Kingdom death: Monster

[Tusky]

Following on from my post about gloomhaven I thought I would post about another boardgame we gave a go recently. The (I think) rather atrociously named "Kingdom death: monster"

It's a horror themed miniatures boardgame for 2 to 4 players. It's a persistent world, where you play a settlement of survivors who wake up in some unknown hellish limbo. The game has a settlement phase where you build and equip your settlers, and then a hunt phase where you track and then battle a horrific monster to gather resources and food.

It can be very bleak and savage. Your people will snuff it almost constantly and will usually go insane (much like darkest dungeon or mansions of madness) although insanity in this game can actually be actually a good thing because it's a stat that protects you from brain damage.

The good

• The artwork for the game on the cards and in the books is varied and really gorgeous
• It comes with masses of miniatures both for the monsters you encounter, and also the survivors. You get loads of variations for the survivors so you can always have a survivor model that has the equipment appropriate to them
• Whilst there are similar games (as I mention it is easy to draw comparisons to games like darkest dungeon) I still think it's a novel idea since it really pushes the angle of hellish oblivion - and role playing the attempt to build a settlement in such a place

The bad

• The rules are sometimes not particularly clear about some details or ambiguities which means a few trips to the internet to get a concensus on what to do
• On our first playthrough our band of survivors got immediately decimated within about 3 hunts due mostly to unfortunate random card draws during the settlement phase. It really put me off at first (although our subsequent and current playthrough is going much better) so I feel like there should be something to prevent certain events happening straight away

Here's a blurry pic I took of the settlement plase (you can see some of the nice artwork in the rulebook - bottom left, which also shows you a little about the feel of the game)



Summary

It might sound quite depressing and harrowing, but it's a lot of fun. It becomes more about the survival of your community, and forces you (usually) to not become attached to a character too much because there is a lot in the game that will just kill them without warning. When horrors are the norm, it becomes quite entertaining to see what absurdly horrible thing these people get to encounter next, and when you do well - when there is so much that can go badly - it's an amazing feeling

[Jubal]

I like horror settings for boardgames much much more than I like them for books or films - I literally never watch horror films and rarely read horror stories. I guess in games you get the element of agency that's lacking when reading something second-hand, and you don't get the annoying cheap jump-scare or super graphic body horror stuff which tends to dominate horror films and videogames. It becomes much closer to the adventure genre really, the premise of a horror boardgame is generally "evil is happening, what are you going to do about it and how will you turn your limited situation to good", which is inherently more hopeful than the premise of a lot of other horror media.

[Silver Wolf]

It's nice to see someone playing this game!

The miniatures made for this game are outstanding, out of this world really. Definitely one of the pros as far as I'm concerned.
However one of the cons I'd also add to your list is that those same miniatures are made for resin if I'm not mistaken (?), making them especially brittle due to their thin/detailed/dynamic design.

[Tusky]

Ah yeah you are right. We've been treating them with kid gloves so haven't come afoul of this yet but I'm sure probably will at some point. Actually we've also just been using the starting people - mostly due to laziness since I can't be overly bothered to keep faffing around with the sprues. We've made all the monsters though - how could you not!

[Phoenixguard09]

Wouldn't mind giving this a go myself actually. Looks like a lot of fun.

[Tusky]

It is! You should give it a go. Would be interested to hear how you like it

I joked that I'm going to go to the MCM comic con in a couple of weekend's time cosplaying the white lion and wear a lion onesie with an arm ripped off.

[Phoenixguard09]

I've added it to my Christmas wish-list. I'll run my gaming group through it after Christmas.