Kingdom Death: Monster – Early Survivor Zelda White Box Review (Patreon)

Since Zelda found the gleaming dagger, she has been different. Swatting at non-existent buzzing and describing a tickle in her brain. While others aren't looking, she organizes mundane objects around the settlement into patterns, or simply vanishes for entire lantern years at a time. Her fellow survivors have urged her to ditch the well crafted weapon, but she staunchly refuses.

Model

First up, I'd just like to express some gratitude that Zelda's miniature doesn't look like the artwork facially. It is rare for Lokman Lang and Wenjuinn Png to miss, but they have absolutely created something that creeps the heck out of me; and not in the good way that Zeen Chin's artwork can do. Ugh, I think I'll be recycling that card art because it's been a long time since I've been repulsed by a piece of art in this way.

The model on the other hand is absolutely gorgeous, I am so happy we're getting starting/early game survivors in the new scale because the old Prologue Survivors are looking tired as heck. I also want to highlight how much I appreciate the design of her lantern, the two standard lantern designs are amongst the things I least like to paint, this one is chunky and has a clean design. Also, as this is apparently the point where I gush about this miniature, I'd also like to express a lot of appreciation for Zelda having not only the obsession dagger, but also wearing a Lucky Charm around her neck. It's rare that you will have a cloth wearing survivor get the Obsession gear dagger active, but the nod towards its Luck synergy are appreciated.

I REALLY like this miniature, and if it wasn't a waste of resources I'd pick up a second copy/just the miniature in order to convert her into a true early game survivor with some other weapon instead of Obsession. 

Content

• 1x Golden Dagger Basic Hunt Event
• 1x Obsession Gear Card
• 1x Zelda Plastic Miniature
• 1x Art Card

Game Content

Obsession is a hunt event gear card, meaning that like the Fish of Abundance or the Sword of Silence, this can only be gained via a basic hunt event card. Now before we look at the card itself, I just wanted to discuss the design where cards like this are concerned. We have a number of them now.

To list a non-comprehensive list there is:

• Baby & the Sword (Fade)
• Object of Desire (Lonely Tree)
• Dead Warrior (Percival)
• Sword in the Stone (White Speaker Sword Hunter)
• Exquisite Aroma (Lunar Knight 2023)
• Golden Dagger (Early Survivor Zelda)

Now how these tend towards three categories; those which give players the option to either encounter the card or have a basic hunt event (Fade/Percival), those which self archive (Lonely Tree/Sword in the Stone) and ones which stay in the deck and force interaction with their event over and over. This third category has become the predominant one and honestly it's a bit of an undesirable situation. I've had more than one campaign where I keep running into Exquisite Aroma and just like Obsession this event can give you a non-Unique piece of gear. I've been in the situation where I've had to make a judgement over getting the Fish of Abundance again. I really do not like this design, I like having these extra hunt events in the basic hunt event deck (mismatched backs notwithstanding, KDM hunt event opaque-backed sleeves when?) and I appreciate how they reduce the odds of my least favourite thing in the entire game (Basic Hunt Event 10); but it just feels weird to have these events not include the option to  say 'no thanks' and take the basic hunt event. It feels even weirder to run into the situation where you suddenly have 4+ Fish of Abundance in the settlement storage. After experiencing this I'm now mulling over either having these cards all give the option for a basic hunt event, or having them self-archive after giving their gear card. It's a part of the newer white box design which I think is a large misstep and should be pushed back against a bit.

Let us now look at the Golden Dagger Hunt Event to see why I wanted to bring this up here.

So Golden Dagger not only lands in this category of “You must roll on the table” and not archiving after giving the gear card, but it also creates a basic hunt event card that kills 20% of the time without any form of counter play. This is not only mechanically poor design because it eliminates a unit ahead of a showdown balanced around 1 big unit vs 4 smaller units but it also can cause 4 player games to have one person sit out the game for potentially most of the game session. This is why other boss battlers have worked out structures that avoid eliminating units on the way to the battle itself. Having someone sit out a fight is such a feel bad thing that the most accessible boss battler – Oathsworn – has weaker replacement units come on the board to keep eliminated players engaged. As an aside, those extra units can permanently die, so in combination with other mechanics, the stakes don't feel lower because the cost of winning can be really high. Oathsworn is so well designed, it's ridiculous and if you haven't checked it out, you should at least check out someone playing the first boss fight.

So on top of this design faux pas, something that not even one of the main inspirational games for KDM; Warhammer Quest's creaking 1995 design would do (it kills you in the dungeon, not on the way there), we also have a card that doesn't go away once you've gained Obsession for the first time. There's more Obsessions out there, you'll keep tripping over them and losing survivor units. And the death happens 20% of the time without any option to ignore it.

