Spiders up the Drainpipe - Spidicules in a 1.6 World (Patreon)

Not what you want to see in your bathtub.

Few expansions in the stable of KDM sit on a razor's edge between being magnificent and 'Must try harder'; most of the time they will land squarely on one side or the other of this line. However Spidicules (pronounced to rhyme with ridiculous according to Adam) is absolutely the poster child for straddling that painful line. It's the expansion which I so dearly want to love more than any other, from that giganticly absurd model hovering over the showdown board, the endless hordes of Spiderlings and the fantastic notion of amputating all of the creature's legs in order to roll it home – the Showdown is one of those highlights which can make Kingdom Death an experience like no other.

Spidicules; like the Dung Beetle Knight, Flower Knight and the  Lonely Tree is also one of the expansions which has been affected by the 1.6 upgrade, not directly through changes/updates/typo fixes for its cards, but instead it has benefited passively through the updates to the core game – in specific the decoupling of the Screaming Antelope from the core locations.

In 1.31 and 1.5 the Screaming Antelope was tightly linked to the Stone Circle and Barber Surgeon settlement locations in a similar way to how the Phoenix and White Lion were bound to the Weapon Crafter for some of their gear. This wasn't a big deal for the majority of the expansions; but the Spidicules expansion was intended to represent survivors settling in an area near where these creatures live and hunt. Creatures that their very presence drives away the Screaming Antelopes. This is why the rules for the expansion ask you to remove the Screaming Antelope's introductory event and replace it with the Spidicules one. Effectively the Screaming Antelopes would rarely enter an area where the Spidicules dwell, those that did would get devoured by the big spiders and as such it became a rare occurrence during a Spidicules campaign for one to get your hands on antelope resources.

This in itself was not an issue; but when you started playing a campaign with the Screaming Antelope removed you'd realise that losing the antelope excised not just antelope specific gear, but it also tossed the barber surgeon location out of the game while simultaneously breaking half of the Cooking innovation into un-usability (It is still a good innovation for the record, extra endeavors are wonderful). So, it's the unintended consequences of this removal which ended up with so many of the changes in 1.6 happening. The previously White Lion specific gem of a weapon, the Zanbato is now a perfect resource item; likewise the Phoenix gear all migrated to the Plumery and the empty spaces left by their departure were mostly filled with some items that are still not performing to a desirable standard. I do think there might be a world where the Scrap Bone Spear is a viable option, but it would have to be a campaign where the White Lion and Spidicules are not quarries.

So; at this point I wanted to explore just where Spidicules sits right now; what has been fixed, what can be overlooked as just 'the bumpy parts of the experience'; what needs to be improved in Campaigns of Death and what we can house rule for now.

We'll start with a run through all of the old 1.5 pros and cons very quickly; so we know exactly where the strengths and weaknesses of Spidicules lay, which ones 1.6 has fixed, which ones can be easily house ruled if you so desire (if you're interested, I play KDM fully by the rules) and which issues are just the lumps one has to take (and laugh about). We'll start with the cons in order to get them out of the way:

