Brave + Hollow – A Kingdom Death White Box Review

Declining to wish upon a frozen star, Brave sets out to fulfill his own wish. He carries Hollow's husk upon his back, journeying to Dedheim to restore the spark of life to her twisted remains.

Strange fires in the sky guide him to a pitted field of freshly dug graves. Brave steals curiously growing seeds from the rot-fumed barrows in the vain hope they will grow to something useful.

It seems that the positive reactions to the Killenium Butcher release, which is form myself right up there alongside the Black Knight, Sunstalker, Gorm, Dung Beetle Knight and Slender Man as the peak content releases for their time (Sorry Dragon King, I love you, but your craftable weapons need buffing); has resulted in returning to see one variant of these characters post event. Here we see what happens if Brave survives and Hollow doesn't. Brave's one of those characters I love to hate, his form of naïve chivalry is delightfully toxic and it not only got his entire settlement devoured by a Crimson Crocodile, but it also comes across so SO well in the various endings of the Killenium Butcher's story.

Here we have Brave travelling to Dedheim (a recurring Halloween settlement) seeking to bring Hollow back to life, which continues his trend of misguided chivalry, given that there's not much left of this particular Hollow I don't think she will appreciate being brought back if he succeeds. Brave really is The Squire's Perfect Idiot.

The Model

This is a really nicely put together miniature which even comes with an alternative head if you want to paint a skull face version (Link to the store page here so you can see it) that's a fun little addition and it is nice to have that. However, there's no in game use for this model at all, Brave's armor set is like nothing we find in the core game, and as such this is more a piece for painters. A gorgeous piece indeed, but if you prefer to play with WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) then there's no place where this miniature has use. For myself this one is going right to the bottom of the painting pile and I might never reach it at the rate I paint.

The Gameplay

This box includes two Era I and an Era II generic crafting patterns, though one of the Era Is calls for Black Lichen to craft it, which essentially means you're waiting until you can beat Level 3 Node 1s before crafting that one. Two of them are pumpkins, continuing the tradition of having pumpkin gear in Halloween releases and offering opportunities for skilled Pumpkin Carving KDM players to make more impressive carvings for the day before Samhain (side note when will we get The Pumpkin Pumpking Halloween monster release?) Lets us take a dive into each one of the starting with:

Hollowlink Pumpkin

The Cannibalize settlement pumpkin is a lot more reserved in power, it is LOPS and gives you survival equal to your courage in exchange for being doomed. That's thematic as it is Brave's shtick and it is also considerably weaker. However, while crafting this one the settlement does gain the Sacrifice innovation in exchange for the death of a 0 courage pleb and the developmental limitation here is the sickle crafting requirement, something that typically needs Ammonia and Leather. Sacrifice isn't a super strong innovation in most situations (Homicidalism is an exception), but getting any innovations in addition to your once per year activation is a boon that should never be overlooked.

Overall I don't think this one is super worth crafting, it has good affinities and getting Sacrifice can be powerful and this one does synergise with the preferred Arc survivor path of picking Cannibalize, however I'm not sure I want to spend a founding stone on this one unless I get a lot of extra stones during the campaign.

Bravelink Pumpkin

As mentioned above, it's going to take a while before you can craft this one because of that Black Lichen, but in addition we also need to have lost a valuable survivor in the previous lantern year and be a Graves death principle settlement. That last one is sometimes a bit of a sticky issue because Arc Survivors are massively rewarded for going Cannibalize, while Non-Arc survivors should generally pick Graves. We'll see that this is an intended thing though when we get to the other pumpkin.

The Hollowlink itself is a solid little item themed around Hollow's mechanic of tanking. One thing to really stress is that you cab repeatedly activate it, become doomed until the end of the round and gain +1 armor point to each location (+5 total). It's worth noting that the end of the round is at the end of the survivor's turn, so this doomed issue is really very, very small and I find myself wondering if they intended for this to be LOPS (Limit Once Per Showdown) like all of the other “link” Pumpkins but missed that part out by accident. Admittedly, +5 armor points per activation isn't massive when you get to the late game, but you can easily be getting this in the mid portion of a campaign because it only requires a Node 1 or 2 Level 3 monster, and in that portion of the campaign this is a hefty buff. Also the self dooming isn't a negative within these designs, it's a positive which works with other gear cards that benefit from doom, we'll see the Sword of Doom later in this article, but there's also things like the Erza of Dedheim gear cards which have additional Doomed synergies (also the Ghostlink Pumpkin from that box set is another Graves requirement gear card).

This is a solid tanking support item which I would craft most of the time and I wouldn't be surprised to read about Team Death stating that it was intended to be a LOPS gear card, because it's a bit too pushed with that consistent armor regeneration.

Sword of Doom

Our third and final pattern is the Sword of Doom, we have a fairly straightforward crafting cost of three basic resources and basic lanterns can be gained via the Weapon Crafter settlement location. So the main hold up on this one is getting that survivor with Analyse and as that is the showdown understanding epiphany, getting that is generally dependant on which monsters you have in your campaign, monsters like the White Lion and Butcher offer the opportunity for understanding gains during the showdown. Also that survivor then gains possessed, meaning that their combat capability is greatly reduced, while you can still gain Weapon Mastery proficiency on a Possessed survivor they're not able to take advantage of it and often that is enough to bench a survivor.

The sword itself is a doom orientated weapon, with the Doombound mechanic generating a doom token when you become doomed but also requiring you to spend doom tokens in order to activate it. While it does refund a doom token half the time when you use that, without additional support from other methods of dooming yourself that isn't something you can rely on (some traps might not even doom the doombound survivor). We had a similar issue with the Scythe of Doom from the Erza of Dedheim Halloween white box, generating enough doom was tricky, especially because Doombound doesn't give you 1 initial doom token on arrival. The Scythe is an impressive weapon, the Sword of Doom is way behind that in power (though it can also be crafted earlier on). Also, this is a Deadly 2 weapon without affinity synergy for the Lucky charm, we need to leverage deadly on this weapon otherwise you might as well be using a Bone Club because that'll activate more often, Deadly 2 doesn't mean much if you can't swing in the first place.

This weapon is very much a situational craft, you absolutely need to have gained other ways of generating doom tokens such as the various Doomlink Pumpkins, relying on the trap card isn't sufficient here, we do need a more reliable source to get us started.

Final Thoughts

At an MSRP of $40, I think that Brave's box here is reasonably priced, however I don't think that at the moment there's quite enough support for what the pattern cards are trying to do, two of them are split between our Death Principles and as Erza of Dedheim's boxed set wants Graves for its doom support pumpkin, the Bravelink Pumpkin is even more marginal in use. We're definitely getting closer to a world where Doomed builds are functional, but we're lacking something that triggers doombound or generates doom tokens in a semi-reliable fashion. Ironically under the old Doomed rules Vermin Obsession + Bug Patch could have given us something like that, but the new Doomed rules necessitated an understandable change to that Disorder.

I do feel that a Doom Token build is super interesting and fun, it's just not there right now and we're probably waiting another year until 2025s Halloween release before we get more support for this archetype. As such I think this is a low priority purchase for players on a budget, it's a niche playstyle built into the pattern system and right now I think pattern decks are more coherent and engaging without the doombound cards in them. I do hope this changes over time, perhaps something will pop up in the community that revolutionises the Doom Token situation, but until then I think this is a safe skip and reassess next year.

I'd currently recommend the Halloween White Speaker (with the Black Ghost Dagger) or Halloween Survivors II (the one with four survivors and patterns) over this if you did want something Halloween themed.