Echos of Death: Gencon Release (Patreon)

This new mini-expansion has been announced just ahead of its Gencon release and I thought I would strike while the Iron is hot and quickly leak/lightly review the information for you guys.

It's a boxed set with 4 plastic Generic Hero Class miniatures in it, they are the Thief, Mage, Necromancer and Fighter. 

There is also game content and I've already seen enough to be able to run through essentially what this expansion appears to be.  So given that this is just based on the FB sneak video/images let's dive in.

So Echoes of Death is essentially a miniature legacy system for your games of KD:M. The Strain System places these milestone cards onto the settlement sheet for all games until you achieve the respective milestone.  Then you discard the milestone forever and your Fighting Art deck gains a new strain fighting art.

These milestones and their respective fighting arts are:

• Surviving Trepanning 5 times -> Infinite Lives
• Have 5 Black Lichen and then consume one -> Ethereal Pact
• Survivor with Prey or Secretive Disorder has 15+ insanity -> Backstabber
• Survivor with Marrow Hunger has a child from intimacy -> Giant's Blood.

Each of these fighting arts appear to do the following:

(Thanks to Tennisdude9993 for this clearer image).

Infinite Lives

You can't create new memories.

You cannot gain new fighting arts or disorders. When you would gain one, instead gain a lifetime! Which means a new name and lifetime reroll and +1 survival for naming yourself. 

Ethereal Pact

Gain +3 on brain trauma rolls

When you suffer the Impossible! Brain Trauma, you become a savior. If you are already past Age 2, you don't get your savior SFA.

Backstabber

On a perfect hit with a dagger, your next wound attempt gains Devastating 1. 

When you attack with a dagger in the blind spot, if you have the hoarder or Secretive disorder, increase your perfect strike range by 1.

Giant's Blood

Permanent +1 Strength, -1 Evasion. You may consume skulls, if you do, gain the Marrow Hunger impairment.

If I've mis-read anything, please do let me know!

Thoughts:

So out of all of these, it's Backstabber and Infinite Lives that are the real doozies.  Backstabber is really, really close to the CE Dagger redesign, so I'm super happy to see it in the game because that's one of the largest complaints about daggers, they don't backstab in KD:M, now they do. I can say it's already really powerful (I'm also amused that the mechanic for Perfect hits is very similar to how we've set things up for CE).

Infinite Lives is a source of rerolls with immunity to disorders, combine that with Accept Darkness and your survivor is essentially immune to death via brain trauma at the cost of no Fighting Arts. Solid.

Giant's Blood is pretty bad overall. That's a weak trade off of stats (+3 Strength for -1 Evasion is a reasonable deal - +1 is not) and the Marrow Hunger impairment isn't something you're really after. However, this one might become stronger if the Gambler's Chest pads out skull eating survivors even more and makes Murder a more powerful event.  At the moment however your giant's blood survivor is basically a murder target to protect your progress towards weapon masters. Same thing saviors are used for, speaking of which.

Ethereal Pact isn't very good in game, as becoming a savior sucks ass these days - especially if you become a savior who can't get their SFA. However, it is interesting from a lore standpoint because it shows a connection between the Black Lichen and the realm of the Ethereal Dreamer. So it is at least cool from a lore perspective.

Also with this FA you can have multiple saviors again. Woo, seems like limiting the number of saviors a settlement could have to just one was a bad idea maybe? (it was, it's a huge nerf to Protect the Young).

So. overall the mechanic is an interesting one, giving you rewards for playing over multiple campaigns and trying to encourage you to do weird things. Some of these are very easy to unlock (Backstabber, Infinite Lives) and some of them require a fair bit of work (5 Black Lichen is a tall order for the average player).  

I like the idea and I hope that it's the starting point for a whole lot of legacy style content (because essentially that's how KD:M's first campaign could and should have been designed!).  Good stuff!

There we go, hopefully these sets pop up in the KDM Store after Gencon and there are enough copies for everyone who wants one!  Good luck!  

Also if anything else good/unique turns up outside of images such as the ones Liz B posted on her instagram. I'll update again!