Arc Philosophy & Knowledge: Part 27 – Regalism Knowledges (Patreon)

We now move onto one of my top 5 favourite knowledge suites. This selection combines insanity, swords, shields, movement and survival actions together with evocative charcoal art. In fact I love the style of the Regalism art so very much that I will likely be writing about it in some of the entries.

If you are curious about builds, I'm waiting till I've finished the full breakdown of the Gambler's Chest before I get into that area because Arc Survivor builds require not just the gear cards, but also the knowledges and philosophies. There's also an increasing amount of complexity in the game, each new element added has the potential to interact with all previous elements. It's a somewhat exponential growth with so many things to explore.

Still, before moving onwards it I think it is worth noting here that Regalism has some synergy issues for Deadism philosophies survivors who cannot gain insanity. However, it is only survivors with Deadism who specifically suffer from this friction, Deadism knowledges are a different matter, especially Dark Eye.

Another quick note; because this is an insanity based philosophy, various game elements that reward insanity such as Phoenix Armor and the disorder Immortal offer alternative ways to take advantage of some parts of this selection. They do require assistance from Insanity generation tools (which Regalism knowledges can provide) due to being a drain on the total amount of Insanity, but given that you only need to maintain 3 Insanity to be Insane, the points over that are available to be spent for protection.

Find the Castle – Core Tenet

Type: Stat booster

Stages: 3

Observations Required: 8/8/-

Advancement: Use this knowledge during a move/Use this knowledge during a move/-

Lumi Costs: 3/4/5

Bonuses: While insane one may move 1 space diagonally during a move/While insane one may move 2 spaces diagonally during a move/While insane one may move 3 space diagonally during a move

Parallels: Harvestman (ish, but not really)

We have an absolute blinder of a Knowledge for a core tenet with this one. Find the castle lets us take an increasing number of diagonal movements during our [Knight] action. To get the complaint out of the way, unless you somehow have only 4 movement you never get to make a legitimate Knight movement (3 in one direction, 1 in a perpendicular one) which is a little bit of a shame considering the knightly bent of this entire philosophy. However, if you do ever get Regalism on a 4 movement survivor make this move for me and consider it “Achievement Unlocked: I'm an actual chess knight”. And no, if you have 5 movement and only move 4 spaces that doesn't count, you're just a pretend chess knight on a hobby horse, you have to do it legitimately with your maximum possible movement.

In a game with as large a board as Kingdom Death that has pieces which only move orthogonally (left right, up down, no diagonals), diagonal movement is a very powerful thing. At its absolute minimum a single diagonal movement is the equivalent of moving two spaces (i.e. up then left). Movement is the Queen statistic in KDM (Queen rather than King because queens move further in chess, they've got that hustle like Stringer Bell). The move movement you have, the more spaces you can reach and therefore the more offensive and defensive spaces you have as an option. But Diagonal Movement is way stronger than just extra movement because it allows traversal through areas that would otherwise cost so much more movement to get around.

Being able to reach more spaces in an offensive manner allows for a lot of benefits such as reaching the blind spot more easily or even squeezing past two blocking squares such as another survivor, terrain or the monster to reach an optimal spot. Defensively it is even more powerful because being able to out distance a monster can help avoid it targeting you in the first place. It also makes your Dash-Cancels more effective because you can move in a way that the monster can't (infinite movement monsters aside). A Dash Cancel is when a survivor uses the flow step between being targeted and being attacked to employ the survival action of Dash to end up outside of the monster's movement range. The monster is locked into coming after you, it's not able to change course, so if it now can't reach you then tough luck for the monster. This is very powerful because the AI cards are the big moves (outside of Trap cards) that intend to let the monster have a chance to level the field against a more numerous foe.

Find the Castle may look daunting to level up at first, it has eight boxes for each of its two levels, but the key thing about this knowledge is the lack of a cap. Many observations are limited in some fashion to effectively allow a limited amount of progress each year. Find the Castle doesn't have that and as such you can, with the right kind of stalling, complete the entire thing in a single showdown over 16 movements. This is because knowledges are forced to level up as soon as you complete all the observations and Find the Castle doesn't have any “X times per showdown” limitations on it. The only real sticky point here is you can't use this if you are not insane, but we have plenty of tools to ensure that remains the case. Regalism itself provides some via other knowledges, but other options are available such as the Screaming Helm, the Gorm Hiccup, Blood Pools and so on.

