Indomitable Survivor – Dashing Reaper Paleun | A Kingdom Death: Monster White Box Review

The thunder of hooves was upon her before she could scramble to her feet. Suddenly she was plucked into the air, her armor snagged between two massive gnashing teeth. Bouncing over the stone faced ground, she twisted wildly, searching for a handhold. Grabbing the froth-soaked fur she felt the pulsing, bulging edges of the Screaming Antelope’s straining neck. Her grip wouldn’t last. She lashed out with her bladed fists. The braying of the monster ceased. A shower of hot ichor spilled from its wounded throat. Something hard sailed out of the wound striking her head. Her grip failed and she tumbled to the ground, landing alongside the strange stone. The monster slid past her, gouging the ground with its silent undermaw.

Contents

• 1x Dashing Reaper - Paleun hard plastic miniature with base and insert

• 1x Gnawed Gastrolith - Screaming Antelope indomitable resource card

• 1x Dashing Reaper - Indomitable Pattern card

• 2x Dashing Reaper - Indomitable pattern gear card

• 1x Install guide

• 1x Postcard sized Art print

• Box

We continue the Indomitable Pattern Survivor series with a second release for the Screaming Antelope alongside the previously released Xell. While I do really like this series, I am a little disappointed each time we see a release for the White Lion or Screaming Antelope because a small corner of myself crosses its arms and thinks “These should have been in the Gambler's Chest.” It's a similar same issue to the Frogdog, where there wasn't enough released in the expansion box and instead a third one turned up in Survivors of Death. I don't much like bringing these kind of things up, but when reviewing something I do want to assess how consumer friendly the distribution method has been and compared to 'complete' expansions these small releases are not great on that front. However, to paraphrase an old saying “The best place for these Indomitable Patterns is in the Gambler's Chest, the second best place is getting them now.”

The Miniature

Paleun is a plastic release, meaning she's better suited for gaming when compared to the photoresin ones and she is decked out in full screaming armor along with the titular Dashing Reapers. I've always loved how Screaming Armor looks and this version of it is superb, with a lot of detail, including two spinal teeth decorations(?), Scabbards(?) hanging underneath her cloak at the back. We'll have to see if that is artistic flare or instead some foreshadowing of future gear.

The main practical issue of this load out is at the time you've managed to gain two Dashing Reapers, Screaming Armor (thanks to the nerfs it got in the Legendary Card Pack) isn't very good. It'll likely be retired by the time you are starting to hunt for these daggers due to having insufficient armor points when compared to Crimson, Singing or Leather Armor. Though this is not a fault of the miniature, it has superb presence and a wonderful composition, that's more an issue with the inconsistencies and deficiencies present in KDM's early game armor design.

Overall I really love this miniature and look forward to one day having the time to paint it.

The Gameplay Elements

I'm afraid that this time I don't have an image of the gear card. So I'll have to write it out instead.

Dashing Reaper

• Weapon, melee, dagger, sickle, stone, lantern

• (2/8+/7) Attack Profile

• Left Red, Right Green affinities

• Paired, Savage

• Red Puzzle, Green Puzzle Ability:

• During your act, archive a Fresh Acanthus to gain <Knight>, if this weapon is paired, gain <Knight><Bolt> instead. Limit Once Per Round.

Crafting Cost: 1x Gnawed Gastrolith, 2x Leather, 3x bone, 1x Scrap

Side Note. The Gnawed Gastrolith illustration is gorgeous. Gastroliths are such an interesting and cool part of animal biology, and the way that this one has been bitten down, transforming it from a disc shape into a crescent moon is stunning.

There's a bunch of interesting elements to this weapon, though the core of its design is a little puzzling, however before we get to that, the baseline keywords are great. Sickle means that you get bonuses when collecting Acanthus terrain without having to carry the Bone Sickle. The Lantern keyword means less pressure on the gear grid slots when you're playing a “compulsory Lantern” portion of a campaign and while there's no synergy for stone at the moment, perhaps we'll see that in the future.

The stat profile is, fine, this is clearly a weapon that wants you to be wielding in pairs because a 7+ in the blind spot at 2 speed is a fairly frustrating attack profile, meaning a single Dashing Reaper would want extra accuracy. However, the strength is great and running this paired for (4/8+/7) is a reasonable high speed mid to late campaign weapon. It's not ideal, 7+ accuracy would have been more desirable, but it'll do work in the hands of the right survivor. Savage remains one of the abilities of all time.

The interesting wrinkle is the puzzle ability. We only need to get one of the pair activated, and the affinities are lined up to work reasonably with Screaming Armor, so the layout isn't too much of an issue (apart from it looking ugly in the grid). The main issue is the requirement to be carrying a Fresh Acanthus in order to use the extra ability. Very few monsters have Fresh Acanthus as a guaranteed terrain drop in their showdown, so instead it needs to either be sourced during the hunt via Herb Gathering, generated by the survivor via an additional affect such as the Herb Grinder knowledge, or carried out from the settlement in a Satchel – which is a gear card that comes from a second Node 2 monster, thereby meaning it's not intended to be “officially” used in the same campaign as the Screaming Antelope.

It's clear that the main aim here is for Herb Gathering to provide the resources to fuel this weapon, meaning that the Bone Sickle is an essential addition for the hunt party, that's not too bad because the Bone Sickle is close to essential anyway. However, I can't help but remember that the 1.5 edition version of the Screaming Bracer provided Acanthus on arrival and it feels like these daggers were designed around that rather than the current heavily nerfed 1.6 version of Screaming Armor. It's a head scratcher for sure.

All of this falls away as an issue if you have Arc Survivors because you can select Herb Grinder for your Node 2 monster knowledge and that means this weapon can be utilised by parties with a Herb Grinder in their line up.

Final Thoughts

Compared to Xell, this one is a slightly underwhelming. The miniature is gorgeous, but the weapons are a wee bit behind where one would expect them to be considering that they are a paired Indomitable Weapon which is very vanilla without Acanthus in the mix. Meaning that the value on this box just isn't as high as Xell because in order to properly use this weapon you need to hit the Gnawed Gastrolith twice (and generally one isn't hunting an L3 Node 2 monster more than ~3 times), that's going to get harder and harder as and when more Screaming Antelope Indomitable Resources arrive (and one should assume we'll see more in Campaigns of Death).

That means this falls into the second tranche of Indomitable Survivors, the place where Grimmory, Kale and Ledla all hang out. There's some lovely parts to this release, and while it meets the standard when it comes to the artistic elements, it lacks mechanical punch and the wow factor that big hitters like Xell, Lordsruin and Morg all bring to the table. I think this one isn't a high priority purchase and if you are on a tight budget it's almost certainly worth waiting to see what Campaigns of Death does to the Indomitable Resource pool and if that expansion for expansions also does more to round out the Screaming Antelope's gear pool in general.

Final Score: A+ for art, C+ for the gameplay. Worth picking up but not before Xell.