Frogdog Indomitable, Pattern and Rare Gear | An Overview

This will cover the last little piece of the gear that comes in the Frogdog expansion before we get into the hunt and showdown portions, here I'll go through the three indomitable weapons (two which come from the Frogdog, the third is in Survivors of Death I), the seed pattern gear and the rare gear. I'm not going to cover the Scout Gear card because it's a very simple utility gear card that helps control where the Frogdog will leap or the Bullfrogdog will charge, meaning it does nothing vs. any other monster in the game. I feel that's a very self explanatory piece of gear and doesn't warrant further discussion.

Fetid Frog Feta

Gained from: Collective Cognition Reward

Most meal gear cards are fun and powerful; the Fetid Frog Feta is no exception. This delightful little tongue twister piece of gear turns one survivor into Bruce Cook's titular character from the movie “Thunderpants”. Movement is always a very strong tool in Kingdom Death and the Feta's ability is no exception to that, giving you not only +2 insanity but a knockback of 5 in a direction of your choice.

While some care and attention must be paid to avoid collisions due to this being knockback rather than a move, there's a lot of places where this can be very useful. The most basic and simple version is for ranged survivors with cumbersome bows to use this as their main method of propulsion around the board. Saving their normal [Knight] for activating their weapon.

Also armor sets with a “Monster Movement” ability such as Phoenix or Dragon Armor can use this to set up their move/attack when starting next to the monster. You face away from it, and jet off with a stinky cloud, returning before that has had a chance to start dissipating with a powerful blow of your weapon. The one who smelt it also dealt it, and by it I mean the powerful blow that the monster receives as the Thunderpants survivor charges or leaps back at the monster.

That means the Feta is a very versatile piece of gear with a lot of different applications and it also has a couple of affinities which is frankly great, affinities are normally a good way to make gear cards that are situational perform even when their situation isn't up. When they're on something which is just a generically good piece of gear, it's even better.

Also the first line of the gear card reads like a tabloid headline.

 "Get your paper here!

Foul Flavors Trigger Violent Flatulence in Survivor!

Monster shocked as gaseous man wearing fecal makeup deals killing blow!

Read all about it!"

Dark Water Pearl

Gained from Noodling of Death: The Bottom, requiring the following series of rolls to unlock:

This gear card comes with 6 hunt xp for the survivor who gained it

Before we get into a review of the gear card, I want to highlight that this is I think the first place we've seen the words "Dark Water" outside of the Slender Man expansion. This pearl could well be the seed/egg of an Slender Man because it carries a lot of the similar mechanics, playing around with age and insanity. I certainly do not think that this card was called "Dark Water" by coincidence.

Dark Water Strange Resource from the Slender Man expansion

Team Death doesn't use words/names lightly in this game, so this is a connection we should bare in mind. There be Slender Men down here at The Bottom and it is one of those which entwines the survivor in Eventide.

I'm not the biggest fan of the Dark Water Pearl, it's intended to be a 'high risk, high reward' gear card that has a limited time due to the large amount of hunt xp it inflicts on a survivor. The second penalty is if your insanity drops to 0, you die. While one could consider that 'I'll just run a bunch of insanity gaining/protection such as the Crimson Helm or the Screaming Helm' and 'I'll abuse the game to get massive Insanity via the Blood Pool, Gorm Hiccup or Butcher' there's still the issue of the situations where the game sets your insanity to 0. That makes this very dangerous.

What you get from this is the ability to change on departing any one attribute to match your insanity. Movement, Luck, Evasion, Speed, Accuracy, Strength; none of them are off the table and because there's a number of semi-reliable ways to push Insanity to stupid numbers this can result in a survivor turning into some form of almost god-like creature as they end up able to move anywhere on the board in a single turn, have a 90% chance of hitting, 90% chance of wounding or 90% chance of critical wounds. These are not temporary changes, those would be represented by tokens, instead they are permanent alterations to the survivor's profile and you can choose a different one each departure.

Mix into that the number of ways you can continue to hunt with a retired survivor (or not gain hunt xp in the first place) and you've got a gear card that threatens to trivialise the showdown. With the risk being that auto-death.

I played with in exactly one campaign, after I pushed its survivor into just double digit insanity, maxed a bunch of options out, kept them hunting via the Shadow Caesar ability and got rid of the pearl via Crystal Skin (With Marrowism) I felt I'd seen everything that this gear card offered. Even before I ditched the peal it was like my hunt team was three people plus a god-like Stand user and the fun wore off very quickly. Simply put, as a personal taste this isn't the kind of gear card I like, I enjoy gear that has interesting ways you can break the status quo, but when it ends up replacing challenge with an “I win button” that very few monsters can overcome the novelty wears off fast.

So love the world building this gear card represents, not as keen on the mechanics.

Spite Balm

Crafting Cost: 1x Gaseous Bladder, 1xOily Sphinter

Requires: Dagger, Paint

One of my largest disappointments in the Frogdog expansion is the low number of Seed and Indomitable pattern gear cards. I hoped we'd see something closer to the Crimson Crocodile numbers, but instead we get one lone Seed Pattern and two Indomitable Patterns in the box. It's a real shame that happened, cause Pattern gear is one of the amazing second generation mechanics in KDM.

The Spite Balm is an aggressively mediocre piece of gear; it provides a couple of solid affinities plus an ability that has uses, but is more of a roleplayer rather than anything super exciting. The sticking point on this gear card is that the damage is always dealt to the head, meaning you have to be sparing with how often you employ this. It's best used to deny potentially lethal tokens such as that final bleed token, meaning that once again, the Frogdog and Crimson Crocodile are a great pairing as the Crimson Armor plus Crimson Pearls like to leverage high bleed numbers.

