Marshlight Reviews: Vignette of Death - White Gigalion (Patreon)

For those of you who wish to see the content and form your own opinions, please see the images above, this is a full set of photos of everything included in this new micro-expansion. Naturally, there will be spoilers galore in those images, so if you want a spoiler free review, check out the first section below.

Spoiler Free Review

This $75 micro-expansion is the first Vignette of Death, it contains a standalone scenario with four pre-built survivors fighting against the White Gigalion, a 100mm (3x3) version of the Cunning artwork. There is also rules for unlocking and hunting the White Gigalion in normal campaigns. The miniatures are absolutely gorgeous, and some of them even have useful loadouts that can be used to represent normal survivors in your games.

The monster itself is in essence a Level 2.5 White Lion, modifying the behavior of the monster with a new reference card, new hit location and two traits. Beating it gives you a new strange resource that is used to craft weapons and armor. There are a total of 6 gear cards, representing four craftable pieces of gear, two of which are duplicates used in People of the Lantern only and a card to represent the Lovelorn Rock.

Overall I recommend this one for players who already have the 'big six' (Gorm, Dung Beetle Knight, Sunstalker, Manhunter, Dragon King), miniature painters, those who are tired with the existing White Lion experience where you hunt it for the Circlet + a few weapons and then never go back to it or those with money to burn.  However, for players on a budget, the Gorm and Dung Beetle Knight both represent more content for less cost and they should be patient and wait until they can pick this one up at a reduced price - like the Lonely Tree it's really about $30-$40 worth of game content.

Deep Dive Review

Now it's time to get into this mini-expansion in detail and we will start with a look at the components. 

You get the following items inside your moderately sized white box.

• 1x Rules Booklet 
• 4x Narrative Sculpt Survivors, reference cards and printed gear grids
• 1x 100m base Gigalion
• 1x White Gigalion Reference Card
• 1x Hit Location
• 1x Strain Unlock Milestone
• 2x AI Traits
• 2x New Strange Resource
• 1x Giga-Catarium Settlement Location Expansion Card
• 6x Gear Cards

I do not have the physical cards with me at this point, I will be returning to this review to update if the card quality is any good, but I think it is very fair to say that the model sculpts are absolutely stunning. The White Gigalion has shed most of the derpy elements it had previously and it's now a brutish, ugly looking beast. The narrative sculpts are also stunning, and some of them even have usable loadouts (especially the Gorment/Leather Shield/Greater Gaxe) for normal survivors. 

The booklet is in the new style that Adam's going to be adopting going ahead (it's the same one as the Philosophies from AKDM will be) and it's a really good size (it'll fit inside normal white boxes), this standardisation of sizes is great, it allows us to sort out good storage solutions and I hope that future expansions use it instead of the previous size books which are honestly not good. It also seems to be typo free, which might be a first!

Overall, visually the components seem to be great, but when I get them I will revisit this opinion and discuss what the models are like to assemble and what the card quality is like.

The Vignette

This is initial way in which you will interact with the Gigalion, playing the parts of the four Deadrock survivors as they face off against the first Gigalion. I've proxied up this scenario and played it through a few times, and it's reasonably well balanced. I'm also amused that these guys are named after minerals and rocks the way that my solo settlements always have been, go go Granite, Crystal and Flint.

What is important about this Vignette is it's likely to be one of the ways that new players will get introduced to the game. You can easily bring along to an evening session the Vignette plus the extra White Lion decks required and play it out there and then. The players get a chance to experience some early-mid game builds, see a few nice combos and get slapped about by a fun monster. It's a good taster for what is to come and it's better than playing the prologue against the White Lion because there are more decisions to be made than just, where do I stand, do I punch or stab, when do I throw my rock and when do I dodge? 

One thing that is very notable about this showdown is that the survivors do not have any bows or rawhide/hit location manipulation. Which means that the game plays more true to the way that the design team does. There are a few support items here and there, but most of the time the nearest you get to "proper" play is just blocking a bit with Hungry Basalt.  This means the showdown feels more tense and more exciting, it's less of the farming exercise that White Lions usually present - which it should be, it's a standalone event.

