Kingdom Death: Monster - Frozen Survivor Galanthus Beta Content Review (Patreon)

Galanthus bound his aching legs, bracing them for the burden. Better to move slowly, than to feel nothing as the cold takes your body piece by piece. Heaving the hefty pelts closer around his body, warmth crept back into his aching bones. He breathed into the hide shielding his face, smelling the monsters lingering stench mixed with his straining breath.

Contents

• 1x Beta gear card
• 1x Insulated Living Glossary card
• 1x Galanthus Miniature
• Various Art Prints and Authenticity Note(s)

Model

Galanthus is our second Frozen Survivor after Hellebore and the miniature bears a lot of similar elements with them both wielding a Cold Face Dagger, wearing a Warming Pelt plus bandages and carrying the same design of lantern. I like these lines of alternative biome survivors and it is also nice to get both a male and female analogue as now we have both Hellebore and Galanthus with the same loadout.

This model is really well sculpted with a lot of dynamism to its pose while also looking as cold as Hellebore did previously. So not only is this a good board game piece, it is also an excellent translation of the concept artwork into a 3D format. All in all this is just a top notch miniature all round and it does a great job of teasing an interesting alternative locale for a campaign to be set in. I'd rather see this Frozen biome over the Ringtail Swamp for example.

Game Content – Warming Pelt

• Crafting Cost: 2x Endevour, 2x hide

Insulated: A survivor is Insulated if they have 6 or more gear cards that grant them armor points.

The Warming Pelt is a non-set chest armor piece with quite a high crafting cost when we look at pure armor points gained. Instead of 1 armor point on a set armor piece for 1 resource we pay 4 times that resource cost. So this is a steep craft when compared to the competition, especially when we consider that there are zero affinities on this gear card (I'm disappointed it doesn't have a thematic blue affinity somewhere for flavour).

However, pure armor points for resources is not all when it comes to armor, abilities matter. The triggered passive occurring upon Insulated is a strong ability, but it is also worth noting that it can't be combined with the White Lion Cloak because it sits in the same slot and it can't be combined with the Silk Body Suit because that card excludes heavygear from being in the wearing survivor's gear grid. But it does combine with the White Gigalion's Lion Slayer Cape which not only requires fur armor(which this Warming Pelt is) but it also has exactly the same ability; thereby stacking your total damage reduction to -2 (minimum 1) from all damage sources (not just hits). That's pretty potent, especially when combined with efficient ways of gaining armor points to all hit locations such as shields.

So, with that considered one can get 3 armor points to 3 separate hit locations and activate this insulated bonus with just two pieces of rawhide. That's not terrible, and as mentioned above it gets better when you have the White Gigalion to combine with this. Also you don't need to stick at 3 pieces of armor point gaining gear and you can go to a full set in order to activate the “Clothed & Satiated” Armor set bonus if you are using this with Arc Survivors.

Hellebore's Cold Face Dagger 

In addition, this piece of gear has insulated synergy with Hellebore's Cold Face Dagger (shown above), which wants you to be insulated in order to turn that weapon into a 3/7+/(4 Melting) weapon. Extra speed is desirable on the Cold Face Dagger because it gradually loses strength over time; the more attack rolls you can make at the higher strength value the better. This is something I really like, it's made the Cold Face Dagger more usable early on, you can go for Dagger + 2x Rawhide + Warming Pelt for a total of 3x endeavour, 4x hide & 1x founding stone. That's a solid craftable early survivor load out for someone that'll really help early on.

I'd certainly consider paying that to get a second survivor kitted out after getting a first Rawhide set completed. While I love Rawhide, there are diminishing returns on the second and later sets, so maybe this build with its ability to scale later on when combined with the Lion Slayer Cape has some merit as an option to help needy settlements. It is however not a perfect solution and I think it is quite likely that other options may instead be utilised, so depending on how determined you are to use this, it may not be something you ever use.

Summary

Galanthus is a sweet miniature with a good, but currently very limited, piece of gear. While I don't think this is a must have piece of gear there are applications for this when combined with other damage reduction gear cards. As such I think its a little less desirable than Hellebore, which gave us an interesting and well costed early game weapon option.

This is where I want to see Beta content at for its power level, exploration of interesting concepts that can be utilised in a reasonable fashion without being absolutely essential.

Final Verdict: You won't miss out if you do not purchase this one, but it is still solid and it gives a campaign with the White Gigalion in it a neat form of protection that is very good at gear slot compression.