All by myself. Don’t want to be, all by myself anymore: The Comprehensive Review of The Lonely Tree Expansion (Patreon)

While controversy surrounds a few of the expansions in Kingdom Death; The Lion God offends some and seems content light to others, many feel that Spidicules harms the game more than it helps and there are even people who can’t get over their personal hang ups when dealing with the Sunstalker. However, you will find that there is one expansion which receives almost universal agreement that it has ‘a pretty model, but disappointing content’.

This is the Lonely Tree, standing by itself, rarely interacting with anything at all, a true standalone expansion in every sense of the word.

As always, spoilers abound, so if you want to avoid having the surprises of this expansion spoiled for you then move on to the Why? Where? and Score? sections of this review down there.

Now that the weed whackers have headed off to trim some shrubs let’s get to work.

So, grab your sharpest axe, we’re going to get to the root of this problem.

Who?
The Lonely Tree is a unique entity in the world of Kingdom Death. According to the lore we have; it is the product of a merging between an old tree and a woman who loved a man who could never be happy. After she gave everything she could to the man she became overwhelmed and ended her life at the base of this tree. 

As a result of it drawing in her vital essence the Tree awoke. It is now either possessed by the spirit of the woman or it holds a facsimile of the woman inside it. Its first action upon reaching sentience was to lure the woman’s former lover to the tree – he was never heard from again, but the tree bore a tear shaped fruit.

As a consequence of this, either the imprint from the woman or the man (or perhaps both) has left the Lonely Tree with a tortured existence. Those who eat its fruit are drawn to it by visions of a beautiful woman, they experience a lifetime of dreams while the tree feeds on them and in the morning they are gone and all that is left is a new fruit hanging from the tree.

The idea of trees that slay the weary, unaware or weak of character by luring them under their branches is something that has been around for many years. My first experience of trees like this was in the second book of the Coldfire Trilogy by C. S. Friedman (When True Night Falls) and I unashamedly adore that trio of books. ‘Old Man Willow’ from the Fellowship of the Ring is another example of this. However the root of the myth may well be from The Madagascar Tree, which was told in 1874 and is worth your time.

The Lonely Tree is Kingdom Death’s own delightful spin on this piece of (relatively) modern folklore.

What?
What do you get in the box this time? Well the Lonely Tree expansion is dominated by the plastic model of the Tree itself. Most model trees are pretty poor in design, barely evolved from the railway modelling trees that they originated from. However in later years there were some pretty excellent trees released by Games Workshop. The Lonely Tree has a similar style to these, but it is even larger, more ornate and beautiful.

There is very little to complain about with the physical nature of this model, while it is difficult to assemble so the lack of instructions being included in the box is a serious shortcoming, but once it has been built it is solid and looks really good. 

Likewise the monster fruit sculpts are durable and practical. In fact the only real problem here is it can be a little tricky to hang all 6 fruit on the tree in an attractive fashion.

In addition to the Lonely Tree you receive a model to represent the Lonely Lady – it has no game content linked to it at all, but it is a nice model – and you get a rulebook AI, Hit Location, Strange Resources cards; plus a Terrain and a Hunt Card.

The Hunt Card is of irritation to me, it is clearly a different color to any of the other basic hunt card and for anyone who has a reasonable level of observation it stands out like a sore thumb. This is even more perplexing when you consider that the terrain card for the Lonely Tree matches the rest of the terrain deck very well. It seems that the printers just decided to use a different brown and quality assurance let that slide or it was printed by an entirely different factory. This is a real shame, and there is not a lot that can be done about this outside of dealing from the bottom of the deck (still shows you when the tree is coming) or using opaque card sleeves that hide the design. Both are not ideal solutions - and it doesn't seem that this issue is going to get any better, because newer hunt events like Fade and Stumpy both have their own unique shades of brown on the back.

Speaking of "Shames", the rulebook has a few of these. I’m going to put them in the How? Section as issues rather than describe them here, because it’s not exactly something physically wrong with the expansion, the rot lays deeper inside the trunk than just the physical.

How?
So how does this one impact on your games?

Well the Lonely Tree arrives in game in one of two ways. Either you draw its basic hunt event and then if you have the prerequisites it will appear during the showdown as a piece of terrain. Or if you just draw it as a piece of terrain then it will also turn up. The second way works in a really odd fashion because you have no warning and no way to avoid the tree. It is also a way for the Tree to turn up inside your settlement – which is a bit of an odd occurrence when you really think about it. 