The loadouts for all four survivors vary in quality, Hungry Basalt's grid is pretty tight, with only the Boss Mhendi and failure to complete that second red affinity being questionable. Gadrock's White Lion loadout is very frustrating, he has the blue affinity for the helm, but the helm itself isn't connected, nor are the White Lion Boots - this was a chance to showcase some of the better parts of the White Lion set and try to win players over on it, but instead we have the Lion Headress choking up a slot.  Breccia's grid is mostly great, for a leather/whip user it's close to everything you could want, only missing a Leather Shield (over the Brain Mint) to really be optimal and that's fine because it doesn't always need to be
"meta" - especially in a one off like this. The Rock Knight's grid though, that one is a huge issue. I'm fine with the idea behind this, she's an almost completely lost King's Man in progress lumbered with the Lovelorn Rock. But the shoehorning involved in making this grid all bone has some serious issues. With an extra point of personal accuracy and maybe one more strength she would have been fine with the Skullcap Hammer, but as it stands she's a very frustrating character to play because she whiffs a lot of the time. Also she has a Skull Helm printed on her grid, which is a gear card that can get archived... Except you can't archive it because it's printed on the grid.  This could easily have been either the Screaming Horns or the Dragonskull Helm instead, perhaps there's a second version of her grid without the helm on the back, I doubt it, but if there is, I'll retract this point.

We'll talk about the Gigalion itself when I discuss it below, the curated version for the showdown is very well put together, but I expect that when dealing with a variant White Lion - they should know intimately how that monster works by this point, we do.

The White Gigalion

In the spoiler free section I called this a L2.5 White Lion and I think this is the best way to consider this monster initially (as a L2.5 or L3.5 White Lion, you can't hunt it at L1). In comparison to a normal L2 White Lion, this model differs in the following ways:

• A new, upgraded instinct
• An additional hit location
• Two new traits instead of Cunning
• Drops 1 or 2 Hooked Claw strange resources when killed
• Always performs Smart Cat as first AI (unless Ambushed and wounded first)
• 3x3 Base Size rather than 2x2 - very relevant for its new traits
• Steals head gear rather than jewelry on the Defeat condition

Otherwise the stats are the same (10B 5A AI cards - plus Smart Cat, +1 damage, +1 Speed, 8 movement over 7), and in fact because of Smart Cat, sometimes the White Gigalios on average have less wounds than normal L2 White Lions. They also have more variance in how difficult they can be, flipping Ground Fighting or Alert in the top 10 cards is way less threatening than revealing Enraged/Bloodthirsty or none at all. 

Smart Cat's start of the showdown trigger means that if you ambush the monster and wound it, the Gigalion does technically have one more wound than normal, but on the whole what Smart Cat does is increase the variance of how powerful this monster is while simultaneously telling you the contents of up to 10 cards in the AI deck. That information can be very valuable, especially if you see things like Maul in there.

Outside of the Smart Cat trigger, the Gigalion's behavior is changed by its new instinct - an upgraded Sniff that gives +1 accuracy, +1 luck tokens to the monster and sets its new Hit Location ontop of the HL Deck. That HL, the Gigantic Pendulous Paunch is an absolute beast of a card, when the <R> Reaction triggers it "teleports" to in front of the survivor and runs them down; in addition to that the location has +5 toughness. However, it is crittable, with that result knocking the monster down.

The two traits replace Cunning and the first of these Vicious, is essentially 'super cunning' with the monster trying to grab every single survivor adjacent rather than just a random one. Normal White Lions pick 1 target in any of 8 adjacent squares, the Gigalion picks all targets in 12 adjacent squares! Outside of that it works the same as cunning, it can be avoided by Dashing and it even includes the same grab and drag.

The Giga Claws trait enhances the White Lion's Grab mechanic further by having it Grab every time it collides and also have a 20% chance of causing bleed when it does this. That's a decent buff in lethality without being frustrating to play against.

