Marshlight Reviews: 10th Anniversary Survivors (Patreon)

I have (finally) had a chance to get my hands on the full material for the 10th Anniversary Survivors and play a bit with the gear and the pattern system. At the point of writing this, they are sold out in the shop but if they come back for Black Friday's inevitable sale then I wanted to give as much information as possible on them while also giving my honest and critical opinion.

This set is what I class as a mini-expansion, it contains the following:

• 4x "narrative sculpt" Survivor Miniatures representing the starting quartet 10 years on. Now dressed in mostly Leather armor with Lantern gear and the new Tempered Weapons from this mini-expansion
• 1x Single Sheet Pattern Rules
• 6x Pattern Cards
• 8x Gear Cards (6 Unique, 2 Duplicates for Paired weapons)

I am still in the process of painting the models, I have Allister to complete, so I cannot share fully painted pictures at this time, what I have done so far is on my instagram over here.

I am going to look at these in the same way I did my review of Echoes of Death II.

 1. The Miniature's Sculpts – For Hobbyists
2. The Miniature's Loadouts – For accurate and useful in game useage
3. The Pattern System - A look at the system as a whole, its concept and potential
4. The Individual Patterns and Gear - A look at how the pattern system has been applied here, assessing each piece of gear on balance, power and usefulness. Taking into account not just what you get, but how challenging it is to get in the first place.

Then we'll wrap it all up with a summary.

The Sculpts

I absolutely love all four of the sculpts for these models, it is fantastic to revisit these survivors a few lantern years down the line and see how they are managing, Lucy has suffered some traumatic experience and Erza has lost an eye, while Zachary has become almost barbaric and Allister is still a twat, but a bit less of one now, more a Draco Malfoy now rather than the Edward Cullen he was before.

Each model has one or two of the weapons from the new line of patterns (apart from Erza, who just has a meme) and the sculpt level on these is stupendous. They have fully sculpted, interesting bases, dynamic poses and Lucy has the best curly hair any model has had ever.

Removing these models from the sprue was relatively easy and it is only Allister's spear that was engineered a little too thin. I suspect it is going to break for many people, it lacks the heft that the King's Spear and similar have. This move towards thin, delicate pieces of plastic is not one that I applaud. 

They continue to be in the new scale and that's great, though now it is clear that the original four models need to be revisited and tooled up because they look tired and lacking in detail when compared to the Role Survivors, Strain Survivors, Gigalion Survivors or these new ones.

When it came to painting, I found that everyone apart from Lucy required subassembly for access (where I put the model together, undercoat it and then pull it apart to paint). I recommend that you only lightly glue the following parts of the model if you intend to paint them. Arms, weapons and bases.

I think Lucy is easily the best sculpt, then Zachary, then Erza and finally Allister. Allister lacks a bit in the personality department, but the Plated Shield he carries is phenomenal.

Great sculpts, must have for any hobbyists. 

The Loadouts

Each of the survivors is showcasing between one and two of the patterns, along with what APG considers to be a "Lantern Year 10" loadout. I took a long hard look at the gear they had and then built the loadouts in grid to see if they worked and if they were effective. If you are someone who wants to use WYSIWYG in game, this is quite important.

The loadouts are as follows (pattern stuff is in italics):

• Zachary: Full Leather Armor + 2x Tempered Axes, Lantern Sword
• Lucy:  Full Leather Armor, Vault Key Earrings, 2x Tempered Daggers
• Allister:  Full Leather Armor, Plated Shield, Tempered Spear, Monster Grease
• Erza: Partial Leather Armor, Lantern Greaves, Lantern Sword, Monster Tooth Necklace, Telcric Eye Tac

Zachary

Tempered Axes have no affinity requirements themselves and they provide and additional down red. In addition leather is a reasonable, if not optimal, armor type for an aggressive type, the use of these axes does not harm the most effective layout for Leather but the lantern sword on his back is quite useless. Also Tempered Axes are best used unpaired, so dual wielding them is not ideal and this means that Zach's model has 2 unwanted weapons sculpted onto it.

This loadout is inefficient, but it can work. It is most likely that this one will be a proxy rather than an accurate representation, you'll normally ignore the Lantern Sword and possibly one of the axes.

