A Look at the First "Vignettes" (Book 3-19) (Patreon)

Today we're going to take a look at the original vignettes; the "failed" scenario book of 3-19. It's something of a curiosity, but it also has a few genuinely interesting vignettes that can be made into fun one shot scenarios or demo games with the insertion of pre-made survivors. 

It also has some insight into lore for a few of the more unique survivors out there.

Link to the scenario book:  http://www.kingdomdeath.com/downloads/Book-3-19.pdf  

Scenario 1: Allison the Twilight Knight

Lets just put this out there right now, I really enjoy this particular scenario as a teaching mechanic. Our genderbent Allister makes for a great one shot fight and also a great replacement for the Hooded Stranger's first appearance event. I do straight up recommend  the next time you play People of the Lantern that you try out this event in replacement for the tables. It actually fixes some of the issues that one has with the Hooded Stranger  by giving players agency over who gets the sword, and also resulting in a cool little battle. I have attached a sample pdf of the files I started to put together to turn this into the full thing, if a few of you are interested in the full updated version of how we play this as the Hooded Stranger, let me know in the comments.

The showdown is a pretty fun one, Allison is around the L1 King's Man in power, but with a "weaker" trap (it's stronger if you have shields) and I've found having it trigger for Hooded Stranger on the 5th Innovation is relatively balanced, especially because if you fail - that's the Twilight Sword gone from the campaign (except for drawing it via hunt events). Which, as much as I complain about the Twilight Sword, is a blow*.

With the right survivors, this one is superb.

8/10

*This is because the Twilight Sword itself is fine, the problems surrounding it are all linked to how it is acquired and the hooded stranger duels. Both of which screw up the game experience a lot. 

Scenario 2: Candy & Cola vs. the Young White Lion

This event introduces us to the Soda Pop survivors who made a second appearance in the 1.5 Kickstarter. Candy & Cola are a pair of cuties and despite my now strongly negative feelings in respect of Ninja Division (you've got a long way to go to fix those bridges), I do still have a soft spot for these two.

This scenario is in essence a slightly easier L1 White Lion, but in exchange for that, you have to run Candy & Cola as one of your survivors over one from the settlement. They're lacking any weapon other than a Founding Stone, Cloth and the very, very cool Cola Bottle Lantern. It's designed to be played around lantern years 1 to 3 and as a house ruled replacement for a normal White Lion hunt during that period (especially in LY1), its relatively well balanced. Giving you an extra survivor, cloth, founding stone & the cola bottle lantern on success. 

The Young Lion's AI (and toughness) is also a bit weaker than normal, so this is not really a scenario that veteran players should spend their time on, but players who are still struggling a bit with getting their head around how to handle the early monsters honestly benefit from this one. 

It integrates well with what's there already and is decently balanced, if not inspiring. Something to consider if you're seeking a more narrative rich experience for your hunts.

6/10 

Scenario 3: Adam & Anna: Explorers of Death

So this scenario seems to be the inspiration behind the White Gigalion's thematic design, with the first Adam & Anna's avatars fighting off against the Corpulent Lion. Making this at most a two player scenario.

Its integration into the campaign is not very well implemented. There's no cost to trying to complete this one as long as you don't have Partnership innovated, and a successful completion gives you Partnership for free (plus 2 endeavors). So yeah, balance is way off and it does nothing but make the campaign easier.

The fight itself is also a little problematic. It's a tougher, harder L2 White Lion without Cunning vs. Two Leather Wearing Survivors who can deal 1 automatic wound per round (if one of them skips attacking).  Should be played standalone. Even then it has some severe balance issues due to Partner Strike. 

3/10

Scenario 4: Paul the Survivor

Paul the Survivor (not savior as the title accidentally calls him) is the Piranha Helm wearing survivor who comes on the same sprue group as Snow the Savior, Aya the Survivor and Alister the Twilight Knight. This scenario adds two interesting elements to your campaign when completed, the Sworn Enemy disorder and the Piranha Helm alternate Rawhide helm.

The scenario itself is a 1v1 battle between a crippled King's Man and Paul. Paul's decked in full rawhide with a Scrap Sword & Petal Lantern (beautiful imagery on that one). The fight itself is reasonably tough because of Paul's lack of a shield - so the trap is brutal even with the HL deck and AI deck nerfed. You've still got to get through battle pressure every turn.  Also, joyously the King's Man packs Coup de Grace as one of its AI cards, so the threat of Paul just being auto-killed is always present.

This one is not a great scenario, but I do think that both the Petal Lantern and the Piranha Helm represent some excellent pieces of gear that I hope will emerge in the Card Pack or Wave 3 content in some form and Sworn Enemy is a super interesting Disorder to boot.

