Kingdom Death: Monster Review – Golden Bat Hunter Foltron (Beta)

The shining wavelength of pure gold is the only visible wavelength for the otherwise sightless bat. The monster fills its habitat with gold-trapped survivor remains, depicting arcane messages only understood by its species. Foltron, one of the most flashy of the Golden Bat hunters, wields a gilded weapon, baiting the monster to follow as the others use their relative obscurity to hunt the darting creature. -- Foltron Lore

As a little neat note before we get into the review; The Golden Bat (Ōgon Batto) is a Japanese superhero who was created in 1930; and is considered to be the world's first superhero. He appears in Unmatched: Tales to Amaze (first place I learnt about him and a boss battler that I highly recommend) and given Adam's uber-weeb status I am relatively confident that the name of the Golden Bat monster is a reference to this character. Likewise Foltron is probably a reference to Voltron. These are all pretty neat, and along with the lore snippet we see above I like everything I see here from a thematic standpoint.

The Miniature

I have to say I absolutely love everything about Foltron's sculpt; she's a really fun little character who has “Main Character in a JRPG” energy and reminds me of the playfulness that Ledla (Smog Drummer) also has. Even her outfit is delightful in a swimsuit kind of manner. I just don't have anything negative to say here, I'm never against exposed skin on miniatures as long as it's creating an interesting look and feels at least somewhat reasonable in an anime world for battling, if I'm not bored with it I'm happy.

Really no complaints here, it's fun characterful and passes my vibe check.

The Gameplay

Here we get cards that represent the same piece of equipment in two different gear cards. This is a fun little mechanic that we have seen before with the Calcified Gear and the Unbreakable Zanbato. Here instead of both gear cards being combined together or represented in Innovation ↔ Gear card we have two separate gear cards. This was likely done in order to present the crafting/repair costs on each individual card, so while it is a bit of an ugly solution it makes sense when considering that this is a beta content release.

Serrated Greatcleaver

Cost: 2x Perfect Bone, 1x Scrap, 3x resources from a Node 3 Level 1+ Monster

I am not thrilled with this cost, it is clear that this is another gear card that leans into the trend of slapping perfect resources on everything, but it is also effectively a Seed Pattern without being a seed pattern. I do understand that there are limitations with what can be done in respect to resource costs for this kind of content, but when the solutions are as inelegant as this the question becomes “Perhaps beta content releases is not the right format for this kind of gear?” I do think that the Node 3 Level 1+ Monster is a good bit of gating even if it is in essence the Seed Pattern system in a new hat. Also this gating tells us that the Golden Bat is around a Node 3 monster in power and that's a fun detail.

The Serrated Greatcleaver itself though is quite an enjoyable weapon to use. It's a grand cleaver (and a saw but we still don't have a weapon proficiency card for that) meaning this can be used as a weapon master training weapon by anyone who owns the game, but also has additional synergies with the Killenium Butcher release. That's a nice way of handling this, you're not forced to pick up extra content to be able to get a satisfying form of use, but you are rewarded for doing so in a way that doesn't feel pushy. Also bone synergy support is nice.

The design of this weapon echoes the Crimson Crocodile's Bloodglass Saw, including the Savage and Saw abilities, but has a lot stronger statline at (1/5+/7) and solid red affinities without any affinity requirements itself. This feels like an appropriate weapon for the crafting cost/gating; I want a weapon with this kind of strength from a Level 1 Node 3 monster because it allows me to progress towards the L2+ versions. This weapon is also neat in that it offers support for either the Strength or Deadly routes and Saw is always a fascinating ability to have on a survivor who manages to stick next to the monster (such like Tanks and other front line archetypes) because it lets them use their movement for a large benefit when they do not need to reposition.

Gilded Greatcleaver

Cost: 2x Endeavor, 1x Serrated Greatcleaver OR 1x Serrated Greatcleaver, 1x Scrap

The costs placed upon this weapon are really smart in their thematics, we're either spending lots of time working on the Greatcleaver or we're using scrap to reduce the time. That's a nice little bit of narrative storytelling via mechanics and I appreciate little details like this.

What you get for this cost is an upgraded version of the Greatcleaver with better affinities, +2 strength and Deadly 1, while still retaining the old affinities and Saw. This only lasts for a single showdown, meaning this is a weapon which has to be maintained the way that the Unbreakable Zanbato and Vespertine Foil require. The Vespertine Foil version of maintenance is pretty terrible, but fortunately the Greatcleaver leans more towards the Zanbato end of the spectrum.

This is absolutely a fair deal and a big part of making me really appreciate the mechanical design of this particular weapon, it echoes the Bloodglass weapon's Honed design without simply copying it and all of this feels right for what we have here.

Summary

While I am tired with the Beta content releases and consider them to be low value best left for the lifestyle gamers and hobbyists, Foltron is one of the really good ones; but I would still not recommend this release for the average Monster Player even if it seems unlikely that she'll get any kind of official Golden Bat expansion release within the decade (unless APG change their distribution model to store releases only once they have completed the current Kickstarter.)

There is a lot to like and appreciate here even without purchasing it, we get a nice little snippet insight into another part of the world's ecosystem along with a demonstration of how Team Death have learnt from past mistakes (Vespertine Foil) and are also able to continue creating unique, fresh spins on weapons that do not automatically retire and replace older gear.