A Review of Indomitable Survivor Pulverizing Star – Venus | Kingdom Death: Monster (Patreon)

Venus emerged from her terror-stricken vantage beneath the stone face cloak. Acrid tears clouded her vision, a deafening hiss filled the air. Before she could take in the shocking scene of twisted bodies, the monster's body yawned open, emitting a wall of menacing heat. It began to inhale, her beading sweat flowing into the vortex of the monstrous vacuum. It was her only chance. She sprang at the exposed heart of the monster her blade snagging the edge of its chest sphincter and tearing open its searing heart. On the sputtering organ, lay a massive, wrinkled tumor of stone, formed of the monster's poison rage. The extraction was agony. As she toiled she imagined the beastly weapon her body was too weak to wield.

Contents:

1x Pulverizing Star - Venus hard plastic miniature and base

1 x Corium Tumor Dragon King indomitable resource card

1 x Pulverizing Star pattern card

1 x Pulverzing Star gear card

1 x Large matte art print

Seed Patterns, Arc Survivors Indomitable Patterns are for me, the best new mechanics we've seen for KDM in recent times and as such I'm very much in favour of the white box releases that add “Advanced KDM” content to the older expansion releases while we all sit in the Campaigns of Death waiting room, releases for monsters like the Gorm, Spidicules, Flower Knight, Sunstalker, Dung Beetle Knight and of course the Dragon King are things I'm very much in favour of. This is because they employ a nice little carrot that encourages us to go back and re-explore content that is around 10 years old at this point.

This is the latest of these releases and to be honest it is a bittersweet one, most of you are probably familiar with the fact that we keep dogs and birds as pets as well as having a garden that supports wild birds, bees, scarab beetles and dragonflies. What you may not know is that in addition to Mercury, our second oldest bird and the one who has been with us the longest, is that he originally had a partner bird called Venus. Unfortunately while I lived in Wales a mouse got into the house and caused Venus to develop a bacterial infection, she passed not long before I left the UK. It's never easy losing a Parrot or Parakeet as they have long lifespans for birds, but they also have very fragile constitutions and they hide their illnesses very well. Once you notice something is wrong with a bird they're already in or close to crisis, so vet intervention with antibiotics is never guaranteed. Venus died while I was treating her, and you never really get over that kind of trauma (especially when it repeats itself as it did a few years ago when we lost another one of our birds).

As such, the name of this survivor “Venus” which was likely chosen by Team Death because the planet Venus is known as the Morning/Evening Star and stars are one of the Dragon King's major themes, means a little more to me than normal. And that's made reviewing this one a little difficult.

The Miniature

One of the benefits of multi-part plastic miniatures is that the material is well suited for complicated builds with plenty of thinner elements. This is a miniature that I'd never want to see printed in photoresin because it would quite simply be too delicate to handle, risking even breakages during the paint job, let alone during play. As a plastic model the elements are thick enough to have less risk of breakage and are also easier to repair in a more “permanent” fashion thanks to how plastic cement works on the bonds between the HIPS molecules.

The model is an excellent interpretation of Danny Cruz's illustration, Venus looks like someone capable of handling this heavy weapon, both with her strength and the way that she is holding it. It's also a really fascinating design, there are plenty of places with handles, allowing for holding the weapon in a wide range of different arcs. It is a silly fantasy weapon, but it also looks dangerous and at least somewhat feasible.

I am a little disappointed in the loincloth, I like how Danny's art has it reach down to the ground and trail across it a bit. However, I do really like the ground. We've not seen a lot of depictions of what the area around near a Dragon King would look like, the base looks broken, cracked, melted and is an addition to the miniature that adds so much. It is always a pleasure to see sculpted bases for these miniatures, and this is no exception.

I like this miniature a lot, and she's going to be one of the survivor miniatures that I do paint up, I'll give her a colour scheme that matches my Venus.

The Gameplay

Crafting Recipe: 1x Corium Tumor, 2x Horn Fragment, 2x Radioactive Dung, 2x Bone

You know the drill by now, defeat an Indomitable L3+ Dragon King and you get a random Indomitable Resource (IR). This is the second one we've had released for the Dragon King, we're not at saturation point (I find 5 is about as many different Indomitables as I want per monster) and it is also a very different weapon from the Tyrant Slayer bow that came with Indomitable Survivor – Scarlet.

