Marshlight Reviews: 10th Anniversary White Speaker (Patreon)

It's time to take a look at the 10th Anniversary White Speaker. 5000 copies of this "white" box (it's a white box in everything but the actual box) micro expansion were released alongside the 10th Anniversary Survivors (review here) and is to celebrate the original White Speaker resin model, while also showcasing the concept of Fighting Arts that can 'level up'

Contents:

• 1x Remastered Plastic White Speaker
• 1x Double-sided fold out Rules Sheet
• 1x Certificate of Authencitity including XXXX of 5000 numberon
• 1x Strain Unlock for the Fighting Art
• 4x Story of Blood Fighting Art

We will start with a look at the model. This is a re-imagining of the original White Speaker, who was allegedly going to be one of the "dungeon crawling classes" in Kingdom Death: Labyrinth (along with the Forsaker, Savior, Priest and Twilight Knight). Here one of them is in action, battling the minions of the Golden Entity with her blood magic:

The original model is, hum, well it's fine for its time, but it shows its age as you can see:

This new plastic version goes beyond a meager remaster and into the realms of an entire re-imagining. Coming with two options, with cloak and sans cloak, the model is larger, fuller and more dynamic. This is the store image of her with the feathered collar cloak.

Here is my first one, painted using the 'no cloak' shoulder option.

(More angles to be found at:  https://www.instagram.com/p/B8ENXhRHzWu/ )

So before we get onto the game content, now that I've painted one version of the model, what is it like to assemble, look at and paint?

Well, it's good, very good. Almost perfect. The model is dynamic with few easily broken points and she has a heft and grace to her that was lacking from the previous version. I like her as much as I like the White Speaker Boss (The Boss has a very bland pose though) and more than the excellent White Speaker Sword Hunter. The flowing pose, solid lines of movement and tight detail make me excited for the upcoming Red Witches expansion. 

I like this one so much that I hope this particular model also finds a home in Labyrinth (if Adam gets to that one before old age or the collapse of the ecosystems claims him). 

It is not perfect however, there is a fair risk of breaking the Speaker Cult Knife when removing it from the sprue as it has a very thin handle between the Speaker's hand and the cross hilt and there is no sculpted base - I expect better on the base front, especially when you look at what the Sword Hunter White Speaker and 10th Anniversary Survivors stand on.

When it comes to painting this model, there are some huge access issues that require either compromise due to difficulty of access or sub-assembly painting. The cloak covers a huge area and requires that the head, shoulders and cloak are painted separately from the body. Plus the arms have an encircling, obstructing nature to them and require separate painting from the torso. I painted the non-cloak version and that required being in 3 parts (body + head, left arm, right arm) and I fully expect that when I paint the version with the cloak that she will need to be painted in 4 or 5 parts. I would rate her easier than Young Rachel to assemble, but one of the more challenging pieces to paint for an inexperienced painter.

Good model, not perfect, but close.

The rest of this box contains the exciting certificate of authenticity (oooooo, recycle it asap) and the Story of Blood addition to the strain system. 

Story of Blood

The rules come printed on a both sides of a threefold paper sheet. The "Front" page has the updated version of the Strain rules (1.1) which is the same as Echoes of Death II (Review here). In essence, you can have 5 strain fighting arts in your deck at the most (there are 9 currently) and when you unlock a sixth one, it replaces one of the previous 5.  At the start of each future campaign you will have 5 random strain fighting arts from the ones you have previously unlocked.  This system is here to help avoid too much Fighting Art bloat, but to be honest the expansions have already done most of the damage and I suspect that Campaigns of Death is going to need to introduce a new system for adding in Disorders/Fighting Arts that stops the decks being such disorganised, chaotic messes.

The second side goes into a lot of detail about how the Story of Blood fighting art is operated, as it is an evolving fighting art that potentially changes over the length of a campaign.  When it is first unlocked (and at the start of each new campaign) it is included in the deck at its first level 'Story of Blood 1). However, the individual survivor who has gained this fighting art can perform 'observations' when a certain condition is completed, and once all the boxes are ticked for that survivor, the observation has a revelation that either levels up Story of Blood for the current survivor (and the copy in the Fighting Art deck) or has a final revelation that is the terminus for this story.

It seems that the intention of Echoes of Death I, Echoes of Death II, 10th Anniversary Survivors and this micro expansion is to showcase/tease the mechanics which are coming in Wave 3. Either they are custom created for the purpose of this teaser, or they are rejects/early releases - it is hard to tell, because so far the quality of design on these has been very inconsistent. We've had amazing, exciting and well balanced stuff that exemplifies design at it's pinnacle in the very same box as horribly unbalanced lunacy that looks on par with the kind of things that would be dreamed up by a teenager designing his first custom content. 

When this stuff is good, it is very, very good. But when it is bad, it is horrid.

So lets take a look at the Story of Blood and see where it lands on this scale.

Strain Unlock

My personal issues with how Strains have been implemented in the first place aside, this particular unlock is very well balanced.  You have to max understanding and then successfully experience each of the three stories in that event with survivors from the same settlement.  But because you're rolling randomly on the table, 3 triggers is not a guaranteed success - in fact it's not likely because the split on the table is 2/6/2 initially and changes to 2/4/4 (or 4/4/2) after you have picked your conviction (Romantic every time beb). 

Doing all of this doesn't even give you the Fighting Art, it just gives you 1x Iron. You have to trigger it one last time in order to actually gain the fighting art on a survivor and add it to the deck. This replaces your roll on the White Secret table btw, big oof if you were looking for Ageless.

That's a heck of a journey, but I think that it is a well designed one in the same way that the Vault Key Earring was. It's thematic, it has benefits along the way (Cult Speaker Knife anyone?) and it isn't too easy to do, which makes the whole unlock special. 

