Kingdom Death: Monster – Glow Review

Legendary characters are born with a story to tell. Included character cards foretell a journey on a grand scale. Use only one legendary character card per campaign. This character's story unfolds throughout their lifetime.

Glow was born with glamorous future. Between fantasy and flesh a vast chasm of questions. A precocious child, she was a clever, nimble-fingered artificer. Piece by piece she would manifest the heart-aching enchantress glittering bright in the darkness.-- Glow Lore

Glow is a new version of the old 'Generic Hero' line of miniatures reimagined in Kingdom Death's main world' that the Echoes of Death series has been running with for quite a long while. In the Generic world Glow is the “Holy Mage”. Glow has spun off from the original design of four different survivors and instead has given us a single survivor at four snapshots across their lifespan. This is something we've seen before; especially with the “Core Four” (Lucy, Zachary, Allister, Erza) and Aya; but the difference here is we're getting all of them in the same box along with matching survivor tokens and a set of gear cards that provide insight into Glow's character.

The Miniatures

What a great set of sculpts we have here, starting with an Unarmored version, moving to Rawhide, then Screaming Armor and finally settling on a Death Armor set. Each sculpt is different, not just in pose and loadout, but also in the expressions on her faces. Glow looks concerned and afraid in the Unarmored/Rawhide renditions, but more serene and confident in the Screaming/Death King sculpts. I would also like to provide some appreciation for the Screaming Armor model in particular, that raised left leg somewhat mimics the unguligrade way that antelopes walk rather than the plantigrade stride that humans have. I've always enjoyed how the armor sets mimic the monsters they are crafted from and I especially like it when the survivors further echo that mirroring through their poses or personality.

The only real criticisms I will levy here are that we have a break in the progression, this collection is missing the Node 3 stop on its tour, but that would have resulted in additional expense. Also the Screaming Antelope → Death King pairing isn't something that happens in any of the “official” campaigns; The King is in People of the Dream Keeper, where the Smog Singers occupy the Node 2 Position. However, both of these complaints are incredibly minor and do not detract away from this collection of snapshots. Instead I think it simply expresses that I'd love to see a second set for Glow that provides Node 1, Node 3, Leather Armor and something else in the future.

This is a great line, clearly depicting the same character at multiple points in time while also making the effort to ensure each version is sufficiently different from the others.

The Gameplay

In Glow's boxed set we get a new Legendary ability with linked craftable gear and a set of survival/act tokens. These tokens represent the first time we've got a token for the People of the Dream Keeper campaign with 'Fist Pump' and they also provide us with the survival action from People of the Lantern with 'Endure'. They follow the same design as the older ones where they are greyscale on the back to indicate they have been used.

I find these tokens to be very useful when playing solo, especially when progressing deeper into a timeline as both the monsters get more complicated and you have more survival actions to consider. I do hope that we get Fist Pumps for all the currently released token sets soon; it is noticable that the token is missing when running a Dreamism campaign.

The Legendary Ability card is “The Glamorous” and this is the first time we've had an ability that provides pattern unlocks rather than a specific ability for a given survivor. The Legendary Ability slot is a very competitive one; you can only have a single one per campaign and we've got very strong options in Weapon Master and The Red Survivor (From Lantern Aya White Box). So legendary abilities have to be either powerful or super interesting to earn the slot. The Glamorous is certainly both of those, but it has an issue that no other ability in the game has had before; there is a set limit to the benefit that this ability can provide. Once you reach Age III on your hunt XP milestone track this ability is not only exhausted for the survivor who has it but it is also exhausted for any future survivors. That turns this ability into a dead draw for settlements with the Character Deck system, though players who do not have that and are instead following the “Install Guide” rules which gifts this to exactly one survivor during a campaign will not struggle with.

Honestly, that kind of lands me at a point where I think this ability card is asking for players to house rule from the very beginning. I don't want to put this into my Character deck, but I also do not want to play without Characters and as such after experiencing this Legendary Ability once I'm going to house rule it later on; either following the Install Guide 'first born survivor gets this' rule or perhaps putting it into my Character deck and replacing it with a different Legendary ability once it is exhausted. (In fact, as an aside there is a lot of fun to be had with playing a Character deck where you randomly swap the Legendary ability to a random one after drawing and applying the one currently in your deck, so you have a constantly rotating surprise in your deck – I think that might be how I play it in the future because I love variety).

So played officially this Legendary Ability is somewhat hard to justify when compared to the other options and frustratingly, while The Glamorous provides us a pathway involving Whips it turns out that The Red Survivor ability gives us “Every weapon is a whip” so even that unique nature here is somewhat muted. However, we'll leave discussion of The Red Survivor until I review that boxed set a bit later on.

Our three pieces of gear are unlocked one at a time and we'll look at them in the order you get them. After that, because they're designed to work together, we'll consider what that means for gear grids.

Voluptuous Bodysuit

Unlock: Age I Glamorous

Cost: 2x endeavor, 2x Scrap

Requires: Face Painting

Setting aside the question of what the suit is actually made of given its components are scrap metal; I think that this bodysuit is a really fun thing that allows for any survivor to use the Glow miniature to represent themselves. It's also quite an insight into Glow's character because it is part of Glow's desire to bring her aching vision into life by transform herself into the Holy Mage – tying into the very concept of the Holy Mage as per the lore here.

The church parlors of the order are found almost everywhere but its Holy Mages are an enigma. For exorbitant fees of gold and jewels, the Holy Mage will transform adventurers inside and out. Masters of alteration, metamorphosis, and transmogrification, the Holy Mage can transform muscle and mind alike. Their knowledge is a closely guarded secret and to protect it, Holy Mages change their own appearance daily leaving their number and identity a mystery. – Holy Mage Lore (Bold provided to highlight the sentence referenced).