• Removes Screaming Antelope & Barber Surgeon in 1.31/1.5 editions
• Silk Armor requires killing L3 Spidicules for a complete armor set which is too weak at that point. If you can kill an L3 Spidicules; you don't need the armor set.
• Silk Armor has a difficult layout of affinities which ensures that you can't ever activate all of its interesting slots at the same time
• Silk Body Suit is really strong and can be crafted very early where it dominates the game.
• Green Ring creates virtual invulnerability when combined with Gloom Hammer (Slender Man expansion).
• Red Ring's auto wounding ability is very overpowered if abused with specific builds.
• Many weapons are similar to White Lion ones, meaning that it has little to entice you to hunt Spidicules early because you can just use the WL versions instead. The King's Spear and Amber Poleaxe are somewhat interchangeable (Poleaxe is superior, but not in a meaningful fashion and the Katars are analogous of each other).
• Amber Poleaxe's ability can be used to safely kill monsters with AI programming that targets mainly threats (White Lion, King's Man, Butcher).
• Young Rivals is a frustrating introductory event
• Taken is one of the hot spot events in the game; causing bad feelings in groups, requiring a "solution" of taking red-shirt survivor on the hunt and also creating rules situations that have an unsatisfying conclusion (such as when only one survivor is rolling a legless ball home and then they get abducted, I'm still not sure how the ball gets back to the settlement at that point).
• Spidicules miniature is large, fragile and mechanically it is just a 2x2 shadow.
• Spiderlings come 6x to a box, but there is no limit to the number which can be spawned.
• Silk Bomb is just not worth crafting.
• Throwing Knives suffer from the lack of a Thrown Weapon mastery. Yes, this one is just a personal gripe – as someone who owns and uses throwing knifes recreationally I yearn for a Thrown Weapon proficiency.

And the positives!

• A well designed, challenging and unique showdown that I just ADORE.
• Hooded Scrap Katar is one of the few weapons worth using paired, which does differentiate it somewhat from the Lion Beast Katar. It's just hard to say no to that Deadly on its competitor.
• Amber Edge is a unique and interesting design, especially for a F&T survivor who is looking for a back up weapon
• Silk is a wonderful resource mechanic
• The Legless Ball is just a perfect blend of mechanics and theme and it makes me giddy every time I try and get all eight legs cut off.
• The rare weapon you can find while hunting Spidicules is interesting without being overpowered.
• Silk Whip is a genuinely good whip that I always love to craft.
• The Blue Ring is a wonderful piece of AI manipulation design.
• Choriea is a great innovation; possibly one of my favourites.
• Harvestman and Death Touch are very well designed Fighting Arts
• Good, interesting Settlement Events (though technically Silk Storm can be abused)
• Forest Gate is significantly more interesting than Overwhelming Darkness
• Excellent Terrain design and Great thematic design
• Silk Surgery and the Silk Surgeon are two of the most epic and engaging parts of this expansion.

So all in all, I think you can see why I've turned towards calling Spidicules an expansion teetering on the edge of the void while it walks towards the land of greatness. As such, for myself the Campaigns of Death update is going to be a serious test of APG's new design philosophies- I hope to see a bunch of  smart updates that help this quarry take the spot it deserves. In particular, I am genuinely excited about the Campaigns of Death updates because they've showcased the Legless Ball miniature and the logical way that a settlement would get access to that is through a previous settlement having a Legless Ball in their campaign when it ends. That's a Milestone I'll aim for with relish!

Still, that remains off in the future, which means that the important thing right now is to consider what we have in the moment.

It is very important to note that the switch of all Antelope specific gear onto the Stone Circle and the moving of the generic gear from there onto the Barber Surgeon, along with the change that means you no longer need to hunt a Screaming Antelope to unlock the Barber Surgeon is a huge step towards fixing the biggest problems in 1.5. Those issues that could not be sidestepped with just a few house rules. Also, while you could get access to the Charms in a game without the Antelope, it did mean some additional resource costs to be paid in order to unlock the Stone Circle just to gain access to a few select items.

Which is a long way winded of saying the 1.6 Barber Surgeon changes are really good, both for the game's health in general and also for the Spidicules expansion in particular. With a reduced dependency on the core trio of monsters; which if we are all honest here do not always showcase the best that Kingdom Death has to offer (I'm a huge fan of the expansion monsters, though I'll always adore the White Lion and Butcher). This change means direct replacement expansions such as Spidicules get space to grow and breathe – it also means that it's easier for future campaigns to swap out the White Lion or Spidicules without having to deal with un-craftable gear in unlocked locations.

