Seed Pattern – Jackel | A Kingdom Death White Box Review

Once, Jackel was poised to strike the killing blow, when a brave survivor surged from behind, stealing her triumph. Frozen in thin-lipped silence, she could not offer even the most insincere accolades. A one-sided rivalry flourished in her embittered imagination. Never missing the chance to depart with her competitor in the hopes of glimpsing his bloody defeat. Finally, the seed of her bitterness bore fruit, the image of a rending weapon, one to leave her daring rival spineless.

For best experience, use with Gambler's Chest expansion.

Available from the KDM Store here: https://shop.kingdomdeath.com/collections/white-box/products/seed-pattern-jackel

Jackel's boxed set contains:

• 1 x Seed Pattern - Jackel hard plastic miniature

• 1 x Hard plastic Kingdom Death 30mm base and insert

• 1 x Spina Sickle seed pattern

• 1 x Spina Sickle seed pattern gear

• 1 x Living rules glossary card

• 1 x Large matte art print

Jackel is the latest of what we should probably start calling the “Legendary Survivors Series". This time, the character comes with a generic Tier III seed pattern card, which is something I greatly appreciate because generic seed patterns require less boxes to utilise and can even be run with just the core game alone. They're accessible to the highest number of players and the $30 MSRP is something that I consider to be reasonable, though it is less of a deal than the four survivors plus game content that comes for $75.

Jackel's design intent is to assist in one of the large gaps that occur in weapon progression for the Whip, as a whip enjoyer this is something that seems aimed directly at me, so let us take a look if the design turns out to be hype enough to generate excitement.

The Miniature

One of the tricky parts of miniatures with whips is that they are thin, long weapons and that means when you cast them in small scale they're really prone to breaking when handling or transporting them. The very first thing I look for in a whip sculpt is a weapon that is hard to break and Jackel manages that while also looking great.

This miniature has attitude, style and panache in spades. I also REALLY love the bone lantern, that's not a design I've seen sculpted before and I think it looks absolutely perfect for the setting. Outside of that it's hard to exactly pinpoint what her armor design actually is and that's actually a good thing. It could be the armor set from the future “Phantom Fang Jackel” (or whatever monster her settlement hunts), but it also could be any form of White Lion, Screaming Antelope, Rawhide or Leather Armor.

 It's got a very solid 'generic' look which will help her fit into a mid game campaign (which is where this whip will become craftable). I like that a lot, especially as I have moved away from exact WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) in KDM and instead plumped for 'the armor and/or weapon' looks correct enough that I know what the unit the miniature represents.

This week I guess Team Death's sculpting team are 2 for 2 with a pair of incredible miniatures.

You love to see it.

The Gameplay

Pattern Crafting Cost: 1x leather, 2x bone (from a Node 3+ monster), 2x Broken Lantern, 1x tall population

Pattern Requirements: Whip Specialist

To start with these crafting costs are really well put together, we're held back from really rushing this weapon by the Node 3 bone and leather requirements. Instead it's going to only become an option once we're firmly in the mid game where leather and Node 3 monsters are the bleeding edge of our gear technology.

For those reasonable, murderous, crafting costs, the whip survivor in our hunt party is gaining access to a (2/7+/6) Barbed 4, Reach 2, Unwieldy, bone, whip, sickle. This is a very well put together set of baseline stats. Unwieldy has always been a fair drawback to stick on a weapon as not only is it balanced, it's also a wonderful opposite side of the coin to Barbed and it's frankly funny. I've had an unwieldy Whistling Mace survivor give themselves a concussion before and honestly, we had to break for a bit because it just tickled us all that much.

Barbed 4 in particular is really sweet, but +4 strength is not all that this weapon gains on a Perfect hit. The Red Puzzle plus Green affinity ability means that LOPR (Limit Once Per Round) a Perfect hit will transfer a luck, speed or accuracy token from the monster to the survivor. Outside of generic good stuff token synergies such as the Gormandism philosophy the addition of the speed token here is a huge deal. Wait, no it's a HUGE DEAL.

HUGE DEAL.

H U G E

The reason for that is one of the prime ways that monsters can scale their threat capability in KDM as they go up in levels is via Speed tokens gained from various AI cards (For example: The Phoenix, Sunstalker and Butcher for example all have cards that give them speed tokens). Speed tokens when they turn up are terrifyingly dangerous as they can act as sort of a damage multiplier, taking whatever damage the monster is dealing and potentially adding an extra dice of damage which is also benefiting from any other offensive tokens (damage, accuracy) and also the base damage and speed that the monster normally gains on their AI card.

Removing just one of those, which triggers on a Perfect hit, so you don't even need to wound and can also benefit from Timeless Eye type bonuses, means that you have one of the lowest bars to cross in order to score this bonus.

Luck and Accuracy are both nice to get (and easier, due to the Basic AI card handing them out as tokens), the Spinal Sickle is justifiably a lower accuracy than we're used to, but there are ways of off setting that, such as the blind spot or combining it with armor sets that boost accuracy such as Dragon Armor or Cycloid Scale Armor. Dragon Armor in particular with its “Monster Movement” ability of leap has again been very impressive with the Sickle because it offers +2 accuracy and +5 strength.

Also, I appreciate how this weapon does not touch Damage tokens in any form. I'm glad that Team Death restrained themselves to just part of monster offensive scaling here.

So yeah, this Spinal Sickle absolutely rules, it's wild, it's got a high power ceiling while also having the delightful downside of potentially making your survivor trip over their own whip and bursting their head open on a rock. I loved it when I saw it, and once I played with it in campaign I fell in love with it in a way that few weapons outside of some of the King ones have managed in recent times.

Final Thoughts

"Oh! That's a Baseball!"

Yes, easy thumbs up on this one. It's generic, so you can fit it into any campaign. It gets more balanced with other seed patterns and the entire seed pattern system being in your collection, but even without that this can be used as your only seed pattern alongside the core game and you'll get it unlocked as soon as the first survivor reaches Insight (which is balanced because you still can't craft it without Leather + Node 3 monsters).

From the very first hunt, where I used this against a level 2 Phoenix with the Rancid Melon Stench Mood and stole the Speed Token while simultaneously hitting myself in the head with the second attack dice I was smitten with this one. It's right up there somewhere in my pantheon of favourite weapons.

Full recommendation from me here. It's a cracking good time.