Kingdom Death: Usagi Beta Content Review

Usagi's tribe had explored the area around the stone cube for lantern years, but she remained the only one excited to enter its depths through its single gateway. A flooded labyrinth teeming with shark-rabbits, only navigable with the strange boats and lurid lanterns capable of parting sections of the green waterways temporarily.

Lagomorph survivors have been something which Team Death has explored here and there for years, we've had the Easter Twilight Knight, Easter Aya, the Lagomorph Survivors (no game content) and Lolowen (another Welsh based name in KDM by the way. The “wen” suffix is a Welsh suffix that denotes female gender. “Wyn” is the male version, so Lolowyn would be a male version of that model. Though the name Wyn on its own is gender neutral).

The Lagomorphs are a monster that takes the form of a shark rabbit, and we can hazard a speculation that the Haremite might be the juvenile form of this creature in the same way that the puppy-like dogpoles turn into Frogdogs. The Haremite is a vermin resource that comes with the Easter Twilight Knight and it looks like this:

It might be linked to the Lagomorphs, it may just share traits, perhaps one day we'll find out!

The Lagomorph is also not the first shark chimera we have had in the world of Kingdom Death, the Sunstalker famously is also nicknamed the Sunshark at times because amongst other things it has the head shape of a shark and denticle skin.

None of this is particularly relevant, but I always like to highlight areas where Team Death have excelled, and the slow burn world building behind the Lagomorphs and the Frozen Survivors are two of the best portions, I personally prefer those two concepts over the Ringtail Fox Survivors.

The Model

Honestly this miniature and its accompanying artwork is a slamdunk victory. The miniature is full of interesting details and not only does it include both pieces of gear that come with the survivor, it also has the remaining elements be from the Leather Armor set, which is one of the ways you will utilise the Lagobond Hoppers in game (more on this later in the gameplay section). The hoppers in particular I would like to really highlight the design of.

These designs are really sweet, not only do we have a raised heel that puts Usagi in a pose that makes her take a more rabbit like stance. But we also have the addition of what appear to be lanterns in the heels. This means that at least some lanterns are rubbery and squishy rather than brittle, that's an interesting little thing to think about. On top of that, if you look at the calves, this armor set contains the Leather Boot design, making them a modified version of the design we are all familiar with. Honestly whoever is behind the creative direction of this line is taking the artists in a wonderful direction and that is why I have growing interest and excitement in respect to the buns.

The Gameplay Content

There are two gear cards in this box and while they are both featured on Usagi's miniature, I do not think they are going to be used together that often. We'll explore each one, starting with the:

Lagobond Nails

Cost: 2x bone, 1x leather, 1x organ

To begin our exploration of this weapon, we'll start with the crafting cost. This four resource cost is all generic, but requires the hide to be upgraded into leather. Meaning that this weapon is effectively a Leather Worker weapon; setting it in the second generation of settlement development. Aka “The Leather Age” or the beginning of the mid game progression.

That means this weapon is competing with Leather Worker, Weapon Crafter and Node 1, 2 & 3 weaponry. It also means that it needs to be viable against at least Level 1 Node 3 and Level 2 Node 1 or 2 monsters. The main rules for a weapon are fairly basic, if it uses strength as its wounding tool then does it have sufficient strength to get to around a 50 or 60% wounding rate against the next toughness level of monsters I'm aiming for? In the core game this toughness level is 10 for quarry monsters and a bit higher when considering the nemesis monsters who may turn up. A toughness level of 10 is asking for a weapon strength of 5+ (that means you'll wound on a 5+ or 60% of the time), Survival of the Fittest Settlements can get away with 4 strength weapons because they have more inherent strength and buff old GigaChad beefcake survivors can utilise any old piece of nonsense for their weapon because they're so shredded that they have the strength to make anything powerful.

This weapon requiring four resources and leather in that cost (making it more like 4.x resources because it needs part of an endeavour which is used in the leather making process) is difficult point against the Nails. It is using a resource which players want to spend on the Round Leather Shield and Leather Armor, because your first Shield and first Leather Armor set are such huge boosts in power, that means these Nails automatically fall to the 6th place in the leather crafting queue (Same problem the Hunter's Whip has, but whips do have the passive benefit of helping in the hunt phase).

