Legendary Card Pack Quick Review (Patreon)

Forenote:

So, as I promised earlier this week; here is the "rough" draft of the LCP (1.6 Update) pack, it's mostly with it's final text, but I haven't been able to release it onto BGG because I'm waiting to take all the photography of the fresh copy David (from The Last Standee) sent to me. The estimated arrival time on the lights is now the 10th of January; because for some inexplicable reason my first order got returned without delivery. 

So because I don't want to delay further and also because I really need to reduce my work load because I've had a very bad set of days health-wise, here it is today for early viewing. I'll be putting this up onto BGG with a few more updates and some images sometime later in January, but for now here is the text as an advanced preview for you all - this makes it a bit 'wall of text like' but I do not want to crack open the LCP pack until I am ready for the photography.

Review Begin!

The Legendary Card Pack Review

How many times will you learn the same lesson?

I think they got it all wrong

We just gotta hold on

And on, and on, and on

• Legendary, Welshly Arms

In 2019, comments and requests from the Kingdom Death community resulted in a mention from Adam about creating some form of balance/update pack for the core game. This resulted in myself offering a few snippets of game breaking combos and balance issues that the extensive, intensive thrashing that the community gave the game's various elements and mechanics had shaken loose. Eventually, I collated as many of the breaks, imbalances, typos, concerns and loopholes that the community had found and provided them direct to Adam for the Adam Poots Games (APG) design team to review, test and work out if they were content with them or not.

We're writing about a whole range of issues, from minor typos and edge cases all the way up to outright killing the Gold Smoke Knight in the first attack. A whole gamut of different things, fed to APG with the earnest desire to refine Kingdom Death Monster (KDM) and make it become the very best version of what it could be. These last of these were sent in April of 2020 and it marked the final time that I would have any form of direct correspondence with anyone from APG – I offered to assist with feedback on any designs/updates they decided on (I do NDA testing for games elsewhere), but I did not pursue this offer, instead just leaving the door open for the company to access myself and my community if they desired to action on that.

Over a year later, we've now arrived with receipt of the end product, the 1.6 update to the core game, a pack that includes not just the cards required to update 1.5 to the new 1.6. but also a few other expansions and some promised promotional content. I also consider that any areas the community considered problematic, but have not been updated, to be a strong statement on APG's position in respect to the matter. The King's Man is the way it is; and that's how they want it to stay.

While the Legendary Card Pack (LCP) contains only a few stickers and some cards; there are many impacts across the game, and in this review we'll visit each one. But to start with we're going to discuss the physicality of this product. This is a very important aspect of such a review, because KDM markets itself as both a “boutique experience” and luxury product that revolves around perfectionism. If you are going to supply such an expensive gaming lifestyle experience then one has certain standards that you have set yourself to be judged by.

It is unfortunate to say that the LCP doesn't meet these standards, while the product looks great from the outside; once you open up the box there are a number of issues which become evident.

The Contents

On first glance things look pretty decent, however once I started to combine these items with the core game (upgrading from a 1.5 to 1.6, while also cross checking against 1.31 contents) some issues became apparent.

Stickers

All of the stickers are larger than they needed to be, in a couple of cases this does not matter, but for the vast majority of the cases the stickers cover up additional portions of the book, obscuring parts of sentences and so on. It's significant enough that I'd advise anyone who hasn't yet attached their stickers to manually cut them down with a knife as neatly as possible. It varies how much you want to cut from each one, but typically you do not want to leave more than 1mm of white space on each side of the stickers.

Also, there are few other issues with the stickers, first of all, the transparency on the paper is such that the text underneath can still be seen and the level of adhesive on the back of the stickers is so high that it almost instantly bonds, which means that any slight errors in alignment cannot be fixed. Most of these issues can be worked around, but it requires more effort, time and accuracy than one should reasonably expect from a customer. If you haven't attached them yet, and you plan to. I advise strongly that you watch a few experts in sticker attachment before you start and really take your time with this. Otherwise you'll ruin your rulebook.

