the various reactions from the monster. All of that just to get one extra wound? I’m not sure I’d even want these with a Red Savior.

In a campaign with no White Lion I could see this being used, maybe. But at that point you’re probably using The Gorm instead and that means you have access to the far, far superior Acid-Tooth Daggers.

Cooking
Ugh. This is so frustrating, but there are so many little parts of the Spidicules expansion that help make Cooking more relevant. However, the Screaming Antelope is so key to the whole cooking process that if you let Spidicules replace the Antelope then it counters all of the little cooking related benefits Spidicules brings along. Seeing all these places where you can gain Vermin resources because of the Spidicules expansion and then seeing how limited you are in what you can use them for is frustrating. 

Poots has claimed that the Spidicules/antelope interaction is ‘as intended’ but it is clear to me that when you breakdown the mechanics of this expansion that not everything was considered.

 Opiliones nothing wrong with this innovation per say, but a decision was made to have it be a requirement for part of the Green Armor and it is the ONLY element of the Spidicules expansion that Green Armor requires. Ugh!

Know what? If you wanted to play with the Green Armor and decided to make a proxy innovation card for Choreia by sourcing the card image somehow. Well, I wouldn’t condone your actions, but I would one hundred percent understand why you did it.

Given what we know about Poots I don’t think this was a marketing move to force people to purchase Spidicules, I’m sure he just thought it was cool to involve the expansion somehow in his super hard prestige achievement expansion. But, regardless of the intent it is still a pretty sucky thing that this has happened.

Amber Poleaxe

As mentioned above, this one was going to make it onto the bad list as well. The ability on the Amber Poleaxe is pretty freaking broken, with the right setup

Red Ring

Automatic wounds that ignore hit locations are a bad thing, a very bad thing indeed. I've written in detail about one of the builds available for this item here on my patreon, so I'm not going to repeat myself. It is just basically I think this item needs to go back to the drawing board completely because it is the second most busted thing in the game (after the Counter-weighted Axe).

Bonus: What is needed to make Spidicules Superb?

This expansion is just shy of being one that the community in general would embrace and love, there is a lot of great material in here and I can see why some players want to defend the expansion. However, it also has a lot of problems, problems that can be addressed. So here are a list of suggestions you may want to consider house ruling if you are finding Spidicules as it stands leaves a bad taste in your mouth.

1. Introduce Spidicules later in the campaign. Thereby keeping the Screaming Antelope.
There is a fair bit of synergy between Spidicules and the Antelope, letting them both exist in the same timeline helps fix the problems Spidicules presents. This is also the only way to allow Spidicules to coexist with People of the Sun and the Slender Man expansions without removing access to content.

This is the solution you’ll see most Spidicules fans recommend, which is not really an example of an expansion that works right.

2. Change the nominated survivors for Young Rivals to allow any males, even ones with 0 hunt exp.
When you play with Spidicules for a while, you end up gaming Young Rivals at the start of the game. Either you level up a disposable couple of men in lantern year 1 and sacrifice one of them, or you go full amazon for the first two years so you do not have any men who meet the criteria. This is not how things should be. Players should not be gaming the system in this manner to avoid a timeline event that introduces a monster. The proposed change here keeps the flavor of the event and still allows for an early Principle: Death trigger, however it doesn’t force players to lose survivors they are just beginning to get attached to.

3. Have Taken target a random survivor in the settlement for the Spidicules Revenge
This is mechanically smoother and also makes more sense than the way that the existing one works.  Instead of losing one of your hunters, the other Spidicules take advantage of the settlement's fighters being out with the settlement's gear and steal someone who was left in the settlement.

This puts retired survivors at risk and also makes players have to make a hard decision about who to take out on the hunt each time. It's just cleaner, feels less bad and makes more sense.

4. Provide new cooking recipes that use Spidicules parts in place of antelope ones.
Pretty straightforward right? I don’t see why this was not a thing in the expansion anyway as Spidicules has closer ties to vermin resources than any other expansion apart from the Dung Beetle Knight. There is a huge missed opportunity here, there could have even been a super powerful recipe that used the "Antelope" Bladder because you can theoretically get that from a legless ball.

Why?
I think it’s clear here that Spidicules is at best an average expansion that contains a lot of mechanically controversial decisions. This is not something I would recommend to anyone who is just starting out in the game. There is too much artificial difficulty in this expansion and too many elements that do not gel well. It’s an early game monster that punishes you hard for hunting it in the early game and provides very little decent gear for the late game.

If you do complete it and get the affinities activated, the armor is pretty cool. I also like the Shield, the Body Suit and the Rings. So, it could be worse! It's just not for everyone.

Leave this one for the more experienced players, you’re better off spending your money on the Dragon King, Sunstalker or a couple of the smaller box expansions. May I instead recommend a Gorm, Dung Beetle Knight or a Sunstalker if you are new to this game?

Where?
Spending 99% of its time sat in my display cabinet, fortunately there is a lot of room underneath it for me to keep other monsters and survivors. It certainly looks cool sat there and the spider silk survivors are also very striking!

It’s not coming back out on the board without a house rules re-write of the rulebook that’s for sure.

Score?
It feels bad to write this, but I can’t give Spidicules more than six egg sacs out of ten, it’s an average experience in a game filled with amazing ones. This is an expansion that only needed a few tweaks to become everything it should and could be, as it stands however, this one is for experienced players who are looking to make their game harder and should be near the bottom of your purchasing priority list.

6/10