KDM – Morgan the Savior: A Review

She traveled in a land of vivid auroras, hanging in successive curtains of heavy red and voltaic blue. She drifted through them, her aura washed in strobing power until she passed into the land beyond, her destination. At the end of the aurora there was a meadow of negative darkness, she passed like a shadow, darkness on darkness until she reached the cairn of shining stones. Their light, flickering and sputtering, absorbed by the treasure within. She plucked the dream, waiting in the center. It shone as nothing for as far as she could see, punching through the shifting sheets of light like a beam of void. Clutching the dream, she was born, at the moment of extinguishing that marked the passing of the lantern year. A new lantern ignites in the settlement, an ominous violet aura glowing within.

• 1 x Morgan the Savior hard plastic miniature

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

• 1 x Character card

• 1 x Olthawartta living glossary card

• 1 x Secret fighting art card

• 1 x Install guide card

• 2 x Large Matte art prints

As a little break between the intense experiences of thoroughly playing and deconstructing the Killenium Butcher and the Black Knight Squire Campaign (along with recording the next video). It's time to take a look at the recent white box promotional release of Morgan the Savior. Morgan is an ancient character in the KDM franchise, existing around as long as Snow the Savior or the original Forsaker sculpt. She's one of the Original Gang and was likely going to be a part of Kingdom Death: Labyrinth, the original Warhammer Quest inspired concept where a group of “heroes” battle in the Holy Lands against the servants of the Golden Entity. I do like that we get to return to these older characters and bring them back to life in the newer sculpting style and I hope this means we will see other iconic characters such as Snow, Paul and Allister “the Betrayer” Twilight Knight brought up to modern standards for a release.

As Morgan is a remastered version of an original character, we can start with a brief look at her first sculpt. Which was cast in resin and later got a pin up version released in Pinups of Death: Vol I.

Morgan's clothing and appearance in this sculpt is a little away from the style we have come to associate with the world of Kingdom Death. She wears tartan and has something of a “Scottish maid” mash-up style. While the name Morgan is the combination of the Cymraeg (Welsh) words “Mor” and “Cant” translating to either “sea dweller” or “circling sea.” Traditionally it was a masculine given name, however over time become a gender neutral name appropriate for all. This is not the only place in KDM where Welsh originating names, folklore and history turn up – the Welsh figure Arthur Pendragon's (Translation Man Bear Dragon Chief) sword Excalibur is also present in the game, which is a really on the nose reference to Cymric history. Just as a quick additional note for those of you who are interested; the North English county of Cumbria gains its name from the original Welsh kingdom of “Cumbri” (It was latinsed to Cumbria by the Romans just as Cymru was latinised to Cambria).

Morgan's physique is also a fair distance from where we land today, being of a youthful and slender build, framed by one of the major repeating icons that tie to saviors via her Peacock feather cape. I think it is a fine enough sculpt, but it is small and lacking in the dynamics that the modern KDM line now demonstrate.

I have this model, and I've never felt the urge to paint it in around a decade, and as such I think that sums up how I feel about it overall.

Our new Morgan sculpt is honestly a bit of a disappointment for myself; while she has kept some thematic elements from her original design; especially around the head and hair, she has gone the same way as Edlen and Zelda in respect of her physical attributes. This is the fastest selling single figure release in recent times and I think we can all see why that is the case. Maybe I am in a minority, but I don't want this; I want more miniatures like the Smog Drummer and Bral (Red Witches) and less of this pin up cheese cake. Don't get me wrong, I don't mind a bit of cheese cake, in fact I enjoy painting it, but when it is in so many "main cannon" releases – well I'm losing ground when I discuss this game with other more mainstream board game content creators who call it things like “The Boobs and Murder” game.

So, it is well sculpted, with great detail and that makes it fine I guess? But I wish this style of sculpt was in the minority when it came to game + plastic releases. It is kind of getting untenable to hold the position that Kingdom Death + Pin Ups is not the same as Kingdom Death: Monster. Yes, I am very mixed in my feelings about this one.