B-

Lucy

Full Leather Armor is again not ideal for the style that dual tempered daggers require, and also the Tempered Dagger's down blue is not hyper efficient for activating a Lucky Charm - which would synergize with the ability of the Tempered Daggers. However this is a build that you can make work, but you will likely ignore that she has the Vault Key Earrings equipped because that is one too many pieces of gear. I think that this is not an issue at all and outside of the armor she is wearing (Rawhide, Dancer, Dragon or Cycloid Scale are all better choices).

As you can easily get away with pretending that Leather = Rawhide, this one I think is fine. Likewise the Tempered Daggers get better when wielded in a pair, so there is nothing I consider to be too sub-optimal about this one.

A+

Allister

The loadout itself is fine in theory, spear + shield and monster grease in leather armor is one direction you can take your tank in if you desire. However, the Tempered Spear and Plated Shield do not really play well together on the same character, both ask to be used as your main weapon and compete hard. Especially around the time you have Leather in general use. 

This becomes stronger when you have Spear and Shield Mastery in the settlement already, but 

The other issue here is that Leather Armor is not the most conducive armor set to getting the Tempered Spear active. I'll show you with an example of how Leather Armor would fit into this:

As you can see, we can get the Reds online without much issue, but the Blues are another story. Left blue in particular isn't something that's easily done without either jaming the Lucky Charm or reaching into expansions - Right Blue has more options, but precious few of them are both easy to get and useful. We've also sacrificed the incredible 3x Green lineup of the Bracers -> Boots -> Monster Grease + Leather Skirt -> Leather Shield. So a lot of the strengths of Leather are being forfeited here.

It's usable, but there is a lot of compromise here and in KDM where things can be so powerful, usable often doesn't cut it. Leather would be better with CW-Axe or Zanbato and the Tempered Spear is better on other armor sets.

C-

Erza

Erza has an interesting loadout, but ultimately it doesn't quite cut it because of the weapon choice. She's got Leather on all locations except the legs which are the Lantern Greaves.  Now here is the layout.

(Cat's Eye Circlet is actually a flex slot, I have just put it here to demonstrate the mirror nature of the Telcirc meme)

The good stuff here is that we have active Lantern Greaves and an active Monster Tooth Necklace. With also the ability to fit anything we want in the last slot. The bad stuff (apart from the Telcirc itself which we will discuss in the next section) is the choice of weapon - the Lantern Sword without a Rainbow Wing Belt (DBK) to negate Early Iron, is an awful weapon. It has an ~28% chance of completely missing each time you attack. It gets better when oxidized, but it is a low priority target for that process because it's not a Beacon shield, Ring Whip or Lantern Glaive. So, Lantern Swords are luxury weapons for the really rich and hipsters.

This is, of course, in keeping with Erza's personality as an idiot, which is why she has the Telcirc in the first place. So I appreciate the dedication to the meme, even if it does mean that she has the weakest loadout of them all.

D-

The Pattern System

Let us get the negative quality point out of the way first, because most of what I have to write here is very positive. The rule sheet for this system is shoddy, it feels cheap, it is frail and it is easily lost. When you look at the rulebook which comes with the 10th Anniversary White Speaker the difference in quality is noticeable. Shame, but lets move on.

The Pattern System we have here is a prototype of the version which will come in the future, it's a sneak peak and therefore it doesn't represent the full picture. So bare that in mind, but I will be judging it based on its current iteration, just like I did with the strain system.

At the start of the campaign, you generate your pattern deck by eliminating all the pattern cards you have that reference monsters not used in the campaign and then mixing up the remaining cards to create the deck. 

There is immediately an issue here, because we get no explanation of what to do if somehow you own more than one set of the same pattern cards. Pattern Cards are not set as unique, and while this might seem like a nitpicky thing, but the fact is that many people who get replacement cards will end up with multiple sets of these pattern cards. The rules make it clear that you are limited to how many gear cards you can craft per pattern card, but not what happens if you own multiples of the same pattern. This is the same problem we have with the Ancient Root and Scoopy Club and it's a typical example of the lack of care and attention that these "promo" items get. They never seem to be quality tested to the level one would expect from a premium, boutique company.