But it gets worse, because 2x bone, 1x hide and 1x organ is the crafting cost for the Weapon Crafter's Counterweighted Axe. While there is an additional cost in opening the Weapon Crafter, that is a task that most settlements need to achieve in order to get access to Scrap Smelting. So not only is it a low priority craft compared to all the other Leather Worker gear, it also has stiff competition from another very good generic weapon. This means it needs to be powerful and interesting, otherwise it is going to languish in the box and not be crafted because it is so far down in the gear priority list. (And I have not even mentioned other special leather based crafting options like the Xmaxe or here).

The Lagomorph's attack profile is (3/6+/3) with the katar, bone and leather keywords. It also has a new Ability that utilises a new mechanic called Rush.

Rush is a reward for high speed weapons, though it has no intrinsic properties of its own, instead it requires the weapon to have some additional effect when you Rush. The Rush ability of the Lagobond Nails is a good one, it lets you put a hit location back on top of the deck after you attempt to wound it. That means you can put a beneficial hit location back for the next survivor to also attack. You also get to do this no matter if you succeed or fail and you do not have to do it to the first hit location you try to wound, it can be any of the 3+ hit locations you hit. That is a great set up tool for survivor to have because it increases team play.

Finally we have the affinities; which are not great, instead they are only OK. They are good colours for a strength based weapon, but they are in a weak orientation, right facing red and left/down facing green are far better than what we have here. The red one in particular is a huge blow for this weapon, because if a weapon has low strength the best thing it can do is be able to connect to the Monster-Tooth Necklace (MTN) and provide 50% of the red affinities needed to let the MTN unlock its full +2 strength bonus.

All of this comes together to result in a piece of gear which is not worth crafting most of the time due to it being behind the power curve that it needs to be at. It doesn't offer anything more to the table for a settlement that can craft it other than its rush ability, which is not alone sufficient to warrant its crafting. It is however a good tool to highlight what kind of things you should be looking for in a mid game weapon, because it is close to being viable while ultimately being muscled out by the generic options that come in the base crafting locations. If you want to make a good piece of gear, you need to justify its crafting by ensuring that it is more desirable than the basic options.

Now let us move onto the Lagobond Hoppers.

The Lagobond Hoppers

Cost: 1x leather, 1x perfect hide

Before we start, I do want to acknowledge the fun pun that is Lagobond. It is a reference to the Vagabond Armor set (a leather based armor set) and also how the Lagomorph survivors have a bond with the Lagomorphs. There are so many fun references and jokes placed into elements like this and I love bringing them up when I notice them. The shagreen keyword is another reference (albeit a non-joking one); shagreen is the “cracked” form of rough untanned hide, something that is made from equine (horse family) or elasmobranchii (shark/ray family) skin. It is descriptive and evocative while also providing a future playpoint for any shagreen armor sets that may turn up.

The crafting cost for these boots is the same number required for leather boots, but it is a higher quality of resource required due to that Perfect Hide over the normal hide needed for the boots. Because the Hoppers are footwear that is the place where we directly compare this gear card. Something which is even further pushed by the Outfit ability and leather keyword. This footwear is a direct optional replacement for the normal Leather Boots and it offers a different ability and affinities.

Improving the quality of resources required is a way of increasing the cost of a gear card by making it less frequent to craft. Perfect Hide in particular is a very desirable Perfect resource because it can be used to craft excellent gear cards like the scavenger kit. Is this increase is worth the price? Let us compare it to the boots then.

The Hopper's affinities are a little bit worse than the Leather Boots; it keeps the green affinity that connects to the Leather Gloves, but loses the one that connects to the Monster Grease and instead has a right facing red. This immediately changes the context of the armor set, because no longer does it have an easy route to getting enough green affinities to activate monster grease. Instead the set now needs to lean on the Hoppers for an identity. Something that comes from this affinity ability here.

