Kingdom Death Review: Mystery Birthday Gift 2023 & Gunborg (Patreon)

Mystery Birthday Gift 2023 Review

Not posting spoilers was requested by APG and I try to respect requests like that. So here is a very short spoiler free review:

Do not spend your money on this box set unless you are a pure collector, and especially do not get it if you think you can open it and resell it in the future. It's not well designed, the balance is all over the place, it oddly has multiple “trolling the customer” elements and it is just straight up stingy with what comes in the box. Don't get it from the store and especially do not get it from the secondary market.

For a slight spoiler comment, I would have rated this higher if there was 12 cards and an extra half a sheet. That would not have added much to the manufacturing costs while making the box really something special. 

If you have the box I am sure you know what I mean.

For Collectors & Die Hards Only.

Gunborg Review

Gunborg remembers too much. Lifetimes of faithlessness crowd out her sense of self, leaving a being driven by recurring impressions, an instinct to betray the ones who hold her dear. A parasitic weapon greedily feeds of her basest drives, preserving her vacant existence.

The Lore Review

Gunborg's lore is rooted in two classic tropes that are popular in Japan, the cursed sword (Soul Edge) and the oversized protagonist weapon. She's a new part of the world's lore and we don't get to see much about her outside of the above lore piece which is really sparse. In fact, compared to most of the “Unreliable Narrator” lore pieces we get about the various characters and places in the world of Kingdom Death – this is without a doubt the most vacant.

In essence Gunborg according to this lore has no intelligence or interest and is little more than a vessel for the Globinsnarfer, so why is she depicted as visiting Aya for her birthday when that's the kind of thing a cursed, apathetic, empty person would not do is a mystery.

The main insight we get is into the weapon which is not only Cursed and Sentient, but it bears the first instance of the cult keyword. Not even stuff which comes from the White Speaker Cult bears this keyword (so far), which suggests that even though the Globinsnarfer shares a similar “sacrifice of flesh” aesthetic it comes from a different source – some other cult that has hereto not been explored in the game's lore. Its name is a silly version of “blood eater” as it is a portamento of Globin (blood) and snarfing (eating) – essentially saying what it does rather than being a name name. For the record, I love Globinsnarfer snarf snarf.

The Miniature Review

Gunborg is a fine miniature in the style of the classic oversized weapon protagonist bucket. The pose is a little bit much to accept without having to hand wave that Globinsnarfer gives her magical super strength or similar but heck, we're in a magical world anyway so that's fine. It still is one heck of an awkward way to hold a blade that is that large – it's also going to get tangled in her cloak when she tries to bring it forward, but yes magical magic explains all issues away. Shazam!

The armor she is wearing is really good looking, it's a few protective elements and a bodysuit, quite possibly a silk body suit weaved from Spidicules Silk. The second sword she has in the scabbard on her back is a hard to identify, it doesn't closely resemble anything we've already had released, the pommel, grip and quillons don't have direct matches in survivor gear options. Not even the Lantern Festival Weapons match this.

It's a great miniature, lovely details, I wish the way she was holding her weapon was less awkward looking, having it planted in front of her or on one shoulder would have been more natural.

The Game Content Review

Crafting Costs: 5x population, 1x iron, 1x bone

The costs for crafting Globinsnarfer are not too steep for experienced players; when you get used to KDM, holding a population at 20+ individuals is not too challenging, 5 population does however make this weapon prohibitive for the early game in a significant manner; you could easily get access to iron as soon as you have the Heat innovation and the Weapon Crafter, because that leads to scrap smelting, or you could get this out quickly via Leather with the Bone Pickaxe mineral gathering. But you still need that population to spend (hello Flower Knight and your many ways of giving us more population numbers).

The weapon itself has a lot of limitations and negatives, it is not only unique; it is also sentient and cursed, meaning it is going to be bound to one survivor and lost when that survivor is also lost. In exchange for all these limitations and tricky elements you get access to a 3/7+/7 grand weapon, which is a very solid statline (though lack of sharp holds this weapon back in the late game without help from Phoenix or Dragon Armor). It also has a load of red affinities, an affinity puzzle that limits the places this weapon can be situated in a gear grid if you want to use its Bloodeater ability fully and there's the afforementioned Bloodeater/Demolish ability.

First of all, it is completely redundant that the Bloodeater ability essentially leads directly to a second ability called Demolish. This should have been named either Bloodeater or Demolish, not both, that's very redundant. The ability itself allows you to kill a survivor for an action, gain all their bleeding tokens and then you require an additional five bleeding tokens before you bleed out and die. The other reward for doing all this is Devastating 1. Not Devastating 2, just Devastating 1. That thing you can get from a Zanbato, which despite being nerfed is still a better weapon than this and lasts longer because it can be calcified.

I can't mince words here, Globinsnarfer is mechanically bad, in fact it is really bad, but looking past that we will discuss how one would use this weapon here.

The main concept is that it has serious synergy with Last Man Standing:

Demolish (Or Bloodeater, I'm going to call it Demolish for the rest of this article) allows you to get towards being the Last Man Standing without having to rely on the “Run Away” event which Pictographs provides. However, in order to gain that Devastating 1 you also need to get 10+ bleeding tokens on yourself before you kill/flee the penultimate survivor and that part is not easy. Story of the Young Hero provides a solid way of getting bleed tokens onto survivors, but that needs the Storytelling innovation and a high expenditure of endeavours to maintain.

It is more likely that you are going to be using Demolish to just get to the Last Man Standing without the requisite 10+ bleed tokens because of just how intensive it is to get it active already in a showdown without having to build multiple "Story of the Young Hero" survivors for the self bleed in to get the Globinsnarfer enough bleed tokens. If that is the case then it's probably best to not try and make this happen and instead get Globinsnarfer in combination with Last Man Standing as an emergency plan for showdowns which go south.

Even that is a lot of stuff that needs to go right. We'll assume that you have drawn Last Man Standing on a survivor and decided that they'll get the Globinsnarfer; what you have here now is a survivor who can execute other survivors for endeavours in the next settlement phase while wielding a weapon that requires them to be insane (or have the Twilight Cloak from the Allison white box) and all they are getting out of this is a 3/7+/7 grand weapon, yes grand weapons rarely get to dodge being slow, that is something, but this weapon (and the Zanbato) exist.

I would rather use the excellent Skleaver with a survivor who has gained +speed stat, Speed Powder and/or the ability to self inflict Frenzy through a Frenzy Drink than use the Globinsnarfer above. It's a more accurate, more powerful and easier to gain weapon that also doesn't get archived when its user dies.

Summary

There is not much to recommend where Gunborg is concerned, it is a really well sculpted model, but the game content is slim, situational and really surpassed by already existing options. Some people may get a thematic, roleplaying based kick out of using this weapon, but I'd still rather spend population crafting the Perfect Slayer or a bunch of other grand weapons.

Globinsnarfer is no Perfect Slayer, it's not even a Skleaver, so mostly this is for edge cases or people who love Soulcalibur. 

Skip unless you want the mini & think the weapon is cool. More power to you if you do.

Reminder: No post on 11th of August as it is my yearly birthday holiday week, normal service will resume on the 18th of August, there may be an earlier post if the GCE arrives at my door during this period.