Kingdom Death: Ultimate Showdown Board Review

Note before we start the Gallery Above contains a lot of close detail images if you want to see some of the interesting world building features sculpted on this board.

This week my copy of the Ultimate Showdown Board arrived, and ahead of it turning up in the KDM shop I wanted to actually try and get a review out ahead of a release. Most of the time I just cannot do that because I do not get any form of early release, so I cannot pass up on this opportunity. However this means when writing about things like this I don't have the information as to how much this will retail for at the time of writing this review (I don't even know how much it was on the last BackerKit opening but maybe someone will comment to provide that). However. I will IMMEDIATELY stress that you should try and make it good practice to never purchase something like this from 3rd parties for more than they paid for it unless you have no other choice at all. Support Adam Poots Games directly wherever possible, sales via their store goes back into their company and also tells them what things we the community like thereby sculpting the direction they take for future releases. Speak with your wallet and all that.

With that written I'll get off the soap box and clamber onto the Ultimate Showdown Board.

The Unpacking

As you can see from the first image, this release comes in a large cardboard box (as well as the external packing. I'm going to come back to this box near the end of the review, so don't forget about it.

Let us do something as close to a "box opening video" as I ever plan to do, because let us face it, box opening videos are something I personally find cringe (just teasing here, but I do not watch them 99% of the time). Here's the contents:

 And here's the contents laid out:

 There are four total of the grid on the left and two total of the smaller grid on the right. I left them out here because it was making the image a bit unreadable. It is worth noting that there are NO instructions, so I'll be supplying my process as I go through this review. I hope it helps.

The Assembly

The first thing I did before opening anything was organise all of the square packets into alphabetical order, I really recommend this because it saved so much time later on. It also highlighted that there are some weird packs that are not set up in order. For example in the top RIGHT (not left as I originally wrote) of this next image you'll see L7, L16 to L22 all together.

After that I got out the original board, because I wanted to see if I could use that board as guidelines. It looked kind of promising to start with:

 But the more eagle-eyed of you readers will have already noticed that this is not quite fitting correctly, and that kind of issue will only grow the more parts we add. Like this. Look at how far offline the bottom left corner is. It's a shame, but understandable.

 So that's pretty much put paid to my using the original board as a set of guidelines. But before we dispose of it, I did do a little more investigating to identify what I suspected was the issue. So I broke open the first few bags from A and B rows and set them up directly onto the board.

 As you can see here, the squares themselves are the same size. So the thing that is causing the distortion is the grids themselves. That's actually a very fine thing that I would call beneficial, because what this means is we have larger spaces for the miniatures to stand without colliding (as much) with each other through overhang. The minis will have a smidge more room to breathe without looking small compared to the terrain.

Also, look. It's one of the lion people from the Silver City! (Or the Gold Smoke Knight in his past glory, they're both very similar looking which is fair considering the links between the GSK and what we know of the world that the Plain of Stone Faces was before the "great erasure")!

Alright, so let us put the board away now, but before it leaves we can have one more shot of it posing with the plastic squares that have now retired it.

As you can see from this picture, these tiles are thick plastic with grid location coding on the bottom of each. Also while the exact position of the grid position may move around, they are always placed to give you the orientation of the tile when you insert it into the grid. Top of the text is top of the tile. You can easily follow this by orientating the tile correctly and then flipping it on its vertical axis (lifting the left or right side and reversing it. I hope that makes sense).

Here's an example image of how the tile orientation would be, but with the bottom face up.

Alright, so how did I fill out the grid? Well I laid out three grids (square, small, square) took the bags in alphabetical row order and filled out all three of those grids horizontally from columns 1 to 22 one row at a time. I do have an additional suggestion in respect to the grid layout, but we'll get to it a bit later. So be patient and don't immediately start filling your grid in.

Here's how it looks after a row and a bit.

 One bag at a time, opening it up and lining up the tiles like this before putting them on the board. Also counting each column as you move across helps you avoid losing what tile you placed last.

 Doing this helped keep it all methodical, and slow enough that I only made the one error when placing the tiles (and I caught that error before finishing the row).

One of the tricky spots you need to keep an eye out for are those afforementioned "mixed bags" like this one:

 I opened up all the bags for those particular rows and lined them up in full (face down) which managed to avoid that being an issue. Otherwise you really could get things mixed up because there are not always matching features on the tile edges to help you keep things organised (more on that later).

If you do happen to get a bit lost, you can either pull out and replace the tile you just put down to check the grid number, or start from 22 and move backwards, which I did here.

Once the first set is fully laid out like this; you can move onto doing the second half of the board.

 OK, so this is where we come onto the layout issue issue I noticed. I'd chosen to go symmetrical with the two large squares on the outside, but once I put the second set on I had immediate regrets because of this.

 In essence, with that small tile in the middle no matter how I arrange the bottom three grids there will always be two seams that line up. So eventually I'll change it to this layout.

This "Brickwork" layout means a lot more resistance to accidental knocks on the vertical plane (nothing can be done about the horizontal one). It'll take a while for me to get it redone this way as I'll need to move every single tile, but I will do so eventually.

Anyway, repeat the above process for the other half and voila!

 Review time!

