The King's Man II: The Clockwork Soldier (Patreon)

Last time we discussed some of the themes and story behind the King's Men; including a lament about how the story was abandoned and is currently left hanging. We'll see if the Gambler's Chest does anything to fix that, but considering that the King's Man has not been announced as being a part of the campaign one shouldn't hold their breath. One can always hope that Adam sticks to his promise to make the King's Man more interesting to play against when the Gambler's Chest comes out, but we've not seen any sign of that at this stage.

This week we're going to deep dive into the showdown; which is one of the most thematically interesting showdown designs, but the issue is that it is more interesting as a narrative construction than it is to play. I will happily praise the nemesis monster for its story involvement with the settlement; it feels like an important part of the survivor's world in the way that the Butcher doesn't. There is the weight of a world outside of the settlement and a feeling of things happening just beyond current understanding, however The Hand turns up and then that's the end of the narrative.

The King's Man is also a stark piece of contrast when compared to everything a player will have faced until this stage, the White Lion, Screaming Antelope and Butcher are all very wild, uncontrolled and feral combatants – in contrast the King's Man moves in a more measured and predictable manner. This ties closely into the main themes the monster carries throughout its fight – this feeling of a clockwork creation dancing to a song that no-one else can hear. There's grace and predictability to its actions in a way that's expressed through a lot of very predictable/duplicate cards in both the AI and HL cards. Also it moonwalks, a lot.

As a concept, there is a great deal to admire about this monster, however the conceptual and thematic elements being so strong does not automatically translate into a good showdown. Unfortunately, once you get outside of the initial surprise of the King's Man's showdown, the lustre rapidly peels off and underneath isn't a pretty patina; it's just cheap knock-off plastic.

That isn't to say everything about the King's Man is worthless, as we explore the showdown and come to understand what benefits there are to be gained, and what downsides there are to minimise, we can appreciate the experience. However, the bottom line for this monster is that it's usually better to send 4x useless survivors (aka Plebs) into the fight with the intention of converting them into double endeavours via Graves if things go wrong or if you own it, just run the Slender Man instead. The Slender Man is as hard as the King's Man, and just as deeply thematic – but it is more engaging and deeper on the content front. I hate saying that content in this game should be skipped, but the King's Man is absolutely skippable.

Before we move on, if you want to read about the Slender Man, click this link and it'll take you to all the articles about that monster. We've already done a Visual Guide for it! As for the King's Man below, we'll look at the Monster's Passive, Active and Reactive behaviours one after another.

Passive Behaviours

The King's Man's instinct is one of the least dangerous in the game, without a target a King's Man will instinctively move to protect itself. Increasing its toughness by 5 points as it sets a guard. The only difficulty that this causes is the way that it climbs its already abnormally high toughness, but as the King's Man is still vulnerable to critical wounds this is less of an issue than one would normally experience.

Battle Pressure is the second of the King's Man's passive defenses; this causes the HL deck to have three Battle Pressure cards sat on top of it whenever the deck is shuffled (and at the start of the showdown). The Battle Pressure experience is not a particularly nice one for the survivors, especially given how often the cards are refreshed to the top and the way that these cards obfuscate any attempts to HL Scout (It is nice to have a monster resist HL Scouting though). The Battle Pressure event King's Step exists to force survivors to eventually learn the Secret Fighting Art King's Step as a way of protecting themselves from this mechanic – King's Step is actually a fairly decent fighting art in its own right, especially because of how it can help protect frail weapons from encountering Super Dense hit locations and also increase the chances that a survivor can find Hit Locations that they want to critically wound.

I really do like King's Step as a Secret Fighting Art, it's got a lot of different ways you can use it in interesting manners and it rewards clever play.

I'd rank the King's Step as the number one reason why you'd take a non-Pleb into the fight, but normally I prefer to take in all Plebs and then promote some of them into the Hunt rotation if they get the King's Step. The reason for this is because of how harsh the King's Step event is; without  tempo tokens you often find your ankles being battered and broken in a frustrating manner that harms your movement. This is further compounded when fighting the L2+ King's Man because of the trait Silent Hymn (aka the worst designed trait in the game). Honestly that table is almost nothing but punishment and it bogs down the fight a huge amount, dragging it out in one of the King's Man's signature moves “Making the Showdown drag out into a hum drum quagmire.”

The next portion of the King's Man's suite is King's Combat, this trait is a more measured version of the Butcher's frenzy. The King's Man gets to do two things a turn, but instead of them being both drawn AI cards (and therefore less predictable), the first one is the Basic Action – a (3/3+/3/Bash/Knockback 5) attack that either targets a survivor in the Blind Spot with a sweeping attack that covers 12 squares or the closest threat. Of course, one can be thinking here 'well I'll just stay out of the blind spot' but that is where one of the clever parts of the showdown design pops up.

