Kingdom Death: Gnostin Stonesmasher Beta Box Content Review (Patreon)

Gnostin heaved his hammer, eyes glazed over with bloodthirsty abandon, swinging maniacally. He squeezed an ear-shattering scream from his burning lungs to complete the effect. The monster recoiled, defensively scrabbling backwards to safety. The others moved into position, steering clear of their fellow's wild onslaught. Then in a single heartbeat, a smile of shrewd satisfaction passed over his face as he smashed the massive face underfoot sending their foe flailing to the ground. Mercilessly they fell on their prey.

The Lore

Gnostin's name is a corrpution of the word Gnostic, and while Gnostics are people who seek learning or understanding; that is not what trope this particular individual represents. Gnostin is heavily coded as a (Dwarven) Berserker type. This is seen through his facial design; hunched up pose, hammer and even his name; you could typically expect to meet someone called Gnostin Stonesmasher in the Warhammer Fantasy setting. I can't understate how much I love this guy.

Gnostin's armor and gear are also very interesting and different to the norm; where instead of being clad in the armor that comes from the set, nor is he clad in a loincloth. Instead he's wearing an odd mixture of Phoenix, White Lion and Sunstalker gear (plus a stylish cape). At it looks like this is his gear loadout.

Not an amazing loadout, but it has room for a helmet and two other gear pieces, so it could be worse. Of course, I would have preferred to see a hybrid Club based armor set as a part of this content release, because it is an interesting layout, but it needs support on the armor points, blue affinities and something that compensates for how basic the Skirt and Gauntlet are.

Outside of that, there's really not much more too look into, Gnostin seems to be a part of some generic settlement and might be a tribute to a survivor from one APG employee's testing campaign. 

The Miniature

Gnostin is something of a breath of fresh air amongst all of the very similar body shapes we've had from the Beta content so far. There are miniatures I absolutely adore who land in the “slim with giant funbags” category, but my favourites are always miniatures that buck the normal bodyshape trends that saturate releases. Things like the Smog Drummer (anyone got a spare copy of her?), Bright Knives, Shadow Stalker, Tough Guy and this wonderful gentleman.

This sculpt is so full of character, dynamism and it feels like a natural piece of the world that both commemorates and supports the lore for this character. Honestly, 10/10 great miniature, love it to pieces.

The Content

We get one single new gear card in this box, alongside the now obligatory new rules for the weapon. I do hope that these abilities turn up more often, because at the moment we're looking at a landslide of unique abilities that have to be either memorised or referenced whenever they're used. The Glossary cards certainly help alleviate this a lot, though at this point my KDM box is breaking at the seams with so many additional cards that it's hard to fit things in these days!

Crafting Cost: 2x Large Flat Tooth, 1x Legendary Horns, 2x Bone

Oh dear, Irreplaceable weapon combined with L3 specific resource? It's another Lance of Longinus, but with a worse statline, losing reach in exchange for savage and a weaker weapon type. That means a lot depends on how good these affinities and the two new abilities are.

A gear special rule. Spend [Actitivation] to archive an adjacent impassable terrain tile. If a monster is standing on that terrain when it is archived, the monster is knocked down.

– Demolish Rules

Here are the impassable pieces of terrain:

• Giant Stone Face
• Lion Statue
• Nightmare Tree
• Obsidian Tower
• Resin Dungball*
• Salt Sculptures (You probably don't want to smash these)
• Silk Nest
• Stone Columns
• The Lonely Tree*
• Toppled Pillar
• Gate

*Also Indestructible so can't be smashed, no taking away the DBK's toy, the basketball won't stop.

Some notable showdown fights that always have terrain like this present are:

• The Butcher
• The Hand
• The King's Man
• The Phoenix
• The Manhunter
• The Slender Man
• The Sunstalker
• The Dragon King
• Spidicules
• The Tyrant
• Dung Beetle Knight
• Lion God

We can also guarantee spawning of Stone Faces through Strategist; giving us a new use for the terrain instead of just a sniper perch for McBowyBowFace.

Very significantly the Phoenix references the Nightmare Tree directly on its Instinct, which means we need an FAQ/Errata for that to cover the situations where the Nightmare Tree is demolished and any monsters that reference specific impassable terrain will need to be proofed against this keyword. Spidicules avoids this because her instinct references 'centre of the showdown board' instead. It's not a big deal, it's clear that the Phoenix is intended to return to the middle of the board, not just the tree.

Also, this hammer allows you to mess a little with the Lion God's mechanics by removing terrain so it cannot heft and also quickly create the Sinkhole Terrain if you plan to raid it and run away. That's an edge case, but it is a possible strategy if you want the hole's loot over beating the Lion God for its unappetising Victory rewards.

As long as the terrain turns up in the showdown, it's relatively simple to get the monster over to stand on the impassable tile; you simply place the target survivor behind the terrain. In addition there is even opportunities to Surge with this and knockdown the monster when it's presenting a flow step on its own turn. That's an easy attack cancellation followed by a bunch of attacks against a knocked down monster.

However, we're making this weapon once we're able to beat the L3 Antelope and at that stage Indomitable tends to become a factor for some fights, so there's a limited window where this weapon will be at its peak. Demolish is mechanically fun as heck though, it's REALLY satisfying to use correctly.

The +4 Luck bonus is the clear juicy payoff for this knockdown and it works with any kind of knockdown so you can also use Pulse Lantern(s), Grand Weapon Specialisation and similar to gain more Knockdowns or even leverage critical wounds causing monster knockdowns.

If your curious about the Savage ability, I always consider Savage to be a net neutral keyword, sometimes it is great at winning a showdown that needs to end quickly, sometimes it results in denying you chances to get resource drops. So it varies but it's certainly got more power here when you have effectively "Deadly 4" vs. Knocked Down monsters.

The Summary

There's a lot to like with this content, however that irreplaceable weapon downside in combination with the heavy keyword (stay away cracks and quicksand!) is a big price to pay and honestly there are already better hammers out there if you have access to expansion content. Still, this is a huge upgrade over the Lance of Longinus and it might be enough to make you want to hunt a couple of L3 Antelopes during the mid portion of your campaigns, especially if you've got a hammer bro in your player group. I also appreciate that it is new content for the Screaming Antelope rather than the White Lion, Slender Man, Phoenix or Dung Beetle Knight again.

I like what I'm seeing here, as there are a lot of tactical options and synergies for this weapon and while it is 100% performing in individual showdowns, I'm not blown away by it because any irreplaceable weapon that costs resources to make (as opposed to ones gained without crafting) is always hard to justify in a game where Rocks Fall, Everyone Dies is a core mechanic. 

I'm giving this a cautious recommendation if you're both a gamer and a hobbiyst; if you're just a gamer, maybe you want to go chase after one of the better beta releases we've had in the past. This one isn't the worst, but it's not making it to the top five Beta releases either.