Pinups of Death II: Dark Seamstress Content (Patreon)

This time the content came on the discord via Star Slayer (original photographer unknown) and this is what comes with the Pinups of Death. 1x Settlement Event and 4x Gear cards. So let us dive in.

Pinups of Death I gave us the Strange Spot settlement event along with the Belt of Gender Swap and that event/gear combo remains amongst the best promotional content which has been released, ever. The event has its weak spots (that old classic design failure of: roll 1 and die) which keeps it out of the very top slots, but the belt is an example of how to make highly situational gear viable. In this case, the gear is cursed and all it does is swap your gender, but because it has two green affinities (and they have strong, strong synergies with Monster Grease) the gear is actually very well balanced.

Death II follows on from this tradition and even improves on it with an excellent settlement event combined with four solid pieces of gear. We'll look at each of the five cards separately however, because even though the gear is all the same in concept, in practice they vary immensely in power/efficiency. 

Dark Seamstress - Settlement Event

The largest, and most important thing about this event is the fact that, like Dark Trader, has no negatives at all. There is a lot of value to a settlement event that "does nothing"; having something happen every single year is exhausting and straight up a poor gameplay experience. So this gets a thumbs up because it dilutes the SE deck with more settlement events that have choices/options on them rather than ones the force things to happen to your survivors.

Outside of that it is simply a set of lingering effects that let you craft the gear listed. I will note that the wording on the card (flavor text to be specific) is rather weak, it's not clear who/what the object 'artisan' is and the entire piece feels a little... rushed or truncated. While this is not a deal breaker, considering this game's high price and claims of being "boutique" one would expect something more on par with the writing in Tainted Grail/Oathsworn/Etherfields. These things matter, and even if at the end of it you're not going to be reading this more than a couple of times; the writing here is not good.

As for the gear, mechanically they are all identical to the original versions that come in the core game, but they have a change in cost. You still need the relevant settlement location open and the correct resources on hand, so this is very much an opportunity based situation and that means the resource costs very much figure into how good these things are.

The other important things to consider are the armor point loss and outfit. The AP Loss matters a great deal because the body is twice as likely to be hit as anywhere else; so unless you have crossarm block (which might finally become useful?) this is quite the issue. Outfit currently only matters for the Lantern Brassiere, but that may change in the future. 

Rawhide Corset - Skinnery

Cost: 1x Resource

Original Cost: 1x Hide

Armor point loss: 1

Outfit material: Rawhide

Viable Armor Sets: Rawhide

Easily the best of the entire selection, the Corset loses the smallest amount of armor points (it's an overall 50% reduction in armor, which is not too bad when that's only 1 point) and has an incredible crafting cost. 

Hide is the single largest bottleneck for any settlement's resource flow, because armor is 5/9ths of your gear grid (in most cases), you tend to need around five times as much hide as you do anything else (and hide is also used in weapons a lot). Having this piece of armor be craftable with organs or scrap or bone is a huge boost, both because it puts less pressure on your hide stockpiles and because it is an incredibly easy bar to reach. Anything will do, you can even make this out of fresh acanthus!

This combination of a good item, in a great armor set, with a superb cost and ease of crafting means that the Rawhide Corset will become a meta item whenever it turns up. The main question now is, can you craft more than one (it looks like you can).

Leather Bodysuit - Leather Worker

Cost: 1x Leather 

Original Cost: 1x Leather, 1x Bone

Armor point loss: 3

Outfit Material: Leather

Viable Armor Sets: Leather, Vagabond

A 50% reduction in crafting cost here, but the item being removed from the crafting list is the bone, you still need the leather and that hurts. Because losing 3 armor points is a HUGE deal for leather armor. Leather Armor is mostly used as a mid game tank set (where armor points matter) and then as a bruiser style set (offensive tank) in the late game.

However, Vagabond Armor can make some use of this armor, this is because that armor set sacrifices head armor in exchange for extra body armor, so you end up with a 1/4/1/4/4 armor set that has an offensive slant rather than a 4/4/1/4/4 set that is supposed to be used for tanking. 

As such, for players with the Vagabond Armor set, I can see this one being of viable use.

Teeth Bikini - Sunstalker/Skyreef Sanctuary 

Cost: 1x Huge Sunteeth, 1x Cycloid Scales, 1x Salt

Original Cost: 1x Cycloid Scales, 1x Huge Sunteeth, 1x Scrap, 1x Salt

Armor point loss: 2

Outfit Material: Scale

Viable Armor Sets: Cycloid Scale 

Reducing the cost of this item by 1x scrap does not make it good. Scrap is a very cheap resource that can be directly gathered at the Weapon Crafter and it is the Cycloid Scales/Huge Sunteeth that are the main obstacles to construction. The fact that this item hasn't lost either of the two monster specific resources and that it is losing 2/3rds of its armor, means that it is not a good piece of gear to craft at all.

If this armor didn't require either of the above two monster resources, or it could be crafted without the Skyreef Sanctuary in the settlement it would be an interesting entity, but as it is. This one is not as bad mechanically as the Leather Bodysuit, but it is also not worth crafting, spend the extra scrap for +2 armor here.

Lantern Brassiere - Blacksmith

Cost: 1x Iron, 4x Leather

Original Cost: 2x Iron, 5x Leather

Armor point loss: 5

Viable Armor Sets: Lantern, Phoenix, Dragon

This piece could at least have lost the heavy keyword so it would be stronger with Phoenix/Dragon (and be more thematically interesting); however it has not and as a consequence this gear item is likely the worst of the entire bunch because it has almost no home. 

The reduction in cost of 1x iron and 1x leather is insufficient to compensate for losing 5 armor points from this location. While you will get some of the armor points back if you activate the armor set's bonus, you still have to deal with the -2 movement penalty and while all three metal armor sets can boost their movement, this is particularly crippling for Phoenix Armor as that set cares about your movement being as high as possible.

This one could have been interesting if it lost the -2 movement and heavy keywords, but because it is just the Lantern Cuirass, but with 0 armor + outfit, it's not up to scratch and as such gets a failing grade from me.

Summary

While two of these three gear cards are not very good overall, the entire package is a positive one for the game. While you shouldn't ever buy Pinups of Death II just for the game content, it is not unwelcome if you are getting this for the miniatures anyway (or if it is coming in some other package/bundle). You will likely keep this in every single campaign because it helps stave off Murder/Plague/Cracks and provides quiet years, occasionally crafting the corset or maybe even the body suit. It's a shame that the Bikini & Brassiere are not even situationally viable the way that the Bodysuit is, but one can only hope that this changes in the future somehow.