KDM Reviews: Deathmas Cockroach Queen & Edlen (Patreon)

We'll start with Deathmas Cockroach Queen and if you forgive me I am going to just be pretty brief with this one because the content is slim and relatively simplistic in its nature. The miniature is a finer little piece one that is now suitably in “world cannon” thanks to Atnas bringing festive cheer to every little settlement. Though I do think it is a bit of a shame that we've moved from a cool fully armored badass to an outfit that's just “sexy santa's helper”. I don't know, maybe I'm cranky about this today.

These the two new cards are a modifier for Atnas to make him more difficult during December/January and a new Vermin card that you will get as your first/next Vermin card during your campaign. The Atnas trait is welcome because as many players have already noted; Atnas is a soft nemesis target. However, what it is doing here is making the difficult part of Atnas more difficult, while leaving the softer parts of this monster untouched. While that does increase difficulty, it does it in an uneven fashion. That makes the fight more swingy, which is a frustrating way of making something harder. While my final verdict for Atnas is still out for debate, I do not think Gift of Arms is a positive.

The Blind Rocker is a bit more interesting in that it offers either +1 survival limit or 40% of the time when you are returning it's going to get consumed. That consumption causes death 20% of the time and 80% of the time grants the Myopic Fighter ability; which is +2 accuracy but you may only attack with daggers and katars.

What that means is either you go on hunts with only survivors who cannot consume; a hard thing to achieve, you need to take a dagger or katar survivor on each hunt, or you'll need to bring a disposable red shirt survivor if you don't want or won't risk losing that dagger/katar user.

Note as well (as per discussion we had on the Patreon) that the Consume portion of the text is missing which means it doesn't archive itself. One would assume that because all other vermin cards archive themselves when consumed (something I certainly assumed was included on the card when testing it). That's an error one would not expect to see on even Beta content.

This entire resource just doesn't seem very engaging to me; you'll get this incredibly early on in a fresh campaign and then it'll either kill a survivor sometimes or lock them into dagger/katars for the rest of the campaign and trading +1 survival limit for +2 accuracy on a single dagger/katar survivor is not a great trade. Also, while there are some thematic links with Verminism it's not mechanically adding anything much to the philosophy.

At the end of it all, I found both of these cards to be interesting world building, but mechanically unsatisfying. I think this is an easy skip on purchasing as there's not a lot I like here outside of a fun miniature of a cool Gambler's Chest character.

Final Verdict: Skippable

Edlen

Edlen is our third look into the tribe of barbarians who find the Mirrorstone alongside Barbarian Allister and Barbarian Lucy. While the previous two models did not come with any gear cards; just the physical representation of stone weapons plus some lore, Edlen gives us our first glimpse of the possible mechanics that such a tribe will use.

We'll start with a quick look at the model. To be honest, compared to Barbarian Lucy, I find Edlen's composition and style to be a bit of a step backwards. Barbie Lucy gave us a buff, powerful looking model that was unique not just when compared to other Lucy's but in general. Edlen on the other hand could easily be just some pin-up release and for myself, that's a shame.

Now don't get me wrong, Edlen's artwork has one of the best new faces we have seen in a long time, it's just a shame that her physique and this miniature's pose both fall back into the generic kind we see elsewhere. It's the breast implant style of her chest is the section that I really do not like. However, outside of the fan service-esque elements I do like the idea as a whole given that she's named after a beauty product line. So I guess in the end I'm mixed on the model, I will enjoy painting her because skin tones are the part of miniature painting I have the most engagement with, I simply prefer the depiction we got with the previous two survivors, they looked powerful, Edlen looks like she'd have an awkward time fighting without multiple wardrobe malfunctions. Eh, your mileage may vary here, like I wrote earlier; I'm probably just cranky about this today.

The Gameplay Content

The two cards we get here are designed to be used in concert, so I'll review them together as a pair, neither one does anything when used in isolation. However, before we get there we'll take a quick look at the new keyword Vanity.