Each pattern card has a lot of information on it, it shows you what the item is, its crafting number (they're negatives in this case to represent the "promo" nature of these gear cards), the required resources to be spent, the list of other things which are used in the process, some flavor text about the process and a Crafting Limit.

This last one creates another rules issue, I'll quote the text:

Crafting Limit: The maximum number of gear that can be made from this pattern.

So the issue here is what happens if that piece of gear gets archived? It seems that the pattern just sits there and you can't make a new one, but that's not clear, usually if something is limited to once per timeline it says so. This is how the system was set in the past with the White Speaker 'Wares for Trade' promo rules. So we're left ??? about what the intention here is. If I trade in my Telcirc for some Blacksmith Gear can I craft a new one or is that pattern going to just sit there? This compounds with the point above, because we don't know if we can have two of the same pattern in the deck, and if so what happens then. It's a bit of a mess that could have been cleaned up with just a sentence or two.

Patterns are gained when a survivor first hits Insight (as per the keywords on the patterns), this in itself has two troublesome spots. First of all, we already have a campaign where survivors never get Insight, specifically People of the Stars, where survivors become Awake instead. This can be fixed with a house rule, but we are again left in the dark if it is intentional that Stars doesn't get patterns or not. This could have been avoided if it said 'When a survivor reaches 3 Understanding, the sudden shift in perspective is accompanied by a new idea.' That not only fixes stars, but it future proofs against all situations unless you end up with a campaign that doesn't have understanding as a mechanic at all.

For the moment you are going to have to decide yourselves if they are allowed in Stars or not. The exact wording we see here says no, which is a shame because there are no 'awake' specific patterns.

Secondly, the other issue is a little more hidden. This is triggering on Insight, which is a nice thematic mechanic. But you're going to deplete the pattern deck far faster than the designers intended. Even with more patterns one can shred every single pattern out fairly fast by making babies. This is because of an innovation and a princple.

These are two premium, high pick cards anyway, you want them regardless. And when you have them with the pattern system they result in insight as soon as the baby is born. Boom, free pattern.

Get yer baby, comes with its own unique crafting recipe!

This could have been limited with a second change to the wording:

  'When a survivor reaches 4 Understanding, the sudden shift in perspective is accompanied by a new idea.' 

With this, you would have to at least get out and hunt or augury and spend a resource to hit that pattern.

We'll have to see what happens when the full system is released, but I find the system dolling out patterns for babies if you pick one desirable principle and a powerful, desirable innovation (in the best innovation tree no less) to be somewhat problematic.

Outside of these issues I think the Pattern System represents the best way to introduce new gear we've seen in a long time. It allows for cross expansion gear, inbuilt limitations on numbers, variable difficulty in crafting and more besides. As we'll see below, this system if applied correctly can result in amazing thematic journeys and exciting ways of mitigating bad stuff.

Overall the Pattern Rules are a positive addition to this game, they just needed more time in the oven at the play testing stage.

The Individual Patterns

So, as you should all be very aware of a this time, the quality that these cards were released in was laughable. They are printed on worse card stock than usual and cut inconsistently, not just with the other stuff made so far, but with each other. I have cards with only 3 corners cut and not a single card is the same size as the others. In addition the card surfaces were torn when cut, which is caused by the cutter being blunt. In short, makeplayingcards.com makes better cards than these, which is kind of shocking.

Now yes, APG is replacing these items, but that is absolutely the least that they could do, in fact it is what they are obligated to do, so they should get zero credit for this. These items went through their internal stocking before being shipped out; quality should have been checked there and these obvious defects noticed for the manufacturer to correct before being released. This should not have happened in the first place, it feels like either the quality control was not done, was sloppily handled or someone made the decision to just send this stuff out 'as is' and 'maybe they won't complain'. We'll never know, but none of those reasons give a sense of comfort. 

You can get replacements if you contact support and get added to the list for them, and hopefully the next project like this does not fall to such a low standard. APG lists themselves as being boutique, they have not achieved that level here, not even close.

That written, lets look at the individual patterns, the process involved in making them and the gear that results from it.

