A Review of Beta Content: Starting Survivor - Allison | Kingdom Death: Monster (Patreon)

Before she pledged her memories to the Twilight Order, Allison awoke on the plain of stone faces. Imagined at the first moments of her journey, Allison wipes the ink from her eyes and squares off against the hungry darkness.

Box Contents

1 x Allison photoresin miniature

1 x Hard plastic Kingdom Death 30mm round base and base

1 x Pillar Card

1 x Install Guide

Large Matte Art Print

Character Art Card

Allison, the gender-bent / “twin” of KDM's Scribe self insert survivor and all round scumbag Allister is a character I've had a fair amount of time and affection for. Allison's and Allister have both been linked with the Twilight Order for a long time, Allison is the miniature that came in the somewhat essential (for People of the Lantern) White Box that gave us the Dormant Twilight Cloak and Blue Lantern additions to the Hooded Stranger's “Tattered Package”. Allister on the other hand continues his run of just being the absolute worst (unsurprising given his nature as The Scribe's Gary Sue/Mary Sue) most recently in the excellent Killenium Butcher story.

This version of Allison is the second of the Apostil releases, the previous of which was Mox who is the Apostil – Healer. Which means we now have a pattern that we can compare against, starting with the title assigned to each of them. An apostil (aka apostille) is a note or an annotation in the margins of a piece of writing. In this case we know that the writing would be in the Scribe's book, so both Allison and Mox exist because someone wrote them into that tome. It could be The Scribe who is responsible, but given that first of all they are apostils rather than normal entries and the fact that The Scribe is known to leave his book unattended for periods of time it could well be someone else who's doing this. Apostil is a word that also has echoes of the term “apostle” also known as an emissary, and so there is this potential that what we're exploring with this Apostil beta series is a group of survivors written into existence as the emissaries of an Entity. There's a bit more of that present in Mox's text which I'll repeat here for the sake of completeness.

A shriek startled Mox from her dreamless sleep. The sound of skittering claws disappeared into the gloom before she could make out their shape. Beside her, a form in fitful slumber lay bleeding. Rubbing the flaking ink from her eyes, she spied the spreading pool of blood wending its way among the cracked stone faces. Suddenly aware of the weighty staff clenched in her hand, she applied its pulsing light to her companion's injuries. As their wounds faded, she felt a sharp pain. Blood poured from her own hand, running along the curiously patterned grooves of the strange staff. – Mox the Healer

Indeed there are a few other similarities between both the Pillar Apostils; they bare all the normal traits of a survivor written into existence (worn cloth, ink on eyes, lantern nearby) but they also have thorned vines curling around them (more prominent in Allison's artwork) and they bear a cursed gear card and have an ability bestowed upon them from the start of the campaign. Mox was a character who seemed to be new to the game's lore, but Allison on the other hand is the same version we've seen before, she's not yet joined the Twilight Order, but if she survives, she is destined to do so.

I personally like this Apostil series, giving us characters who are born with some of their destiny/fate written in advance, it builds upon the narrative that all the starting survivors we have are characters written into existence from the pages of a book and I think it is a really interesting way of giving survivors a form of “class” or direction in a game that usually has the players determine the roles their survivors will take.

The Miniature

I don't often use photoresin miniatures on the table, but for Allison I will be making an exception because this miniature is wonderful. Not only does she have a new, fresh take on the standard loincloth, one that reflects her destiny as a Twilight Knight, but she also has a wonderful base addition in these stone face piles and a bone dagger tied to her waist. I'm thrilled that she's going to replace Allister in all my future prologue showdowns even if I'm not using the Apostil card, good riddance to the worst survivor, hello to Allison, Zachary, Lucy and Glow (no offence to Erza, I'm sure I'll bring you back when you have a refreshed sculpt).

Part of the reason why I feel I can do this is she's a pretty compact sculpt with no overhanging elements. She's been glued on the base as if she's walking off it in the product image above, but she can be moved back further and stand in a way that nothing overhangs the edges. I would prefer a plastic version of this model and I am beginning to hope we get a box with something like eight+ apostils as a release in the future, but for now I'm excited for her to take a role on my table.

The Gameplay

Like Mox before her, Allison is a Pillar Card, we don't have the full details for how these will work when generating a campaign, that will become clear when Campaigns of Death arrives, but as it stands right now we just choose to include her in the campaign. I am a little disappointed that the back of the Apostil cards are marked by the blue beta ribbon, this means they're not easy to include with the future Pillar cards, while I can round the corners on the card with a cutting die and make them match in shape, I can't conceal that blue ribbon. Of course, backs of cards not matching is at this point a signature style of Kingdom Death, but it is a shame when stuff that should be randomized and drawn blind is marked.

Allison's unique ability is the Blunted Affect, meaning her passion, emotion and feelings are all dulled or blunted somewhat and she is rather stoic in personality. This translates into her being less impacted by brain damage, taking 1 less brain damage (to a minimum of 1) each time it happens. That's a strong ability in game, having a lot of potential combinations and/or benefits – Immortal would be a classic example that we all have access to, but there are plenty more.

She also has a second element to this, if the Hooded Knight turns up and she is in the settlement, she is always going to be the one who has the tattered parcel thrust upon her. That sidesteps an issue in People of the Lantern, where the parcel is normally forced upon a returning survivor and as such we always had to plan around the Hooded Knight turning up by ensuring that at least one returning survivor didn't have a weapon proficiency with progression (because whoever gets the Twilight Sword is pretty much locked into mastering it, otherwise the Hooded Knight will just butcher them in a duel). It is a nice little safety valve, and it is relevant even outside of People of the Lantern because there is a small, tiny, chance that the Hooded Stranger can turn up in any campaign if the right situation shakes out of the hunt phase.

