Hitting with the Saddest Stick: Gloom Club Strategies (Patreon)

Before we start, I just wanted to express a little surprise that given Adam's close Irish roots, it is stunning beyond all believe that we still do not have a single Shillelagh in the entire repertoire. This traditionally Irish walking stick/weapon has not only roots in Irish culture, but it is also a potent part of several myths; some of which we already see inspiring elements of the Kingdom Death world.

The only thing one can surmise (outside of assuming that it's ignorance or laziness) is that because of their traditionally wooden construction they are due to make their appearance in the Abyssal Woods; and I recommend strongly that if they do not start to turn up then, we picket the Kickstarter updates with pro-Shillelagh placards and chants. I think that's an appropriate use of time. Because a series of club/walking stick hybrids with benefits in the hunt phase is a wonderful thematic, mechanical and design concept. Until then, we're going to spend a little time today looking at the closest we have managed to receive so far, the "Sad Smashing Stick" aka, the Gloom Hammer. 

The Slenderman is an expansion where there is utterly fierce competition for what the best individual piece of gear might be. It's a very strange experience to have a challenging, interesting, powerful nemesis monster also be loaded to the seedpods with tonnes and tonnes of useful and powerful gear cards. If only other nemesis monsters could have copied the Slenderman's homework instead of just turning in the bare minimum, the texture of games at the moment would be richer, deeper and longer lasting.

Still, shallow nemesis monsters is not a problem because APG constantly put out multiple additional expansions each year, so the game is kept fresh and enticing for new and existing players alike. At least, that's what I'd be writing if we lived in an alternate dimension the same way as the Slenderman does, one that's dark; wild, wet and inhabited by plant people.

This wonderful depressed entity requires level two Dark Water crafting and is made from two skulls, a hunk of iron, one generic organ and two fluid ounces of dark water. It's something you're not going to be able to craft until after you've defeated your second Slenderman, but once you have it, you're going to wonder how you lived without it.

This is because the Gloom Hammer not only packs an incredible set of stats andonly the Speed/Accuracy in combination is a smidge disappointing - with a baseline 64% chance of scoring at least 1 hit [ P(A∪B) = P(A) + P(B) - P(A∩B)= 0.4 + 0.4 - 0.16= 0.64 ]. When you score that hit though, with 13 strength you are typically going to be inflicting a wound, and with the Gloom Hammer, the first wound you score ends your attack, cancelling all remaining reactions and triggering the super interesting part of the hammer's power.

Before we get to that; it must not be overlooked that this item is Sentient, you will need to ensure that the user remains insane, otherwise the weapon will not be useable. So, the very first step you want to pay attention to is making sure that you have some way of replenishing the user's survival back to 3 insanity if they get knocked below it somehow. The simplest tool for this is the Screaming Helm (which can be on any survivor in the party), but other options are available.

The Proof is in the Pudding

If the Gloom Hammer only pounded monsters like yesterday's meat with that ridiculous 13 strength; that can have Sharp stacked on top of it via Lantern/Cycloid Scale armor, or have the strength boosted further by Phoenix/Dragon Armor (Reach 2 is amazing with those two armor sets) then it would already be one of the best weapons in the game. 

However, the Gloom Hammer has a few other completely unique tricks up its haft, all of which trigger when you score a wound (something this weapon is very capable of doing with that combination of ridiculous strength and Deadly).

For a start it ends the attack, which is a bit of a double edged sword - for a start you don't have to deal with any remaining reactions which were not very pleasant, but also you don't get to wound two locations with positives. So from situation to situation this is going to feel bad or good depending on what you draw. But the larger issue is that this weapon cannot deal multiple wounds per attack without mastery:

So, that's a lot of investment to get what is basically Devastating 1 on the Gloom Hammer, but it is a bonus in addition to the gloomy nail smasher's usual benefits; depends how much you value getting Club mastery, it's fair to say that the Gloom Hammer is very good on even a red shirt hunter.

That is just the tip of the iceberg, it's the next two abilities which do (almost) unprecedented things, these two wounding triggers build on the concept of clubs providing AI control and twist them in exciting fashions. One of the reasons why I wanted to go back and write more about the unusual and rarer weapons is due to how exciting and stupendous these portions of this weapon are. 

Run Away Little Monster, Run Away!

Clubs have a history of having minor AI control effects on wounds (critical or otherwise) and the Gloom Club is no exception. Wounding the monster not only ends the attack, but it causes the monster to flee with a full move directly away from the attacker. This is something that's just unheard of anywhere else in the game at the moment, so until you play with it one might not appreciate all of the applications it has.

So the first thing that you do have to consider is the order in which you attack the monster, if you swing with the Gloom Hammer first, then the rest of the survivors will either be out of range, or forced to move up a bit in order to get back into range. So a typical survivor round will involve the Gloom Hammer hitting last - but there are exceptions to this, and Phoenix Armor is a great example of one of them. 

