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

Last part for this particular deep dive and we've saved the best for last, however before we get into the legendary abilities it's worth taking a look at the design of these cards which are quite different when compared to the abilities and impairments. Those two are two sides of the same coin, and the weighting of them is 4 abilities is worth 1 impairment because that is the ratio in which we are asked to build the deck (reminder of the rules is in this page below under "Building the Character Deck").

Legendary Abilities (I'll call them Legendary/Legendaries from now on) on the other hand are super versions of abilities with the weighting that they are worth as much as all of the remaining cards in your deck. As discussed in the opening portion of this series, that's should be 24 cards, because the Legendary is the sweet treat that you're always wanting to get. Adding more cards into the deck reduces the odds that you will gain that Legendary, so you do not want to do that at all.

Beyond just a pure “min-maxing” perspective on handling the odds, the other core reason for sticking to the smallest deck size possible is because these Legendary cards are all mutually exclusive. You can only pick one for the entire campaign, so whatever you pick, you want to see it as much as possible, because you might not get to play a campaign with that card in it for a long time, perhaps even years if you are only able to play one lantern year a week.

On top of that, whatever ability we are getting from our Legendary, we want it to be worth having in duplicates, we're stuck with one legendary for the entire campaign, it would be terrible to draw it a second time and have it do nothing at all for you, your settlement or the survivor who gained it.

I'll have a few suggestions at the bottom of this post for how you can house rule things a bit to try and make legendaries more accessible if you're not able to run multiple full campaigns a year, but until we reach that section I'm going to be assessing these cards on the criteria which I listed above. I expect these abilities to:

Be powerful in that they change the way you play the game in some fashion

Be good in multiples, it's not fun to have no reason for a second legendary character in your campaign

Open up game space by making you look at things in a new way

Have that “Wow” factor that creates joy

We need to be especially critical and focused when considering these cards because of their unique position within the character deck and the campaign we are currently playing.

The Fang

I really want to like The Fang, it is a fun thematic tool for the Twilight Sword and it also works well with bows. But trading away 5 armor points in exchange for this ability just isn't enough to justify its legendary status. This feels like an overly safe design that was created early in the process and either had a negative stuck on it because the team was afraid of bows being mobile (which they are anyway, shoot-n-scoot strats are easy to achieve) or it wasn't tested in comparison to the options which came later.

Also, I've recently noticed that the face on The Fang's miniature is really disappointing, she's sat on my table half painted right now and this miniature feels like it was from a different aeon of Kingdom Death miniatures. I'm not sure if I feel motivated to finish her or not at this time.

As a normal ability I would be incredibly into this card, but as a legendary I am never taking this one out of the box.

Rating: E

Weapons Master

Our second Gambler's Chest Legendary ability used to be the default pick, it allows a settlement to quickly complete masteries with strong specialisations and in combination with Family it gives us a bunch of offspring with a good start on their weapon mastery before the Master departs.

Weapon Mastery is one of the biggest areas of friction in the game, Kingdom Death wants us to treat our survivors as disposable resources, but the design of the game pivots so much around the permanent upgrades that the settlement can gain via weapon mastery that it causes a lot of problems and potentially unfun playstyles or situations. This is in sharp contrast to other boss battlers that have disposable units like Aeon Trespass, or ones where the gameplay loop is short enough that it doesn't matter because you either all die or get to start the next boss fight in good condition (Townsfolk Tussle, Sentinels of the Multiverse, Marvel Champions). In particular Aeon Trespass does an excellent job of creating high stakes while also freeing players up to sacrifice titans for the greater good.

One of the solutions to that problem is this ability; Weapon Mastery gives us a way to "speed" run the essentials and that lets us spend less time grinding the staple masteries and more time playing around with the fun stuff.

Rating: A

Morgan – Morgan White Box

Dream of the Heart is an interesting ability, you can read a full breakdown of my thoughts about it in the review collection, so here the main points are that this is a card that turns the survivor into a savior, gives you +1 speed and allows you to sacrifice that savior for another survivor who died. Bringing them back to life and creating an effective +1 life for an important survivor.

Also it is worth noting that this card has slightly weird interactions with People of the Lantern's intimacy table in that if you have a Savior gained from Intimacy, you can also get Dream of the Heart, but if you have a Dream of the Heart Savior, you cannot gain Saviors from Intimacy. That means you can turn the Twins result back on, but also that's something I do anyway with saviors because I like to keep a high Hunt XP savior in the settlement to a) enable twins and b) protect from Murder and c) provide a permanent elder to teach hunt XP via Shared Knowledge (you can see this in the game I'm playing with Justin over on Playing Board Games, we've locked Father Mateo into being a permanent settlement member and it is likely he's only going out to fight if we reach a do or die situation).

I do think that having a back up “extra life” via the Heart of Olthawartta secret fighting art is an interesting ability, but I am not so high on it when it a) doesn't return survivors who died during the hunt phase and 3) takes up a legendary slot. So this one is interesting, but is held back when compared to other options due to being tied to a savior and occupying the most important slot in the Character deck.

