Kingdom Death: Review – Seed Pattern Willow White Box

Editor's Note: This is a shorter review this week because I am hit by a lot of side effects from my treatment. I do however have two large reviews coming up in the next 2 to 3 weeks. Including my full review of the Black Knight Expansion and a Review of Primal: The Awakening. Primal is going to become a 'Purchase via the webstore' brand soon and I really like that they are attempting to not return to the Kickstarter Well and instead choosing a direction that gives them more direct control and is honestly better for consumers. Primal is a great game that lands somewhere between Card Boss Battlers like Marvel Champions and Miniature Boss Battlers like Kingdom Death and Aeon Trespass: Odyssey. 

The Black Knight review has had its first draft completed, so I need to let it sit for a bit and ensure it makes sense, so that will be the one that comes out first.

Onto Willow!

Willow is the most talented swordmaster to appear in generations. Her adaptability, sense of balance, and inventiveness have taken the lives of many and captured the attention of more. The Hand itself has taken an interest. It waits patiently to either best her in combat, or for her life to end so that it may soak a memory quill in her brain. The Scribe is always pleased to add new techniques to the corpse-filled library.

Contents:

• 1x Seed Pattern - Willow hard plastic miniature

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

• 1x Seed pattern card

• 1x Seed pattern gear card

• 1x Living rules glossary card

• 1x Novel Sword weapon proficiency card

• 1x Large matte art print

Willow is the most recent beta content miniature to be translated across to physical form; and as before we've seen some quite significant changes between the two. There are some quite sweeping changes here and they are in a direction that makes the older beta content not work. This is because the original version of a Novel Weapon Proficiency could be selected by any survivor who reached specialisation in the matching type and had at least three courage. The new version ties closely to seed patterns and we'll explore that in the gameplay review, but to start with let us take a quick look at the miniature.

The Miniature

I really liked Willow's photoresin release, the miniature has a combination of practicality (no parts overhanging the edge of the base) and a pose that projects a relaxed confidence. I greatly appreciate getting narrative sculpts of the core armor sets because it increases options for a more accurate representation of a survivor on the board without using the now tired and small looking multi-part sculpts.

Willow's plastic rendition has translated well into physical form as you can see from the official image above and I would go as far to say that I think this is one of the best looking lantern armor miniatures we've ever had. I also greatly appreciate that Willow has a sculpted base to stand on. These bases save on time and add so much to the world building with little snapshots of what the world looks like when it is not just stone faces.

It's a great miniature and I have no notes or critique to make here, sometimes things are perfect, Willow is one of those things.

The Gameplay

To start with, here are the updated and new rules for how Novel Proficiency weapons work:

Novel Proficiency

Novel weapon proficiency types may not normally be selected to accumulate weapon proficiency levels. Only remarkable circumstances inspire survivors to train with these weapons. When survivors gain a novel weapon proficiency, they may select this weapon type and accumulate weapon proficiency ranks as normal. Mastering novel weapon types does not confer any benefits to other survivors in the settlement.

Our current non-beta novel proficiencies are Cleaver from the Killennium Butcher vignette and Sword – Willow which comes from this box. The Cleaver proficiency is gained from battling against the Level 2 Butcher, but Willow's sword proficiency is gained from crafting the Refined Lantern Sword Seed Pattern provided in this boxed set.

How this works is on the Refined Lantern Sword Pattern, so I'll have to share that here.

We can see that the first requirement here (Sword Specialist with 3+ courage) is the same as in the beta content; so you still need those two criteria before you can start crafting with the required resources. Then they switch their weapon proficiency to the rather clumsily named “Sword – Willow”. I'm not entirely keen on the idea of that novel proficiency name, it feels off and something like “Willow Form” or “Willow Style” would have clicked better for myself. This is of course not a major deal, so I don't hold my own personal preferences against this box.

One thing I am not quite clear on here is what happens to the ranks in Sword proficiency when switching. This new proficiency is technically still a sword proficiency, but it is also “Sword – Willow” proficiency. I've assumed that one has to start from scratch, because that is the worst case scenario, but if anyone has an opportunity to get clarity on this, let me know in the comments.

