Kingdom Death: Monster – Review of Lune, Longclaw Lioness Lenore and Sen (Patreon)

With thanks to patron members timberwolfl and Mike B. for supplying details of the game content and miniatures so I could proxy test out this content in advance of its store release.

Lune

Resin version of Lune from the Shop.

At time of writing I have not received my GCE, so I will be reviewing this based on the install guide rules. Though I am already familiar with the concept of character cards and how they work due to its relatively simple rule design.

A survivor from a cold and superstitious settlement. Lune dances to the howls of the Centiwolves, mistaking their reverberating cries through the frozen peaks of the black ice spires for the Huntresses' song.

Lune brings us a Character card along with rules for use in campaigns without its associated Character innovation and a miniature to represent the character of Lune. I absolutely love the Lune model as she breaks away from the usual female form in KDM's latest releases; she has a lot of ethereal dynamism to her presence in a way that really makes her fit into the world in a different but valid manner.

Hard Plastic version of Lune, image supplied by Mike B.

There have been a few changes to the model between the resin and plastic versions, but in all ways that matter, she is still an excellent sculp even if her “on the showdown board” value is not useful for WYSIWYG (What You See is What You Get) players. I really like this model a massive amount, she has the aesthetic of an oil painting by a master.

The Gaiety is the Character Card that comes in this box, it is not a lot of game content, but you will encounter it in just about every single campaign because it triggers on the next/first survivor birth in the settlement. They gain the following Character Ability:

Of course, being tied to instrument activation is a meaningful cost as there are risks to bringing instruments out on hunts; but on top of that this ability requires an instrument to be activated in a given round for the temporary bonuses to strength and evasion can kick in. That limits the useful instruments to the Whisker Harp because the Gorm's Gorn is a once per showdown instrument, the Flower Knight's Vespertine Cello does not have an activation and the Rawhide Drum's ability is one that triggers when the Encourage Survival Action is used. Of course, we are getting more instruments in the Gambler's Chest Expansion (GCE), so this roster of options will change and expand in the future.

That means in the current and pre-GCE games The Gaiety is only triggered by the Whisker Harp; which is an excellent gear card for mood management, but it isn't something you typically use every single turn without the following Strain Fighting Arts:

That's a Strain which needs to be unlocked and then a part of your starting pool before it is relevant at all. All of this means that I think this is not a card with the current campaigns in mind, it is for one where you have access to the Smog Singers.

As for the ability itself, it is a “survival of the fittest” level bonus on demand, and The Gaiety themselves doesn't need to be the survivor activating the Instrument. Someone else can do that, which is an interesting area of play space when combined with surge. It means that you can activate in response to an attack by the Gaiety survivor to boost their strength, or in response to the post target flowstep during the monster's AI card when it will be using the attack profile for that extra evasion. I think that's neat.

So, if you are waiting for the GCE, I think this is content you will have an interesting time interacting with and if you also want the model I think I can give this one a recommendation for you. It's simple, it's neat and the model looks good.

Longclaw Lioness Lenore

Image supplied by Mike B.

Lenore's miniature is a bit of a disappointment in that she is another cookie cutter style of character; with both the pose and physique being a bit generic. I will however praise the legs on this model, the definition and sculpting of the knees in particular is excellent even if the armor itself is a bit “skin to win”. I like painting skin, but when a model is meant to be a combatant and has an armor set that just isn't going to keep her covered up and protected I do need to call that out. Same with the pose, it's very “department store window display dummy” and that's a pity when you consider how incredible and unique this weapon is. Lenore could have been swinging this Longclaw in some dynamic fashion, instead its just flat and lifeless.

Things on the game front however are a better situation. Lenore brings another mechanic from the GCE; the concept of Indomitable resources and associated patterns. We've seen variations of this content before with the Sunlion Armor's terrain resource unlock and Death Crown Inheritor Aya's Undying Heart for the Phoenix. It's a way of patching in new content to existing monsters and in specific what we have here is a reward for killing the L3 White Lion (because the Cat Fang Knife has proven to be a lacklustre design and therefore not an incentive to hunt L3 White Lions).

The first time in a campaign where you defeat a L3 White Lion, you'll get the Overgrown Dewclaw Indomitable Perfect resource, that unlocks the Longclaw pattern and it can be used to craft the Long Claw gear card. You get one Overgrown Dewclaw per campaign, so one should be ready with the 2x bone, 2x iron and 2x hide in advance of hunting the L3 for the first time, because if you lose the Dewclaw from the settlement storage, tough luck!