Normally with Phoenix Armor one is forced to retreat in order to get enough of a run up and Charge, so no matter how much you work on boosting your movement in order to get bigger run ups, it just doesn't work out that you can do it every turn even if you are exceptional at tank positional control. The monsters in this game can be quite static at times, especially when they have a specific target in mind.

The Gloom Hammer changes this, allowing you to smash the monster, make it flee and then have the Phoenix Armor survivor charge in for a huge it. This can also be done with Dragon Armor, but you need to have a decent reach weapon to make up for the lower movement boost that Dragon Armor gives you (typically it is a flat 5 spaces vs Phoenix's 7+ if insane and 10+ with Harvestman). 

You can also take advantage of this mechanic with very long range bows, the Ink Blood Bow or the Arc Bow are the two best positioned to do this as they have the longest ranges (and are overall the best sniping bows in the game). 

Even without these two specific armors (or Screaming armor and Green armor, which also have a charge like move) you can still take great advantage of this effect by having a tank (high evasion, high armor, shield) survivor move forward into the space between the monster and the survivor before setting a block. Most monsters will never target survivors outside of their attack range, and they often go for the nearest

The Gloom Hammer also has other neat tricks that are monster specific, such as keeping a Dung Beetle Knight away from its ball with ease or turning the Dragon King around when he's about to go meltdown.

But there is one final trick we've not discussed here, and that is using the Gloom Hammer to help cancel the monster's attacks, what you want to do here is either have the monster's target one space clear of the monster (or have a Dash available) and then surge on the flow step after the monster has chosen its target. If you hit and wound the monster will full move away and then full move back at its target but end up out of reach, doing nothing for the turn.

It's All in the Mind

That brings us all neatly to the final element of the Gloom Club, and the most interesting one of them all. When you wound the monster, you gain control of the Monster Controller card, which means that when the monster next takes its turn the survivor/player who is next in rotation will be the AI controller, and because this triggers each time you wound the monster, you will be able to set up one survivor/player as monster controller for most of the fight.

At its most simple and basic level, this means that the Gloom Hammer player will almost never be the monster controller, and the player that follows them in the AI rotation order usually will be. So the Gloom Hammer survivor can build in a lean fashion with a focus around dealing damage rather than having good defense, while the 'Monster Controller' survivor can build very tanky, with confidence that not only will the monster be coming at them whenever they want it, but they will also gain that bonus insanity for being targeted.

Of course, we cannot discuss this ability without considering the incredible synergy it has with the 3 rings from Spidicules:

Normally the rings are 'balanced' by their high crafting costs, requirement for a legless ball and the fact that one is only the monster controller a portion of the time. This changes when the player before you in the turn order is 

We can skip on the Red Ring, because making use of that requires a far more different and utterly broken strategy I've discussed in the past (check the Spidicules and build tags to find it) and it's not one that works super well with the Gloom Hammer. Instead we'll focus on the Blue and Green Rings.

Which one you choose to use is entirely up to you, the advantage of using the Green Ring is you get a massive amount of armor points, which puts you way outside of the damage range almost any monster in the game can deal (unless they hit the same location multiple times in a row) and that means you have a huge buffer every turn that the Gloom Hammer successfully wounds. However, you are not going to get any additional protection against Intimidates or other non-attacking moves, which are things the higher difficulty monsters love to employ.

This is where the Blue Ring shines, if you feel sufficiently protected on the physical front, having a free rawhide headband every single monster activation and that is a lot more damage mitigation than you can possibly calculate because now you're avoiding Intimidates, moods and any cards that really cause huge issues. 

Also, never forget, it's possible to stick both rings on the same survivor if you run the right grid. The easiest one to do it with is Cycloid Scale armor and that's a big part of why I recommend the combo of Spidicules, Slenderman and Sunstalker as an expansion combo. 

Putting it all Together

That leaves us with how to assemble our teams; well if you are running the Gloom Hammer, you have to accept that it is the centerpiece of the hunt party, its impact is so wide and dramatic that trying to play any survivor who is not able to adapt to the change in monster movement and AI control is not going to work out very well. 

Weapons with Range and Reach become more valuable, but also non-tank survivors can run lighter armor sets than normal and use things like Rawhide further into the game than they usually would, allowing for more surge spamming rather than leaning into Devastating to kill the monsters. I'm going to give a few ideas for how you'd build hunt parties rather than provide specific builds, because there's a lot of flexibility here.

Gloom Hammer Survivor

Phoenix, Lantern, Rawhide or Cycloid Scale armor, shield + support items

Tank

Cycloid + 2x Rings or Leather + Green Ring with Shield and Monster Grease or you can go with a Shadow Saliva Shawl build.

Other survivors 

Depending on the previous two builds, but they should have Screaming Armor on one survivor because of the Screaming helm and probably at least one bow. They can also run Rawhide and stuff like Blood Paint + two one handed weapons. Deadly DPS builds are always good.

If there are enough requests for them in the comments I can follow this up next week with several 4 grid parties to help visualize the various ways you can do this. But for now I hope I've given you enough insight into the theory behind the use of this unique and exciting weapon. Smashy smashy!