I really cannot overstress how varied in quality the design has been for these January 2024 releases; we've had amazing stuff like Stampede Glaive Xell and Galanthus alongside one of the worst game content releases we've ever seen (Lunar Aya) and this incredibly frustrating design here. One that feels like it's just been plucked out of the air one afternoon and then not given any professional design quality assurance & testing. The first time I drew this card on the hunt I immediately saw that this card would increase the odds I will lose a showdown by 25% (perhaps more if the event revealer is a key survivor like the main tank); that it would never go away and that it would force archiving of a gear card if I didn't have an empty slot on every single survivor because who knows who will run into this one.

So yeah, Golden Dagger is an absolute stinker and my hard recommendation is if you're going to purchase this box and put that event your basic hunt event deck I'd recommend archiving it right after you get the first copy of Obsession. Otherwise you could end up trading a Death Armor wearing Rank 3 Philosophy survivor for a Decent Dagger that you've already got/don't need. Woof. The other option is to manually archive this hunt event after a certain number of lantern years, in fact I'd recommend using both of these options for this rancid offering.

Enough about the bad part, lets look at the gear card to see why one might want this card to work at least once.

Obsession – Rare Gear Card

Obsession in contrast to its associated hunt event Golden Stinker, is an interesting and well crafted piece of design; it's so good that it is almost jarring how on earth this weapon can exist in the same box as that hunt event. What Obsession gives you is two different weapons in a single package. The basic version is a selfish, sentient (3/6+/3) dagger, which makes it one of the better daggers available in the early game. 

3 Strength is a really important breakpoint for fighting the Node 1 and 2 Level 1 monsters because not only does it manage the 5+ wounding threshold for 8 toughness, but it also only requires +2 strength to be able to hang against 10 toughness (which is typical for many Level 2 Node 1/2 monsters).  That in itself makes it interesting for early game, however it is not all it can do, let us look at the “unlocked” version.

With 8+ pieces of gear in your gear grid that share the same keyword, Obsession becomes an incredibly powerful Deadly 3 dagger. If you have never played with Deadly 3, then let me tell you it's an obscenely high number, that's critical wounds on a 7+ without any additional modifications. Plus this 8+ requirement means you still have a slot for a Lucky Charm if you cover the rest with a suitable keyword.

For the moment the keyword we're most likely to be able to take advantage of is metal. We can't use Other because of the Selfish ability (that also stops this Dagger being combo'd with the Death Mask. Told you this was a really well designed gear card); gold is something that's probably going to be tied to the Gold Smoke Knight gear and always come with the metal keyword. So the sensible build here is something like Lantern/Death/Phoenix Armor, plus metal shield, plus Obsession, plus flex slot (probably +luck so you can Critically Wound 50% of the time in order to make up for the lack of strength).

Though, for the completely insane out there, we have one other keyword we could lean into. Weapon. Yeah, have a gear grid with 2 blue affinities, Obsession, Lucky Charm and everything else as weapons. That's really exciting, especially because we have a bunch of “naked” survivor frameworks we can build upon – Crystaline Skin, Impermanism, Marrowism, Leyline Walkers and so forth. There's a lot of potential here for something that's both stupid as heck and brilliant at the same time. Is it worth running a survivor with 7 weapons that they are not going to use? If you're getting Deadly 3 online really early on in a campaign, yes. Yes it is because it is so dumb that it is brilliant.

So yeah, I really like Obsession's design, it's amazing. But is it good enough a carrot to support the repeated beatings from the stick that is Golden Dagger as designed? I don't think so, so this one's getting a self-archive house rule for sure if I use it in the future outside of the test campaigns.

Summary

Beautiful miniature that I love so much along with an amazingly well designed weapon attached to the worst designed hunt event since the original game's 1.31 core game release. A complete roller coaster of emotions to review this one for sure and I don't know where I land except that I am only going to use this one with house rules in the future.

Final Verdict: As a community we need to push for a revision/errata of the hunt event and don't purchase it before then (unless you're cool with House Rules, which lets face it, you have to be in order to play this game at times). 

Otherwise, if you are not here for the miniature, you should save your money for a genuinely good White Box like the Indomitable Survivors, Ringtail Fox, Fade and Allison (to mention a few). Even the biggest stinker I've played with in recent times; Lunar Aya doesn't actively harm your fun because you are not forced to craft that pattern card if you don't want to. 

Skip on this one if you haven't already purchased it.