The Gameplay Content

As appropriate for such an iconic character from “the old days”; Morgan comes with some content that breaks new barriers. She is our first two affinity savior; bearing both a Red and Blue affinity. This came as a bit of a surprise and it adds to the world; however that addition is slight because despite how heavily they are tied to the core game's campaign, there is not a lot of in game details surrounding them to explain why this has happened and who/what Olthawartta is. In fact, I've drawn a complete blank on my research for what even the name Olthawartta is inspired by. Which is interesting because all of the previous three names have origins that I could uncover. If you've got some insight, please do share!

This savior ability is granted not through the usual route, but via a Legendary character card. Now I've not yet written about Characters yet; but it is a system included in the Gambler's Chest Expansion (GCE) and how it works is that the deck is set up at the start of the campaign with at least 24 cards in a ratio of 5 abilities for every 1 impairment and then at the end a single Legendary card is added to the deck. Then when the Character innovation is innovated each survivor when they gain their name also draws a card from the deck and gets that ability/impairment. That means at its leanest; you have a 1 in 25 chance of seeing this card when a survivor is named after the innovation is drawn and chosen.

If you do not own the Character innovation, this is instead applied to the next survivor born (limit once per campaign) as per the Install guide.

I didn't address this in the Lune release, because that character card was a normal ability rather than a legendary one; but this time it is worth discussing. We already have two legendary Character cards in the GCE via “The Fang” and “Weapon Master” and they were already competing for the same slot in each campaign. That's very reminiscent of the Strain Fighting Art unlocks, which were limited to 5 in the Fighting Art Deck per campaign and became even more limited when Philosophies pushed Fighting Arts to the bench.

However, you do get to choose this particular Legendary Ability to include, so if you want to experience it over the other two options you can. If that is a good decision or not? Well let us dig into what Heart of Olthawartta does and how it compares to the other two current options.

We'll start with a really quick look at the other two, so we have a baseline to compare. The Fang is a total of -5 armor points in exchange for ignoring Cumbersome. Despite the art depicting a Twilight Sword wielding White Lion Armor survivor; this is clearly best utilised as a Bow based ability because they are the ones that most benefit from being able to move (shoot & scoot) and due to their relative distance from the monster they also suffer the least from lower armor points. It is making an excellent weapon type stronger; and is something you choose when you have a good selection of powerful bows that have cumbersome (i.e. Arc Bow and Crimson Bow).

Weapon Master on the other hand doubles the speed at which you gain any weapon proficiency ranks at the cost of the Weapon Master themselves leaving the settlement once they have completed their task. This is of particular use for dealing with the busy work of completing things masteries with powerful specialisation abilities such as Fist & Tooth, Shield and to a lesser extent Spear. These masteries are so useful (especially F&T) and as such Weapon Master is my default choice and hard to shift, not just because it is powerful, but because it enables fun and faster use of 'off meta' weapon types. Having to spend less time on the busy work means that I can devote more time to fun masteries and exploring other parts of the game.

Dream of the Heart gives our survivor the savior ability, +1 red affinity, +1 blue affinity, +1 speed, Life Exhange and the Olthawartta ability. Life Exchange means they age twice as fast at the end of a showdown and “vanish from existence” when they retire. Savior have always been a resource that is spent either to protect against murder (age them up as murder bait to protect Weapon Proficiency survivors) and/or to help secure Showdown Wins.

The two best "mainline" saviors are Blue (due to resource generation) and Green (due to masses of durability); but because of the different way of gaining this savior ability, and its lack of dependence on Watchers/PotLantern we can't really make a direct comparison here beyond noting that they work in a similar fashion apart from the difference in gaining and the fact that if you have a savior already in your settlement then you can't gain a second one through intimacy. (Though you can do it the other way around, this character card isn't negated by other saviors existing).

So this ability is honestly pretty close to irrelevant; as a direct comparison with “The Fang” ignoring Cumbersome at the cost of gain hunt XP is in most cases worse than The Fang's passive. While we also get Early Iron, Grail, Sentient, Slow and Unwieldy added to this list, these are all abilities that are not worth a whole level 1 showdown's worth of XP to generate.

