I'm Garth Marenghi and Welcome to my Darkplace: The Comprehensive Review of the Slender Man Expansion (Patreon)

-- Rare extract of the title song from the cancelled Slender Man cartoon series which aired in the 1980s, only half an episode of the first season survived. It was later revived as the science fiction suspense drama ‘Stranger Things’. They did not keep the theme tune.

(Note: Patreon just ate the second part of the article on SFAs, it even destroyed the saved draft copy which was at 90% done, so I'm releasing this review early instead of re-writing all of that material. Sigh.)

As always, ahead in this dark, water infested place lurk a huge amount of giant spoilers, so if you want to go into the experience of fighting the Slender Man blind do not read any further on. You have been warned. You can skip to the bottom and read the Why? Where? and Score? sections to get a spoiler free overview.

Who?
Who is the Slender Man? Well, he is the first ‘internet folklore’ to have arisen and really taken sufficient root in humanities collective consciousness’s sufficiently to be considered a true folk tale. If you are not familiar with the tale of the Slender Man and his various incarnations I would recommend that you do a little Googling and at least learn how this creature came to be. Do not worry, such reading will not spoiler anything to do with Slendy, that’s my job – as long as he doesn’t get me first.

In the world of Kingdom Death the Slender Man comes from some strange alternate dimension filled with ‘dark water’ where he dwells along with his victims. Completely forgettable to the point where survivors memories will fail to retain information about his existence the Slender Man is free to slide into the world, abduct his chosen victims and then depart. However, eventually the illusion breaks and the blotted out memories of those who survive encounters with the Slender Man will return, whether you want them to or not…

What?
So what’s in the box? What’s in the box?!

This one has a bit more content than most nemesis expansions and that is because this is the (at time of writing) only nemesis expansion with craftable gear. So in addition to old Slendy himself you also get a selection of pieces to represent the weapons you can craft. The sculpts on the weapons are fantastic and the artist should be proud of the way that the Gloom Hammer and Gloom Katana look, they’re on par with the beauties that are the Skleaver and Denticle Axe (Sunstalker Expansion Weapons).

In addition to this you get the usual suspects; lots of cards (AI, HL, Strange Resource, Innovation, Fighting Arts, Disorders and gear cards) and a rulebook that is up to the usual standard i.e. a cover that works as a grease trap and is filled with beautiful artwork and writing issues that can make parts of the game unclear or cause you to miss rules. The rulebook is par for course for Kingdom Death and by that I mean the team need a professional rules lawyer and copy editor to get everything in line.

All in all content wise it is a reasonable deal for a nemesis expansion.

How?
How does the Slender Man integrate into your games? Well this is an expansion with a lot of pain and pleasure at the same time and as such it can feel alternatively amazing and very unfair. But it has such sights to show you (hey, where’s my Cenobite expansion Poots?)

As always I’m going to list the pros and cons of this expansion which I hope should help you make a more informed decision about the benefits and limitations that the Slender Man brings.

First up, the stuff you must try to remember, hold onto these good memories, don’t let him take them away!

Replaces King’s Man
Let’s face it, the King’s Man is a real party pooper, not only is he incredibly hard for the average player to deal with, but the ‘reward’ for beating him involves having a survivor who cannot wear full amour sets and faces an inevitable devolution into a King’s Man. This is a pretty sucky situation for players to deal with, so as annoying as the Slender Man can be, he’s actually fairer than the King’s Man – encounters that punish one player for winning (I’m looking at you Lion Knight and Spidicules) can feel like a cheap shot because they initially ‘gotchya’ a single player and then later on they force one person to take a disposable survivor in. It’s not ideal.

Personally I like the idea of a cursed, doomed individual, striving to protect the settlement and bring some good into the world before their demise hits them, however in practical terms, because the Regal Armor set is terrible and armor sets are so important in the game. It doesn't work out so well.

Also, of all the showdown fights outside of the Lion Knight, the King's Man is the one that is most 'solvable', featuring a trap that's literally irrelevant once you understand it and mechanics that are exploitable. It's obvious that the King's Man is an early design and Poots & Co have done much better since.

So if you do not like this (and to be honest I think the King’s Man is really boring), Slender Man is here to save the day. Like some really awful Superhero who improves the place by being less of a problem than the villain he has driven off - Slenderman is still a hard monster, but it's less one dimensional than the King's Man and never really feels 'solved'.

Craftable Gear
This is a huge one, every other nemesis in the game right now (Wave 1) does not include any form of craftable gear, they might provide some items for beating them (Manhunter), or some resources (Butcher) or some other benefit (Hand, Lion Knight) but this is the only expansion that has stuff you specifically craft from resources gained during the showdown.

Not only that, but these items trend towards being really good, I don’t mind hard monsters but the reward for beating them has to be reasonable, I’m not someone who gets a laugh out of endless, pointless punishment. It’s why I tend towards high challenge, high reward monsters like the Sunstalker and Dung Beetle Knight and shy away from ones where they tend to punish you for success (King’s Man, Spidicules).

Slender Man has the right amount of carrot to make the stick bearable.