The Cards

The problems on the physical front do not stop at the stickers however, the cards also have their share of issues. As is often the case, the card printing has come out a different colour to the previous issues. This does not matter for cards which are acquired in a non-random fashion, but in the case of cards that go in AI, Hit Location, Hunt decks and so on – that is decks which are shuffled and drawn from. The differences are quite noticeable, both on the backs and the sides of the cards when stacked.

In addition, not only are the shades different, which is an unfortunate error on the part of the printing factory and QA. But the actual print layout on the back of some of the cards seems to be off. As such if you are an observant individual sensitive to changes in layout, shade, size and similar then you are going to be given unintended information about certain cards before you draw them.

For people who've ordered a full 1.6 core game from the start, this portion of the issues should not arise, you lucky souls have a full rulebook and matching cards. However, as we'll discuss in the next section, you might want a LCP anyway.

The Promotional Material

The LCP contains promotional material from the following boxes:

• White Box Allison – Tattered Package
• White Box White Speaker – Wares for Sale
• Christmas Nico – Story in the Snow
• Pin Ups of Death II – Dark Seamstress
• Beyond the Wall – Gear cards

From what I have gathered elsewhere, these cards are not included in the 1.6 core game. Which means that even at retail the LCP is a very cost effective way to get your hands on the game contents of the above items if you are not interested in the miniatures.

All five of these promotional items are very good additions to the game experience and it is hard to pass on them if you have the spare finances. You'll also get some additional normal gear cards to add in to your core selection and they should (theoretically) match up with the printing. Sidestepping all the issues that people upgrading have above. It's almost ironically funny that the LCP is easy to recommend as problem free for players who own the 1.6 game, but that it has issues for players who are upgrading. In addition if you own the 1.6 game and pre-1.6 expansions, you'll find that this pack is essential for fixing the typos/omissions from the Lonely Tree, Tyrant, Lion Knight and Dung Beetle Knight expansions. These should be added into newer printings of those expansions, but they're not going to be available in the older copies. Be aware.

The Game Content.

Now it's time to dig into the nitty gritty of this update, what new/updated/fixed content for the core game (and expansions) does this 1.6 pack contain?

The goal of this update pack is as follows, in addition to correcting a few typos, the LCP also aims to do the following:

• Update a few cards broken by rules changes
• Decouple the core monsters (White Lion, Screaming Antelope, Phoenix) from the core crafting locations. Increasing the modularity of the game.
• Solve a few outright unintended abusive items that have caused exploitable situations not desired by the creators.
• Balance some of the less desirable (or too desirable) items so they become interesting options.
• Update Perfect Hit abilities with the key ability word “Barbed”
• Add some keywords to a few items.

Updating for Rules Changes

The 1.5 change to Doomed altered the way that two cards in expansions worked at a fundamental level – the first was the Villain role in the Lion Knight expansion, previously Doomed did not force a survivor to do nothing. Now it does, the Villain role is doomed – so they went from being limited in actions to effectively being unable to do anything. This has been addressed

Likewise, the Dung Beetle Knight disorder Vermin Obsession cause a survivor to be unable to do anything at all when a bug patch was on the board. This wouldn't have been as large an issue, except that one of the core Dung Beetle Knight mechanics makes all four departing survivors gain Vermin Obsession – therefore they arrive at a showdown with a bug patch (Screaming Antelope and Dung Beetle Knight always have these) and that meant they couldn't do anything except get mauled to death by the monster – like little inanimate flesh toys belonging to a particularly cruel child.

These updates are both great, they solve the problems while returning the cards to something resembling their 1.31 versions. Good stuff here.

There are also typo corrections for cards belonging to the Lonely Tree, Dung Beetle Knight, Tyrant and Screaming Antelope. Physical issues aside, these are all great to get. As are the tweaks to the White Lion and Screaming Antelope hunts.