The King's Man trait Weak Spotreduces the King's Man's toughness by 4 points if you attack in the blind spot. This is an excellent piece of carrot and stick which asks players to make a decision about if they want the bonus of the monster being easier to be wounded in exchange for it retaliating against the survivor. This kind of design is great because of how it says 'you can get this benefit, but it has this price' players can make an informed decision up front about how they want to handle the situation – this is Input Randomness, and it's the more interesting and engaging form of randomisation in games.

Outfighting is a semi complicated Trait to operate, I recommend that you take your time with it, because it makes the King's Man move a little differently to other monsters, you'll sometimes find that the King's Man is causing edge cases – make the best decision for how the monster operates (an actual place where Rule of Death works as intended) and don't worry too much about it.

Finally we have Silent Hymn, this absolutely trash tier piece of design bogs the showdown down by slowing the survivors every turn, while it is thematically excellent, it is mechanically garbage and it's one of the main reasons why you see players talk about skipping the L2+ King's Man fights because they're just a busy work. I absolutely cannot stand this card and I put it right up alongside Deja Vu and the Harvester as a prime example of elements that should erased from the game. If you want to minimise the problems experienced by this trait I would recommend that you get familiar with things that boost movement, such as the Dragon Boots or the Harvestman fighting art – the more movement you have, the less this trait triggers.

However, if you really REALLY want to crush the heck out of this trait, get your hands on the Dragon King Secret Fighting Art Altered Destiny, which basically turns the trait into super speed for your survivor.

(Can I just say, I'm really looking forward to writing about the Dragon King, because that showdown is pure fire).

You can also do neat stuff with the Lonely Tree trait Super Hair, but that is a lot harder to get and once you have it you can't really get it again because normally you only face one Lonely Tree during the campaign. Altered Destiny is a lot easier to get, and has a repeatable source.

So that puts us through the Passives that the King's Man can have, it's time to move on to its active behaviours with the AI deck.

Active Behaviours

Next up, we shall look at what our walking human toothpaste tubes do when it is their time to draw an AI card. What stands out through the King's Man's 21 AI cards is just how predictable and repetitive the moves for the King's Men are; especially amongst the 13 Basic cards. More than any other monster they have a lot of homogenisation of their moves and the attack profile they use. Typically the base line is (3/3+/3) with a fair amount of bash and knockback 5. This means that Leather Armorwith its ignore bash set ability is very good for survivors and that evasion with Block support is quite vital.

Also their targeting is very predictable, outside of survivors in the blind spot the King's Man targets threats almost exclusively, sometimes the closest threat in field of view, sometimes the furthest one in range. This intense reliance on threat targeting is how it becomes so simple to cheese the King's Man with two Amber Poleaxes (dealing damage to the monster on collision) and 4 Fecal Salve (and Surge). What you set up is the two survivors with Fecal Salve have ranged weapons to allow them to turn off the Fecal Salve ability, then you just alternate having one survivor as a threat each turn and position the Amber Poleaxes (who are already covered in poop from the salve and never remove it) so that the King's Man charges through them. This strategy is known as the Punji Stick strategy and it devastates all levels of the King's Man due to the blind spots in their AI targeting. (And yes this issue/exploit was raised with Adam directly, seeing that 1.6 didn't make any changes it's clear that he's fine with this existing).

In short, you can easily figure out who the King's Man will normally attack even without any form of AI control. They're that predictable.

However, with that written, there is one card which really has to be respected at all times until you are sure that the particular King's Man you're fighting doesn't do it; and that card is Coup De Grace,if there is a downed survivor when this card is drawn (i.e. at the start of the Monster's turn or after its free basic attack) then this card will just kill them outright. What you need to do is make sure that survivors are on their feet always before an AI card is drawn, most of the time this is relatively straightforward, because you can pretty much encourage at any time (unless your doomed, which you will be once the card is drawn).

Clang is another card which can be softened by one of the most ubiquitously excellent innovations, Song of the Brave, you really should be aiming to innovate as much of the music tree as possible in a campaign anyway though. Perfect Thrust is another card that is very straightforward to avoid; as long as you don't stand in these positions before the monster draws its AI card, it doesn't do anything. If you've messed up and you're standing there, well, you're gonna have a bad time.

In respect of the Advanced AI cards, you should first of all be always bringing a Whisker Harp to the fight (same as The Butcher), because you can then shut down the three moods the monster has. Lash Out is not too much of an issue if you're either blind spot attacking or wearing Leather Armor.

The Spinning Halberd AI card completely neutralises ranged weapons; as such you're usually best off not bringing ranged weapons (except when you're Punji Sticking, because you don't care about the King's Man being hit, you just want the ranged weapon to make you be a threat).

The Legendary AI card is mostly interesting because of its place in the Lore. This card is a hint towards how the survivors are carbon copies of other survivors elsewhere in the plain (the starting survivors, less so the ones who are born later on). That's because they were created by The Scribe, written into existence as starting 'seeds' for the Kings to later feed on (other monsters also feed on or use survivors as they are written into existence, White Lions opportunistically feed on them and Watchers lure them, feed their society and then devour all of their minds and memories once the settlement has reached a certain level of maturity).