However, even with all of this, the Gigalion is still a White Lion at heart, it still has the mostly same AI, Hit Locations, underpowered Trap and predictable behavior. Don't expect anything really new when facing this monster, it is just a variant of the existing one.

Integration into standard Kingdom Death

In order to hunt Giggles in your normal campaign, there is a Strain Milestone called Somatropin Surge (somatropin is a growth peptide hormone present in humans and animals). I'm absolutely on board with the Gigalion being locked behind a strain unlock, however this strain unlock is almost completely meaningless.

You unlock the Gigalion by completing the vignette once. That's it. Seriously. Now, I get the flavour and lore reasons behind this unlock, but mechanically this is just about the worst strain unlock we've had so far. It's so, completely disconnected from the experience of playing campaign games to the point that you might as well ignore it totally.  I feel that they could have done a lot better with this one, it's almost a waste of cardboard if I'm honest.

Once integrated, the Gigalion becomes a standard option you can pick instead of hunting the normal L2 or L3 White Lion, the first time you beat it you get access to the Giga-Catarium and you spend the new strange resources there along with white lion resources to build 3 or 4 of the new gear cards. These pieces of gear are all exceptional and we'll discuss them below, but before doing that I want to highlight the impact of this expansion on the current White Lion.

Once you have the White Gigalion, there is almost no reason to ever go hunting a normal L2 or L3 White Lion. Why such a strong, bold claim? Well it boils down to risk vs. reward. You see the Gigalion is not that much more dangerous than a normal White Lion, you can see from the Deadrock survivors that you don't need to be super tooled to handle one. Just like the L2 White Lion the L2 Gigalion is around the L1 Phoenix/DBK/DK/SS tier in difficulty and it's not any less predictable than the normal White Lions are.

In exchange for hunting this beast, you get access to an L2 Post Overwhelming Darkness hunt spot (aka the sweet spot) which means Mineral Gathering is possible, better resources when you kill it and the ability to craft very strong gear. That's all in exchange for a monster that's a bit more offensively dangerous and steals head gear if you are defeated. A massive deal, one you're just not going to pass up. So in essence, the L2 and L3 normal White Lion's are dead content now (and that's not all that's been killed with this mini-expansion).

The Gear

Rest in piece Cat Fang Knife, we never used thee.  

The new pieces of gear are a set of arrows, a new dagger, a fur body accessory cloak, a card to represent the lovelorn rock and two paired oxidised Lion Beast Katars with mirrored artwork. I'm going to work through each one in turn, but the single biggest issue I have here (and I'll revise this if my assessment of the pictures and the contents page is wrong) - there's one copy of each card in the box. These are non-unique pieces of gear but we're only getting one of each. For $75 MSRP. You know that for $60 MSRP you can get the Gorm right? Which has multiple copies of each gear card and full AI/HL Decks...

Why? The miniatures might be boutique, but that move certainly is not.

The gear itself is also, well some of it is very problematic from the perspective of how it will distort the balance of your campaign. I'll walk through each of them in turn here.

Lovelorn Rock

It's great to finally have a card to represent the rock which has taken up a slot in your gear grid. In addition it's also now got keywords: item, heavy, bone, stone. Heavy and Bone are a bit of an eye raiser to me, heavy is a disaster of keyword to get lumbered with on something that didn't have it before, there are some builds that can now be broken by this event because of gear being switched off and also if you have the rock you're now always vulnerable to things like Cracks in the Ground. The bone keyword on the other hand is an amusing surprise, it allowed for the Rock Knight to be able to use the Bone Earrings and it's a welcome addition to the rock's lore.

Dense Bone Arrows

Press F in chat for Sunshark Arrows and bows in general. They just got power crept out of existence. In case you can't remember, Sunshark Arrows are a (1/4+/6) arrow with Sharp and an activation limit of 3 in exchange for 6 resources.  Dense Bone Arrows are a  (2/5+/6) arrow with Sharp and no activation limit in exchange for 8 resources + the Blacksmith unlocked. 