The Review 

The production quality on this board is very good, the tiles are thick and durable and the only real point of possible breakage is the grid itself. I don't have enough finances to destructively test one of these boards, so I'll have to skip on that and stick to destroying Morgan miniatures with a hammer. The grid however seems more than durable enough to withstand normal use and accidental droppage. I do think we'll see 3rd party frames to put this board in though, so if you are concerned about that you can purchase or even build one (wood board, nice coving for the outside, black paint/stain, warnish, boom job done).

My board holds the tiles really snugly, but I have read elsewhere that some people have found some tiles to be loose, which isn't ideal and I hope that there is some form of replacement plan available because this is going to be too expensive a purchase to tolerate anything less than the highest possible quality. This is something that will just take time, we'll see.

The biggest benefit of this board is how much additional immersion it builds via the extra details on the board. I've put loads of them in the gallery above, but I would like to go and show a few I really liked.

 There is more than one Crab Spider on the board and they were always one of my favourite elements of the illustrated board. This one is missing a leg right now, but one would assume they'll regrow. Crabs are very resilient, it's why nature loves to evolve into them.

 There are a couple of places where we have coins on the board, it was nice to see them, though I am not sure if they are a reference to The Hand's faction (King's Coins) or a part of the older civilisation's ruins. I chose this particular image because the board damage is also super interesting to look at.

 I like this large face a lot, and also we can see a broken Sword in the foreground that has a bit of a resemblance to the Adventure Sword in hilt design and an example of the small skulls that are scattered here and there.

This is one of the spots where I things don't gel as well as I'd like.

 On the illustrated board these look like steps, here's a quick photo that shows how the art works there to create that effect.

The shadows here provide the illusion of steps, that's lost in translation to this plastic board and I find the entire affair looks a bit odd. Though the practicality of the flat plane is way better than actual steps would be. So I can accept the compromise made here as part of the cost of translation and I am sure once I have got used to it I'll forget it was ever any other way when playing.

One of the areas where the ultimate board is better than the original is the center. Instead of the "leyline energy" look we have a big old pile of lanterns.

 The teeth are also excellent looking and as such I really like how all of this looks. It is stylish and well sculpted.

There's only one criticism I have in respect to the board and that is the main face pattern doesn't seem to line up from one tile to the next. Most of the time this isn't too noticeable, but there's one spot in particular that I cannot let go right now. It's the bottom row in this image, snapped as soon as I put the second tile in place and saw the resulting effect.

That's the same tile pattern. but mirrored with altered details, it's a very understandable way to operate when 3D modelling because it saves a lot of time. But having the tiles right next to each other but mirrored made it stand out to me and now I can't see un-see it. This is of course a very minor point that will not bother the majority and one could swap the left tile with a different one, but think it isn't unreasonable to expect a premium product like this to avoid it in the "official tile order".

Onto the other consideration, that is wear and tear. As a plastic board this is absolutely going to be more durable than the original cardboard one. However I am not sure if I am going to paint it at this time, that is because plastic miniature bases on a plastic base is going to cause abrasion. While the bottoms of miniature bases do not matter too much, the real concern here is if you paint the showdown board.

The solution would of course be rubber base rings for the models; I've seen them out there from third parties, so that is something that can be solved but it is additional expense (and I have failed to find them for the monsters so far). However I'd take that over having to touch up and re varnish the board every few months. So something to consider if you want to get this painted and you play a lot like myself.

There is another thing to consider and that is the wear on cardboard tokens. We are getting 3D terrain that is updated to be compatible with this new board, that sadly isn't something I can afford and the chance of getting some plastic/rubber trays for the cardboard tiles or "terrain sleeves" is a bit remote. So terrain is going to get worn down on the backs for people on a limited budget like myself.

Anyway. those minor grip aside, this is a well engineered and luxurious piece to have on your table. I hope the gallery of images is enough to help highlight the amount of environmental oomph and atmosphere that this board brings to the table.

Packing Away

This is where we return to the box; I was pretty sure once I saw its dimensions that it would hold the board in full and indeed it does. You can take each segment and put them into the box on top of each other and it fits perfectly.

You can see there's a nice bit of space above, which means that the box has room for cardboard spacers between each layer. And also the box is wide enough that you can reach in and extract the grids without any issue. So the box itself is worth keeping. I assume given how much thought has gone into this product that providing a decent box to keep it in was part of the decision making. I suspect the best solution is going to be a rack of some form, but that isn't the kind of thing this product is looking to solve, having a storage rack would have increased the costs even further and that's not something to expect. Hopefully we get a smart 3D printed storage rack from a skilled 3D modeller in the future.

Final Thoughts

There is nothing essential about this board at all; no gameplay elements, not even improved readability of the board (in fact it's slightly worse because we now do not have the grid coordinates to refer to). However, if you have the disposable income there is definitely a large improvement to be gained in respect to atmosphere and board presence during games. Even unpainted this board is beautiful and the extra space that the grid "framing" gives the miniatures more room to breathe.

I can recommend this completely for anyone who can afford this as a part of responsible buying, but if you have a more limited income to spend on your hobby then rest assured that the original cardboard board is still an excellent and atmospheric option.

Nice to have, but not a must have. Which I think is a great spot for this kind of product.