So what the survivors are seeing when they see the face of a loved one isn't so much a past member of the settlement turned into a King's Man, but instead the face of one of the settlement's clones.

The short version of dealing with the King's Man's active behaviours is; leather good, shield/block good, evasion good, always keep encouraging until you've seen all the AI cards it'll use for the fight and determined that Coup De Grace is not a factor, ranged weapons not so good, Whisker Harp good, Fecal Salve good and Amber Poleaxe is good.

Reactive Behaviours

Also known as the 'Hit Location Deck' the King's Man's predictability continues in the design of the HL Deck.  Many of the King's Man's 21 Hit Location cards are duplicates or close mirrors of each other. There are the 3 Battle Pressure cards talked about in the trait section above, and there are also three almost identical First Strike cards that end attacks if the attacker is wearing heavy gear (note that there is a difference between carrying and wearing gear, worn gear includes armor, carried gear includes weapons - but the rules are very, very fuzzy here and haven't been clarified despite requests).

The King's Man is; unlike the Butcher, relatively vulnerable to critical wounds, and even though there is one location (the Plume) where you will be punished for a critical wound this is not sufficient to concern yourself with. You should still keep aiming for critical wounds because they let you bypass a lot of nasty reactions and also ignore the King's Man's relatively high toughness.

There are also a bunch of bonuses for using Daggers against the King's Man. Thematically this is a tribute to how daggers used to be very effective against plate mail because they can slip through the gaps more easily. Mechanically it means that daggers get a bit of extra strength against the King's Man. This used to not be that relevant, but now that we have a selection of powerful daggers like the Acid-Tooth Daggers, Hooked Claw Knife, Speaker Cult Knife and any generic dagger + Cycloid Scale Armor – Daggers are a bit more common than they used to be.

Then we have the trap, this is one of the most binary cards in the entire game. If you are not within 2 spaces, or you have a shield, then the trap does nothing to you except cancel the attack and reshuffle the HL deck (returning those Battle Pressures to the top). If you are in range without a shield, well it can hurt a lot. It's pretty much a great example of bad 'gotchya' design in that it crushes you the first time you encounter it blind and then it's almost completely irrelevant in the future because it has hard counters.

So last of all to consider is the Deathblow and killing the King's Man. The Deathblow is a neat little piece of theme which shows how hollow the walking calcium shells become. They're little more than metal, acid and some barely existing meat. Hence why I refer to them as the human toothpaste tubes. You get a Lantern Halberd from the kill, which is an OK mid game weapon, but it falls off fast without support from one of the strength gain armor sets (Cycloid, Dragon, Phoenix).

The kill is another gotchya, because the survivor who inflicts the killing blow will become cursed with the King's Curse. This causes them to gain a piece of Regal Armor, which is permanently cursed and will spread to other locations. Unfortunately this armor set is little more than armor points – it has no abilities on the pieces and no affinities. So it often ruins the career of the survivor who gets it because many builds rely on set bonuses.

This means that normally a plebeian survivor will deal the final blow as a kind of sacrificial red shirt. But for settlements that cannot manage that, there is another option which can be gained through the Mineral Gathering special hunt event.

This ability, which is I think in my top 20 favourite designs in Kingdom Death, allows survivors to peel off the King's Man pieces and reveal some shiny beautiful crystal skin underneath. You still lose access to armor and their set bonuses for the rest of the campaign, but I think that's a fair trade for the upsides of this ability. So if your favourite survivor has to get cursed, it's not automatically over, some pick axes will give you a few hunts to get them converted into a delightful diamond survivor and always remember that diamond is unbreakable.

Victory also brings a few additional pieces of benefit for the survivors who make it, they can all get better at spear use if you desire, and because of how powerful spear specialisation is, that's something which I consider to be quite beneficial. This means you can send in four newbies and use this fight as a way to get them towards Spear Specialisation quicker than normal. This is something I quite often like to do with the core game nemesis monsters, send in fresh survivors and see if any of them come out of the other side strong enough to be considered for rotation into the hunt teams. The King's Man is no exception to this.

Last of all, a quick note in regards to defeat. If you could lose this fight, or if you plan to throw it in order to generate endeavors because you're employing a 'churn' strategy - make sure that if you have Pottery, you build everything you need which requires it (Blue Charm for example) - because the King's Man will kick the settlement's Pottery to pieces with those pointy little Sabatons on the way out. Mean.

So, there we have it, while I do not consider the King's Man to be one of the top  five monsters in the game,  as there are areas where this monster has things to appreciate and it doesn't need much work or love from the design team to make it really something special. However, for the moment it is just something that can be appreciated as a storytelling device even if the showdown experience isn't everything that it could be if given a spit of polish and some attention.

Next week, as they finally arrived, I'm going to deep review the promotional Halloween Survivors II before putting together the visual guide for the King's Man. CAN I JUST SAY I LOVE THE MODELS IN THAT SET!