Kingdom Death: Monster – Halloween King Costume Review (Patreon)

They await this special costume each lantern year. Dressed to evoke the hulking mass of consumption and destruction, perfect to celebrate Halloween. Includes pattern treats for the occasion.

Our latest Halloween Pattern follows the trend set last year of providing just a single miniature and costume for an increased price. In truth the only time we got a good deal on the Halloween Survivor range was when the first four were released together in the same box. This new costume is a single miniature, a single seed pattern and the seed pattern is linked to the King's Man rather than the King itself.

The Model

All of the Halloween miniatures are immensely characterful and fun to use, this little King is no exception to that rule. Our short King is absolutely adorable with his outfit and accessories. It's a really fun piece to have on the table representing a survivor draped in the awaited majesty. I honestly love him, especially his expression. In addition, it is nice that we've been given another “official” colour scheme for the Kings, previously it was Black and Red, this time we have one in mint green & lavender.

So I think that this model is a slamdunk piece of sculpting and world building.

The Pattern

The Regal Costume requires 1x iron, 1x leather, 2x bone (from Node 2+ monsters), the Barber Surgeon settlement location and a cursed survivor with at least 3 pieces of Regal Armor. That's not an unreasonable task for a settlement that has the King's Man in its timeline. You can engineer a situation where you have a survivor that meets this threshold and then park them in the settlement until you gather the needed resources.

What we get is an item that follows the same template as all the previous Halloween costumes, 1 armor to all hit locations when departing and if activated an ability that half the time is beneficial and half the time isn't. These costumes are typically best employed without activating their “Trick or Treat” ability and the Regal Costume is no exception to this. While making the monster skip its first turn can be very powerful, having the survivors miss their first turn and hereby giving the monster two AI cards in a row can be absolutely devastating for the survivors. As such this is another costume where you'll get it just for the +5 armor points, which isn't awful for the price but you can get better.

What this means is that overall the Regal Costume lands alongside most of the other Halloween costumes, +5 armor points for a survivor and maybe a couple of affinities you'll use while you try and avoid activating the affinity ability.  Big Bite remains the best of the costumes, the other costumes vary in power depending on if you can remove the negative attribute tokens through survivor abilities/fighting arts/philosophies. The reason Big Bite is so strong is because its downside is a bleeding token, something you can easily remove or even leverage to your advantage.

Summary

Like last year's Flower Knight Halloween Costume, this King costume represents poor value for money when compared to the original release. In addition the costume ability isn't great outside of the armor points. However, there are benefits to the Halloween costumes and the miniature in this particular box is gorgeous. I simply wish we'd get the 4x costumes + models in the same box rather than individual single releases.