Froggy Dog do do dee do do doo, Froggy Dog do do dee do do doo. (Patreon)

While it arrived in March (why on earth they can't internally schedule these things to launch in the middle of each month instead of behaving like someone dragging their feet over homework); the Frogdog Update is more of what I wanted to see from the Dark Herald. Very little Adam in this post (though again he cannot help but dampen the hype over the Dark Herald post by starting off with a reminder that he truly is the GRR Martin/Patrick Rothfuss of the board game world). Yeah, I know you don't read this stuff Adam, but maybe it's time you removed your fingers from the Dark Herald's pie? We wouldn't complain if you and the Dark Herald posted in the same month.

Still, it is an improvement, and that is something which should be congratulated, so thank you Adam for mostly letting your colleague breathe and please next time, let them present their topic on time. So, obligatory Adam/Procrastination criticism completed and put to the side, it's time to dive into the Frogdog content.

This is overall not so much of a big content reveal as it could have been, mostly because the big drop of Frogdog information arrived back in Gencon 2019. That demo revealed how the fight worked at its lowest level/difficulty and also displayed multiple weapons, items, armor pieces, AI Cards, Resources and Hit Location Card. I'll share those here for you all to see as a supplemental content/reminder.

Here is the full armor set, it's a very solid early game armor set with another version of the “monster armor charge” ability we see used on multiple armor sets. The final judgement on this set will depend on crafting costs, but it'll probably be around 9 resources total because that's the template that is normally used for “Node 1” monsters.

Here's a shot from the showdown, if you look closely at the models, you'll see one of the 3D printed Membrane Armor survivors from the prints we see clearly in the update. We also have seen the full text of the Lilypads before and here it is.

This tool is quite a useful one during the Frogdog fight and it gives players something to do tactically that isn't just move next to the monster and attack. It's a solid piece of terrain design but it looks like it's showdown specific instead of being mixed into the general pool of terrain.

Next up, we also know about two upcoming disorders:

This is a pretty grim disorder which has your survivor become aroused by (fl)atulence. It's a disgusting, but positive disorder that gives your survivor a bonus for wearing Monster Grease (or other Stinky gear).

The other disorder (Which I wasn't able to screengrab as a full entity) is Delirum. It's a bit of an odd one because honestly its mechanic doesn't have any current rules to help it work. Is there a bag that the tokens are all mixed into? Do you put one of each into a bag, draw, replenish, draw? It's hard to say. Also as most tokens are drawn vertically when pulling from a bag, that's also going to require a few extra hand movements to ensure that the token ends up either flat on the table/in your palm. Ultimately, this is not a disorder you want to keep, each token has a 50% of being a negative and you get the noisy keyword (which is a death sentence in the current game's hunt phase).

In addition, we got to see a lot of the Frogdog's cards and here they are:

There's plenty to comb through there, so if you do, it's worth baring in mind that this monster was a demo version (so some numbers were altered) and it will probably have seen additional iterations but there's enough here to understand broad strokes on how the Frogdog is going to behave. There's a fair bit in common with how the Gorm operates – with that mixture of physical and bodily. However, instead of flanking tactics, there's more you need to do with the “heinous origin” spot in order to try and disarm the FRT attacks.

Last of all, before we get into the update's content, here are the two weapons that were spoiled. They're both pretty great (crafting costs aside):

The Vertebrayonet is confirmed to be an Anna Poots naming creation and it's pretty wonderful (you can hear more about this in the TWIST video with Zachary Barash I have linked below). The weapon is also a very interesting dagger, with reasonable early game statistics, an important blue affinity and extra luck for persistent injuries. That's interesting design space there and a great way of using luck.

The Long Club (green added by myself because it was lost on TWIST's green screen) is another interesting early game weapon. It's got acceptable strength and speed, great accuracy and reach 2. This stinky weapon, if it is of reasonable crafting cost, is going to be a staple for club users in the early game. It's very basic, but basic doesn't mean bad.

Right, that's the previous known stuff mostly out of the way, but, if you want to see the fight in action (and the source of these screenshots) the link is still live on Youtube for the TWIST Gaming Frogdog fight (https://youtu.be/Y6EU2gX5OhU).

