Generations: A Deep Dive into the Character Deck | Abilities II (Patreon)

Second verse, same as the first. This is going to cover most of the remaining GCE Characters and then the third part will cover a mix of final few GCE and promotional characters. There's some rather unique and interesting cards in this selection.

The Hoarder

The art of the hoarder, and its miniature, gives us a survivor who not only hoards goods, but they also have a version of what I believe is the Phantom Friend fighting art from the Slender Man expansion. If that is correct then in this case that friend is represented by the hand on their shoulder. Thematically this is fun, because both hoarder and Phantom Friend are mechanics that ask a player to sacrifice a resource in exchange for that survivor gaining a benefit.

When we get to the mechanics we have a really unique one here, in essence we can potentially have our survivors give birth to a perfect resource (and a baby), which is unique and very useful in the world we now inhabit, a world where Team Death ask us to use Perfect Resources for so many different things.

This one is an easy auto include for the character deck, because we don't even have to take the hoarder out on hunts if we don't want to, in fact if we are in a situation where having a hoarder along would be a problem (it usually isn't when you reach the latter parts of the campaign because you'll typically have a glut of resources and don't mind investing a little into courage). If you do need to take this survivor out and hoarder is an issue, we also always have Trepanning over at the Barber Surgeon to remove disorders.

+1 Population and +1 Perfect Resource is amazing and there's no campaign that doesn't want access to that. I'll always include this one.

Final Score: S+

The Last Stand

Shout out to our board game podcast The Last Standee, which is named in part after the Fighting Art The Last Man Standing, but somehow manages to be closer to this new character card.

When getting to this one, I expected that the artwork would depict the same survivor as the Last Man Standing art did. In truth, while the Last Stand illustration is more dynamic and detailed, it doesn't really say “Final Last Stand” more than “Beared Man Swings Axe.”

Here's the Last Man Standing card for reference, I prefer the composition on the fighting art which is bleak, but casts the survivor with a grim determination.

This character card is not just compositionally a step back for me, it is also nowhere near as good as the fighting art version is. One of the fighting arts I have most missed when moving over to Arc Survivors is Last Man Standing, it's a really unique and cool little card to have in a hunt party because of the incredible emergent storytelling it can potentially create. It is rare that you do get in an organic situation where you have that last survivor be the one with this fighting art, but when it happens the mood becomes electric.

As for the Last Stand gaining Frenzy when you're the last survivor alive is a mixed bag, it turns off fighting arts/knowledges/weapon proficiencies meaning that it isn't always a positive when you don't have other survivors to pick up the slack. I thought this one was cool in concept, but in practice it's often been a disappointment.

Final Score: D.

The Lithe

The Leyline Walker depicted here is also represented on a Romantic Knowledges and it's a fun character model that I make use of when I have sans-armor survivors in a hunt party. If anything I think that the miniature does a better presentation job than this illustration does.

In respect to the mechanics of this one, you're not born a Leyline Walker, so gaining +1 evasion in exchange for a total of 10 armor points is a bitter pill to swallow. There are builds that can leverage a lot of evasion in order to tank, and combined with a good shield there is something you can do here, but for many armor sets in the game this represents a huge chunk of the soak they are offering.

However, we do have some survivors who can really leverage this well. If you're planning to turn your Lithe survivor into say a Green Ring (Spidicules expansion) user, who can generate extra armor points during the showdown, then the loss of armor points is not much of an issue. As such this is an ability which can be leveraged, however it's a very situational and considering that this is a character card that offers both a positive and a negative instead of all just upsides it is hard to rate this one as much more than, sometimes good, sometimes not good.

Final Score: C or B.

The Mad

The Murderer is absolutely one of my least favourite characters in the entire game, he's an incredibly goofy looking mess of a character and the bust that was released for him just isn't my jam at all. Of course, different strokes for different folks means I wouldn't judge someone who likes this character, but for myself I'm not particularly into comedic or goofy looking killers in my media. That written, I do appreciate that the art here continues the theme of how there is a violent melody that plays through the world of Kingdom Death. In fact I think the illustration of the Murderer is for me a better depiction of this character than the physical sculpts of him have been.

Mechanically this is a very simple +3 Insanity on arrival. That's really good, it helps survivors who need to be insane in order to use certain mechanics like Immortal, Frogdog Gear or Sentient weapons. It's also a really useful piece of protection when dealing with the Crimson Cronkodile. So this card is one that I'll put into every character deck at the moment. It isn't going to create any new playstyles, but you are almost never going to be disappointed with this one as there are few fights where extra insanity at the start of them isn't a benefit.

Final Score: A

The Magma

Sporting one of the boob windows I am 100% fine with because it is present on male and female armor sets and it's a reference to both The Tyrant and the Dragon King, The Magma is a badass all the way through. From that finger point, to the expression this is a pure JoJo pose and I am here for it. Badass.