Because this one is a difficult fight, with only a single survivor to control, I think that the scenario isn't worth playing unless you're a solo player and you want to practice against the King's Man. However, the Piranha Helm is a genuinely interesting replacement for the Rawhide Headband, losing access to the AI control ability is a massive price to pay, but the ability to spend survival while frenzied is worth the cost. It enables some very interesting builds. Likewise the Petal Lantern is very interesting and well designed, with you being able to spend survival to increase your roll on the severe injury table and it's a lantern with an affinity (red down). All of this is great and I hope to see these items and disorder printed with artwork.

There. Not a great scenario, but the additional content here is all amazing and worth experiencing. I've attached that image file below as a temporary content piece, I'm strongly considering going back and sorting them out as bleed images with proper backs.

5/10

Scenario 5: Kara Black vs. The Silver Antelope

Kara is a very difficult miniature to get your hands on these days, because she's a cross over miniature from Studio McVey, there seems to be no reprinting opportunity for her (same with Candy & Cola above).  That's a shame because she has one of the coolest and most unique items in the game.

This one is so utterly ridiculous that it's hard to not find it cool. She's literally smacking monsters with a giant stone face. As you can see, it's basically a non-slow Zanbato/Rib Blade variant, but with the drawback that 10% of the time you lose it forever and create a giant stone face terrain feature for that showdown. Considering you get this weapon for 'free' by playing the scenario, that's a seriously well designed piece of gear.

Kara herself is a potential new population gain, but the scary part is she's got nothing but a founding stone, cloth and the Giant Stone Face vs a L2 Screaming Antelope. The good news is, you get to bring three other survivors to try and help keep her alive! She's also got +1 strength, 3 survival, Tough and Leader - so she's no slouch, but she is still certainly outclassed a bit during this fight, you have to work hard to avoid her being trampled too much.

The antelope has a pretty solid AI deck, but it's got both copies of Chow Down in it (which is the most abuse-able and weak AI card the Antelope has. In compensation though, it packs the Butcher's Trap instead of its usual one. I love these monsters that switch up what trap they have, it's awkward when you come to drawing from the deck, but it changes up things in a really interesting manner.

This is one of the good ones that you can consider running instead of hunting a normal L2 Screaming Antelope. It's actually a bit harder than it would normally be because of Kara's kit loadout being better suited for a L1 Antelope, so you're often having to baby sit her.

8/10

Scenario 6: The Messenger of the First Story

Another 1v1 scenario, which immediately makes it a worse experience for non-solo players. This scenario has the MotFS (Messenger of the First Story, aka Ayla from Chrono Trigger) fighting alone against a L2 Radiant Lion (I do love all these variations for these monsters, don't you? Very evocative).

The Radiant Lion has a very small 5 card AI deck and 9 card HL deck, so this one is tight with a lot of trap triggers happening. Ayla gets access to the following gear:

• Screaming Armor
• Arm of the First Tree (2/6+/4): Club. On a Perfect hit the monster gains -1 toughness until end of the round. Limit once per round
• CEC
• Monster Grease
• Dried Acanthus

So honestly she's one of the better designed solo fighters, capable of handling the Radiant Lion a reasonable amount of the time. If you succeed you get a free trigger of White Speaker: Story of the Goblin (minor benefit, fine if you get it for free) and the Arm of the First Tree club (which is a great mid game club). 

If you fail, you get to fight the Radiant Lion directly with 4 survivors from your settlement. The only think I think is a bit off on the balance here is this event is all special showdowns, so there's just pure positives for the settlement. But hey! It's something to remember if you're playing and a settlement is struggling.

6/10

Scenario 7: Aya the Survivor

A massive departure from the normal design of the game. This one has a highly pre-programmed Screaming Antelope (that can auto kill Aya) patroling while Aya attempts to recover her necklace (I hope the Monster Tooth Necklace is part of her gear in the next vignette). 

Honestly, this is the worst of all the scenarios in the book, it's a stealth mission with an automatic failure condition. Have you ever played an action/FPS video game that suddenly adds one of these in? It's obnoxious.

The interesting part of this scenario is how the antelope has been programmed to move around, rather than physically moving from one spot to the next in a patrol fashion, it 'teleports' to a randomly determined spot from amongst 5. Which means that the entire scenario is based on patience and occasional baiting of the antelope. 

It takes forever to play, and isn't worth the time. But the layout of the terrain on the board is super interesting!

1/10

Scenario 8: The Messenger of Courage

It's time for Genderbent Link's adventures. This is a series of 1v1 battles and it's really good content, but only for a solo player (or maybe two players). You've got to complete the gauntlet; killing a variation of each L2 core game quarry, with a single Survivor. 