Let's look at the Long Claw:

This Katar has a lot of baked in synergy with the White Lion armor and is an overt push to provide options to make that armor set work (hint, what White Lion Armor really needs is +3 armor points overall, as in three locations with base 3 Armor). Not only does it synergize with Pounce and the armor set bonus but it also provides a key affinity that often holds the White Lion armor back, a down blue.

Its keywords are all excellent, positive options, and the abilities of Reach 2, Deadly and Sharp are all very welcome. We also get a puzzle affinity ability that replicates Katar specialisation, meaning that a Katar Specialist+ gets to cancel two HL reactions on the drawn cards. That makes attacking a lot safer thant it would be for the average survivor. Reach 2 is also a notable addition, it ties into the playstyle that I fell into with the various Monster Movement Armor sets – using Reach to make those abilities more effective because Reach 2 increases the number of squares you can target with your weapon activation from 4 to 12. That extra area greatly reduces the amount of positioning faff you have to engage in before pouncing.

As an additional note, this also has synergy with the White Sunlion Armor White Box content, in an interesting fashion because the White Sunlion Armor and Beast Kunai complement it. There is a little bit of no-bo (non-combo) where the White Sunlion Mask and the Longclaw's Reach overlap, but it's not a dealbreaker, just something to be aware of.

The White Lion has needed something like this for a long time and I am happy this white box exists as it is expanding on content that all players have. I hope we see something like this for the L2 White Lion, the L2 & L3 Screaming Antelopes and the L2 Phoenix. More monsters need to be like the Sunstalker and provide lots of interesting crafting options to encourage players to hunt higher level versions once or twice while also causing difficult decisions to be made because there are too many chase gear cards for different levels.

Sen

Image from an eBay sale, sorry best I could find at this time.

Sen's our Beta Box content for the Gencon, and it is a new weapon type with an associated Proficiency card. We now have fans as weapons, which is a really fun concept, slapping a Dragon King who towers at over five times the height of a survivor with a device intended for cooling oneself is just too delicious. This is of course a reference to the Japanese war fan, aka the tessen. A weapon that was used by feudal Japan's samurai. These war fans were used for battlefield communication in addition to being a weapon and as KDM is at its heart an anime board game, it was inevitable that they would make their presence known at some point.

A tessen is a folding fan that is constructed of iron plates or a solid club that looks like a fan but cannot unfurl. They were taken places where weapons were forbidden because of their deceptive nature. Sen's weapon is of the folding fan variety and its design reflects a capability for this weapon to be used in both furled and unfurled forms. Let's look at the Specialisation/Mastery first before getting on to the Crescent Tessen itself.

The specialisation has two elements to it which seem a little complicated at first, but exist to allow you to have a Deflect token when it is not your act, but remove it during your act. This is effectively your survivor furling and unfurling the weapon – furling it to attack and then unfurling it to defend themselves. Deflect X is a powerful ability and this gives you access to it early (Echoes of Death 4 Seiging Offense strain fighting art anyone?)

The mastery builds on this by scaling your fan up offensively when you have no Deflect tokens and also providing an alternative boost to Perfect Hit Fan strategies if you decide to not unfurl your fan. Gosh this is getting complicated to write out!

All of this is of course only part of the picture, because the Crescent Fan itself provides the base which these proficiencies are playing off of.

Crafting Cost: 1x bone, 3x scrap, requires: Bone Crafter

Here we have a weapon with two modes, switched either by activating the Deflect 1 ability on the weapon or using the Specialisation to change modes “for free”. What we have here is a weapon with two different states, the furled mode above and the unfurled mode which is:

(3/5+/0) Deflect 1, Barbed 4

I'd like to point out that a more elegant way of using this card would have been to make it double sided with the furled version on one side and the unfurled version on the other. Flipping double-sided gear cards is something I've designed in the past for KDM and it is a really fun mechanic that allows for some interesting playstyle changes. I wish they had done that here as it is a design space I really want Team Death to dive into.

Still, having a new weapon type is interesting and Tessen is absolutely an area of the game's mechanics that are shaping up to already be interesting and engaging to play with. As such I think this one is a soft recommendation from me, if you are super into the concept of war fans (or know someone who would get a kick out of it) this does expand play space. The negative here is (currently) we have only one fan, which while it is a deeply textured weapon that will take a while for a player to master the mechanics of, you don't have a lot of variation at the moment. You get one weapon that can act like two different weapons, but is that enough for you if they never release any other fans? If so, get this, but don't get it just in case they release more fans. If they put out more fans they will likely give us a white box version of this the same way they did with White Sunlion Armor.