Being born with +1 Speed is just good. While very high speed is something that requires a lot of skill and experience to manage, moving up from 2 speed is always a benefit and I'm often also happy with 4 speed if it is backed by a good level of Perfect Hit, Luck or Strength. There's not that much more to write about this one, when you can grant +1 speed to any weapon you desire, there's a lot you can achieve because you're in control of it. It's just good, especially because high speed attacking is a skillful portion of the showdown experience.

Final Score: A

The Mighty

Another fantastic piece of art, this one not only presents a powerful looking individual, but the loadout which is full leather + Zanbato + Leather Shield + Monster grease is a legitimate standard build and getting such a great sculpt for it is really appreciated.

The mechanics on this one are pretty simple, we're getting what works out on average over an entire showdown as about +0.4 strength per attack as long as we run Grand Weapons. However, we can push that further if we leverage ways of increasing our Perfect Hit range or our Speed. As such, this can move from being an exciting random happen stance into instead being a cornerstone of a hunt parties' combat plan. There are a lot of Grand weapons in the game and not all of them are slow, many of The King's weapons for example are Grand weapons with 2+ speed and we also have other characters like The Queen (see below) who can give our Mighty Survivor extra speed.

This is a strong base ability that can be leveraged and as we always have Grand weapons available in every campaign it is hard to justify not including this one in the deck.

Final Score: A

The Parent

I think it is fair to say that The Parent's art and miniature is one that has struck a chord with the community as a whole. It's a wonderful piece that offers a peak into a side of KDM that is normally abstracted away due to there being few mechanics surrounding it. KDM, for all that it is a generational game, is surprisingly sparse when it comes to the younger characters being depicted outside of some art panels.

There's a lot more storytelling in the miniature that you can't see here in the illustration also, the sculpt not only has the ball from the rulebook illustration of “Protect the Young”, but the Father's shield is the Pattern Shield “Elder's Aegis” which requires Protect the Young to craft and also extends the concept of the current generation teaching the next one through its mechanics. When people try to tell you games are not art, or Kingdom Death is a horrible game about boobs and murder, point them at this card and miniature.

All of this would make The Parent a strong contender just through the sheer narrative that it carries, this isn't just a piece about a parent and their child, it's about an entire settlement and the way they carry themselves despite the darkness all around. However, the mechanics here are incredible, The Parent, once they have successfully survived intimacy and become a parent, has an extra life. No matter what the fates might have done, they get to cheat death once and it is even via the “inexplicably survive” tag which is used in pattern crafting.

This is a character ability card that you have to justify not using because it has strong thematics along with the perfect safety net via an ability that doesn't cost a gear, knowledge or fighting art slot. Top marks.

Rating: S+

The Queen

Rather than being beloved by the Community, The Queen aka Cockroach Queen is a character that seems to be more a favourite of APG. She's the Verminism survivor that comes in the GCE, but she's had a seasonal variant that was first cast in beta form before getting a full plastic release. I really like the artwork for this one, but the original miniature isn't as good due to it suffering the same issue that The Fang's miniature has, it's in an older scale and looks odd when placed next to other survivors. The face in particular on both of those models lacks the character and detail one comes to expect from this franchise. Also she's clad in Lantern Armor, which isn't what you want your dual Lantern Dagger survivor to be wearing.

The Mechanics on this one however are unique and exciting. We have here a support survivor who is able to do something few other survivors can. They're able to exchange their activation for an extra speed to all other survivors in the hunt party. There is a whole bunch of weapons that love to push their speed up one dice, the 2 speed weapons in particular excel when you can push them a bit further. Other examples include Perfect Hit weapons and Devastating ones.

This is a different playstyle to the one we normally see in the game, and it can be leveraged to great effect. Especially on a survivor who is able to act passively as a tank due to high evasion and soak.

Final Rating: S

The Shadow

I'm on record with how much I love the vintage bathing suit look that the Sunstalker survivors have, also I'm a huge enjoyer of the Skleaver; name, design and mechanics. So The Shadow, swinging a darkened version of that weapon, black clouds rolling off it while her little bathing cap sits awkwardly on her head is something that ticks all the boxes I'm looking for. It's another demonstration of how to show power and motion in a static image and I am here for it.

Mechanically this one is a little bit tough to swallow. Movement is a better stat than evasion, without enough movement you can end up losing multiple turns because you are just unable to keep up with the action. However, there are ways that this can be overcome, the main one being the primary tank and having AI manipulation in the hunt party to keep the monster coming back to you.

However, there is no way that one evasion is worth the price of two movement, so despite the fact that you can indeed make use of this one, you're also going to need to find ways of getting movement back up to at least 4 because 3 movement is absolutely terrible. Fortunately there's a fair selection of boots, such as Dragon, Leather and Phoenix along with the silliness that is the King's footwear which can help overcome this. I can't give it a high mark, but this is a character card that the right build can leverage. That build is just always 'Tank', and that's not what The Shadow Stalker miniature and illustration represents. If this was -1 movement, +1 evasion I'd consider this to be a fair trade off, but 2 movement for evasion? No thanks, movement is worth much more than evasion to me.

Final Score: D