Decoupling the Core Monsters

This move is the largest undertaking that the 1.6 update has achieved and it's been a pretty excellent decision. Not only was it odd to see so many monster specific items spread across multiple locations, but the Screaming Antelope in specific was causing a lot of problems. It is intended to be replaced by the Spidicules expansion monster, but when one did that players lost access to the Barber Surgeon and Cooking recipes and also had to pay a lot extra to unlock the stone circle just for a few limited items.

Now the Barber Surgeon is crafted from the Organ Grinder, this is such a natural progression that it feels as if it always should have been that way from the start. Items have been moved away from the Barber Surgeon and onto the Stone Circle. At the same time the Weapon Crafter has experienced changes – the Phoenix based gear has moved across to the Plumery and in a somewhat unexpected move, three new 'Perfect' basic resource have been introduced to the game and the Zanbato is one of the items which can be crafted from them. I'm still not sure how I feel about this particular change, there is no doubt that the Zanbato needed to be harder to get – but I expected it to move to the Catarium and require a L2 specific White Lion resource to craft. This move does make the Zanbato scarcer; and it sidesteps the issue of the Dung Beetle Knight's involvement with the Zanbato in a satisfying fashion. But the White Lion was given no compensation for this loss, and as it's a monster which rapidly devolves into becoming a hide farming target (unless you have the Gigalion), I'm disappointed that we didn't get a new L2 specific weapon for the White Lion and an update to its L3 Dagger.

The Phoenix got a couple of changes in addition to the reshuffling; the changes to the Sonic Tomahawk was a phenomenal one, the weapon has gone from being a joke that gets its user killed into a very valid and interesting axe.

The Hollow Sword on the other hand is a frustrating design, it has swung from being an unusable frail paired sword into an undesirable sword/dagger. It's frustrating because there is a world where this new Hollow Sword is interesting, if either it didn't share resources with the superior Sonic Tomahawk or if it had Paired or more speed then it would have been an incredible weapon for a Dagger Specialist (they can play around the Frail weakness in an interesting manner). This is one of the only times I wish that APG had contacted me with the designs before going to print, because between the Hollow Sword's original design and the new one there is one of the most interesting weapons I've seen in a while.

The gaps in the Weapon Crafter are filled in with a few new items. The Scrap Lantern is absolutely a great addition to the game, it helps with the core campaign's late game requirements and also has meaningful passive buffs. The same however cannot be said in respect to the other two gear cards added in. The Scrap Bone Spear is a woefully overpriced and underpowered weapon for the location it's crafted at. This weapon is worse than the White Lion's King' Spear and the Spidicules' Amber Poleaxe. When you're worse than a weapon which can be crafted in Lantern Year 1 or 2, well you need to go back to the drawing board.

The Scrap Rebar is even worse, to the point of already occupying an almost meme level of existence in the community. It exists to protect a frail weapon from breaking during a showdown, it breaks instead. However, its design is so overpriced and questionable that one can't help but question how thoroughly it was play tested. Not only is it far too expensive for a single use item, but its design doesn't mesh with many of the frail weapons out there. It has to sit on the right of the frail weapon, which means it disables the Scrap Bone Spear's 'Barbed' ability and blocks the green affinity on the Zanbato. It is very bizarre decision to make this item fail to work with two of the weapons most likely to be candidates for its use.

Also, because Hit Location scouting is a more effective way of sidestepping Frail when you do want to use Frail weapons (you can also just avoid using them altogether) – the cost of this item is absolutely mind boggling. You can either spend 2x scrap and 1x organ crafting this item, or you could spend 1x Eye of Cat/2x Organ making a Cat Eye Circlet/Wisdom Potion and get the same effect plus a load of bonus ones. Both of these two items (spear, rebar) might be used in a world where there are no Gorms, Spidicules, Dung Beetle Knights, White Lions or Lion Gods. But as it stands right now? All they do is exist as bad choices to punish the unwise.