It also allows for Zachary to continue dressing up to match his Halloween Cat outfit and his Damsel one from the Lion Knight. Zachary is fabulous in all his forms and really knows how to serve ____. (I'm not writing the second word here even though it isn't a taboo word in my home country. If you know what that drag catchphrase is, well you know).

The item we craft provides an early game use for Scrap, 1 armor point to all locations and effectively turning any monsters who hit on a 2+ to instead only hit on 3+s instead. This is a powerful item and can make survivors in full rawhide close to unassailable for most Node 1 and 2 Level 1 monsters and also causing trouble for level 2s (Apart from the Crimson Crocodile, because Crunk doesn't play by the normal rules). It is really strong, but justifiably so given that not only do you need to get the Glamorous survivor and reach that first milestone and have Face Painting plus the scrap. I think this one is strong enough to be used all campaign and also fairly costed.

Mage's Hood

Unlock: Age II Glamorous

Cost: 1x endeavor, 2x cloth, 1x scrap, 1x perfect hide

Requires: Face Painting

The Mages Hood is a head slot accessory that provides one armor point; when its left green puzzle and a red affinity are connected on the gear grid the Mage's Hood leans into the Body Suit's passive ability by having the first 1 rolled each round (2 = 1 with the body suit) provide +1 armor points to all hit locations. That is not as strong as the Green Ring version, but it also does not require you to be the monster controller.

This is definitely meaning that the Glow gear is shaping up to become a Tank focused suite, the pseudo evasion (frankly stronger evasion) from the first item and the “regeneration” that this second item provides are really powerful tools that become better the more often you are attacked.

Holy Sword Whip

Unlock: Age III Glamorous

Cost: 1x endeavor, 1x Ring Whip, 3x Scrap Dagger

Effective Cost: 1x endeavor, 1x iron, 3x organ, 6 x bone, 3x scrap

Requires: Inner Lantern, Blacksmith, Weapon Crafter, Heat

I've peeled all the costs apart in full here because the Holy Sword Whip requires a Ring Whip and three Scrap Daggers, meaning that for most settlements you'll also require that the Blacksmith and Weapon Crafter are open in order to be able to craft this. It is a very expensive weapon, but as an endgame gear card that is to be expected.

The Holy Sword Whip is a sword/whip with Reach 2, Savage and the (1/6+/9) attack profile. Also it has an ability that requires 2 green, 1 puzzle red (left facing) and 1 blue that allows the player to “roll off” against one attack role and if they beat it, it is rotated to be a 1. The designers use the word 'set' here, but I think they should have used 'rotate' in order to respect The Gambler mechanics. The 1 that is generated here will trigger the Mage's Hood, providing another layer of synergy for entire trio.

This weapon being a Whip means that it can gain effectively +5 strength in the hands of a master while also giving the weapon AI manipulation through the Whip's Specialisation (which lets you wound the top card of the discard pile instead of the top card of the deck, a very strong form of AI “pruning”). It also gives the options for Sword Mastery instead of Whip Mastery (There's arguments for both options; Sword provides +1 accuracy, strength and speed which a strong survivor will appreciate over Whips massive strength bonus) and the Sword specialisation which lets you roll to wound before selecting your first hit location to apply the result to.

That's a strong combo and has flexibility in either being Whip Master/Whip Specialist/Sword Specialist or Sword Master/Sword Specialist/Whip Specialist at the top end of weapon type progression. The best part of that is I can't even state definitively that one path is better than the other, both Whip and Sword masters bring different things to the table and it really depends on the survivor rather than the gear. That's always a nice situation to be in.

The main negative here is the lack of truly late game options like Deadly (to combine with savage) or Sharp, so this weapon may fall off if your survivors are not big, buff, burly women and men. However, 9 strength and the Weapon Masteries do a lot to mitigate that.

The Full Set

Combined together this trio of gear cards occupy potentially a complete row across a gear grid, however they can be broken apart if they are able to connect up the desired left Green and left Red affinities elsewhere. The main goal though is to have access to another green and one blue affinity elsewhere on the gear grid. That is a concern for Death King armor, one of the sets that we see Glow wearing in her sculpts. This is one of those elements of game design that I cannot be sure is intentional or not; because we don't get much transparency for how these things are designed internally by Team Death it is impossible to tell if it was a deliberate choice that Glow has Death King Armor despite it not working due to affinity issues or not. Given that the entire trio works with Rawhide and Screaming Armor's affinities from a outside perspective this feels more likely to be unintended rather than measured.

However, the set works with Crimson Crocodile, Singer, Rolling, Phoenix, Dragon, Lantern and Cycloid Scale Armor sets so I do not thing this is a large negative; likewise it works with “sans-armor” builds such as Crystaline or Marrowism builds and that even lets us go back to using the Unarmored Glow miniature to represent the survivor there, so that is really cool.

Final Summary

For pure game content consumers this is a bit of an expensive purchase at $75 + shipping and taxes, but if you are going to get use/pleasure out of the miniatures then this is a fantastic purchase because it has that concentrated “same character at different points in time” series of sculpts that are usually spread out over multiple releases.

Add onto that the very useful survivor tokens and this is a release I am very excited about; though as mentioned above it is getting harder and harder to justify purchasing additional Legendary Ability releases because you need to be playing a lot of repeated campaigns and be seeking an alternative from the usual powerhouse option of Weapon Master (and now we have The Red Survivor taking the crown as strongest and most fun Legendary Ability).

As a hobbyist, reviewer and player I like what this box is offering a great deal, it's interesting in all aspects from world building all the way through to mechanical, but if you are a newer player then picking up various expansion boxes is better value than something like this. One for the lifestyle gamers.