Le Frisson De Vampires – Kingdom Death Beta Content Review – Summer Cyrus (Patreon)

Before we get into the bulk of this review, I'm going to take you on a short journey, one that will condense the experience I had reviewing this content and provide an important piece of information that has informed the backbone of this review.

It's early in the evening, and after a hard day of working you settle down at your gaming space ready to start a fresh new campaign of Kingdom Death. You set up the showdown and things are going quite well when suddenly, in a flash of bright light the Tyrant appears and throws one of these to you.

You catch it deftly and look at his alien expression, confused about both his appearance and why he's thrown this bit of cardboard to you. His voice echoes out in your mind, filling you with an immense sense of weight and sorrow. “My child, if you can tell me what this item I have given to you is, and how you can use it. It is yours to keep and cherish.”

You look down at the centre of your palm where the piece of cardboard now rests and then look up to your floating benefactor, you clear your throat and say confidently. “It is a reroll token.” The Tyrant nods solemnly and raises up one finger to indicate a correct answer. Bouyed with confidence you pick it up and hold it aloft between your index finger and thumb. You smile and say “It is a reroll token from Kingdom Death: Monster and I can spend it to reroll any one dice.” The Tyrant snaps his fingers and the token bursts into a bright green flame, vaporising instantly and leaving you with a mild dose of radioactive energy.

You are confused, perhaps even an little angry, in fact you'd be right to feel angry. It's a cardboard token, it's called a reroll token in the rules, rerolls are a simple mechanic, you've known about them since you first played a dice game like Yahtzee! What deception is this? You feel that The Tyrant is cheating and tell him as much. In response The Tyrant points to your rulebook and says, “If that is the case, find me the page where the rules tell you as much.”

You pick up the book and check the glossary, there is no entry for reroll tokens, the entries skip over it, going from Remove to Resolved. You next check the main text for survivors and the settlement and find no reference there either. This starts to feel ridiculous, you know instinctively what this token should do, why doesn't it say anything in the book? With a flash of inspiration, you check the online Glossary and FAQ; surely here there will be an entry that errata's the rules and ensures that you are correct. It does not.

The Tyrant nods as you understand the hopelessness of the situation and having imparted his knowledge, he ascends through your window, transforms into his Dragon King form and proceeds to go menace Tokyo.

This short, silly story is a twisted reflection of my experience with Summer Cyrus; while testing the content out for a review I started by reviewing the rules for reroll tokens, because I wanted to see if there was any limit to how many tokens you could have and how long they lasted. While I found that they would be removed at the end of the showdown, the same way that all tokens are removed, what I couldn't find was the rules for reroll tokens. Not in the 1.6 rulebook, not in 1.5 and of course not in 1.31. We all know what a reroll token should do, but as far as the game's rulebook was concerned, they did not exist.

In Kingdom Death, when you hit a point where the rulebook and online FAQ/Glossary are not answering your questions it is typically because of the fundamental rule “When a card's text and the rulebook contradict or the rules have no details at all, the card takes precedence.” This meant I knew it was time to go digging into the cards themselves, I have a spreadsheet for this matter and searching through that found first of all Survival of the Fittest which you can see here.

The important thing to note here is that this card explains the text for when a survivor can reroll, it does not mention reroll tokens. So I checked the next entry, which was not on the rules page, or the innovation page, instead it was on the fighting art page and as it turns out, it provides the rules for reroll tokens:

Scholar of Death is the one part of the game which explains what Reroll tokens do, this is a Secret Fighting Art that you can get if you Innovate → Symposium → Storytelling → Records and then Endeavor to give it to a survivor.

What this means is Reroll Tokens are in a strange place, normally with the beta content, when we get a new ability we get an update card plus an entry in the online glossary. At the point of writing this review, there is no Reroll Token glossary update – which means that without Scholar of Death you cannot spend rerolls to do anything at all. You can gain them, which does contribute to one of the Acanthus items bonuses, but you cannot spend them at all.

Which brings us to one of the age old classic problems that often rears its head in a game with such fuzzy edge case rules; Rules as Written vs. Rules as intended. Here we have a particularly tough situation because both world views are equally valid. As released this set of gear functions as a way to collect reroll tokens and gain evasion/strength for having them, but you cannot discard the reroll tokens to reroll without Scholar of Death.

The other, equally valid world view is that this was an error on the part of the designer, that they assumed the core rules of the game included text for reroll token rules. That's a pretty valid assumption to make, but it's not really something one would expect from a team who is this experienced. Going ahead I'm writing this review based on the assumption that this second world view is the valid one – if someone wants to get clarification from Adam or either of the Zachs that this is the case. I would love that, put it in the comments if you get a response.