On the omissions front, I remain disappointed that no additional whips were added and that thrown weapons continue to be neglected. We should be rattling the bars demanding a Thrown Weapon mastery!

The Screaming Antelope changes however went even further, not only was the edge case loophole on the helm closed (good move), but the armor set was hit with multiple nerfs, moving it from being the second best overall armor set in the game (behind Rawhide) into a place where it just doesn't seem to do anything. It's lost a tonne of armor points, which would push it into the place of being a support/spear armor set, but it also lost the arm piece's ability where it could let you gather acanthus. A unique thing that let a Screaming Armor survivor work as a sort of 'healer' because they could provide Insanity and Armor points to survivors.

As it stands right now, the set has decent spear synergy, good affinities and that's about it. You'll probably still use it, but not forever. The armor set did need some nerfs, but the sheer number it has been hit with hasn't been compensated elsewhere. The Screaming Antelope, when taken as a whole, is a quarry that exists now to be beaten up for lots of easy resources. It's a shame, and I hope that this is addressed in the future – perhaps by making the Beast Knuckle, Speed Powder or Spear of Longinus (why is the spear that stabbed Christ in the game?) more interesting. However, the honest truth is that the Screaming Antelope needs a rework from first principles because of major flaws in its showdown and gear design.

We also can't move on without writing about the Vespertine Bow changes, this item was an unbelievably pushed piece that made the Flower Knight into a literal training wheels expansion due to its combination of cheap price, high range, deadly, high strength, high accuracy and options in modes. It had its strength slashed recently and is now only an option for specialist builds based around high Luck/Deadly – where there are already better options. While this change needed to happen, it has left the Flower Knight in almost as much free fall as the Screaming Antelope. There are still some great aspects to this expansion, but they are not really enough to justify its existence outside of Green Armor campaigns.

Finally we do get to close on a couple of high notes, the Blacksmith location gained a new item as well with the advent of the Polishing Lantern. This item does three excellent things, it cancels Early Iron, making various Blacksmith weapons viable choices now, it also gives extra bonuses to finesse weapons and it's another lantern for the core game campaign. All good stuff, very welcome – especially considering how most survivors are depicted carrying a lantern, but rarely tend to have any in their gear grid. It's a good move.

The Counterweighted Axe change is a welcome one, this weapon was insane because of how it could bypass the hit location deck and deal wounds directly without drawing hit location cards. This ability scaled with speed and got stronger the worse your survivor's accuracy was. Limiting it to triggering once per attack is an elegant change that feels right, while also hard curbing it's power ceiling.

The same can be said of the Monster Grease change. Adding Flammable to its keywords is a minor nerf that currently has no real impact (you didn't use Monster Grease against the Sunstalker anyway because it's also soluble - and the Sunstalker is very good at evaporating soluble things). The doubling in its cost though is an excellent move, it was too much of a no-brainer to put Monster Grease on all survivors early on in the game, because it combs well with Tall Grass and also has a low crafting cost. Now it's far more expensive to make a move like that, so we'll see a gravitation towards crafting 1-3 lots of Monster Grease in a more controlled and steady fashion instead of just making 4x of it without much thought. Excellent change.

Summary

This one is a bit of an odd thing, because it's more or less an essential item for anyone who owns 1.5 and intends to get their hands on any future content. So you have no choice about it, you do need to get this. Likewise, it's an amazing deal just for the promotional content if you do not already own sufficient copies of those.

However, the production quality is exceedingly disappointing and the designs of the new gear cards are very variable. In fact, the entire thing smacks of either being rushed, or just not given the care and attention that it deserved. It's hard to tell exactly which, and that means all I can really do is give this one a kind of, sad recommendation. It's not so much that this is a good product, it's more that it's a flawed but essential one.