Clubbed to Death: The Bone Club's Power (Patreon)

So when I reviewed the Bone Smith location, there was some interest/disbelief in my assessment of the bone club. Which I have gone on record as saying is probably one of the most powerful weapons in the game.

When I first saw this weapon, I was impressed with the statline, but concerned about the drawback of cumbersome.  For those of you without access to the card right now, the Bone Club is as follows:

• 2 Speed
• 6+ Accuracy
• 5 Strength
• Cumbersome
• Weapon, Melee, 2Handed, Bone, Heavy, Club
• Red Affinities on Left and Right

The first thing that should strike you is that this weapon hits harder than the average weapon crafter weapon.  Seriously, it has the same strength as the Finger of God and only the Zanbato is higher strength also, compared to the Zanbato, Bone Weapons and similar this weapon is not frail.  

In fact, in the entire club category the only club that is superior is the hard to craft Riot Mace (not including Green Armor shenanigans).

The next part of this puzzle was the changing of Club Mastery in 1.5.  The Specialisation doubles your first wound attempt on a perfect hit and the Mastery causes any wound that is double the monster's toughness to cause an additional wound (here is the KDM reveal image for reference).

What this means is that clubs have become late game crushing machines, perfect for handling high level monsters with huge toughness - and that happens when you have just the specialisation. If you get access to Timeless Eye then the Club becomes even more powerful.

However, I'm sure by now you're thinking "But fen, it has cumbersome, that's an awful drawback on a melee weapon, I know - I've been saddled with the Twilight Sword by that Hooded Douche before!" Well, yes, but as it turns out when you have amazing weapon stats cumbersome on a melee weapon is something you can work around with relative ease.

Crafting Efficiency

Now, there is no argument that the Zanbato and Counter-weighted Axe (CWA) are overall stronger weapons than the Bone Club for a lot of the campaign, however they are less efficient and for an early settlement the more efficient you are in your crafting the easier your time becomes. 

There's no way that you're going to skip out on the Zanbato or CWA in a campaign, but you do want to note that these weapons have a prerequisite cost of 1 endeavor, 3 bones and 1 hide.  That's actually pretty huge and don't get me wrong, I do advocate rushing the Weapon Crafter for settlements with a lot of bones and spare hide. But the Bone Club offers an alternative path which is very powerful in its own right.

Your first Zanbato costs 1 endeavor, 3 bone, 1 great cat bone and 3 hide. That's actually a huge investment and it's not one you can make without some form of Hit Location control.  (Also the Zanbato is a Lion specific weapon, so it's not always an option).  Likewise the first CWA costs 1 endeavor, 5 bone, 3 hide and an organ.

Now these assessments are a bit of a fallacy because that unlock cost for the weapon crafter isn't exactly a price for the weapons and there are other benefits to the location; however it is at least a partial contribution. So it is fair to say that the Zanbato costs around 4-5 resources and the CWA costs between 5-6.  This is in part because there is almost nothing else worth crafting from the weapon crafter unless you're phoenix hunting and building a Screaming Katana survivor.

Essentially, the Bone Club is about 30-50% of the costs of the Weapon Crafter weapons without ever costing hide and that can mean a LOT early on where your trying to get armor for all 4 survivors (one of the largest dictators of success in early KDM is getting sets of rawhide/screaming armor/leather easily). 

But!

In itself that wouldn't be anything much to crow about, because the bone club would just be an expensive T1 weapon.  However, with clever play the Bone Club remains viable and eventually becomes the equivalent of a T6 (Blacksmith) weapon. So the real kicker with this weapon is you can pay 3 bone to have one survivor's weapon sorted for the ENTIRE campaign.  That's an absolutely ridiculous benefit.

With one huge cost: Cumbersome, it's a massive issue.

But what if I told you that with the right playstyle and loadout there are multiple ways you can make use of the club without worrying about cumbersome. There are loads of armor sets that have neat tricks to work around the weapon and at times you'll barely notice it's an issue.

Un-Cumbersome!

Right, so there are two main tricks to making use of the bone club without worrying about, these are:

• Movement abilities
• Monster control

Movement Abilities

Movement abilities come in armor sets, either in the bonuses or sometimes on certain pieces of armor.  The most basic version of this would be the Leather Boots on the Leather armor set, which allows you to move one space after your act. This is of very minimal benefit to a cumbersome attacker, however it is not to be overlooked when combined with Monster Control.

Here are a selection of these abilities, there are more out there, but you can look for them yourself (hint, Guard is one of them, but it's tricky to use).

As you can see, each one of these provides a way to move and attack with a cumbersome melee weapon and gives different benefits when you do.  Personally I think the best one for the Bone Club is the Dragon Armor (especially when attacking the Dragon King and Sunstalker because they are 4x4, which is perfect distance for the armor's ability).

Yes, you will still only get to make one attack a turn, but with the Bone Club it's about making that attack have the highest chance of scoring wounds. So anything that adds to accuracy and strength is very potent.

Monster Control

This one is a little more subtle and it's very much a playstyle thing, personally my preference when playing KDM is to place one very hard to hit/wound target in front of the monster and manipulate its AI to try and ensure that the monster will attack that target.

What this means is that early on I'll employ a loadout of Bone Club + Rawhide Armor + Monster Grease and on the turns where the Bone Club wielder is unable to attack due to positioning he will use the Rawhide Headband to bring the Monster back to him.  When combined with Rhythm Chaser and Tall Grass this can make early game monsters almost completely trivial (especially because the club has such a high chance to wound). Also don't forget SotF adding to this equation!

Later on, I will have a separate rawhide support survivor do the job while the Club Tank mostly concentrates on blocking (and provides the occasional power hit when the window arises).  This becomes especially powerful when you reach the Clubber's final form.

Here is my usual loadout.

Note that the Skullcap Hammer is something I consider a flex slot (often there's a pickaxe there) and the Scrap Shield can be any piece of gear with a left or right facing red (because the Bone Club will go either in the bottom left or bottom right corner of the grid no problem).  A good example of a replacement item is a Monster Tooth Necklace for +2 strength.

As you can see, at this point the Bone Club becomes a 2/4+/5/Sharp/Cumbersome weapon, which means that it's rolling before survivor buffs between a 8 and 25 on its wounding rolls (averaging a 16). That's sufficient for most L3s and it's really only the Gold Smoke Knight that'll be an issue to wound without the Death Die.

Also as a quick aside, +speed -accuracy becomes a bit of a boon on club users when they hit the Specialisation. For the same reasons it works well on the CWA.

Downside:

However, there is one last thing which has to be acknowledged, the Bone Club costs 2 survival to attack twice with, you first have to Dash + Activation and then you have to Surge + Movement. This means you cannot activate your Bone Club during the monster's turn and generally you need deep survival reserves to be able to attack twice with this weapon. So in general terms, if you have a Club, it's a once per turn thing, with your surge held for activating a shield.

Summary:

There is a LOT more that could be written about this weapon, but in essence the proof is in the eating. Until you try and make this weapon work, it's hard to see how much stronger all its upsides are when compared to its downsides (2H, Heavy, Cumbersome).  

It took playing with the weapon to turn me onto how powerful it was, especially in how much it smooths out early fights by letting you power through a monster's wound stack (vital in games where you are pre-farming). 

So I would like to urge you to consider trying out the Bone Club in one of your settlement's runs. You might not click with the playstyle, but if you do you can reap the benefits.