Marshlight Reviews: Halloween "White" Speaker (Patreon)

Last week we went through Oktoberfest Aya's content, which was a pricey set that holds some so-so content that's not really for anything other than the dedicated player. This time we'll have a dive into the Halloween White Speaker, so you'll know if you want to chase it down on the secondary market or pick it up next halloween.

Contents

This micro-expansion set contains:

• 1x Specially printed "black" box
• 1x "White" Speaker Plastic Model, including sculpted base
• 1x Art Card
• 1x Pattern Card
• 1x Gear Card 

For the MSRP of $25, pretty standard for this kind of thing. 

The Model

The Halloween White Speaker (HWS) first emerged as one of the earliest KDM Photoresin prints seen by the public. It was later released as a resin product with no additional game material. In 2019 it finally came out in plastic with game content. Honestly, I don't think this is the right way to go about releasing these things, if you are going to put game content with a product, it should be the way that it has been done with the Halloween Twilight Knight - it's present in all versions. That method means that people who picked up the older resin version are not "forced" to pick up the newer plastic one in order to get the game content. 

Little things like this might not seem like they matter, but they are anti-consumer practices (intentional or not) and should be highlighted for the community to see. Kingdom Death appeals strongly to people with "collector's instinct" and "FOMO" (Fear of Missing Out) through a huge amount of approaches. While I do not believe that these are cynical and calculated practices on the part of APG LLC, this does not lessen the impact they have. As an ex-gottahaveitall myself, I am keenly aware of the financial. mental and emotional damage that experiences like this can have. You might not be affected by them, but that does not mean that they are irrelevant.

This is why I keep critiquing these practices and highlighting them for others, the only way things will change for the better is through pressure from the public (because people are absolutely not going to speak with their wallets, the fever is still too high).

The model itself is, well it's nice enough, it's another White Speaker. They're kind of useless in game at the moment, a Halloween version especially so. It's well sculpted and straightforward to assemble, for ease of painting I recommend that the speaker, the cloak and the base (including the pumpkin sack) are all kept separate for painting access.

It is a fine model, and the final point to critique is that it does not come with any spare Black Ghost Dagger models for your survivors to wield. I firmly believe that we should be getting at least one physical copy of any item/weapon that comes in a promo set, so we can model it if we desire. This is not the case here, but in a perplexing moment, it is the case for the Halloween Twilight Knight. Consistency, a specialty of the Kingdom Death line!

The Game Content

We have exactly one pattern gear here. Again we have a complete lack of rules for how to use this piece of gear. So I will simply cut and paste my comment from the previous article on this. 

I consider that to be a serious oversight, if you are going to release promotional content with rules that are not in the core rule book, you absolutely should either be:

a) Warning people that this box requires rules from another promotional box.

b) Providing a copy of the rules online, with a link on the store page to download them

c) Putting the rules in the box.

None of these have been observed here, and I think that is a large mark against this product. It should be able to stand alone for anyone who purchases it, not require another piece of limited edition/seasonal promotional content or asking around online for the rules. 

As for the content itself, it's the Black Ghost Dagger.

As always, what you are not warned when purchasing this micro-expansion is that it requires not one, but two other expansions. This card does absolutely nothing unless you own and are using both the Dung Beetle Knight and Slender-man. 

I have written this before and I am sure I will have to write it again and again. These products should have the following text on their store page:

"This product requires the following items to be integrated into your Kingdom Death: Monster experience.

1. Kingdom Death: Monster Core Game

2. Dung Beetle Knight Expansion

3. The Slender-man Expansion"

Again I have encountered people who have purchased this item and do not have both of the  required expansions, they are now having to secure those separately in order to maybe, one day, experience this pattern.

Overall these elements contribute to my point above about anti-consumer practices. Simple things such as fully informing the customer about obligatory expansion requirements for an item and providing copies of rules electronically (if not in the box) are not hard to implement, but despite push-back, these things still have not yet happened. The Christmas Stan (Satan) has been out for two years and the page still does not warn you that the strain requires the Flower Knight. I consider this to be unacceptable at this point.

Crafting the Dagger

The full requirements to make this dagger are as follows:

• Crafted on a year where Nightmare Corn (L2 Black Harvest) is collected.
• A Survivor with 10+ Insanity.
• Hovel Innovation
• Survivor with Blotted Out Fighting Art
• 3x Dark Water Slender-man strange resource
• 2x Iron Strange Resource

That seems like a lot, but it really isn't. Blotted Out is handed out in spades by the Slender-man, Hovel is a Level 1 innovation (direct from Language), Iron is iron and Dark Water is gained via fighting the Slender-man.