I am however clear that once you have a... Hang on, this Sword vs. Sword – Willow thing is getting confusing for me when I'm writing about it. I'm going to just call the new one a “Willow Proficiency” from now on when I reference it because I don't think I can even call it “Novel Sword” because that'll cause issues if a different Novel Sword proficiency turns up in the future.

OK, where was I?

I am pretty clear and certain that once you have a Willow Proficiency survivor, you can pass that onto children via things like Family, which means once this is unlocked, it is something you can use for multiple generations. Retaining and using this from year after year is the same as any other proficiency, so we can translate those skills and practices across.

The more awkward stumbling block here is this Proficiency requires the Pattern to be constructed; that means we need to get to the Scrap Smelting innovation via either Bone Smith → Weapon Crafter → Special Innovation → Scrap Smelting or through Innovate Ammonia → Lantern Oven → Scrap Smelting. This innovation lets us construct the Blacksmith, which is one of the ways we can get the Lantern Sword needed for this pattern.

There are alternative routes that may let us get this pattern completed earlier; meeting the Cyclops Knight all the way down at the bottom of the Mineral Gathering Special Hunt Event (I usually take a Beacon Shield here, but this might change my selection, which is nice) or via the Settlement Event Card “Open Maw” which requires some serious beating of the odds in order to roll a 32 to 39 on the endeavor without hitting any doubles at all. But it is possible, and doing that is a large benefit because getting more years with a weapon proficiency available on a weapon that eventually sheds "Early Iron" means more time to complete it and utilise multiple masters.

There's another serious point you should watch out for here, which is make sure you get a child from the Willow Proficiency survivor via Family before you start risking the original. If you lose your only Willow Proficiency survivor then you are not going to be able to regain it without somehow archiving the crafted pattern sword and re-crafting it, a process that is both hard to achieve and slow. One should always treat your potential weapon masters with reverence and care, but this case requires extra caution.

OK, all of that written, let us get into the Specialisation and Mastery:

Our Specialisation is:

“Swords in your gear grid gain Block 1 and the two-handed keyword.

When you block or deflect a hit with a sword, gain +1 survival. Limit Once Per Round (LOPR).”

This is very different from the original Novel Sword proficiency as that was far more powerful with the text “After resolving a monsters action, if you ignored a hit from it with block or deflect, you may activate a sword and attack. LOPR”. That is a stupidly powerful specialisation, because as you can see it triggers of any block/deflect and it allows for a parry → riposte play style style of off-tank.

In fact the Willow Specialisation is taking elements from the old Mastery. Which reads “<K><A>: For the rest of the showdown, all your swords gain the two-handed keyword and Deflect 1. When attacking with them, double your strength attribute”.

To return to our White Box version (this is getting confusing!) we now have a static ability that provides a positive (Giving all swords Block 1) and providing +1 survival (LOPR) when that happens but at the cost of making swords two-handed (meaning no Blood Paint, and Dismembered Arm is a large issue). This means you can attack, surge to Block 1 and maintain survival levels. That's a solid Off-Tank play pattern but not something you can rely on for heavy durability, this is because it is not as strong defensively as a traditional Sword & Board Blood Paint Bruiser or as durable as a full Tank running a shield.

Our mastery reads:

“After Resolving a monster's <AI Card>, if you ignored a hit with block or deflect, you may spend 1 survival to activate a sword and attack. LOPR.”

Again we don't need to block/deflect with a sword here, so we can be running Sword & Board (something Regalism Arc Survivors will appreciate) when we reach mastery, which is solid enough because many builds lean on a shield plus shield mastery to provide sufficient protection via soak when the monster damage numbers get higher.

OK. So to capstone this, what Willow Proficiency gives us is a two-handed negative and in exchange we get the ability to Block/Deflect with a sword, gain 1 survival and then optionally spend that survival to make an attack during the monster's turn (after its AI Card resolves). That is a solid play style reminiscent of the Marchioness Armor (Black Knight Pattern Armor) and I like the play pattern it offers.

Refined Lantern Sword

Crafting Cost 1x Lantern Sword, 1x Perfect Bone, 3x Bone, 2x Endeavor

Well first of all, I am disappointed that this is yet another pattern card using a Perfect resource, I've mentioned this before in other reviews, but the Perfect resources have become something of a crutch for design and they are over-exposed. This causes fatigue because it removes some of the novelty in crafting, I would prefer to see more use of other gear cards to mix things up. It does also create good tension though, because players are asked to make difficult decisions about where to spend their precious Perfect resources.