I'm reviewing based on the second world view, because without that being the correct one; most of this Acanthus based gear that comes from Summer Cyrus doesn't work in isolation until you get Scholar of Death. That makes the gear a lot weaker and less interesting, so we're going to give APG the benefit of the doubt here and look at the best possible version of these gear cards. I want to portray this set as a net positive for the game, and it is that. Which means now we've gotten past this long point, we can get onto the good stuff!

Summer Cyrus comes with a set of three Acanthus/Flower Knight based accessories. These pieces of gear all have that in common, so they provide a small amount of armor points plus abilities. The abilities are focused around gaining reroll tokens passively, either when arriving or by attacking into the monster's trap. This is all gear design space that expands on options, making it some of the best area for stuff to be constructed in – the Flower Knight has precious gear worth crafting and plant based clothing is an area which has been missing for a long time despite there being plants all over the place in the game's setting. However, if you don't own the Flower Knight you can still craft these items, which is always a good aspect of the promotional items that are based around expansions.

Sighing Sarong

Crafting Cost: 1x endeavor, 1x cloth, 1x sighing bloom/1x perfect organ

The Sarong provides us with two additional armor points to the waist and legs and functions in many ways as an upgraded basic Cloth. It's worth remembering that you only get between 4 and 6 cloth gear cards (depending on starting player count present during the first White Lion fight) and the Tabard for the Vagabond Armor set also requires this cloth. However, what you get for this cost is a fantastic piece of gear that could be worn by absolutely anyone even if you don't craft the other two items. Gaining four armor points and a reroll is absolutely worth the slot even if the green affinity itself isn't that useful because it points in the same direction as monster grease's does. I think this is the piece of gear that is most likely to be crafted in multiples because of how generically useful it is.

It's worth noting here that the reroll token is gained on arrival, not on departing, which means that you don't have access to the reroll in the most useful portion of a hunt (the Hunt Phase). Instead you're likely to sit on this reroll token until something very important like surviving an unexpected severe injury or avoiding a nasty failure reaction comes up. The biggest benefit here if the Sarong is the only piece you're crafting is definitely the armor points.

Sighing Acanthus Hat

Crafting Cost: 2x Acanthus, 1x Black Lichen, 1x Sighing Bloom/1x Perfect Organ

This head accessory provides less protection than the sarong, but it can gain you more reroll tokens if you are willing to be the survivor who pushes into the trap card. This is absolutely a tool for survivors who are employing the 'Trapper' build style – you can combine this with Spear Specialist and Blue Charm to generate reroll tokens and also potentially ignore the trap card's effects. The place where this is likely strongest is when it is used in combination with Cycloid Scale Armor. This armor set has the Prismatic ability which means all of its affinities are all colours. That's the most efficient way to get the blue affinities required for the Blue Charm, it can get tricky with other armor sets, but it is also something you can achieve with Crystal Skin plus smart item/accessory selection.

The real decision point here is if you're going to be happy with gaining just +1 reroll token each trap or if you're willing to forgo armor in order to get +2 and pay off the Acanthus Underwear a lot faster. Survivors who generate armor points without need for armor such as; Acanthus Doctors, the aforementioned Crystal Skin survivors, Green Ring wearers and Shield Turtles (survivors who stack a bunch of different shields for armor instead of wearing a set) are the types who will most benefit from the latter style (though Acanthus Doctors won't usually be able to activate the Blue Charm and will have to rely on their own massive pile of armor points + spear specialisation).

I think it's also important to remind everyone that the 10thAnniversary Survivor Pattern gear Tempered Spear also helps improve the odds of spear specialisation triggering if it is activated because it adds +1 to Spear Specialization roll results. Again Cycloid Scale Armor is probably the best home for this build combo.

The crafting cost for this gear is however quite steep, you will need to slay a Level 3 monster in order to get the Black Lichen that provides. This means that you're going to be well into the mid game power level before you can get it. This does hold it back a lot in overall efficiency.

Acanthus Underwear

Cost: 1x Endeavor 1x Fresh Acanthus

Finally we have the third item in this "set"; the Acanthus Underwear is the cheapest piece of gear to craft, requiring just two resources (Endeavors are a form of resource); so it's very easy to get these by hunting the Screaming Antelope.

Without either of the other two items, this doesn't provide any stat bonuses, but at a base line it has one of the two best blue affinity orientations and the best green affinity orientation. It also gives +1 armor to the body and waist. That makes it a relatively solid option to just craft and if you combine it with only the Sighing Sarong you still get a two item combo that provides +1 evasion, +1 strength (assuming you match the blue affinity up) and a reroll token. That puts it on par with the classic pairing of unactivated Monster Grease & Monster Tooth Necklace, with the added bonus that if you can also discard both stat bonuses they give to have a potentially lifesaving reroll. 

