Variant Campaigns: Hard, Hero and Putting them Together (Patreon)

It's time to put a cap on the Variant Campaign section, here we'll take a look at the Quick Mode, Death Mode, Hero Mode and then run through a few variant campaigns I've played which turned out to be interesting, challenging and/or fun.

Quick Mode

Quick Mode is intended to cause things to die quickly, it doesn't speed up the game very much at because it's focused around speeding up only the showdown. What happens is everything just gets shredded a lot faster. The variant is as follows:

• Survivors have +1 Strength
• Monsters have +1 Damage
• Survivors deal an additional wound each time they wound the monster
• Survivors die when they have 3 bleeding tokens

Honestly this mode is just a milder Death Mode, survivor turn over is very high and I really cannot recommend this mode for anyone except people who like seeing settlements die quickly. 

This is because this mode doubles the speed that survivors die, and causes monsters like The Butcher to become incredible at just obliterating a survivor in a single attack (via Bleed). Because your replacement rate in the settlement isn't doubled to compensate for the double speed survivors die at, it's on the additional damage to monsters to balance it out.

Well, it turns out that having Quarry monsters die extra quickly; without any additional resource drops at the end of the showdown, means less resources. So Quick Mode quickly becomes 'Hard Mode' v2.0.

I just can't recommend this game variant at all, it feels like it was just written onto the page and called 'complete' without a single test and certainly no attempt at balancing in the slightest. However, that's not something which can be blamed on the design team too much, the balance levers for scaling in KDM are so delicate that moving even one of them screws with a huge amount of unintended areas.

Death Mode

The mode that is intended for "purists" (yeah, enjoy being shamed by the rulebook for not being a purist). This Mode is Quick Mode on steroids, with the monsters enjoying their benefits but survivors getting none. Just look at these three modifiers that make up the allegedly "Full Kingdom Death Monster Challenge".

• All gear is irreplaceable
• Survivors die at 3 Bleeding tokens
• Monsters gain +1 damage

With few exceptions, this mode is absolutely miserable to play because you spend all your time being as safe as possible in your tactics. Evasion, Shields, Bandages, CEC. All of the slowest, strongest, dullest methods of playing this game have to be employed in order to make progress here. (And the death rate against the early monsters when you don't have that stuff is awful). 

Yes, this mode is a challenge, but it's not interesting because of how absurd the scaling of the damage issues is in the early game and the problem about how everything is balanced for 5 bleeding in the late game.

You also end up using the cheapest, most efficient gear possible and grinding the easiest, rewarding monsters over anything else. So, this one is almost also a hard pass mode, with one exception which I'll mention below when we talk about how to combine variants.

Hero Mode

An interesting mode, this one pushes things a little too far in the direction of being too easy. Here are the rules.

• When survivors die, they are knocked unconscious and check Skip Next Hunt. (Remove them from the showdown). All unconscious survivors are returned to the settlement at the end of the showdown.
• When you name a survivor, in addition to +1 survival they also gain +1 Permanent Luck, Accuracy, Evasion, Strength or Speed.

The first one of these two is fine, I used it as the basis for my own Hero mode variant. But the second one is an absolute joke and is best left for your kids when they play alongside you. Just like giving +1 Damage to a monster in the early game, getting +1 Luck on a Survivor

Still, it's a fun mode if you just want to get through the story and experience the campaign without having to reset all the time. There is still risk to the survivors, through maiming, retirement and things which remove survivors without killing them (exile, erasure from time, etc).

There is also the Storyteller Mode, which is not really worth discussing because of how bare bones it is (nice idea though, it's a good way to bring your friends into the game if they dislike the random crushings), and the 5-6 Player Variant, which is well known to be somewhat troubled in design to be generous (because the +1 Damage issue turns up again).

Overall I'd recommend the Hero Mode for playing with the family and typically skipping on all the other offerings here because they're very poorly designed. One can hope that Campaigns of Death has more effort put into its variants than these, it should do as this space in the game has huge potential.

Recommendations

That brings us to the recommendations. I'm going to put forward a few variant combinations I have enjoyed in the past, each with a brief explanation of why. You should consider these next time you start a new campaign.

The Seven Swordsmen of Death

Death Mode + Seven Swordsmen + any campaign

This is a very fun, tight campaign with a lot of the excess trimmed away. You don't have to worry about population, you just need to keep everyone alive for as long as possible. Death Mode's irreplaceable downside is less of a hit also because you just have less survivors overall. 

The thing here is you know you're likely to die, you have the odds stacked against you massively, so it's not about winning, it's entirely about the journey and the distance. There will be frustrating 'instant deletion' moments, and you need to be prepared for those heartbreaks.

Still, winning this one in lantern should probably be considered to be the pinnacle of fortune.

The People of the Sun Bloom

People of the Sun + People of the Bloom (bonus points for adding People of the Skull)

Restrictions and limitations are a great breeding ground for creativity and this is the most gear restrictive experience you can bring up. Not only is wearing heavy gear denied (for non-Hellfires), but also you are dealing with additional green and less red affinities. It is a heck of a ride and a way of exploring the game when you've played a lot of it over and over. 

People of the Skull is an interesting addition to this mix because it adds even more limitations, while also giving that incredible boost via the Skull ritual. However, Skull + Bloom denies access to the Lion Skin Cloak (often a favourite for Skullz) and debatably removes access to rolling armor for them (we still don't know if Sun stops wearing Rolling Armor or not, rules as written it doesn't). So you are probably going to want access to the Gigalion and Spidicules in this campaign (just don't try removing all the legs from a Spidicules, it is torturous in Sun).

The People of the Star Bloom 

If you want to slant things in your favor and have a lot of fun. Adding Bloom (or Skull) to Stars can create some very powerful survivors in order to explore some of the more crazy content out there. Bloom leverages a lot of power for survivors, giving faster access to the bonus evasion on Monster Grease while also shutting off things like the Counterweighted Axe (which you never wanted to use in this campaign anyway) - plus that additional Luck and the awesome gear cannot be overlooked.

Skull is another fun variant to use here, however it is darn scary to run your constellations without too much protection, so you likely want to have the Dung Beetle Knight available in order to build multiple Rolling Armor sets.

And there we have it. That's the end of the variant campaigns for now, one hopes that Campaigns of Death adds a bunch more, especially for the shorter campaigns, as no matter if they succeed or fail, they are always an interesting portion of the game for how they can potentially refresh your game experience!