I guess I'm mixed on it, tired with seeing it all the time, but it does play well in game if you don't draw too many perfect resource seed patterns (spoilers, most campaigns that reach the finale will draw ALL the seed patterns, it's too hard to not manage that because of the Insight = +1 seed pattern trigger combining with Saga making all new survivors start at 2 understanding).

The Refined Lantern Sword alters the standard Lantern Sword by removing Early Iron, adding a blue right affinity and swapping Sharp for Razor Sharp. This means that if you do not own the Gambler's Chest (GCE) you cannot use this weapon because the GCE is currently the only expansion that provides the Razor Sharp dice required for this mechanic (Technically you can proxy the dice, but personally I think this box set should have come with a Razor Sharp dice).

Razor Sharp is:

“Razor Sharp

A gear special rule. When attacking with a Razor Sharp weapon, roll the Razor Sharp die and add the result (denoted by the number of pips) to your wound attempt. This is not a wound roll and cannot cause critical wounds.”

I've not discussed it before, so lets look at that dice here.

The Razor Sharp dice faces are:

• 5 Pips

• 6 pips

• 7 pips

• 8 Pips

• 9 Pips

• 10 Pips

These pips are on the dice along with runes that likely stand for each of the numbers rolled, but we don't have any context to confirm my suspicions there. (Quick Note, we finally got the rune for F in the Frogdog expansion!)

That means our average number of pips are going to result in: 7.5 strength with a 16.17% (1 in 6) flat even distribution between each of the possible options. To provide comparison, Sharp is an average number of 5.5 with a 10% (1 in 10) even distribution between the possible options. So yeah, the Razor Sharp dice is a better dice to be rolling because not only does it have a higher average, it also has a tighter range of possible options, making it more reliable. You know the worst that the Razor Sharp dice is going to give you is +5 and that means you can plan accordingly.

So this is absolutely an improvement over the normal Lantern Sword, it doesn't have to use a Polishing Lantern to ignore Early Iron, it's offering a better version of Sharp and that extra affinity can mean something relevant by increasing options for builds. Though it is worth acknowledging that the biggest boon here is getting rid of Early Iron so you don't have to use a Polishing Lantern (you might still do so though if you want the Finesse +Strength bonus that lantern provides). Of course, if you got this sword early and don't have a Blacksmith yet then you're really REALLY happy about this upgrade (I've had a very early lantern sword from Open Maw and while it is strong, it is also frustrating as heck, so I'm very happy to be removing Early Iron).

I think after all this I can call the weapon decent. It doesn't spark joy in me, but it is also something I can see myself using because it comes alongside a Willow Proficiency survivor and that is a juicy bonus.

Summary

This boxed set is for the more experienced player seeking to expand on Seed Patterns further. The content here needs the GCE to properly shine, so if you have only the core game and the 1st Generation of content (Pre-GCE) you should hold back on the FOMO and wait for a sale. Even then I wouldn't pick this up until you've experienced the Seed Pattern system from the GCE and decided if it is an element of the game you want to keep using going forwards.

As for this new proficiency, I'm not sure how often I'll pursue this one because there are many other Weapon Proficiencies I rate higher (F&T, Shield, Spear, Katar, Axe, Whip, Scythe). I do certainly prefer this over the original Sword Proficiency and I also appreciate that it is not as busted powerful as the Beta version has turned out to be.

The model is great, though Lantern Armor + Sword is not a super common combo utilised in KDM because of Lantern Armor's intense synergy with clubs, so it is likely that Willow's miniature won't represent a 1 for 1 WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) situation. However, that's something that has become the norm since the switch to Narrative Sculpts.

So, Willow is a solid enough pick up for players seeking to expand on their Seed Pattern collection after getting the GCE content, but overall I'd rate this as a middle of the table release, not bad, but not amazing either.

You can purchase Willow from the KDM store here: https://shop.kingdomdeath.com/products/willow

I would assume that there will be a digital release of her in the near future and I'll return to review that in video form when it arrives on the KDS.