The second part of this is Allison has the “String of Rebirth” cursed gear, this is the second time we've seen “strings” used in conjunction with someone being “born” the Life String from People of the Sun is the second place. It's an interesting element that suggests Allison's existence is written and rewritten over and over, that if/when she dies, she will return somewhere else in the Plain of Faces, perhaps a consequence of being an apostil.

The String of Rebirth is nowhere near as useful as Mox's Beating Heartstave. That weapon functioned as an alternative starting “weapon” (it's a tool, not a weapon but it does have an attack profile) and combined with Mox's ability to create an entire “sympathetic healer” type of build. The String of Rebirth here on the other hand exists mostly to occupy a slot in the gear grid and inflict -1 Luck on Allison. It's also created an unfortunate rules clash that we'll get into shortly. Here's the String.

So overall this is something that's not worth having in your gear grid, but Allison can't get rid of it without the assistance of Crystal Skin, so not only does Allison effectively have -1 luck for the entire campaign, she's also only got 8 slots for a build and she can't equip any gear with the other tag. The smart ones among you may already realise what the “rules clash” I mentioned is, the String of Rebirth has the Selfish ability, which works as follows.

Selfish (Gear): A gear special rule. Selfish gear cannot be in the same gear grid with any other gear with the "other" keyword.

This is mostly a thematic ability, though it does have some game balance uses and in itself it's not an issue, restrictions to gear combos can be very interesting. No, the issue is that the keywords “order” and “other” along with the ability Sentient are defining characteristics of the Twilight Order's gear. The Survivor forgot from the Killenium Butcher wears a Tattered Archivist Robe that has the other keyword.

Both gear cards that come with Allison in her Twilight Knight white box, gear cards that are iconic in their association with Allison also have the other keyword.

The Twilight Sword also has the other keyword.

In essence, when Allison receives the Tattered Parcel from the Hooded Knight, it contains a bunch of stuff she cannot equip or use because of her String of Rebirth. This is very unfortunate in the case of the Dormant Twilight Cloak because in addition to being and iconic item of clothing associated with Allison, it's also a tool designed to help utilise the Twilight Sword early on in the campaign. If you use Apostil – Allison you can still have the cloak, but you'll have one less, key, place to use it.

The big one is of course the Twilight Sword, we've got a real unstoppable force vs, immovable object situation going on here. The Twilight Sword is cursed, and cursed has specific rules.

Cursed: A gear special rule. This gear cannot be removed from the gear grid for any reason. If the survivor dies or ceases to exist, archive this gear.

The Hooded Knight game text reads:

“The hooded knight forces a tattered parcel into the hands of [Allison].”

Tattered Parcel - The survivor gains the Twilight Sword rare gear, place it in their grid now. The survivor may select Twilight Sword as a weapon proficiency type. This weapon is Cursed.

As you can see we have the Hooded Knight and Cursed text now fighting with the Selfish text over this situation. Sure, Kingdom Death is a game with fuzzy rules and inconsistencies at times due to how many cards, rules and interactions are in the game, but this is just the very first thing I though of when I saw that the string had the Selfish keyword. We're left with a bit of a mess here that just did not need to exist, Selfish didn't have to be on the gear in the first place and if it is an important thematic mechanical element then this box should have included an additional rules card that clarifies what happens.

My assumption here is that the intended interaction is that the “forced” place in the gear grid from the story event trumps the Selfish ability and then the Cursed rule for the Twilight Sword keeps it locked in the grid. But that doesn't help with the narrative dissonance we have in respect to the Allison White Box content not working with the Allison Apostil, she can't wear that Dormant Twilight Cloak, she can't hold that Blue Lantern.

All of this is somewhat forgivable because the release is a Beta release, but it is honestly sloppy and inconsiderate design work from a Team that is normally much, much better about their thematic designs - I can't remember the last time such a simple and immediate situation wasn't thought about before the product was released. This is especially galling when you consider that the game design work for something like this is not more than a few hours to half a day including the testing and the Sword/String clash comes up immediately when you trigger the Hooded Knight. This should have been caught and addressed on the very first playtest of the gear card and it is hard to think of a reasonable set of circumstances where it slipped through the cracks.

As such I bring this up because if the Apostils are going to become something more than just beta content as I hope might happen these are the kind of things that need to be addressed by Team Death.

Final Summary

Starting Survivor – Allison is an interesting nugget of an idea added to a potential range of starting survivors that could be very interesting, however she's incredibly specific in what she does, being at current almost useless mechanically outside of People of the Lantern and she's not even a clean addition to a People of the Lantern campaign due to the aforementioned rules friction and lack of compatibility with previously released Allison/Lantern/Twilight Order content.

I doubt that this will be addressed on the website and instead any clarification will be buried on the KDM fan Discord (which is a terrible place to find rulings/clarifications due to how Discords work, that's what a website is for - APG could learn from places like FFG about this).

As such while I really love this miniature I don't think there's much value to be had due to it being mostly tied to just one campaign. This goes double for groups that have players who will struggle with finding a route through the muddy patch that this Selfish/Forced/Cursed clash has created, if you've got rules lawyers/sticklers in your group it's going to cause a headache.

In fact I'd go as far as to say this is really low value for the buyer for even a Beta release, don't bother looking for it on the secondary market, wait to see if we get a revised edition in plastic and reassess then.