Vanity

Vanity: A survivor's sense of pride and self-worth. When a survivor suffers a severe injury, they archive all their vanity tokens and set their vanity to 0.  -- Living Glossary Update

It seems that Vanity is going to be a new stat we'll be tracking in PotMirrorstone; so we don't need to worry about that portion of the mechanic here at this time. The relevant part for these two gear cards is when you suffer a severe injury you archive all your vanity tokens. Still, as we'll see, this gear doesn't care about that unless you suffer a severe injury on the hunt.

Cost (Fierce Paint): 1x endeavour, Face Painting innovation required

Cost (Mirror Stone Earrings): 1x Founding Stone, 1x Scrap

That's a super early game set of costs, so the crafting bar is easily cleared. Only the real cost here is that Founding Stone because Face Painting is a great innovation and scrap is low value early on. A very efficient crafting cost indeed. In fact the main cost here is the gear tableau slots, two slots is a lot to expend in theory, but if what it does can justify those slots then that's OK.

The Mirrorstone Earrings are very straightforward, they give you monster level vanity tokens, tokens that have no properties beyond how they archive themselves when the wearing survivor suffers a severe injury.  I would have liked to see an affinity or two on this gear card so it could do something else for a survivor, but this is early game gear so I guess it's fine. I do still want to highlight that situational gear like this really benefits from a second effect and a good affinity or two will often cover that without making the gear too overpowered.

The Fierce Paint item is where those Vanity Token(s) get to do their thing, as each hit location that does not have armor keyword gear on it will gain an armor point for each Vanity Token. That means a naked survivor gains 5 armor points against an L1, 10 vs an L2, 15 vs an L3 and 20 vs an L4. That's very competitive for a two slot pair.

We can even leverage this further in a few other directions; for a start, accessories and other non-armor sources of armor points (Crystaline Skin, Marrowism) don't interfere with this because they do not involve the armor keyword (nor do shields). So there's a lot of scope for naked/evasion based survivors to gain scaling protection relatively early on and have it scale up as you move onto higher level monsters.

You can also combine this with some armor and the new Clothed & Satiated set bonus, which is super interesting, but we're back up to 5 slots for armor again at that point, so it doesn't feel as useful when compared to leveraging pure nudity or accessories only.

For reference here's a non-comprehensive list of ways to one can currently gain armor points without using the armor keyword:

• Shields
• Crystaline Skin
• Marrowism
• Vagabond – Tabard & Cloth Leggings
• Some Masks
• Necromancer Secret Fighting Art (Lion God)
• Gloom Mehndi
• Gloom Bracelets
• Summer Cyrus Acanthus gear
• Corsair Coat
• Acanthus Doctor SFA
• Immortal Arm & Jarngreipr (the affinity helps these arms also)
• Armorsmith's Tongs Seed Gear
• Dream Keeper Cowl seed gear

So on this front I do have to say that there's a lot of ways to bolster this and the symbol keyword is a boon for the Necromancer SFA in particular. It's also really neat how it feeds into the Gloom Mehndi/Crystal Skin synergies in a very compatible manner. Mirrorstone is shaping up to be a promising alternative to People of the Skull.

On top of that, the red affinities are a nice bonus, though they are in the weakest two directions as they don't connect with red affinity staples like the Counter-weighted Axe or Monster-Tooth Necklace. You will find some areas where they help, like the above mentioned arms or the Seed Pattern Weaponsmith's Hammer so they are nothing to sniff at, they're just lower value than the other two directions.

The last two things to note are the jewelry and soluble keywords both of which become more risky in certain circumstances such as fighting White Lions and Sunstalkers respectively. This is not a deal-breaker by any measurable means, just something to be aware of.

All of this means I think I can call Edlen another Beta content success, this was worth purchasing if you are interested in the mechanics. It also shows promise for the Mirrorstone campaign mechanics and thereby makes Campaigns of Death look even more exciting (as if they weren't already).

Verdict: Good at MSRP, not worth chasing on secondary market

Edit: Updated to fix a few formatting errors, add additional notes on the Blind Rocker and correct an error on the Mirrorstone (see comments). Final verdict on both items has not changed.