So yeah. I am happy with this particular strain unlock. Though I wish the story event White Speaker* was involved somehow.

The Fighting Art

Once you have it, what is the fighting art like to use and level up? In order to decide on that we'll wander through each level, looking at what you get and what you need to do to level it up.  It is important to remember that the observations have to all be completed by the same survivor, each survivor with the fighting art has their own observation track.

Story of Blood 1 is an underwhelming fighting art; the first time you gain a bleeding token during the showdown, you gain +1 survival. That's a very low power fighting art and as a consequence you are going to be seeking to upgrade it as soon as possible.

The four observations required are linked to endeavors being spent at Bloodletting or Sacrifice during the Settlement Phase. It requires a total of four activations. Bloodletting  costs a resource each time it is used, but can be beneficial by healing Warped Pelvis or Intestinal Prolapse (otherwise it gains you +1 understanding at the cost of crippling your survival or +3 insanity). Sacrifice is a bit easier to handle when you have Graves, it causes population loss for either gains of insanity or removal of disorders. If you have a decent enough population (and you should have if you've been learning how to population manage) then you can spam this one out in a single lantern year at the cost of 4 to 8 population and potentially curing some disorders at the same time. However, Sacrifice is a Tier 3 Innovation (Language -> Inner Lantern -> Shrine -> Sacrifice) and it's not usually a high priority pick.

Story of Blood 2 is a more promising development, it allows you to spend an activation to remove a bleeding token. This causes 1 brain damage but gives you one armor to a location of your choice. Having access to this means you don't need to concern yourself with Bandages, because you have your own personal bandage shield with a minor upside (the 1 brain damage is pretty inconsequential). It still isn't as impressive as many of the other baseline fighting arts we already have (and it doesn't hold a candle to most of the other strains).  

The four observations here require the survivor to use the fighting art while they have 4+ Bleeding Tokens, difficult to achieve without the help of Surge and/or Unconscious Fighter.

Story of Blood 3 is a straight upgrade from Story of Blood 2, allowing you to use an activation to remove a bleeding token and gain 1 armor point to any hit location. The only improvement here is the removal of the (inconsequential) 1 brain damage. At this point it is basically an okay variant on bandages, but considering that it doesn't help anyone else, you are still going to end up with bandages in your hunt party most of the time.  It is possible that you might end up running Story of Blood + Unconscious Fighters along with a Bloodskin (White Speaker Promo) party to avoid the need for bandages, but this is unlikely.

There are three observations here and the requirement is absolutely bananas. You need to be present when another survivor dies from bleeding tokens. I've long stated that anything linked to the death of hunt survivors needs to be very strong in order to justify the cost. This one requires three!

Story of Blood 4 continues the activation mechanic, but now you gain 1 armor point on all locations for that bleeding token. You can also spend bleeding tokens in place of survival (hey look, it's the Rose Knight SFA mechanic! Stop borrowing my mechanics Adam! Kappa**) However, each time you use this FA (it's not clear exactly which part of the FA as it fails to use a definitive article), then it gains an observation. At 7 observations you have a 50% chance of dying each time you use it a future time.

Honestly, this limit of 7 observations is really awkward and unpleasant to use. You're likely binning the fighting art when you get close to 6 and replacing it with something new. Only risking the 7th observation if it was life and death already (it's not explicitly stated in the rules, but loss of the fighting art does not seem to reset the observations on it).

There are some issues in its interactions with Sculpture, but Sculpture is a problematic mess that I hope is removed somewhere in Wave 3 and replaced with a (second) revision. At a minimum Strain Fighting Arts should never be allowed to be Sculpted (Convalescor I am looking at you).

Summary

Story of Blood is very much a humdrum experience of 'almost good enough' all the way through from start to finish. Which makes it a solid and acceptable promotional piece. There are some intriguing lore snippets in this experience and overall there is nothing overpowered or underpowered present here. 

The typical experience with Song of Blood is you eventually unlock it (mostly because you're farming Understanding gains) and then eventually you get it and then you push it to Song of Blood 2. After that it sort of haphazardly upgrades itself as and when it happens, and if you do somehow get it to the max level it becomes a temporary Fighting Art that you use 6 times before dropping it for good.

So... Is it worth chasing down now that it's out of stock in the store? Not for an additional price unless you really like the model. This is a fine, okay addition to the game, with a fun adventure involved in getting it and it's a solid emergent story telling experience. But it is more book keeping, more tracking of things and the payoff at the end is somewhat underwhelming to say the least. 

That said, I approve of promotional material being like this rather than on the level of Echoes of Death/White Gigalion/Tempered Axe/Tempered Spear, so it does get a thumbs up of approval. 

Worth it at the shop price of $25, but not a penny more sir!

*When White Speaker/Storytelling was updated/improved for 1.5, the name of the activation was changed from the Beauty and the Beast/Disney reference 'Tale as Old as Time' to the generic 'Story Time' you see pictured. I often wonder why this change occurred, if it is copyright concerns then one has to wonder why the Slenderman has not been changed. Who knows?

**In case you are not aware, Kappa is from Twitch and is an indication of a satirical/humorous/sarcastic comment. Honestly I couldn't care less.

GIVE AWAY

You got this far down into the article? Well guess what. I have a spare set of the rules, strain and fighting art cards to give away for those of you who missed out. They are from the miscut original printing run as I bought two sets to paint each variation of this White Speaker model. So you will notice the difference if you play without sleeves, but I'm not charging anything for them. You just have to be a $5 or higher Patron and enter in the comments below with the phrase 'My Blood is my Shield!' 

Drawing will be undertaken by one of the mod team and we'll announce the winner on the 17th of February!

 Good luck to those of you who enter!