Plated Shield

All of the crafting elements used here are reasonable costs, from both a thematic and a balance point. You're spending an organ and 3x scrap, plus using some Stone Noses and needing Metal Arm Armor to do this. The last point is a big one, the metal arm requirement means that this gear needs Phoenix, Lantern or Dragon arms to get it constructed. That is an excellent gate to lock this shield behind because it is absolutely an improvement over the Leather Shield and it would be too strong for the early portions of the game. You're not just rushing the Leather Worker + Ammonia to make this, you're going to have to stock some iron, get to the Blacksmith or go beat the Phoenix/Dragon king and craft their arm pieces (both of which are not the best parts of the armor and normally you'd leave them till last). 

It has Deflect 1 and Sharp (when it has the Deflect token), which makes it both strong offensively and defensively, but it is still low speed and relatively inaccurate. These two negatives combined with the Frail drawback keep this weapon balanced for its cost. It is a great shield, one of the best and it is wonderful that we have a step between the Leather Shield and the Beacon Shield here that is worth taking (Feather Shield is Immortals only and Blast Shield is a sideways option from the Leather one, not an improvement).

I like the Plated Shield a lot, it is a great piece and well designed.

Tempered Axe (2x from one pattern)

One of the only drawbacks of the Bone Axe is the poor return on investment it represents. The cost of 1x bone and 1x organ represented too much for an item that would be discarded back to the settlement storage for eternity, hanging on the wall and reminiscing of times gone by. 

With the advent of the Tempered Axe this era has passed, when you draw this pattern your bone axes can have new life as one of the most powerful members of the axe meta since the Counterweighted Axe turned up. This weapon is absurdly powerful and easy to get, requiring just Ammonia and Scrap Smelting as its boundaries, two things which are picked up almost all the time early on by settlements. 

The power level of the axe is also very high, in the hands of an axe specialist this weapon essentially has sharp when you need it most along with a great statline for the mid game. This weapon is a late game weapon turning up in the early mid game and that is a problem for the power levels of the survivors in this game. You are going to pick this axe up 100% of the time you can, because it surpasses most other options available at that time and many that come later. You could make an argument that this weapon is better than the Lantern Glaive and I wouldn't say you're wrong.

Finally, this weapon has counter intuitive design on paired, you are punished for using this paired because it is at it's best with lower speed so the "safety" ability doesn't get spread too thin. Having Sharp on a reroll for 1 of 2 attack dice is powerful, having it on 1 of 4 is not so much. So this discourages people to use it paired and instead you will typically find it being used in a single by one survivor or two different survivors.

This weapon is not well designed and I consider it to be a misstep, axes did not need this level of pushing, they were already in the top portion of offensive weapons, especially in the late game.

Tempered Daggers

In contrast to the Tempered Axe, I feel that the Tempered Daggers are great and a welcome addition to the game. The Tempered Daggers move into a space where there was no good options before. Previously in the mid game one was using sub-optimal daggers on Cycloid Scale/Dragon or Phoenix Armor to try and get around the awful levels of strength. 

The Tempered Daggers instead give us a luck based dagger to use and they allow for some incredible power. This is what rewarding paired looks like, all those extra locations drawn can potentially become a big pile of luck to help generate that extra resource or cripple that monster location. This weapon rewards thoughtful use and doesn't overly punish a user for high speed.  I have used this one with the 6 speed paired on a Dagger specialist and it felt really great.

The crafting recipe is also just right for the weapon's power, it's costly, especially when you are making two of them, but the unlocks are the correct level for the weapon's potency. While you can scale this one into the late game, you're only going to be doing it with the aid of external strength gains.

Also It's probably not the case that I'm being called out, but I did chuckle at the fact that 'A disgruntled aesthete complaining about Scrap Dagger design' was an exact description of myself and my public position on the Scrap Daggers.

Tempered Spear

I am on the fence with this one, the crafting receipt is very simple and the costs are reasonable, which means that this weapon will turn up fairly early. Also the affinity requirements are hard to achieve and the weapon's statline is not overpowered in isolation.