I think that just as a two item combo the Underwear plus Sarong are quite viable in themselves, so you may well craft them early with the intention of adding the hat to the mix when the opportunity presents itself.

Consideration of Combinations

When combining these items together I think there are three configurations worth remembering. Putting all three together is the obvious one, they are an almost self contained row of items, just needing a red affinity to activate, so they'll allow you to poke into the trap and gain a benefit. This is most effective with spear & blue charm, but it's also not terrible if you do it without any trapper elements at all, you still get a small bonus for hitting that trap. That means its something speed freaks (players who like to roll lots of dice) could employ to help mitigate the downsides of their playstyle.

The second combination is the Underwear plus Sarong. This is an early game combo that works as mentioned above, like a baseline Monster Tooth Necklace plus Monster Grease plus reroll. Given that Monster Grease has increased in cost, this might be something that settlements with the Flower Knight as a quarry will consider using. The Perfect Organ crafting cost when you don't have the Flower Knight makes this pairing a little harder to justify, but it's always an option for you without taking up anything other than the resource costs.

Then we have the Acanthus Hat plus Acanthus Underwear, this combination seeks to hit into the trap as often as possible in order to scale up reroll tokens and get stat boosts, it starts a little behind the full trio because it doesn't have that first reroll token from the Sarong, but gear grids are tight and being able to squeeze in the scaling without spending 8 slots on armor + acanthus clothing is worth a lot. Most builds just don't have space to spend all 9 slots on weapon + protection, even though you'd also get stat scaling from these accessories. This is a mid to late game consideration because we can't get the Acanthus Hat early on.

Before finishing I also want to note that this armor set has direct interactions with Scholar of Death; in that it becomes stronger when used in combination with it. I mentioned that Secret Fighting Art up at the top of this article, but Scholar of Death doesn't just provide rules for discarding of reroll tokens, it also gives out reroll tokens based on how often you've activated Records. Here's the new Records card for reference:

This will allow you to record up to three volumes for a particular monster (at the cost of retiring the survivor who creates the record) and will give you up to 3 bonus reroll tokens at the start of the showdown. Records is almost an afterthought when building a settlement because it's a tier three innovation (requires three innovations before it; Language, Symposium, Storytelling) so it's rarely used, especially because of the cost of retiring. But now you can consider having multiple survivors with Acanthus Underwear who gain bonuses, this is great for settlements that hunt specific monsters multiple times at Level 3 and it might give older settlements a new area to play with as long as you can keep providing disposable survivors to record the volumes and retire.

Summary

Putting the inexplicable lapse of judgement in design caused by how Reroll Token rules work to the side, (because goodness knows I want to be able to say nice things about Kingdom Death's content and not just criticise it), Summer Cyrus represents possibly the best beta content released to date (closely followed by Novel Proficiencies). These items are accessible to anyone who owns the game, but in addition they benefit from the Flower Knight's presence by becoming cheaper and that is a monster that desperately needs more options due to how poor its craftable gear has remained.

It is always important to remember that none of these items are keyword armor, as such they have a whole load of other fringe applications, such as with survivors who cannot wear armor but need a little extra protection and we'll probably be finding uses for these three cards for years to come.

So, these pieces of kit are all interesting, they have applications beyond just crafting all three and they expand into a design space that has had precious little exploration before. They are exactly the kind of thing that the Beta content should be used for; weird, potentially powerful, but not open to obvious abuse. I think that as long as the rules situation is cleared up the only negative to this set is the beta content really should come with three of each card, it is a frustrating shame that these beta cards come as singletons when they can be crafted multiple times and in the case of the Sarong, may well benefit from that.

This is one that I'd judge as being right up there with the best of the promotional content for creating space since the Grim Muffler. There's a lot you can do with these pieces of gear both in isolation and in combination, but everything feels both fair and powerful. At no point am I worried that this stuff will get broken, because there are nice limiters set on things, you can get at maximum 4 starting reroll tokens and because this uses reroll tokens, not rerolls it doesn't interact with Survival of the Fittest or Infinite Lives (A broken strain fighting art).

Last week I considered Doll to be a real low and a point of concern for the design direction that APG were taking, but Summer Cyrus is not that, it's instead a triumph and the only areas of shame are the inconsistency in design quality that this beta content represents and also how overtly greedy APG are in not giving 3x of each card in the box. Proxy more of these if you need them, because the secondary market prices for this set are already insane.