The Hopper's activated affinity ability allows for the wearing survivor (the hopper) to effectively have 7 “movement”, but they get to ignore any possible obstacles for this “move”. It is superior to Pounce (a similar bounce ability) because of its huge range and flexible landing spot; it also compares very favourably with the Dragon Armor's set bonus of Leap, because while there is +2 accuracy for Leap, the Hopper has more range, more flexibility in placement and +1 speed.

The tricky part of this gear card is the affinity activation requirement; in order to explore that let us look at how it will shake out on the gear grid.

I've put the Lagobond Nails in this grid because this is clearly the intended loadout for Usagi; but as mentioned above I do not think that the Nails make the cut, you could instead have a Counterweighted Axe in slot 4 beneath the Leather Mask.

What we need to finish out this build is two of the following affinities; up red, down red and left red. Second Generation Gear cards like the Crimson Crocodile's Crocodileyes or Immortal Arm are great for this, however one of the big noticable issues is when you do not have a left facing red affinity you are often leaning into either weapons or some suboptimal choices to get that extra red affinity. That makes it a little awkward to get active, but you do get to pick the best two of three for your purposes (and a bone dagger can just be slotted into slot 9 with the Leather Mask above it to complete the affinities for 1 bone and a slot).

That means we can absolutely use this in a leather armor set instead of the boots if we want to make a more speed orientated leather damage dealer. However I do not think it is the top place where we would use these boots, for that let us move to the Lion Knight expansion.

When we use these boots as the replacement for the Leather Boots in Dancer Armor (I believe outfit still works with hybrid armor sets) we suddenly have a really interesting damage dealing platform come to life.

The Lago-Dancer has a gear grid that comes with 1 red and green affinity as a part of its armor set, which means we only need to find a left facing red or a complete red affinity pair in order to have the Hoppers active. That's easier than the Leather version asking for two options.

Also Dancer Armor provides us with an extra [Knight] after attacking, effectively meaning that a Lago-Dancer can hop in, attack the monster at +1 speed and then hop back out of range. They can even hop back and forth from behind an obstacle where the monster will not target them as often.

This is a very safe form of “shoot and scoot” and in essence turns a melee survivor into a “ranged” attacker.

That's not all though, we also have the Imitation Butcher Armor Seed Pattern from the Gambler's Chest. With the Leather Boots replaced it looks like this on the gear grid. I've orientated it all to try and create as much space as possible so extra cards can get us to 4 red affinities.

Again I've included the Lagobond Nails, but I think there are better ways to get that red affinity elsewhere. This armor set still has the usual problems of how hard it is to get 3 red affinities on this gear grid with so few reds in the armor set to start with, but it has improved over the normal Imitation Butcher Armor due to that extra half affinity from the Hoppers. There are options that will get us to the fully unlocked Imitation Butcher Mask ability and that is a significant upgrade over the previous Leather Boots in this hybrid armor set. I've not fully explored this one yet, it's a bit harder to unlock than Dancer Armor; but early impressions are very positive (though there is some minor counter synergy between the Hoppers which keep you safe from monster attacks through distance and the armor set bonus which only works if you are attacked).

Summary

Mixed impressions in this one, while the miniature and Hoppers are great additions to the game, the Nails are a waste of a good ability on a good weapon type with bad stats and weak affinity orientation. We don't want to carry multiple weapons (outside of shields) in most builds because slots are always at a premium in this game and the way that this weapon uses leather and costs more than the Counterweighted Axe pushes it out of the play space.

The Hoppers in contrast have the armor points they need to hang with Leather and provide a strong alternative play style with awkward but not the worst affinity orientation for their red affinity (an extra Down or Up Red along with the Right one would have been the best orientations for this particular set of boots btw).

This is a tough one to evaluate, because on one hand the weapon is mediocre, but the boots are fun, unique and have multiple places where they can be utilised. Also, given that this is for a monster who hasn't been released yet, it is unlikely this will be reprinted in a white box anytime soon. So I do softly recommend this one, as it is leather based, so will get more usage for all levels of player skill, but the purchasing price here is a little steep, $30 plus import/taxes plus shipping is a lot to ask unless you are also wanting the miniature in addition to the boots.