As you can see here; when we compare this to Blue or Green's significant showdown swings it really doesn't impress much.

So we're left with the Age 2 milestone to try and lift this character card out of the doldrums. Let us take a look at it.

OK, so it is a self sacrifice extra life for any other survivor during the showdown. That means we can utilise this to protect our most valuable survivors, such as those running important knowledges or weapon proficiencies. That in itself is pretty useful, especially for players who still struggle with showdown fatalities (and unexpected BS moments); however for players who have mastered the showdown this isn't working in the most important phases such as the Settlement Phase. The Heal and removal of a severe injury on top of the resurrection is pretty great, and it should secure a showdown win most of the time.

However, +6 Hunt XP is a huge additional penalty, and while this can be used advantageously in order to steam Arc Survivors to higher power ranks, it is going to be a disaster for Weapon Proficiency trainers unless they are really close to the end of their progression. That is a problem because the friction between the game philosophy of "survivors are disposable" breaks down when you consider how important completing key Weapon Masteries is. So much of the "top" playstyles in the game are developed because of that issue. We're cautious and pushed to build overpowered stuff due to survivors not actually being disposable. Imagine how different the game would be if Weapon Mastery tracks were located on the settlement sheet instead of individual survivors.

All of this means; do you have survivors good enough to make having a temporary extra life tagging along with them? Is it worth sacrificing one weapon proficiency progression slot in exchange for that security? Early on, I am not wanting to do that because of the friction that exists between Weapon Proficiency and Hunt XP; however later on in the campaign, where I've achieved most of my ticks and I have survivors that I do not mind retiring because they can pass on Knowledges (Forum) or Weapon Proficiencies (Family) then this becomes a bit more appetising.

The bottom line though is I don't feel I need assistance in the late game, if you get a settlement to the late game then it is rare that it will fail because of survivor showdown deaths, it'll be other unexpected circumstances that are delivered through randomness or because I failed to get the important proficiencies together in time for relevant nemesis monster arrivals.

All of that means that personally I want Weapon Master over Heart of the Savior because Weapon Master is doing the job of securing the relevant proficiencies early and has a manageable downside of survivor attrition, Heart of the Savior also has survivor attrition, but it is more 1+ half a survivor lost due to that extra hunt XP ladened on the resurrected survivor. The Fang on the other hand is more specialised and exists mostly for cumbersome orientated campaigns; so if you have a selection of quarry monsters/campaign that includes a lot of cumbersome I would rather take that over trying to make Olthawartta work (especially because the combination of abilities listed on Olthawartta rarely collide on the same weapon in any number and ignoring just one of them is honestly a bit worthless, just build around them instead) .

Summary

So with all of that written I think I can conclude that this, despite the quantity it has sold at, is not very good for players seeking game content. You can currently only use this in a third of campaigns (currently, that'll drop further when we get more legendary abilities) and if you do select this one you're also going to only see it on 1 in 25 survivors at a maximum. Plus, if you get it in the early game it is only a partial protection for survivors because it ages them up rapidly. I can see strategies using this in order to rapidly score Age 4 Knowledges/Abilities/Benefits like Ghostzerker and then late game use it to pivot into protecting survivors but honestly I'm not that excited about this.

Because it's a card that competes for a slot set at the start of a campaign and we have diminishing returns per card the more of those are released along with its relatively lower power level (due mostly to that +6 hunt XP punishment for Weapon Proficiency Survivors) I think this is one that you can skip on unless you're playing campaign after campaign after campaign as a lifestyle choice.

Of course, in campaigns where you are not playing with the Character innovation at all you will always get a single copy of this survivor and that is fairly decent, even if it is forced on your first survivor birth during these types of campaigns, so oddly it gets better without the GCE in your collection. So you might want to consider that, maybe? Just be aware it gets worse once the entire Character mechanic comes into the mix (unlike Lune that remains just as good).

Ultimately this is no Ringtail Vixen or Allison White Box, so it can be skipped without regret if you are on a budget, love the GCE legendary character cards or are just not playing enough to get to experience something this limited in occurrence.