The only real awkward parts are setting up the Level 2 Black Harvest for Nightmare Corn (because you'll have other things you want to craft while that corn is present) and building up to 10+ Insanity (unless you're going to cheese it with the Gorm). Ultimately, this is a mid game recipe that is very achievable through the natural progression of the game and the only real issue is the Dark Water, a resource that is not exactly available in large quantities and wanted for other really powerful items like the Gloomhammer and Slender Ovule. It's a hit on your opportunity costs and creates a hard decision. Great stuff! This weapon needed to be good because the Slender-Man gear that competes for the resources is also good!

Using the Dagger

The Dagger itself comes with two new mechanics and is another powerful dagger that fills the issues and weaknesses that the weapon class has. There has been a huge amount of pushing on dagger designs over the past two years and they have moved from being a low tier choice to a very viable attacking weapon with the right expansions. Whips and Thrown Weapons now just need the same amount of pushing.

It is baseline a 3 speed, 7+ accuracy, 2 strength weapon. Which isn't anything to really write home about. But that extra Black boxed 1 under the strength box has the following rules text on the back. "This gains +10 strength when attacking a monster with 10+ Toughness." 

12 strength is nothing to sneeze at, it's an absolutely huge amount. The number of weapons that break 10+ strength is a very short list and having it on a Dagger is incredible.  10 Toughness is also an amount that is reached very quickly.  Most early game monsters are 10+ Toughness at level 2 and the Node 3 monsters are the same at L1. So this ability is online pretty much from the moment you make it unless you're being a baby and still farming weaklings (which you shouldn't be, you've just had a Nightmare Corn harvest, so you've been beating up DBKs).

The other abilities are Deflect 1 when the puzzle pieces are connected, that's another massively powerful ability. 

Finally the weapon gains Sharp when fighting (Pumpkin) monsters. We do not have any (Pumpkin) monsters at the moment, but I think you should expect to see some, either as an encounter or a legitimate Nemesis monster/Quarries next Halloween.

It is a very good, well designed weapon. A little pushed* (see footnote) and on the strong side, but the high speed, "low" accuracy, high strength design is a good one and while Deflect 1 seems strong, it has been established that Block 1 on a non-shield is undesirable. Deflect works better on a weapon because it allows the survivor to 'set and forget' rather than surge whenever they need to defend.

Summary

Like most promotional content, this one is not exactly a 'must have' but it is a higher cut than normal. It has a relatively well balanced weapon which is a reasonable challenge to craft and appropriate power for the portion of the game you use it in (really it's for attacking L3 monsters, especially when used with Cycloid Scale/Phoenix or Dragon Armor).  It must be acknowledged that it has been "pushed"* but if you are pushing an area of the game that was very weak beforehand and you are doing it in an intelligent manner, that is fine.

I think this one is a smidgen expensive because the model isn't usable in game (as of now), but it is a fun sculpt and the game content, despite being very small, is impactful in a good manner the same way that Allison or the Ringtail's content is.

This one gets my approval. 

*For those of you who are not familiar with the term, a "pushed" creation is something that has been deliberately upscaled to make it more powerful than the average member of its category or even everything else in the game. An example of this in another game was the Oko debacle in Magic the Gathering last year, this was a pushed card that utterly distorted all the games around it until it was banned in almost every format. This is the ultimate risk when pushing a design.

In the case of daggers we have seen Backstabber to supplement daggers and then the releases of new dagger items in Hooked Claw Knife, Cult Speaker Knife and this new Black Ghost Dagger. All of which represent significant improvements over the daggers that were available previously, where we were in a game world that only had Acid-Tooth Daggers + Monster Strength Armor or Nuclear Knife + Red Core and Monster Strength Armor or Nuclear Knife + Blue Core + Lucky Charm. All of which (apart from the Acid-Tooths required a huge number of pre-requisite actions and supporting gear to make work). So Daggers were not in the meta at all.

This new breed are all stronger and have more utility abilities than the previous ones, so they represent pushed design. There is a clear decision from the design team that daggers are underused and they've strengthened them to the point that they make many weapons in other categories look laughable in comparison.