This chance is why Spidicules jumped up rankings in my estimation, it still has the same internal issues that it has always suffered from; but the external ones which were forced onto it by the core game have gone. You can now play it exactly as intended; without the Antelope in the game and it  feels right (there's a few wrinkles such as Cooking not working and the time when the Legless Ball barfs up a Bladder which you can no longer use to make Blood Paint because it requires you unlocking the Stone Circle – something you can't do now without shoving the Screaming Antelope back into the game – but I guess that's just one of those things we'll learn to live with? I do love Blood Paint though.)

It means that finally the Spidicules expansion can stand on its own merits. Some people may now find that Taken is an acceptable price to pay and be fine with the 'red-shirt' strategy which is required; others may just use a few house rule tweaks to get around the parts they don't much care for. I mean, lets face it, the Kingdom Death which we all know, love and engage with is somewhat different from the vision that its creator has. We often take the vast selection of options APG has released and pick to use the sections we engage with the most personally. 

Kingdom Death doesn't just belong to Adam alone anymore, it belongs to the audience, to the community, to us. So play the game you wish, cut the parts out you don't like and alter the parts you want. All ways have my blessing.

Which brings us to the center of this web; with the strategies I employ when playing the Spidicules expansion "completely official" (no altered rules) and more importantly what house rules how would consider playing when I am not playing the game exactly as printed. Which happens when I want to introduce new people to the game without having them feel intimidated or frustrated by some of the harsher moments that Spidicules can deliver.

Official Spidicules

I will typically pick the following expansions/monsters to use with Spidicules:

• Gorm – As a quarry replacement over the White Lion; this way I am not tempted to get the White Lion Spear/Katar over the Spidicules ones.
• Slender Man – For Synergies with the Rings.
• Phoenix – For Synergies with Slender Man and Spidicules alike. Plus the new updates to the Sonic Tomahawk and the Arc Bow are just too good to pass up on. Plus did I mention that I love Harvestman + Phoenix Armor?
• Sunstalker – Has huge synergies with Slender Man gear, especially the armor. Also it's the best expansion in the game for my dollar.
• Dragon King – High synergy with Sunstalker expansion and the way that this expansion improves specific survivors works well alongside the Silk Surgery event.
• Dung Beetle Knight – For access to the Trash Crown and Calcified Zanbato

Optionally I'll also add in the Manhunter because of its high synergy with the Sunstalker and I always include the Lonely Tree because of how self contained and rare to encounter it is. The Tree also has some fun synergies with the Dragon King that are sweet to unlock. The Lion God can be  an optional addition, but only for the L1 version in order to get a Necromancer Circlet – this helps if the legless ball is proving too evasive for Wisdom Potions and Trash Crowns. You can alternatively keep hunting the White Lion, with the goal of getting the Cat's Eye Circlet in order to secure that legless ball.

This means that I have 6 quarries to hunt, which I've found is around the minimum I want in order to have a good varied selection of fights over the 30 lantern years. 3-4 quarries feels too few and I am of the genuine opinion that the core game needed one more good early game quarry (Node 1) and a really late game quarry (Node 4). We don't really have any Node 4 monsters at the moment, so I settle for a monster that scales well into the late game in an interesting fashion (Sunstalker, Dragon King, Dung Beetle Knight).

For the strategies on how to remove all the legs from Spidicules, please check this post: (https://www.patreon.com/posts/having-ball-how-22365550).

In preparation for Young Rivals; which is the Spidicules introduction event that causes the death of one experienced male survivor and a stat shuffling (+1 strength, -1 evasion) the way I approach it depends on my settlement plan for the campaign. If I want to avoid it entirely, I ensure that I only ever have 1 male survivor with hunt XP and stick with that until the event has resolved (for reasons I've written about in the past, female hunters have advantages over male ones, so this isn't a penalty – I'm notorious for running 3 or 4 women hunt parties).