Integration with Core Quarry monsters
It is always nice when an expansion has direct integration with other parts of the game, it feels rewarding to realise that you should save X resource from monster Y to use building gear from monster Z (Monster Z is a pain in the ass to beat btw, ugh!) It gives you overarching short term goals that can last from one session to the next. This is why I like the Green Armor so much, even if you can’t build the full set it is very engaging to work towards Fetasarus or (if you get lucky with the disorders) even Griswaldo.

Now Slender Man only integrates with the core game directly. This is something I’m going to just take an aside to discuss here. I like this, but I think Poots should and could have gone further. Integration directly between expansions is very rare. Outside of the Green Armor we have the Tactics cards from the three knight expansions and… Well that’s sort of it really.

 Yes we get gear combinations and synergy between items from one expansion to the next – but we don’t have anything that really links across. The best we get is direct links to the core set (and the above mentioned exceptions). However, this is at least something and I’ll take it!

As an aside, annoyingly the Slender Man has high synergy with some of the Spidicules gear, but you have to make sure that Spidicules does not replace the Screaming Antelope if you want to really get the full benefit of Slendy and Spidy. This is not the fault of the Slender Man, this is Spidicules in action, stupid dumb harvestman.

Gloom Bracelets
Now these are cool as a cucumber. They are an arm accessory that provides 6 armor points (amazing with the Crossarm Block fighting art), +2 Insanity when departing (very useful with the Phoenix Placart) and it also have three affinities. On top of all of that, it’s made from the Lion Tail, an item which previously read ‘build 1 piece of rawhide with this’. That’s an unexpected bonus which I greatly appreciate. This is what I was writing about in the point above in action, adding Slender Man to the game makes a previously average resource become something useful and worth holding on to with the aim of making something cool a bit further down.

More of things like this please Poots!

Gloom Hammer
This neat two handed club is the single sexiest piece of gear in the expansion and tied with the Riot Mace for second sexiest blunt instrument in all of Kingdom Death (first place foes to the Tyrant’s bald head – so much Saint Picard)!

It’s another one of those items that just asks you to construct a build around it, and if you do then you can create the ultimate crowd control character. Someone who constantly draws the attention of the monster – this has huge benefits when combined with stuff that cares about when you are the monster controller, for example the Green and Blue Rings from Spidcules… and lets you spend insanity for other benefits.

Oooo, what could that build be? Do you want to know? Tough, I’m not sharing builds at this point, let me finish writing about all the expansions first. One thing at a time now.

Gloom Mehndi
This piece of Gear is another example of how to construct good gear cards. It’s relatively easy to make, facilitates non-armor builds and has honest to goodness useful affinities. It also has the potential to cause the creation of the Crystal Mold if you are wearing it. That event (gaining crystal skin) even works well with the Gloom Mehndi. This is just one of those pieces of gear I love, a host of small benefits that can easily be tweaked into whatever build you want or used to power some of the rarer and more off beat builds by providing defensive support in the form of armor.

Gloom Katana
The Gloom Katana is in all honesty not worth the effort, most of the time, this is because it’s a super hard to make weapon that only works with certain survivors. However, occasionally you will find that you manage to build a survivor who gains Insanity like it is never going out of style. In the hands of these guys you can have one of the hardest hitting weapons in the game. There is also some cool (insane) stuff you can do with this in combination with the Butcher’s Blood gear from the Lion God expansion and the weapon can become utterly busted with the right exploits.

Gloom Cream
Oh boy oh boy, this one is really good. It’s not an item that gives you much during a fight, instead this is more of a long term investment tool and it’s something you should consider getting one copy of if you are playing with the Slender Man expansion no matter what. It’s a unique mechanic that allows your heroes to reverse aging and that means you can keep key survivors out longer so they can work on their weapon proficiency while pretending to be Benjamin Button.

If you play Heroic Mode this one is a must have and it’s an amazing tool in the normal game anyway.

Spiral Ganglia
This disorder is the start of the road which will end (hopefully) with you gaining a Gloomy Man of your very own in the settlement. The Gloom Man status card, which is the eventual benefit of Spiral Ganglia, lives in the realm of potentially broken abilities you can get on a survivor. It gives you huge benefits while you are insane, but kicks you out of insanity right after you gain them. Unless you have a cursed item or disorder that makes you permanently insane that is.

Surprise Slendy!
This one might be a negative, it depends on how you feel. There is a Settlement Event card that causes the Slender Man to invade your game even if you didn’t add his expansion originally. I really like this as it means the expansion is always included in your games, existing in potential. It’s almost like having a good version of the Lonely Tree on hand (whoops, did I just spoil the Lonely Tree review?). This is kind of scary when you play People of the Sun, but you can always remove the card from the deck before you play that campaign. That’s if you’re a chicken.

Here are the things you’d rather forget:

Blotted Out
This is a fighting art with pretty much no in game benefit at the moment, it mostly exists to provide interactions with the Slender Man himself, but for those players who upgrade their core game by leaving all the Fighting Arts in this one is basically a negative fighting art. That’s not a bad thing in my book as it’s OK for the Fighting Art section to have some fighting arts that are highly situational or provide a drawback – however most people who draw this have a negative reaction to it, so it may upset some players if drawn when not playing with the Slender Man.

