Manhunting Part 3: Lore, Story Events and General Discussion (Patreon)

I believe at this point it isn't really a secret how much I like and appreciate the Manhunter as a whole. I've been pretty effusive over the years with my praise, while I don't rank it in the very top of the expansion lists, it is always just on the cusp of breaking in. I'm not by nature a fan of things, I'm very much a critic; for me you can't ever design a perfect game because every single element of the game exists at the cost of others. For example; a smart, complex AI is heavy to operate and bogs the game down, it could be handled by a machine, but then it is in an App and has the issues of possibly being erased from existence in the future and having a shorter lifespan than the game it was designed for - and so on.

In Monster this is no exception, the creation of the wonderful Hit Location, Attack, Reaction, Trap system has the issue of making scoring lots of hits that have a low wound chance very undesirable. There's no sensible way of fixing this, that's the output that the system produces. In a more specific case, each monster having its own theming pushes and pulls at the levers in the design and makes the expansion better or worse depending on how it has been constructed.

The Manhunter is one of two expansions which include abduction as a part of their theme, with Spidicules being the other. Spidicules' abductions are like that of a spider; they drag their prey away for later feasting (or using as a lure to deceive more survivors) - the Manhunter on the other hand deals with a far more tricky subject and honestly handles it better than some other games does. That subject is slavery; and the Manhunter expansion succeeds as strongly as it does because at no point does it paint slavery as anything other than something to be opposed and crushed.

You see, Manhunters come from the Holy Lands. They were created by the Golden Entity as a method of bringing in fresh population, this is because the methods of increasing population in the Holy Lands are not very repeatable. They create male survivors known as the manless in a process that is just one aspect of the really horrible culture that surrounds the petty little Golden Entity. It's built a civilisation (though I hesitate to use the word here) like a giant hive, with everything constructed around keeping the machine of its "culture" operating.

Manhunters are one of the ways that this machine feeds itself, these manufactured beings who barely resemble the survivors they have been sired from are sent out, armed and equipped with a wide range of tools and knowledge. Their goal is to find a settlement, kowtow it and then establish a consistent source of tribute for the Holy Lands. They won't abduct the entire settlement, there's more of a farmer tending its crops vibe to how they handle things, they come and take a survivor once every two years. Rewarding the settlement for obeying its commands with enough resources to replenish the lost individual (and sometimes a bit more).

There is absolutely no ambiguity about this in the entry, results 3,4 and 9+ can all end up with the direct demand of 'Give me a slave!' which means any member of the settlement will be taken for tribute. Grim and a consistent reminder of how more technologically advanced races would turn up and just take people from other places before shipping them off to a far away place. I don't think we really need to discuss why slavery was bad and how its terrible impacts are still felt throughout the world and also how the descendants of these abducted people still carry deep wounds and consequences from their ancestors being ripped from their homes, family and friends.

What the Manhunter expansion does here, in a way that many colonial board games like Puerto Rico fail at, is it is a story about resisting, fighting and slaying the slavers. No matter how many times a settlement loses to a Manhunter in a fight they can rise up and rebel against these attempts to abduct their population because their weapons and power are not actually that far behind the Manhunter's (and they outnumber the creature). 

That's the thing which makes this a palatable theme within this game; like most of the game's mechanics this is themed around struggle, hope, determination and triumph over adversity/evil. (That's one of the reasons why the nihilistic endings that APG usually write fall flat). The story here is about fighting against slavery and slavers from the position of the inhabitants, it's not one that's often told in board games even if it is heavily sanitized away from history due to being included in a grubby fantasy game. It is also very clever with how these theme is demonstrated, if you've never lost to a Manhunter, then you've never seen the consequences of their victory and therefore their agenda. They're just some nasty wrestling inspired cowboy, witch hunter, pilgrim hat wearing dude who appears out of nowhere thanks to a magic lantern.

There is also a nice additional nod to the position of the Manhunter as slavers in that they use White Lions, the previous civilisation of the place where the survivors now live, as pets. Not only do they seek to abduct and enslave the current species, they make the last species complicit accomplices in this undertaking. It also serves as an additional reminder that the Golden Entity of the Holy Lands jealously tries to emulate and exceed what the Silver City and the Lion God achieved before its breaking.

I'd also like to briefly acknowledge that the Manhunter has a capotain (pilgrim hat) on, it's not something people discuss, but it helps bring home the fact that here the Manhunter represents the Europeans who are culpable for so much wrong when it comes to slavery. It's a very dark and well expressed piece of damnation, alongside the small toy which appears in the Tools of War story event; an event that also brings the point home with 'the monster might be from an organized society. [With] tools that seem somehow standardized, as if they were all crafted together in a large batch.' and the formation of the War Room, to allow the survivors to better face off against what they perceive as now being a war between them and the Manhunter's society (The Holy Lands).

I'm going to pour through the Manhunter showdown next time and then cap this all off with a visual guide for the creature, but I think this piece demonstrates just how intelligent, measured and unique the Manhunter is within the world of Kingdom Death. It is unusual in how it allows players to take the part of being a settlement under siege from a more technologically advanced society - one that seeks to exploit them by taking their numbers in a cull and for me it manages to do it in a way that never makes what the Manhunter is doing look right or trying to pretend it is anything other than what it is. 

It's a really well designed expansion and I didn't even have time to get into writing about its sub themes - so I'll cover those when we dive into the showdown.

The Manhunter expansion, face off against slavers, shoot their hat off their head, destroy their genitals and then kill them. What a pitch.