One of the “hidden” skills in KDM is positioning, while learning correct positioning is a skill that you develop over time (as long as you avoid the trap of calling the game completely random, too hard or lacking in tactics/strategy) another important facet is having more mobility in survivors. Harvestman is a good Fighting Art because it provides 3 additional movement, Find the Castle is even more powerful than that because it's offering up to 6 squares of additional movement when fully upgraded. Movement that can squeeze between gaps and is available on Dashes.

Before moving on I must comment on the art as it is fantastic, I'll be squeezing in praise here and there, especially when it's as evocative as it is here. I love how each level of Find the Castle shows that the castle from the previous piece is more a wall and gate and that the real castle is three layers deep. It gives a dream-like quest feel to the whole experience. It is only in the third full art piece that we see a castle in the sky that seems to be the Storm Citadel. Gorgeous.

Edit: I also have to add another short note, in KDM the movement action is represented by a knight piece like so ♞. Having this diagonal movement knowledge be a core part of the philosophy is such a satisfying decision. This really is a Knight based philosophy and it is delicious that our tenet interacts with ♞.

Call to Arms

Type: Protection, Support

Stages: 1

Observations Required: -

Advancement: -

Lumi Costs: 3

Bonuses: During your act you may set all other survivors insanity to match yours. Limit once per showdown

Parallels: Screaming Helm

“To arms! To arms! The Lion roars!”

One of the core thoughts of Regalism is “You don't have to be insane to find the castle, but well scratch that, actually you do need to be insane.”

Find the Castle wants us to be insane to use it, and other knowledges further down this article help generate those insanity points. Call to Arms gives the owning survivor the ability to provide insanity to their fellow hunters without any strict timing windows (So you can pretty much use it at any reasonable time). This has a few different applications, the Regalism survivor can leverage their insanity gains to protect the other survivors if they also have ways of having large insanity or protecting it. Alternatively a support survivor with a lot of insanity can use this ability to keep a Regalism survivor topped up and fully functioning. You can even run two or more copies of this knowledge in the same hunt team in order to maintain high insanity across the team as many ways monsters reduce insanity tend to be single target. If Survivor A and Survivor B have Call to Arms, then once A's insanity drops too low, B can top them up and then A is able to reciprocate that action later on. Both C and D also passively benefity from this entire exchange.

Outside of Regalism, there are plenty of gear cards that appreciate/need the insane state to be useful, these include Phoenix Armor, the Frogdoggles or Sentient gear. Also the Gorment Mask is once again worth mentioning in an article because in combination with courage it can negate many ways that monsters may harm insanity, which allows you to spend it elsewhere but the Crimson Crocodile Mindlock Token can also function in a similar fashion. While Gorment Armor has issues, it can still be a 4 slot armor set for a survivor who stays further back than most and we're not locked into using many of the Regalism knowledges with specific weapons.

I don't think I want more than 1 or 2 copies of Call to Arms in a particular hunt party simply due to only having 3 or 4 free knowledge slots per survivor (4 is when you have Romanticism), but this is one of those Knowledges that works well with itself and that is not common.

Combat Conviction

Type: Passive “Healing”

Stages: 3

Observations Required: 2/-

Advancement: Perfect hit with a Sword / -

Lumi Costs: 2/3

Bonuses: Perfect Hit with a sword +1d5 insanity / Perfect hit with a sword/block/deflect gain +1d5 Insanity

Parallels: Various perfect hit benefits

Combat Conviction is something of a “glue” card in that it provides a tool for survivors to gain insanity to fuel other abilities elsewhere. Funnily enough part of this is triggered by Perfect hits and the Deadism Knowledge “Dark Eye” increases the perfect hit range. So synergy between Deadism and Regalism exists despite the anti-synergy mentioned at the article header!