This is all good.

The crafting recipe is another interesting element, before we get into the ease/challenge of crafting, I'd like to highlight the storytelling evoked by the name chosen for the resource – the Corium Tumor. Corium is a thing, it's something that is created if a nuclear plant suffers a meltdown. It was created during the Chernobyl, Fukushima Daiichi and Three Mile Island meltdowns. Chernobyl of course had the largest amount of Corium due to how catastrophic it was. The infamous “Elephant's Foot” is a corium deposit, the largest one in the world.

While it is likely that Kingdom Death Corium is different from our world's version due to the lack of nuclear reactor parts such as control rods or ceramics in the mixture, there is no specific “corium” element with a fixed ingredient list. So there's no issue here, it's just an interesting thing to think about. It also causes one serious question to be asked about this weapon, it's made out of the same type of material as three of the most radioactive sites on the planet. Why does the Pulverizing Star not also have the nuclear keyword? For a game as deeply thematic as KDM, it is rare to see this kind of thematic swerve, especially when we consider that the Tyrant Slayer is made out of a less radioactive material (a Dragon King tail spine) and it's a bow that somehow transmits its radioactivity to arrows launched from it. We have here something made out of the single most nuclear part of a walking nuclear monster and it's not nuclear. If the weapon proved to be unbalanced if it was given access to the three Nuclear Cores then in my opinion Team Death should have chosen something other than Corium for the Indomitable and saved that for an actual Nuclear weapon. (Bone is a good keyword though, I've not forgotten it).

We'll leave that thematic discussion behind us now as it's time to consider how smoothly we can craft this weapon and what it is like when you use it. The Dragon King specific resources here are Horn Fragments and Radioactive Dung of which we have 4 and 2 respectively. One may need to hold onto the Dung in advance just because you're less likely to get two from the Dragon King, but the Horns are a ridiculously common drop. So in all you should most of the time be able to build this as soon as you get the IR.

The weapon profile here is really competitive, we've got a whip/club which are two really good proficiency types and that immediately gives this weapon a home with Lantern Armor (and also makes it clear that Sharp is fine in combination with the weapon, further making the lack of the nuclear keyword feel wrong). It has an excellent (3/6+/7/Barbed 5/Unwieldy) attack profile, and this is design I really like to see. The weapon rewards additional speed in an exciting manner with that massive Barbed number, but also it brings that risk of hitting yourself with Unwieldy into frame. Unwieldy is a well designed drawback that I really like, but it needs to be on a weapon with the attack profile to justify it (sorry Whistling Mace, back into the bone pile with you, Unwieldy has a new ruler and she's a queen that slays). This is a true gambler's weapon in the most fun way possible.

“One more point of speed won't hurt? Right? Right?”

"Ow, my face!"

By itself though that wouldn't make for an exciting weapon though, what really makes the Pulverizing Star stand out is that [Full Action] ability, by spending both movement and activation we gain +10 strength, ignore Parry and get Reach 5. That's an incredibly potent, thematic and flexible addition to the weapon and pushes it from being "solid" to being “Very Exciting”.

The Ignoring Parry is a sweet little thematic bonus that occasionally might matter, but the massive strength boost and “bow level” reach seals the deal. It's also a very clever addition to the weapon's design because while it does give the weapon reach, it cannot be combined with the usual “monster movement” armor set abilities (Pounce, Leap, Charge, Spin etc) because it's not an inherent natural component of the weapon. Smart designing there.

Add onto that the addition of those three red affinities, the specialisation and mastery potential from whip/club and you've got a weapon which is flexible, powerful and just fun to smack monsters around with on the table.

Final Thoughts

If you have the Dragon King expansion I think both Venus and her older sister release of Scarlet are must purchases, this weapon is one of the most fun I've played with in recent times because while it seems straightforward enough, it's strong and flexible in all the right ways. I do think that nuclear being omitted from the keywords is something that should be fixed with errata because it's a huge flavour failure and giving this weapon access to the red core is no different to it having access to Lantern Armor. It's also not a luck/deadly focused weapon in the first place so the Blue Core is not a concern here (especially when Wrath exists) and the Green Core would just be cool as heck in combination with this. Deflecting with the Pulverizing Star is something we all need in our lives.

Love the Dragon King? Love Venus.