We'll get into the update now. The plastic miniature for the Frogdog is very much a take-it-or-leave-it kind of affair, it is absolutely the closest that KDM has come to acknowledging the heavy influence Berserk and Ito Junji have had on the series and I can say that as a painter I appreciate the level of detail this model has, but I am not excited about painting all of those Dogpoles. I predict we'll see a lot of miniature painters airbrushing this pile with mostly the same fur colours and just a few different ones. I know I'm going to keep the dogpoles very dark in their colour so I can keep attention onto the Frogdog above, otherwise it'll get quite busy.

Likewise the art direction of the monster kind of splits between the incredible and moody piece that depicts it hanging out in the Cess Pond and the juvenile sketch of it expelling an FRT bubble. This is a monster that is going to provoke extreme reactions from some people and will probably trend negative due to its combination of crude humor and childish concept. This is absolutely one of the reasons why KDM is not “Grim-dark Fantasy” in the way that Dark Souls is, it's forever going to be what is termed a “Grubby Fantasy” - a style of setting where the bleakness is peppered with jokes and humor to alleviate/contrast with the oppression that's depicted elsewhere.

It's honestly a monster that feels a lot like the Gorm in base framework, it's packing a mixture of gross bodily projectiles as a weapon and physical attacks.

The look of the Frogdog armor is something I'm not completely sold on however, it has this mixture of traditional KDM bashed from monster parts and biological science fiction (plus a nod to Portal in the leg design). It looks cool, and it certainly reflects the aquatic/gaseous/froglike nature of the monster, but it also feels way more high tech than the usual early game affairs. It's also, surprisingly, not stinky. Which is something I would have thought would be a key aspect of this armor set, the monster is very stinky, but its armor isn't? That's a curious design decision, especially when the club we've already looked at is stinky.

I adore the mechanical design of the Membrane armor though, it's got a load of affinities and the armor set gives the wearer has effectively “infinite” armor points on every part apart from the head, until that location is at 0 armor. That's a sweet ability, it means you can bring the armor set into harder fights than you would normally be able to use something of this tier because you know that a 10 damage hit on a location is identical to a 3 damage hit as long as it hasn't been reduced to 0 armor in advance. That's powerful, but the compromise that this armor set pays is it

It was also neatly described as a concept by the Dark Herald, it's fun to read the lore reasons why armor works as it does. In this case the air pockets, when punctured, propel the wearer to safety. Realistically, that's nonsense, but conceptually in the fantastical world of soft magic that permeates Kingdom Death, yeah it at least makes sense.

The Frogdoggles are also relatively solid, they have a Frogdog specific ability, but they also have good affinities and an accuracy bonus. Accuracy is an unsung hero of the showdown, anything that boosts it is very good – especially for weapons with high strength but low speed. We can't really assess its specific ability however because we need time with the showdown to work out the value of what it provides. They look cool though.

Also this update gave us this fabulous face, one we can use to really help depict the feeling of waiting for new content to be posted to us. I love it so very much. Please sir, I'm so thirsty, just a drop of content to wet my lips.

We also got this large selection of concepts called “apothecary tools” which gives us an indication that the monster's intended use is dual, not only will it be harvested for weapons and armor, but it seems that like the Gorm, there will be a lot of support items. It's likely that not everything reaches final design stage, and one needs to be careful when having concepts such as popping pills for power boosts, but there's a distinct medical slant to all of these things, with even an IV “IVY” drip and syringe making an appearance. I guess some Frogdog settlements will aim for better living through chemistry.

I do like the little teapot.

Overall, I don't think this article was worth being a day late, I guess it happened because the Membrane armor sculpts needed to be reprinted (someone procrastinated on doing that job), and it was nice to see them all together with a clean presentation, but I firmly think that the March update needs to be dropped out before the 20th of the month, so if it runs late there's not a problem. Especially when you consider how content light this update was. We want to see more from an update than this.

The Inverted Mountain remains the part of the Kickstarter I am most interested in and the Frogdog is a welcome part of that, while on the whole this update didn't knock it out of the park, it did give us a few new pieces to nibble on. The concept art pictured above is always a great one to look at because of the insight it gives us into what might be in the world in addition to just the game content.

I'm going to be putting a poll up for the next monster deep dive → Visual guide tomorrow, so vote there on what we're getting into next!