Odd and unpleasant, because the way the tree interacts with monsters can make a nemesis fight quite the challenge. There are simple rules to follow that allow you to overcome this when dealing with most monsters.

Once you have encountered the tree as a piece of terrain, which is its dormant state, you are given a piece of Lonely Fruit – having a survivor eat this will end their brief existence and then immediately trigger a special showdown against the Lonely Tree. This is the active version of the Lonely Tree and it is a very different beast when compared to the terrain version.

Then, once you have encountered the tree once the rules get a little unclear as to whether you can encounter it again or not, I’ll explain the situation in the issues section below. But first of all let us hit the positives before we move onto the negatives.

Eden’s fruit is tempting because:

Beautiful Models
No two ways about it, this is one of the best looking trees in any game ever. It is full of detail and the way the design branches out in multiple directions feels more natural than any other tree released to date. The way that the tree replicates the art of the Nightmare Tree tile is likewise very welcome. The Monster Fruit and the Lonely Lady are also stunning sculpts.

Can be used to represent the Nightmare Tree
It has uses outside of the Showdown Fight, 3D terrain is a wonderful thing to experience in the game and I am always pleased to put the tree out on the board. It does have some issues when you do this

Unique rewards
All four of the fruit you can get from the tree are unique and have the potential for very powerful builds, they are also limited because they are not gear cards, they instead grant a special ability to one survivor – lose that survivor and the ability is gone forever. Each of the four fruits enable a different kind of build, one uses strength tokens to create luck tokens, one allows you to leverage bleeding for a benefit for example. Also one of them, gives you access to one of the People of the Lantern savior abilities.

It’s a powerful double edged sword with the nerfs that have been laid upon saviors, especially if you place this ability on one of the Constellations from People of the Stars or Warriors of the Sun from People of the Sun (if you are brave enough to fight the tree in People of the Sun that is). High risk, high reward! Be aware that this will age that survivor out of use very quickly if you do this, you can't make them Ageless anymore, Ageless saviors get no benefits from the ability (see White Secret in the main rulebook).

It also allows you to get a second savior in a People of the Lantern campaign. 

Also when beating the level 3 tree (with cooking) all survivors gain ‘Super Hair’ which is a decent ability to have on a group of survivors and can create some amazing combinations when used with other fighting arts. 

 That is quite powerful, but overall the L3 Tree isn't super worth fighting.

Challenging and unique scenario
The showdown fight with the Lonely Tree is unique. Now each monster’s showdown fight in the game is unique in some fashion, but the tree stands out from the pack. For a start it is the only fight we have a static monster that attacks exclusively via range, either through throwing fruit, leaves, roots or other tree like implements. It is a special showdown (literally and figuratively) and I am never disappointed when I experience it.

In addition, this is the first monster who is weak to axes, and as I have mentioned in other reviews I appreciate monsters with unusual weaknesses that reward slightly offbeat weapon choices. I rate axes as the fifth or sixth best weapon mastery in the game, but it is so hard to fit them into builds when you have the essential defensive masteries of Shield plus Fist and Tooth and the offensive powerhouses that are Grand, Bow and Katar. Axes get to shine here, it’s both thematic and just awesome in general.

Interesting Method of Integration
It is hard to encounter the tree, but that is honestly OK, it is fine to have unicorns in Kingdom Death as that increases replay ability. I do appreciate how the tree is slotted into the game, it’s a low impact expansion that you just leave in all the time and see if it turns up. It is fine that expansions like that are present, they just need to not be as expensive as the Tree is.

The worms in this apple are:

The Mess that is the Rules
Nestled in the rules is a section that explains that the tree is immune to knockdown and cannot be moved under any circumstances. These rules could, and should have been printed on a trait card for the tree rather than wedged in the rules. I have seen quite a few people not realize that there are extra trait rules for the tree in the book, rules like these ones should be on a card.

On top of this there are multiple typos that refer to monster fruit, fail to refer to the Dreamer’s Fruit and as such the expansion is intensely confusing for someone who isn’t aware of the process of the tree via a third party. It is a relatively simple expansion to use, but not when everything is named incorrectly.

The Lonely Lady
This model is referenced in the timeline event, but it has no gaming related content what-so-ever, it is just a pretty little piece you can paint up and keep on the shelf. You might be OK with that, but after reading the timeline event I felt that the Lonely Lady is a wasted opportunity.

However, the very first complete custom campaign I release will include a unique Lonely Lady nemesis as the main antagonist. It is coming along nicely, I just need to be able to afford spending less time on commissions and more time on card design (which is in part what this Patreon is here to let me do, and I thank you for that).  