Combat Design – Specifically Hit Locations
This is yet another monster where your key mechanic is to beat them by scoring critical hits. In the case of Slendy the only way to manage your insanity gains outside of being sent to Garth Marenghi’s Dark Place is to score critical hits. There are very few ways to lower your insanity in the game at the moment and the Slender Man doesn’t provide much to help this apart from the raptor worn collar. Props to the designer for actually including a least one item that does the job and putting useful affinities on it!

The Showdown Fight
This is not a bad thing per say and in fact most of these ‘bad things’ here are not so much ‘this is awful’ they are more ‘you need to be aware of what makes this difficult’. It is just that the Showdown Fight itself can be very frustrating and difficult to understand the first couple of times you encounter it. In general terms you want to have access to Dash, you want Bandages and you want to stick together as much as possible.

It is hard and it is not for everyone.

Losing access to other Nemesis fights
Some people get this wrong and assume that the Slender Man replaces all other nemesis permanently. That’s not exactly the case, the Slender Man replaces every timeline situation where you would choose which nemesis monster to fight. Overall this is not a major deal breaker, you’ll still get to fight the Hand and the Butcher at least once; but it does mean that overall you’re going to get to fight them less often and miss out on stat gains (Hand) or scrap to turn into Iron (Butcher).  

However, this is mostly an issue in People of the Stars as that is the campaign that makes the most use of the 'unspecified nemesis monster' mechanic. So it's not a massive negative.

The Crystal Mold
Getting this thing is an absolute pain in the ass, you need to get a Crystal Skin into a survivor who is wearing a Gloom Mehndi – now on one hand I appreciate that you have another item that integrates into the core game, in this case playing off the mining mini-game, but it’s just so hard to get this to happen and without it you’ve got one gear card you can’t make (Gloom Katana) and one that you cannot unlock the full potential of (Gloom Sheath). You almost have to consider building 4 Mehndi’s + pickaxes and hoping for the best.

Level 3 Slender Man
The level 3 Slender Man is one of those serious ‘this is bull’ monsters in the game, the main problem with it is you have a hard cap of 15 Insanity when fighting the level 3 Slender Man. You hit 15 Insanity and you are dead. Now that doesn’t sound too bad as 15 is a large number right? Well considering how much insanity the Slender Man forces onto survivors it’s not that big and the fight can at times be blink and it’s over.

And you are going to have to face one if you add Slendy into the game, the only way you can avoid it is by killing off your settlement entirely before he comes. 

However, you can build to avoid this problem once you are aware of it, and that makes it a great puzzle. I would call this one less of a 'bad' thing and more 'hey watch out for this and plan accordingly'.

Gear progression

Now we are onto the big design problem with the gear. That is the gear progression is a little squiffy.  The Gloom Hammer is significantly better than the Gloom Katana, but they come in the opposite order, which is a bit bonkers.  

I can see that the potentially unlimited level of the Gloom Katana's strength makes it seem like it's the better weapon, but there are so many insanity clearing events in KDM (set Insanity to 0) that the Gloom Katana has inbuilt self limits, while the Gloom Hammer sits there at 14 strength with a slightly worse than slow ability and the amazing club weapon typing (because Lantern Armor makes clubs ridiculous).

When you get the Level 2 Dark Water Research, it can be hard to justify the cost of going to Level 3.

Why?
If I am honest the question is less ‘why should I get this expansion’ and more ‘when should I get it’. The Slender Man is the nemesis monster with the most content currently available and it doesn’t make the game much harder, instead it provides alternate difficulty where the King's Man used to lurk. It's quite easy to fit into a campaign because of the way it replaces rather than adds content and as such it's easy to recommend as something for players who have explored a lot of the core game already.

Where?
I like to keep Slender Man present in every corner of the internet, watching and lurking, just waiting for you to fall into his watery embrace. The model is also really cool looking, so it’s allowed to sit on my shelf in a prominent position, I just need to keep checking on him every once in a while in order to ensure that he is not stalking after me.

Score?
I give this one a watery seven abducted survivors, a fish and a gloom hammer for a total of nine things pulled out of ten dark waters. Despite being based on an internet folklore tale this is an expansion with a lot of punch, power and potential. Yes it is a very hard fight, but the monster it replaces is in the same difficulty tier so that is an equivalent exchange. However, if that is all it did then the Slender man could hardly be called “worth recommending”, so it’s just as well that we have the addition of craftable gear. No, wait that’s underselling it; this expansion has amazing craftable gear – loads of great stuff.

I can recommend the Slender Man, but it’s not for an expansion for newer players – So pick this one up if you either; love the lore surrounding the Slender Man, are a more experienced player or you’ve had enough of the King’s Man and his special brand of nonsense.

I just hope you can remember my advice after you close this thread, because the Slender Man’s coming and he’s going to take your memories away…

9/10