However, on the Cycloid Scale Armor, Blue Charm, Trapper build this item is absolutely insane. Yes, it is only +1 to your chances of reshuffling the trap, but that is a 20% increase in relative power of that ability (5/10 to 6/10 is a 20% increase) and that means 3 in 5 situations you are stopping that trap card instead of 1 in 2. 

Also Cycloid Scale gives the spear sharp, which means it scales into the late game and never leaves your hunt party. Dragon or Phoenix armor also have strong impacts with the power level of this weapon, but it is at least harder to activate in their cases and requires some compromises (and no Blue Charm).

Outside of Cycloid, the spear is relatively fair. So this one is going to vary with power depending on monsters and circumstance.

Telcric Eye Tac

Note: This is the only monster specific pattern in the set. It requires the White Lion, a lot.

This item is a meme from start to finish. The name is literally "Cat Eye Circlet" in reverse and the item does exactly that. Instead of scouting the monster's hit location deck it "scouts" your own hit locations and gives you the ability to force the monster to hit one of three locations you have rolled. 

This is a bad version of Silk Armor and Crossarm Block, neither of which are the kind of things that people are breaking down the doors for. On top of that the crafting recipe requires a Cat Eye Circlet, Golden Whiskers and a Sinew. All of which are premium resources used to craft amazing gear from the White Lion.

I'm not going to waste much time on this, the item is a meme, the ability is bad (mostly because you have to activate it) and the cost to make this item is too high, no-one is sacrificing their first Cat Eye Circlet to make this, and probably not even their second one.

I hope one day to be proven wrong, but so far I have found no use for this item and always would prefer something else to be in the slot it is taking up.  Left blue affinity is rather rare though, so it has one use!  🤣  🤣 

Vault Key Earrings

I am not going to beat around the bush here, as I discussed on the Discord before, the Vault Key Earrings represent the very peak of what the Pattern system could and should be doing. This item is perfection itself in representing what it is doing mechanically and as a story.

You cannot make this item without having a survivor who has Fear of the Dark, they are basically useless in the campaign at this point, unable to go out and hunt. However with the addition of some relatively common resources (Plus a Cyclops Fly) you can create an item which allows them to get out there and hunt again, giving them the chance to remove their Fear of the Dark for good, or complete their weapon proficiency journey. 

On top of that, once they are done with hunting you have mitigation for one awful disorder in your hunt party whenever you need it, and it comes with a premium right green affinity to boot (great for monster grease or the Phoenix Placart left greens).

Everything about this item is perfect, it is situational, but incredible in that situation and it can help mitigate the early retirement of a survivor, something that often can cause people to lose heart in playing and move on to a different game or campaign. 

This, this is what pattern designs should aspire to be.

Summary

The pattern system as a whole is a marvelous addition to the Kingdom Death repertoire, it is a great space for the game to expand on current expansion content without having to make major new releases and it has been done in a way that integrates into the core campaign well. In principle this expansion is phenomenal, however when you get into the individual elements there are concerning lapses in the rules and some of the gear design is either too pushed or laughable. This is a common pattern with the more recent releases, most of them feel like they are being squeezed out between crunch sessions. The delays to wave 3 and 4 are causing these things to not get tested enough and we're getting grey areas in the rules that don't need to be there or items that are either useless or too good.

I wouldn't consider this one to be an essential purchase for the casual gamer because of the $60 price tag, but for a hobbyist or collector there is plenty here to enjoy.

Giveaway

Finally, a giveaway!

I have a spare set of the Pattern Cards, associated gear and rules to give away to someone who missed out on getting this set when it was out. They are miscut (as are all of these originals) and the rules were lightly mangled by the printer, but you can have them just by entering below!

Rules:

• You must be a patron (any tier)
• Please enter if you were unable to get/afford the 10th anniversary set, do not enter if you already have it, there is no benefit to having two sets as patterns are limited in construction.
• I will be sending them in the post in a padded envelope to you, they will not be tracked unless you want to pay extra for that.
• The miniatures are NOT included.
• Drawing will be done by one of my mods next Friday so you have a week to enter. We will contact the winner via direct message here to get your address.
• As noted above, they are not pristine, almost no-one got pristine cards from this.
•  The entry phrase is a comment below that says 'I have a pattern for success!' 

Good luck!