So I hope to fix this issue and give you guys more content for the Tree.

The Timeline Event
This is another one of the great KD:M ‘Gotchya’ moments that I so despise. The event not only annihilates the survivor who ate the fruit, but it forces an immediate showdown with the tree. The first time that this happens it can catch a group completely unawares and even launch them into a ‘game over’ situation (unexpectedly losing 5 survivors can be really tough at the wrong time). 

However, once you have experienced this once, you are prepared for it and the Tree becomes trivial because you can take advantage of its weakness with the following point.

Gaming the Tree
While you are not in control of when the tree initially turns up you are completely in control of when you have to fight your showdown against it. The Tree ‘levels up’ in a step system, it is level 1 till LY12, then level 2 from 12 to 16 and level 3 at 16+. Because the power of survivors increase gradually the gap between the tree and the survivors is at its lowest in LY11, LY15 and then as late as is reasonable after LY 16. Depending which fruit you want to get from it you can trigger the tree at the last possible moment, after crafting for that lantern year, and hit it when it is weak.

This turns the Tree from being a frightening foe into a neat little quick farm for the survivors.

The Strange is it Unique or Not? Rules Issue
So, when you draw the Object of Desire hunt card and resolve it then it is removed from the game afterwards. This means you can only encounter the tree via the hunt once per campaign. That’s fine, because once you have encountered the tree it should start to trigger the events that cause it to lure a survivor away.

However, the tree remains a terrain piece, even after you’ve defeated the tree in the nemesis fight it can turn up again and again over and over. Technically it is possible (though unlikely) to have double digits of Lonely Fruit stored up in your storage and therefore fight the tree multiple times for the various rewards (or even the same reward multiple times). This is all because the terrain card isn’t archived and the reward fruit from the tree gets archived when it is placed in storage, meaning you can encounter the tree and get the same reward again.

If that is the intent, then fine, but when you consider how the hunt event works it seems unlikely that the designers intended for it to be this way.

This could have been fixed by simply having the Lonely Tree terrain card archive itself (and the hunt card) when the monster showdown where the terrain card turns up ends. As it stands right now it appears that either there are multiple lonely trees or the darn thing can bring itself back to life.

Because of how hard it is to get a direct response from Adam and the design team on so many of the unclear areas in KD:M; I still don't know what the design intent was. Is it a unique thing (as the hunt card suggests) or are there multiple trees per timeline (as the terrain situation suggests)?

Overall lack of content
This is an expensive expansion, it is so because of the sheer physical size and complexity of the tree, but with other large, expensive and complex monsters you get a lot of game content. You just don’t here, there is less content in the Lonely Tree than there is in any other expansion in the entire of Wave 1. You get less showdown fights, less rewards, the rewards are more temporary because they are abilities and not gear. For the price you pay you’d be right to expect content level around the Gorm or Dung Beetle Knight in level, but nope - it's pretty sparse, less than any other nemesis by a long margin. 

You don't even get cute sculpts of the 5 fruits. Which was a missed opportunity.

No Super Hair Survivor Models
It’s quite hard to make these survivors, it requires you beat the level 3 tree and have cooking innovated. However, it would have been amazing if the expansion had included 4 sculpts for them, it certainly would have increased excitement and engagement with the expansion by a huge amount. People would have seen these unique looking survivors and asked ‘how can I get these?’ It’s not a dealbreaker, but it could have been very cool.

Why?
I would recommend the tree for someone who has a fair bit of extra cash to burn and wants something that adds to the experience of playing the game only a little bit. The Lonely Tree is a splashable expansion, but it is absolutely style over substance. Early on you are best served by getting expansions with quarry monsters, something like this should be the last wave 1 expansion you get, it has less in game content than the Green Armor expansion and that is just 2 models, an armor set card and some craftable gear.

But for those who can justify the cost, or pick up the expansion in a sale. This is content you can add to every single campaign, so there is definitely
value for money over time if you are someone who plays a lot of KD:Monster.  

It's also really nice to paint.

Where?
I’m going to keep mine right on the board when the terrain card ‘Nightmare Tree’ is drawn. At least we can enjoy how pretty it is more often then.

Score?
The best I can do for this expansion is a meagre 5 and a half monster fruits out of ten trees. This expansion is riddled with typos, rules issues and has very little content. Expansions like the Gorm, Dung Beetle Knight and Sunstalker are shining examples of how expansions should be made, the Lonely Tree is ‘how expansions should not be made’.
 

But at least it's a better nemesis fight than the Lion Knight. :P