Still, this is not a bad piece of gear, in fact the main reason I find it disappointing is because there's nothing else. This would be a fine member of a Frogdog Seed Pattern trio, but instead it's all there on its own, and that means the Frogdog has less ability to flavour your seed pattern gear choices than some of the other monsters. However, this singular seed pattern per monster is the baseline, the Smog Singers and Crimson Crocodile also have just one seed pattern each in the Gambler's Chest, which means we're probably waiting for either White Boxes or Campaigns of Death to round out our options.

Grimacing Guillotine

Cost: 1x steel carbuncle, 1x spindly paw, 1x iron, 1x leather

First of all, shout out to the Steel Carbuncle for having the best resource art in the entire game. It is such a mood. The Guillotine itself is also a really interesting weapon despite not having a weapon proficiency (Tool weapon proficiency in the future maybe?). The place where I found this most useful was in the hands of a Shield or Fist & Tooth based survivor because not only do they already have a weapon to train, but also they synergise well with this weapon. Shield synergies are because having a shield means you'll often be adjacent to the monster when someone else critically wounds it and F&T is because you're the one who's going to be generating those critical wounds.

Automatic wounds are a very strong mechanic in the game; this is no exception to that rule, it's strong. It's been balanced by not only requiring 1 survival to activate this automatic wound, it also can only be activated once per round. These are limits on the ability that I greatly appreciate being put in place.

The stat line on this weapon is also fair for a Node 1 Indomitable weapon, but this weapon can last a lot longer on hunts beyond the limits of its 8 strength not just via armor set or gear assists, but also because its affinity connects to a lucky charm, meaning a luck based survivor can carry this to increase their damage output. It's a solid weapon that's well designed and feels like it has potential future synergies due to that tool keyword, speaking of which, don't forget that the Manhunter's Toolbelt can give this +1 speed, +3 accuracy and sharp.

Jaw Saw

Cost: 1x gilled fungus, 1x mossy molar, 1x perfect bone, 1x skull

Saw is another weapon class currently without a proficiency and the Jaw Saw follows the trend set by the Crimson Crocodile's Bloodglass Saw before it (anyone else think the Butcher should have some kind of saw related elements) in that it has the “Saw” ability. This is identical on both saws, so it is looking like it is the core ability for the saw weapon class along with Savage. This is a very good luck based weapon with excellent stats, powerful abilities, bone synergy and the Grand weapon keyword to ensure that we can make good use of this weapon even if Saw Proficiency doesn't materialise.

I'm not really sure what else to say, this is a perfect design, it needs you to spend your [knight] to get +2 luck, so you're not as mobile, but it compensates for that with reach 2. It has great speed, a good strength number backing up that high luck bonus and the grand specialisation means you can even mitigate the monster's reactions if you critically wound early in the attack. Everything hangs together in a cohesive whole both thematically and mechanically, so for my money it's a great weapon.

Also you can say Jaw Saw to the Jaws theme and that is the kind of stupid thing that amuses me.

Bully Hammer

Crafting Cost: 1x coated femur, 2x copper, 1x perfect hide, 2x organ

Requirements: Tuskworks

Note: The resource and weapon are printed in Survivors of Death NOT the Frogdog Expansion. I have included it here for completeness' sake. Also given that I now have a full understanding of the current copper situation I want to reassess this weapon from a blank slater based on how scarce and precious that resource has really turned out to be. So I have replayed with this weapon from first principles.

The Bully Hammer turns out to have quite a heavy cloud hanging over its head. This weapon requires a total of 3 copper to craft as the femur is the only copper monster resource in the game at the moment. It is also completely parasitic, requiring the Bullfrogdog Armor set to be able to make use of it because it has the Tuskworks design; worst possible accuracy in addition to an ability that triggers with all attacks hitting. This is a horrendously frustrating weapon to try and utilise because you can really only get one Bullfrogdog Armor set and the honest truth is this Bully Hammer isn't much better than the Bullfrog Halberd/Mace and Bullcharge Shield we can get for a lower copper total. It is clear that the Bully Hammer is trying to replace both a weapon and the shield, which would be a reasonable goal if the weapon didn't cost 3 copper total instead of the 2 copper that the two gear cards it is trying to jostle for position against.

With repeated use, it has become clear that no matter what I felt about it originally, this weapon is kind of undercooked. Gaining +5 armor points as a 'double wound total' trigger isn't better than the Bullcharge Shield handing out Deflect 1, in fact at the monster damage level these gear cards operate in, it's frankly worse. Add onto that its strength being only 1 point higher than the Bullfrog Mace, its lack of Reach which is what makes the Halberd so good and the affinities being flipped into an inferior layout when we compare them to the Bullcharge Shield (which fits right into the Bullfrogdog Armor layout perfectly) and we have something I've struggled to justify crafting. It didn't even feel better than the Bullfrog Mace when paired with Lantern Armor in a run that produced little copper.

After repeated play I have found that the best part of this weapon is taking the Indomitable Resource and spending it on the normal Tuskworks gear, which isn't ideal considering this is part of an additional set that costs $75. The model that holds this weapon is super cute though, I hope to paint her some day.

Final Thoughts

And that's it, that's all the Frogdog Gear I'm going to cover in detail unless we get more white box releases or a Polifrogdog Vignette Variant, next week I'm going to go through the Pillars System and present how I utilise that to set up my campaigns, and when we return to the Frogdog it'll be time for a showdown analysis followed by an actual review.

On the whole the gear here trends towards being good, there's some things I really like and some I'm not so keen on,despite I think there's a lot of unique elements being explored by the designers. I can't call anything boring because there are attempts to explore new portions of the game space along with clear evidence that they are not repeating past mechanical errors.

Also this gear succeeds in the area which I think matters most of all, games should be engaging, this stuff is engaging. Overall a great success.