As an alternative, if I want to trigger an early Death principle to get Graves, this event is a guaranteed way to get it without having to lose a survivor to the hunt or showdown (losing survivors during the settlement phase is always easier than when on a hunt). So I'll ensure that I have two male survivors with exactly 1 hunt XP each and then get the Death Principle in Lantern Year 2 – which allows for Graves to provide a 50% chance of getting +1 Luck onto a survivor. A +1 Luck survivor can do some really amazing things in this game, they're precious due to how many resources they can generate.

In addition; the survivor who suffers the stat change is very useful in the early game. Most early monster attacks hit on a 2+ anyway, so the evasion loss doesn't do anything there if you don't intend to give them Monster Grease. Also; +1 strength is a significant boost for the start of the campaign. As such, it is perfectly fine to field that survivor as a pure offensive orientated attacker – you don't need more than two evasive characters anyway for most showdowns; so this survivor can complete an early weapon mastery and retire before their -1 evasion becomes a problem. They're pretty good at training shield with the Knuckle Shield (Gorm weapon) so that's often what I aim to do with them, because the Block gained from the Knuckle Shield is superb at removing the need for evasion in the first place..

In respect of Taken after a showdown, typically one wants to play with 2-3 players and have one support 'red-shirt' survivor who is going to do monster control/support things rather than gain weapon proficiency. They'll get abducted and then when the next fight against Spidicules happens (Which should occur before the timeline event kicks in and possibly causes another abduction) four normal survivors can go out. If you're playing 4 players then one person is going to have to volunteer to be the sacrifice for that particular fight (I'd recommend that person be the most experience player, let the others be the big heroes, same reason I recommend the owner of the game plays tank or support ). Fortunately you only need to do this every other fight.

Suggested House Rules

So if one doesn't want to play with the game pure, then these are the house rules I run for Spidicules with new players.

1. Young Rivals – change it so it targets two males with 0+ XP. This keeps the flavour of the event while also not punishing people who want to play male survivors.
2. Taken – The other Spidicules abducts a random survivor in the settlement in revenge rather than hitting a returning survivor. This house rule has always turned out to be really cool and interesting because of the difficult decisions it forces on players.
3. Silk Turban loses Silken Nervous System strange resource from its crafting costs.
4. Silk Body Suit gains Silken Nervous System strange resource to its crafting costs. These two changes balance major problems with the timing on getting the armor and the overpowered nature of the Silk Body Suit if gained very early.
5. Don't abuse the Rings with Red Ring of Death builds or Gloom Hammer/Green Ring builds. Just try and show restraint, or keep the Gloom Hammer out of the game entirely if you can't trust yourself. Both of these strategies are more powerful than anything the monsters can currently handle

Those five items above are the main things I would like to see changed in Campaigns of Death, honestly if they fix the way the two settlement events work, tweak the Red Ring's combo with Gloom Man & Story of the Young Hero, rebalance the Turban and Body Suit, work a little on the armor set and maybe add 1 point of strength to all the Spidicules weapons (so they distinguish themselves from the White Lion ones) I would be slamming Spidicules straight into the S-Tier without hesitation because of how well designed its fighting arts, disorders, secret fighting arts, hunt and showdown design are. (I don't know if you've noticed over the years, but I really love Harvestman + Phoenix Armor as a combo.)

Whenever it arrives, Campaigns of Death has a real chance here to make all the difference, – and it's honestly a pleasure to be able to say that the fixes needed are not particularly heavy (unlike the Lion King, Lion God, Screaming Antelope and Flower Knight who all really need a 2.0 version of the showdown at this point in their lives).

So that's it. Now that I've deep dived into just about everything that changed (apart from errors/typos) I'm going to spend some time this month writing a full review for the Legendary Card Pack and it'll get posted both here and on BGG. 

So look forward to two updates next week as in addition; next Friday we'll dive into that all music hunt party. A post for those players who really want to all play as bards. Cause as we all know Bards rock.

Another Spidicules WIP. One day I'll get this one finished!