When fully unlocked I've found this card to be an incredible tool not just for Regalism, but for front-line tanks/bruisers across the board (it is also fast to unlock, potentially taking just one showdown). This is thanks to the fully evolved version working not just with swords but with any kind of block or deflect regardless of the source. That means in a vacuum we have a tool that gives us sustainability for Insanity that provides protective tools especially in concert with the Immortal Disorder. However, as we'll see near the footer of this article, we can do so much more with Insanity as we unlock more of the knowledges.

This is a quiet little card that does a lot of work assisting other knowledges, both with interactions and by keeping the survivor alive. It's a little frustrating to level up, but that is because of the random nature of Perfect hits. We can increase our Perfect hit frequency, but it is still in the hands of the dice to get the job done.

Also, it's about time APG started manufacturing D5s for us isn't it? They could be as simple as a D10 with two lots of 1 to 5 on the faces or they could lean into the more funky shapes that work while still remaining random.

Call the Storm

Type: Stat booster

Stages: 3

Observations Required: -

Advancement: -

Lumi Costs: 2

Bonuses: Once Per Round, spend 2 insanity to give your next wound attempt bonus strength equal to your weapon's proficiency

Parallels: Various strength boosters, especially temporary tools like Barbed.

Tools that can allow you to use weapons far longer than their intended lifespan are things that I very much appreciate in this game. Part of that is because sometimes we have really interesting early game weapons that fall off because their strength isn't good enough and the other part is when covering weapons that still don't have a full, robust progression system. I often cite Whips for example because their progression chain is very weak but they often have very interesting abilities on the weapons.

Strength is one of the primary ways this scaling of weapons is performed, with the Cycloid Scale Sleeves giving Sharp being a classic example of that. Call the Storm is an alternative that scales with increased weapon progression and doesn't take up a gear slot. It is also an outlet for us to spend spare Insanity on if we haven't unlocked other options. The Once Per Round limitation is not a big issue either, we can work with 1 speed weapons and even 2 speed weapons don't hit with both dice all the time.

I'm not really sure how much more I can write about this one, it's one of the most efficient and powerful versions of temporary strength boosting we've ever seen and that makes it great even if it is limited to just one wound roll per round.

Sword and Shield Style

Type: Proficiency / Combat boost

Stages: 1

Observations Required: -

Advancement: -

Lumi Costs: 3

Bonuses: If you have sword spec, you also get shield spec, and if you have shield spec, you get sword spec.

Parallels: None, though weapons with multiple types exist. Maybe one day KDM will also get a Shield Blade of its own.

Before we get into the rules text for this one, I really just have to point at this artwork and gush for a short while. Regalism as a whole has some truly breathtaking pieces of art, but this is certainly my favourite, not just because it depicts so many little pieces of the world such as the Steel Sword and Steel Shield which can be gained from the Cyclops Knight. But it's also got three references to pop culture. The first of which is the most tenuous, but given Adam's age it is the one that if I wasn't so camera shy I'd ask him about.

That is the pose of this entire piece, which has our pictured survivor holding the sword in a way that is reminiscent of how Lion-O from the Thundercats would raise up the Sword of Omens before asking it to give him “Sight beyond sight”. This one is absolutely the wildest speculative punt from me, but given the presence of the Steel Shield (Lion/Gold Knight face), the use of thunder as a major aspect of Storm and the prevalence of the White Lion civilisation (aka the Silver City) I've often seen pieces of what could be Thundercat references in KDM, however I'm not familiar enough with the series to be confident about this.

The more certain assumptions I have however are in respect to 2000 AD, in specific Judge Dredd and Judge Death. The helmet here is very unusual in design, it's not a Regal Plume as one would expect, that helmet has a cage visor with full coverage. Instead we have a helmet with an open mouth/jaw area and the mouth itself is fixed in that iconic expression that “old stoney face” Judge Joseph Dredd is often depicted in. Here's an image from the comic

And because it's a great performance here is Karl Urban's performance of that same expression.