Linkette's actually quite the beast in combat, with a huge amount of bonuses, a good rank in the Twilight Sword and Last Man Standing (great choice of a fighting art for her here) along with leather armor, a feather mantle (helps with the Phoenix) the super interesting Scouts Tunic and a free full heal Fairy Bottle.

The Scout's Tunic in particular is a super interesting piece of gear. It's a head/body leather armor piece of gear, so it lets you complete the Leather set with one item less. But it has less armor points and holds less affinities. So there's a genuinely good trade off here and this is another item I'd like to see make its way to the main game in some official form. 

Also, as she beats each monster, she 'levels up' by gaining more gear, the main irritant here is she gets a beacon shield for killing the L2 Phoenix, you've beaten the hardest monster, you get a piece of gear that lets you stomp the others (if you haven't already beaten them).

That minor gripe aside, this is a great, fun scenario and can be a neat two player or solo experience. It certainly evokes the flavor of playing Legend of Zelda, so I have to give it a bonus point for that. 

7/10

Scenario 9:  The Messenger of Humanity

Next up in the knock-off characters we have 'not-Guts' from the Berserk series. Honestly this scenario is a big flop. You basically chop away with a Dragon Slayer at 25(!) retinues while trying to not get overwhelmed. Then finally you cut up the 'last challenger' who is almost as generic and boring as the retinues were before them. It's a mindless slog, lacking much in the way of interesting tactical decisions because of how simplistic the Retinue/Last Challenger are.

The Stone Arm gear handed out at the end of the scenario (on a victory) is once again another interesting piece of gear and something again want to see released in an official form. But I hope it's attached to a more interesting package next time.

Guts? Hardly, this chap is more like Schmutz!

3/10

Scenario 10:  The Messenger of the Spiral Path

This time it's  Kamina from Gurren Lagann, now I know absolutely nothing at all about this character or the series. So you can go read about him yourself if you want. 

Like Allison before him, Kamina is styled as a "replacement" nemesis monster, this time replacing the L2 Butcher, and providing a 'softer' experience. So you could slot him into a campaign in LY16, replacing the usual L2 Butcher fight that often occurs there.

He has a heck of a design, employing cards from 5 different monsters to result in something that's very unique and unusual. Attacking via Spiral Age in addition to the normal  attack vectors monsters employ. Just like Allison he's also a 1x1 "monster". But unlike Allison he becomes increasingly more and more dangerous the lower his life falls.

So yeah, I consider this one worth the experience of playing. It's very unique and I hope it makes the translation across to the new content in some form. 

I'd like to also quickly take a moment to talk about the Reborn mechanic used here (and in the Allison showdown), it's a very clever way of punishing players for losing, you don't get endeavors here, your survivors come back to life and are saddled with Fear of the Dark - so you might be able to unretire them, but it takes effort. If the mechanic had ever made it into the official game, survivors being hit with Reborn over straight death would have weakened Graves a great deal.

7/10

Scenario 11:  Snow the Savior vs. the Relentless Butcher

Hrum, well I'm already on record stating that I don't much care for the 1v1 scenarios because they don't make for good demos or good experiences outside of solo (or maybe two people) play. 

Still, Snow is an interesting look into how saviors alternatively can employ their abilities. I really like all three of them and wish they had in some form been integrated into the main game. They're hugely thematic and interesting (though the blue one probably wouldn't work well). 

The fight itself plays out in a unique fashion, with Snow using portals to kite/taunt and frustrate the Butcher while gradually trying to wear it down. To be honest, she shouldn't have too much trouble, because she can use the combination of portals and Green Glow to ensure that she can heal/tank up while kiting and eventually turn on the Butcher to kill it. However, sometimes, the Butcher just bites her head off. Woo. (It's also neat when she survives Hack City).

I think this one is just an interesting curio and look into the expanded experience of what Saviors can be when they're not so harshly tied to the mechanics in the core game. So unlike some of the other 1v1 scenarios on this list, it gets a passing grade.

5/10

Summary:

There are a few gems in the rough amongst all of this, with the standouts being Allison, Candy & Cola, Kaya and Alya/First Story being the main ones because of how they nicely tie into a campaign with their replacement hunts. But there are also a lot of interesting and unique spins on the game experience, plus snippets of lore and very cool uniquely named variant animals. I love things like the Corpulent Lion or the Silver Antelope - and I wish that more work had been done on these, because they're close to being a great part of any campaign. Just having them better integrated, more useful for multiple players or drawn via settlement events would be great strides towards sorting this out. Now inevitably, seeing how I've written this, someone is going to go and try to do it all as homebrew. But my wish is that APG would hurry up and revisit these, because there is a lot of potential here being wasted.

Just forget about that Aya and Humanity scenario ok? They're not good.