Rating: C (I'd prefer this to be just a new savior)

The Glamorous – Glow White Box

The Glamorous is an oddity within the legendaries in that it has a single set of age milestone based pattern unlocks and once those have all been gained, the survivor's ability and all future survivors who gain this ability have no value. If your first glamorous survivor doesn't make it to the third age milestone then additional draws of it lets you go again, so it is not like the second or third glamorous people are totally worthless.

I really enjoyed using this card the first time, but once the gear was all unlocked the shine fell off it and later playthroughs with this card have not felt as good. This one would have probably been better designed if it had worked like the Ringtail Vixen's bookmark rather than as a character card.

Nice idea and the three items are good, but more thought should have been taken into what happens after that third milestone. I am not sure I'd trade Voluptuous Bodysuit + Mage's Hood + Holy Sword Whip (as good as the builds can be) for the next entry

Rating: First time this is gained it is S tier, but once you have all the gear unlocked this becomes an F tier because it does nothing.

The Red Survivor – Lantern Aya White Box

What can one write about the card that represents one of my three favourite survivors of all time? (Hollow and Lucy are the other two). This card lets you use any weapon as if it is any other weapon and take advantage of all synergies or masteries that you might have access to. Your sword is simultaneously a club, a whip, a spear, a shield, a bow, an axe, thrown and a grand weapon (plus more). There's a whole bunch of neat weapon specific options in this game and just writing about all of the ways you can use The Red Survivor would be probably thousands of words in multiple articles. Warlord Armor lets you stick +1 luck onto any weapon you desire, Shielderang (Fighting Art) lets you throw a bow like it was a chakram, once you have Spear mastery every weapon can provide the potential trap disarm and turning any weapon into a whip gives you mood control on tap when you have access to the specialisation. There's so many options that this card already has and every time new weapons or even masteries are released it is only going to get stronger.

This for myself is the only correct choice for every single campaign, it creates an incredible playground where you can use any weapon with any mastery while also getting to advance frustrating but important masteries and it is even amazing in multiples. If you are picking anything else it is because you have a specific reason for that strictly worse option.

Rating: ∞

Final Thoughts

Legendary abilities as a concept are really cool, only 1 in 25 survivors should end up with one, which means that even if you had a hundred survivors over the lifespan of a settlement we'd see on average only four of these. That means they should be special, powerful and exciting. However, most of the options we see here just aren't up to that standard. The Fang has the same power level as a normal ability, Dream of the Heart is interesting but would have been better if it had been designed just as a new savior option for settlements that gain saviors (PotLantern, Collectivism, Lonely Tree, Echoes of Death I etc) and The Glamorous needed a fourth milestone that replaces it with a different legendary card because once you've unlocked the three patterns it becomes a blank card and that honestly feels bad even if the gear is very good.

That leaves just Weapon Master and The Red Survivor as the two options, and Weapon Master has the problem that it's occupying roughly the same mechanical space as Red. It is a fine choice for people who do not own the white box, but if you do have Lantern Aya then why pick the less fun and experimental option?

We are still in early stages with these cards, so unevenness is to be expected, whenever Team Death move into a new area of design it is possible that hiccups and unevenness will happen. But I hope that in the future the design team takes note of how the player base reacts to these releases and tunes future stuff to match. There's still potential for fun things like 'When you depart with a complete armor set you may pick any armor set bonus from the same monster node.' Oh damn I just plucked that out of the air and I'm already excited about playing something like that.

Anyway it is an exciting space and I am not too upset that we have some misses at this stage, it would be nice if they were revisited in the future, but they are also just a few pieces of cardboard amongst hundreds.

For the future Legendary abilities? Good luck competing with old Red, she's set a real high bar to clear.

House Rule Options

So given that my conclusion to this section is pick Red unless you don't have it, then pick Weapon Mastery and the rest apart from The Glamorous can be left for people who really want to use those cards regardless of power considerations what can be done?

In the case of The Glamorous I think the suggestion I had in respect to the fourth milestone is a fair one. Once you've reached the fourth milestone with a Glamorous survivor remove the card from the deck and replace it with a new one.

Alternatively, if you want a really chaotic experience that feels “Kingdom Death” at its heart what you can do is cycle through your legendary cards. Each time you draw the card, after recording it, you return the card to the pool of legendary cards, shuffle them all up and add one back into the Character deck. If you don't look at what it is you can even enjoy the anticipation and surprise of what might turn up next.

I think that's a great solution for players who aren't able to run multiple campaigns a year because it'll let you experiment with each one and it can also create really cool situations where four different legendary heroes can march out on a hunt together. Also it would be fun to use Glow's holy whip with a Red Survivor and I found that having a random shake out for the legendaries is more interesting than how it felt when I tested it with abilities/impairments.

Next couple of weeks are going to be some reviews. Which I always love doing.