However, I did mention Judge Death as well, and that's because the visor we see here is not a traditional knight visor, nor is it a Judge visor. Instead it is a portcullis, which in part gives the helmet the appearance of Storm as we see it described in the constellation text (and also matching Storm's castle somewhat). Judge Death's helmet is well you can see it for yourself right here. It's iconic and when you put it together with Dredd's default, stern expression rather than Death's grim rictus you get something similar to the Sword & Shield Style image above.

That's a lot of words to say that I think this artwork is one of the best pieces in KDM, if all these small references were deliberate or not, I am not the one to say. But I see them there and I think intentional or not, this is a fantastic work of art.

As for the knowledge itself, there will be less words that revolve around the subject that I really like this one. It's a great supporter of the Sword & Board style that I very much enjoy when playing a Blood Paint Bruiser (Sword ↔ Blood Paint ↔ Shield) and the overt support here is something I greatly appreciate.

Having this work both ways is an interesting piece of design, for the moment however I mostly use it to support a Sword specialist with a shield for protection rather than the other way round simply because Shield Spec's +5 armor points and immunity to knockdown on collision is more useful than Sword Spec's Roll to wound first and then choose which card to apply it to.

However, that written what I tend to do when I have Regalism is push to complete both Sword and Shield masteries in concert on two separate survivors, the Regalism survivor will run sword directly because of the other knowledges while the Shield specialist (if they haven't mastered by the time Regalism arrives) will pick up a sword to use in the showdown once they've finished scoring their shield wound.

Affirmation

Type: Resource Management / Survival Action Booster

Stages: 1

Observations Required: -

Advancement: -

Lumi Costs: 8

Bonuses: You can spend insanity as if it were survival

Parallels: None, though some survival regeneration tools like Abyssal Sadist come close.

Oh, hey, look it's the Storm Knight!

This artwork is another all-time certified banger and the first “in game” appearance of the Storm Knight character. It's still not clear at this time exactly what the relationship with the Storm Knight and Storm are, could they be a perfect circle in the Venn diagram or are they in a hierarchical tree? Who knows at this stage and all I do really know is how superb this depiction of what it is like to be in the presence of a Stormy K.

As for the rules, my goodness, we saved the best for last didn't we? Insanity is one of those weird little guys in KDM because it is a survivor stat that is completely uncapped and carries from one showdown to the next. While there are ways the game can reset insanity to 0, there are more routes and tools that survivors can gain a crazy amount of survival without considering leaning into unintentional game “exploit” loops like Gorm Hiccup.

Even without those kind of external factors, we have Combat Conviction which can be combined with extra perfect hit range, a block/deflect sword or any kind of shield with block/deflect in order to generate more survival than we'd need per showdown anyway. Survival actions are good, Insanity is a bonkers statistic, combine them together and we're off to pancake town, where the pancakes are made of monsters.

This one absolutely justifies that 8 Lumi purchasing cost. It's an amazing capstone to a phenomenal philosophy. It is the knowledge that doesn't play well with Immortal, but it is more than strong enough for that to not be a concern.

Final Thoughts

I love a lot of the Tier 2 Philosophies a great deal and Regalism is the one with the aesthetic I appreciate the most. I am not much of a user of swords in Kingdom Death most of the time because while they are solid, they're also over supported in the game with many different bonuses for using swords and I find the mastery to be very whatever good stuff soup.

Sometimes these bonuses do however overcome my disinterest in swords, True Blade is one such example and Regalism is another. In fact I'd go as far as to write that I'll focus Swords in every campaign where I have Regalism for sure because this Philosophy is that fun. It's got good flavour, great lore, amazing artwork, great levelling tables and more cool Knowledges than you can shake a pointed metal stick at. I love how these knowledges do simple things that open up a wide range of potential uses. For a "Sword and Board" philosophy this really covers a wide range of other things.

In fact, Regalism is so good that I honestly hope that the next big project from Team Death is not more Monster and is instead a dungeon crawler where players seek to climb the sword castle, moving up one level at a time with each ascension point protected by a tougher and tougher boss.

I absolutely love this one, it is right in my top five rankings with Marrowism, Faceism, Romanticism and the philosophy I'll cover next time; Verminism.