Difficult to Acquire, Simple to Use: A Comprehensive Review of the White Box Items (Patreon)

And now, dear reader, it is time to take a quick squifty at the promotional material available in the game. Specifically the various ones that come with items that allow you to craft the stuff in game. So if it doesn't have rules for incorporating it into the game, I'm not going to touch on it here.

This review has many different boxes in it at once, so I'm not going to try and keep it brief for each item.

So strap up, get your wallet ready, and let's dive into the realms of the promotional material.

Percival

Honestly I really do not care for this promo at all. Percival gets a lot of hype because of the very nice miniature depicting  Ol' Stumpo the Dead. But the game material is a big old stinker. 

It's an additional basic hunt event (nice); that does nothing at all most of the time (boo), and when it does do something because you have innovated a marginal innovation what you get is honestly really bad. Like it's trash.

On top of that, the card is printed with a different colour to all the other hunt events (and slightly larger), so it's obvious when it is going to be drawn unless you employ some form of work around.

The hype on this one is basically around the miniature; which is a nice looking piece, combined with some very weak in game material. Honestly this one is overpriced for what you get because it doesn't even really add any content most of the time.

3/10

Fade

After the disappointment that is Percival, Fade comes as a breath of fresh air. Again this is one of the more chase promotion white boxes, but this time it has more justification.

Fade's miniature is honestly superior to Stumpo's in every aspect, but also the hunt event blows the other one out of the water. Fade's hunt event is meaningful when it turns up; it provides very useful pieces of gear, but at a price. I love designs like this which say 'here is something that will benefit you, but it may cost or kill'. It's great.  Also this expansion has indirect interactions with the White Speaker promo set and it's set to have direct ones with the Red Witches. This is because Fade only died recently, unlike Stumpo who died a long, long time ago.

However, once again I have to deduct a bit from the score because of production issues.

7/10

Before the Wall

The single best promotional item out there right now, Before the Wall includes the Vagabond Armor set and Tabard. Giving you everything you need to be able to build Vagabond Armor instead of Leather Armor.  While this armor set really shines once you get access to Beyond the Wall; Before the Wall is all you need to get trucking on this one. And that's why it is sold out.

Vagabond Armor is powerful, interesting and great for groups that have issues with getting weapon masteries.

10/10

Beyond the Wall

This is the less popular of the two Aya promotions for a good reason. While the items included in the promo are very powerful, the decision to not include a copy of the Vagabond set bonus card in this box has meant that many people do not pick it up. That's just poor marketing on the part of Adam Poots Games.

However I very much appreciate having access to these two items, especially as an alternative way to build Vagabond Armor faster and earlier because the Cloth Leggings have a very cheap crafting cost.

7/10

White Speaker

This promotional boxed set expands upon the White Speaker event from the Storytelling innovation.  It provides a way to purchase two excellent items from the White Speaker when she visits.

The first is the Blood Skin, an item that provides practical immunity to death via Bleed tokens along with an up and down green affinity. This is an item that has a lot of use in self-bleed based builds instead of bandages as well as being good for Gorment Armor builds which are supposed to survive pick up lots of severe injuries, but struggle to fit Bandages into their build.

The second is my favourite dagger in the entire game, the Cult Speaker Knife. It's a Fist and Tooth/Dagger hybrid weapon and it is very powerful. I have read from many people that they think this weapon is 'broken'; I've played with it a lot and while it is very powerful, it's not broken imo - it is on par with top level weapons, but it never gets a particularly strong offensive mastery - dagger mastery is not very potent in this game, and Fist & Tooth is not what you want to have on your end game attackers. So generally this is a pretty balanced weapon because you have to give up having access to one of the other much better offensive weapon types (Katar, Grand Weapon, Bow, Axe, Spear, Sword)

9/10

Allison

Allison does the unthinkable, she manages to make the Hooded Knight event suck a bit less. She adds an additional event that gives you access to a decent lantern (relevant because of spoilers) and a hood that allows a newbie to handle the twilight sword when they are not insane (very important).

This promo has absolutely no relevance outside of People of the Lantern however, so it's hard to score it higher than a...

7/10

Halloween Twilight Knight

Once a year you have an opportunity to get your hands on a lantern that doesn't really do much except be a lantern with a marginal ability that triggers upon the death of a survivor.  In addition, the lantern is irreplaceable and has zero affinities, so there is almost no place in the game where this item has relevance.

It's a cute curioso at best.

2/10

Xmas Holiday Pinup Twilight Knight

I really want to give this one full marks, because the Xmaxe is one of my all time favourite items in the game as it's a more powerful Gloom Katana (Gloom Katana is an interesting, but fatally flawed weapon imo) and also Axes are straight up cooler than katanas in all circumstances.

However, this promo costs a LOT, and paying all that money to get an axe, no matter how awesome it is (and the Xmaxe is seriously awesome), is not for everyone. So you have to decide if you also want the 54mm Holiday Pinup Twilight Knight for something (selling it on the secondary market without the promo card is not a very good return on investment).

8/10

Pinups of Death

In this set you get a huge amount of pinup models, plus the Settlement Event 'A Strange Spot' and its linked gear card 'The Belt of Gender Swap'.

Anything that adds more non-sucky settlement events to the settlement deck is something that I have a great deal of time for and the Strange spot/Gender Swap is just brilliant (even though it created that awful, detestable Anonymous Survivor we're going to have to put up with in the 1.5 Kickstarter material).

This event always gets a bit of a laugh when its first drawn, it can create some great storytelling moments and the cursed gear item isn't completely useless because it has 2 neat green affinities.  This is the gold standard for promotional material, but I can't give it full marks because of the cost involved.

8/10 (10/10 if you want the pinups also)

Holiday White Speaker Nico

Another christmas promo with a pile of "unneeded" plastic in tow. This one gives us another settlement event  (see above) so that's already put it in my good books. 

This settlement event is an odd one, because it used to be a punishment for cheaters. However it's become a benefit to have survival of the fittest forced onto your settlement, and it's also fun to 'increase the cheating count by one' whenever players do something a little questionable. (Ominous).

Also the redo on a fight is an amazing thing to get because it lets you push at fighting something outside of your comfort zone with a safety net for all your survivors (apart from saviours, but who cares about them these days?)

8/10

As for the rest, well they are not designed to be officially added to the campaign so I don't intend to review them at this time.