Technically these arrows cost more to build, but the resources are easier to get and you want to unlock the blacksmith anyway. When you have them however, any bow in the game becomes as powerful as the Sunshark Arrows are, and in case you can't remember - they're in the top 10 strongest weapons in the game already, held in check by the fact that they're arrows with a limited number of activations.  In contrast the Dense Bone Arrows' only downsides are the building cost/restrictions and the fact that you can't gain proficiency by shooting them exclusively. In exchange your little old Catgut Bow is now able to punch as hard as the Oxidised Lantern Glaive and harder than the Calcified Digging Claw.  

Bows have always been one of the most overpowered and potentially problematic parts of Kingdom Death's weapon balance, this tips that situation further.

Hooked Claw Knife

The Hooked Claw Knife also power creeps daggers, however in contrast to the previous entry, daggers were in need of some serious power creep because they're currently not a viable weapon type for the average player. The Hooked Claw Knife has good strength, solid speed and accuracy and an ability that is unique, powerful, balanced and interesting. 

It's finally something worth hunting the L3 White Lion/Gigalion for and the only real shame is that the Cat Fang Knife hasn't been tuned at all in 1.5.

Oxidized Beast Katar

This one is Post Watcher only, which limits it to People of the Lantern. There's already a real choke point up at that part of the campaign where you need to Oxidize shields, a glaive and a ringwhip before you go anywhere near anything else (it's pushed swords, daggers and helms into the realm of luxury items) and this weapon puts even more pressure on that valve. There is no argument that the OBKs are worth crafting, they have 10.5 median strength (range 6 to 15) for a median wounding roll of 16 - plus sharp and a Perfect hit ability that adds +4 strength when it's triggered (that's a median 0.8 extra strength over time). That puts it right where it needs to be for an End Game Katar and it's even kept Deadly.

If this one wasn't just restricted to Lantern Campaigns only I'd be super hyped for it, but at least it's going to be viable for punching things in the face in that campaign.

Lion Slayer Cape

Finally we have the Lion Slayer Cape. This accessory is designed to buff White Lion armor by giving you damage reduction against all things as long as you're wearing fur armor (it's not armor itself). Unfortunately, what this Cape actually does is make Screaming Armor stronger - pushing it into the realms of late game tanking because of how strong that damage reduction ability is.

In campaigns which have Spidicules, Screaming Antelope and the White Gigalion this situation can become even more ludicrous because you can combine Screaming Armor with the Silk Body Suit and the Lion Slayer Cape for a total of 3 damage reduction to hits and 1 damage reduction to all other kinds of damage source. While Spidicules replaces the Screaming Antelope in the recommended design, most people do not play that way and this combo might trivialise some of the higher difficulty monsters.

This one reminds me of the Lion God gear which is intended to improve White Lion Armor, but instead accidentally buffs other strategies more. As a player I still love this one as much as I love the knife.

Conclusion

As I wrote in the short review, I don't consider this one to be a must have for anyone outside of those who are in really deep, have a lot of money to burn, love painting minis, want a way to demo the game or are completely burnt out on the normal White Lion. There's just not enough content to justify the price here and if I'm honest, the fact that it was rushed out in a few months (as confirmed by Adam in an interview) shows, this thing had less than six months from conception to release and because the narrative sculpts match the grids so well - we know that design was locked in way before the release date so production could be made.

I think it's a great piece considering the length of time it took the team to construct and the Vignette is very well tuned in particular. But I feel that this one does make portions of the core game redundant and it almost feels like its trying to fix issues with the White Lion gear collection that should have been done in 1.5. The score goes up because of that Vignette, but on the whole for every couple of good things I find about this one, there's an issue that takes a smidge of the sheen off. That Hooked Claw Knife is almost worth the price of admission for Dagger users like myself though, it makes me hopeful for the future of Daggers in KDM.

So, if you don't have that much content already and you're not someone who's afflicted by KDMFOMO then get the big six  first and wait for this one to go on sale. It will refresh your White Lion experience, and give Dagger users something to aim for, but in trade it's going to flatten out the development experience for bows, effectively delete certain other items from the game and make the White Lion model used only for L1s and Legendaries. This one both adds and takes away.

7/10