Kingdom Death Review – Indomitable Survivor - Thumping Timpani Ledla

WARNING: REQUIRES GAMBLER'S CHEST EXPANSION

Spewing and hacking, Ledla stumbled out of the kaleidoscopic cloud crying many-hued tears. From within the obscuring smog, wretched cries of guilty conscience expired invisibly. She collapsed, clutching the flaccid face, the springy resonance of the waxy monster hide hitting the ground played a note of absolution to her fading consciousness.

The Miniature

Our third shop review this week is the white box release for a photoresin miniature that came without game content. I was kindly gifted the photo resin version of this model by AWAF (a warm awful feeling...) and it is one of my favourite models in recent times. Ledla's sculpt is absolutely gorgeous and the transition to plastic has only improved that. I adore the aesthetic of the Smog Singer armor and Ledla's version of it is playful. From her joyous enthusiasm all the way down to the battered faces on the timpani, Ledla is a delight that I never tire of looking at.

The Gameplay

If you are not familiar with them, timpani (a form of kettle drums) are large drums which are a bowl shaped from copper and have the drum skin stretched over the top. The name is at its root based from an Italian word, which evolved from a Greek word. In Swedish they are called pukor. The notes that come from striking them are very distinctive and play for a long time (long sustain), so they are often muffled after being struck in order to control how long the note plays.

Strauss's masterpiece Sunrise (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ayDohuoqnIs) from Also sprach Zarathustra is an incredibly iconic example of how these drums sound. You almost certainly know this tune, and in case you don't know it by name, you will as soon as you hear it. Then play it every single time Ledla is arriving on the showdown board with Gorn accompaniment from Gadrock.

Thumping Timpani

Crafting: 1x Pompous Face, 3x Fluted Severed Head

This is an awkward crafting cost that you are going to have to work towards because there is exactly 1 Fluted Severed Head in the Smog Singer resource deck (despite there being three smog singers per showdown and for us, three heads would be better than one). That is in itself interesting and it is the main factor of why this is a really expensive card to craft. As a consequence of that demand versus the mechanical scarcity, we're looking at a minimum of three showdowns to get all the resources gathered.

 Fortunately the head resource is only used in the Pipa and we can skip crafting that with comfort because it has terrible strength (4 total strength if puzzle affinities are activated) in combination with an average power level ballad (gives savage, which is situational in its strength). The Pipa isn't completely useless, having applications against Atnas, but outside of that showdown you're not going to be using the pipa often. Which means these Severed Heads are not essential for other crafts and that's good for the Timpani.

This all means that players will need to plan ahead when this card is a potential crafting option that one wants to persue, and the first step is to hold onto two or three heads in your settlement storage to ensure you can craft the timpani in the settlement phase that comes immediately after the showdown drop. Keeping two is the minimum I'd go for, three is ideal because you're not guaranteed a head drop every showdown (though it is far more likely against the L3 due to the increase in resource generation via rewards and monster life totals).

The Timpani itself is an item that gives a huge amount of (5) survival on arrival and provides up + down red affinities without needing any itself. Its ability is one that buffs your encourages (reminiscent of the Rawhide Drums) and as such it synergises with anything that involves the encourage survival action, such as the Earl armor set, or Leader Fighting Art. Likewise as an Instrument it will gain Instrument Force under certain circumstances when fighting The King.

I am at the point in my personal play sessions (ones with friends/family rather than the ones I play strictly following the rules as much as possible) where I house rule the Harvester, so beyond noting that all instruments suffer from that massive downside (meaning you should only use them where there is no hunt phase if you want to play safely and optimally), I won't dive too much into that issue (again). But I do have to bring it up each time for a complete and fair assessment even if I'm as tired writing about it as you are reading it.

On the showdown board this item performs very well if you have a good mixture of self-knockdown options, a monster that likes to cause a lot of collisions that result in knockdown or having a way to encourage survivors even if they are knocked down. Those elements are an excellent first step towards really making these babies sing.

The real kicker then is the Singing Breastplate from the Smog Singers, which gives you access to an encourage that works regardless of if the other survivors are standing or not. So this is our key piece of the puzzle (you can even mix it with the Black Knight's Earl armor pieces to really take advantage of Encourage bonuses, something that I've been experimenting with recently to reasonable success thanks to the Clothed & Satiated armor set bonus). Fortunately that's Smog Singer gear, as is this, meaning they are nicely self contained, but being so closely tied to a Node 2 armor set, even one that is as good as Singer Armor, does put a time limit on this item. You want to prepare to craft this in advance and get it made as soon as possible.

This synergy is key to unlocking the full potential of the Timpani as they require 3+ guilt tokens already on survivors in order to give the encouraged survivor +1 attribute token of their choice and that is slow due to the normal limitations around encourage. With a steady use of Hit Song (the name of the Singing Breastplate's ability) you can get this online and that is clearly what these drums are designed to be used with.

Singing Armor is often used as a tanking armor set because of the hat bonus, but the Timpani here reward using the armor set for its intended design use. Smashing into the monster and then backing up to do that in a later turn (the Singing Boots allow your survivor to retreat up to 3 spaces away from the monster after your act so if you then kite the monster away from the Hit Singer a space or two on their turn then Hit Song will be set up ready to go again).

That creates a very unique damage/support playstyle, one which scales up more and more when you add additional encourage based gear cards into the survivor's gear grid and I do appreciate that a great deal. It also brings new life into Knowledges/Fighting Arts that use Encourage and also supports the Gormandism philosophy as they can eat the positive attribute tokens and turn them into permanent statistical bonuses.

Final Thoughts

I love Ledla as a character, and this is a very solid addition to the Smog Singer gear suite, though it has a somewhat stifled set of areas it can be used in because of the limitations that often surround Encourage. However, this is tacked onto a creature that many players will grow past due to how soft the monster is and how repetitive the showdown against them is. But, this gear card does encourage you to use the armor set for its intended (and unique) playstyle instead of as a generic mid game tanking/affinity providing set. That means something.

Which means that the ultimate answer lays with you and your relationship to the Smog Singers, if you enjoy fighting them and you're good with how they impact on the difficulty of the campaign (and especially if you house rule the Harvester Basic Hunt Event) or you adore Ledla's sculpt as much as I do then this is a good one. But if you don't hunt the Singers, or you've grown past them due to the lowered difficulty, then you can safely skip on this.