Playing Kingdom Death: Monster

 I've been lucky and this weekend I've been able to finally play a game! In addition, it's been no less than Kingdom Death: Monster, a game I've been wanting to play for ages.

(In the unlikely event you don't know what I'm talking about, please visit their web first)

I have been tempted through the years to get on board of some of their kickstarter campaigns, but I never found the right moment to do so, considering that it was quite an investment and the probability of actually playing was thin, and not even mentioning the probability of running a proper campaign.

However, my pal Hetairoi (What do you say? You don't follow his IG yet? Please, go, no worries, I'll wait) got the game back in the day and has been struggling (oh, everything regarding this game involves struggle, I'll explain later) to run a campaign. He has played a few games and I finally got the chance to jump into one! Needless to say I was that much eager to play.

Specially if you play in such a handmade board. Please go visit Hetaitoi's IG

The story of the game itself, its narrative, is pretty much game-driven. A group of puny humans awake in the darkness and have to survive to the hostile environment. As I got into an ongoing campaign, the characters had already lived some adventures and, well... they had seen things. So they have some traits, disorders, abilities and impairments that make them unique.

I played with these two characters (my pal got another three):

One suffers of apathy and the other has anxiety. Yup, this game brings in your real life issues

This game was about hunting an antelope. But, oh, my sweet summer child, not what you understand for an antelope...

But I'm anticipating events. The game has several and very different phases. During the Hunt Phase, the survivors look for the trail of the beast. You have to draw some random cards (some of them generic, some of them specific of the monster you are hunting) showing some events happening while in pursue of your objective.

Oh, is that truly an... antelope??

For example, my very first move into the game. I had to draw a card, it was a random event, and my character fell into a pit and hurt his foot. An sprained ankle or so. Just the beginning!

Characters have separate statistics for head/arms/body/waist/legs, and so for brain and insanity. 

 

*This* is insane

Our poor pals wore some simple pieces of cloth (+1 armour on waist) and some close combat weapons. That will have to do!

After following the trail of the monster, the survivors finally got it cornered. Then the Showdown Phase started.

Showdown!

In this phase the monster uses a deck of artificial intelligence cards and hit location cards, so every interaction with the players is driven this way. To put it in few words, the AI cards represent the monster's wounds. When you cause a wound, a card is taken away from the deck, until no cards (or survivors!) are left.

But oh, the antelope can graze, as weird as it seems on such a board. It can eat the acanthus leafs that are scarcely growing here and there, and recover a wound wich each one. So another part of the strategy for your game can be denying the food from the monster. But beware! If you try to reach an acanthus leaf, you may be bitten by a snake (which happened to us!)

The survivors approach the monster

This creature is not called "screaming antelope" for nothing. It suddenly started a monstrous stampede of one while screaming aloud, throwing everybody away and causing brain damage to any survivor who was not deaf (yes, I insist, this game descends to that kind of management).

Hard to say who is the hunter and who is the prey

There are advantages if you attack the monster on his blindspot. Oh, yes, I already made the jokes

The antelope is quite an agile creature (and a deadly one!). It kept moving along the whole board during all the game. Its kicks caused serious wounds to the characters. One ended with a ripped up arm, another with her spleen bursted, all of them with some brain damage... Oh, it's nice to point out that in this game insanity is your brain's armour. Your way to avoid understanding the reality of your surroundings. Cute. This is Murphy's favourite game. Anything that can go wrong... will go wrong.

It is worth noting that cornered animals are most dangerous

It kept on kicking and killing until the end

But little by little, the survivors managed to cause wounds to the antelope. Each time, a card was taken away, so everytime you had to shuffle the AI deck, there were less and less cards. But finally...

Die, spawn of hell, die!!!

The antelope is killed! But one of the survivors had been squashed by a kick and the others are injured and bruised all over. A high price to pay...

Now that the Showdown Phase has ended, the Settlement Phase can start. You have to collect your prizes from the hunt...

Fruitful hunt!

...and then organize your settlement and bring them in. You can craft new gear, develop abilities, try random events and so. This is a purely management phase, but is crucial for the campaign, as it will determine the effects on your survivors for future encounters!

 

This is a very brief review which makes no justice at all. I had some intuitions about the game, but now that I have tried it, I have to say it's awesome beyond measurement. The dynamics are really elegant and swift, yet full of content and detail. The kind of events you have to pay attention to is not at all overwhelming, but enriching, and they add a lot of depth into the game. You can feel the tension growing as events begin to go wrong and wrong. In fact I'm pretty sure that any good thing that happened to the characters was due to any mistake we made applying the rules. Nothing good ever happens to these poor people!

I'm in the conundrum again. I'd love to get the game, seriously, but it takes quite a lot of time and commitment to make the most of it. I'm not sure if I'm ready to spend the money it costs; not because it's not worth of it; it is! Trust me, it is. But I'm sure I'm not able to run a whole campaign. Oh, I won't say it's a lifetime project (though it can be!), but it requires some dedication.

However, the minis are exquisite (even if my pal replaced the antelope with an even more usettling creature), the game is full of details, it's exciting and incredibly well designed down to every detail. I can understand it's not everybody's cup of tea, but if you ever have the chance of giving this one a shot, please don't think twice.

That's all for now! I'll be resuming painting production soon!