It’s that time of the year again: the Kingdom Death holiday is upon us – Black Friday. Deals, new releases, the return of the Sim key and a massive update looking at both the next wave of items to be shipped next year and the Silver City – today has had it all.

15 years ago the game’s first miniature saw the light of day and with this year’s Black Friday we saw the release of the 15th Anniversary Survivors. Whilst I personally cannot comment on the lengthy life cycle of this game, as I’ve only got my copy comparatively recently and only have been watching its development for “only” about 8ish years after first watching a playthrough on Youtube – it was Beasts of War (now: OnTableTop) feat. Darker Days Radio that did the partial playthrough I stumbled upon first, giving me a more concrete understanding to what this game was actually about – but I am here for it now and it has captivated me to an absurd degree.
So I was prepared to spend the night awake – estimated drop of the sale would have been around 6 a.m. my time – but it felt easier to just stay awake rather than go to bed – and this was somewhat rewarded as the actual sale dropped at 3 a.m. my time. Wooh. And as it turned 5 a.m.my purchases had already been made and I was done with my first and second look at the update.

Give it a read yourself – there is no real way to paraphrase all its contents.

The synopsis:

• a look at 15 years of KD:M
• Black Friday Sale and 15th Anniversary Survivors
• plastic showdown board terrain on bakerkit
• upcoming expansions:
  Pariah
  Red Witches
  Screaming God
  4 Wanderers
• 2024 recap
• The Silver City Expansion overview:
  dungeon delving
  monsters
  events and traps
  art and story
  glimpses of loot
• philosophy pack update
• plastic showdown board galery
• Ivory Dragon on the way to plastic engineering
• GCE Painting Contest Gallery
• Expansions of Death Painting Contest Announcement
• Dark Treasury update
• KD:M Sim is back available with a large update
• Community Garden Q&A
• Legendary Card Pack 2 announcement
• Video Showcase
• official fan comic showcase and download
• Teasers for Video game and Nukelope

That’s quite the list. And I just saw that Adam himself confirmed on the Lantern’s Reign discord that the nukelope and its 4 vignette survivors are done and ready for tooling.

Going in order of what I am personally most interested in:

1. Screaming God

The Screaming God and the Parasite Queen have been my most anticipated upcoming release for a while now, which I only partially understand as the Screaming Antelope is my least favorite encounter in the core set.
With this update we get a better understanding of how the expansion has changed from its original pitch. The Infinite Labyrinth is ridiculous and fun though, so we will see how it all plays out once it releases. Thankfully all the “remastered wave 1” items are in production and should be appearing in backers hands in the early parts of next year.
The armor set associated with the Screaming God looks great in all the variations that are shown off and what little we see from cards seems decently powerful – 9 armor base.
Anybody ready to get power vomited into a wall?
Nothing on the Queen just yet, though.

2. Red Witches

The painted sculpts they showed off look incredible and from the previewed art and the cards we get a much more defined sense of the different personalities of each of the witches. Seer really has the big boss vibes going for her and I love it. How the escalating showdown works out will be very interesting to find out.
It’s also important to point out that the Red and Black armor we can build with this nemesis set, does come with its own source of resin, not entirely relying on having a Gryphon present. I wouldn’t expect the table to be more freely handing out the resource than the Frogdog’s noodling though.

3. Pariah

The Butcher replacement Pariah had not really left much of an impression with me before but the more we get shown of the expansion the more I am interested in it. The artwork is visceral and evocative, whilst the mechanics at play only get more interesting the more we see. Somatic Empathy, causing triggered effects when a HL card gets discarded for dealing a wound is a great concept. At this point, I am thoroughly intrigued.
Also the idea of fighting upside down against its Level 3 version has been a highlight of the pitch for me since the beginning.
Also, I was thinking that the upside down Pariah could have also been a suitable Core monster for the Inverted Mountain campaign considering its prominent role in the settlement, but this debunks this idea.

4. Silver City

Kingdom Death as a dungeon crawler.
Not really something I cared about or was looking forward to, but I cannot help but feel excited whilst looking at the myriad of pictures in the update.
It’s supposedly a Node 2 equivalent and would replace the monster of that slot, offering a very different experience compared to doing a hunt-phase and showdown, instead heading straight into a perilous dungeon, filled with smaller monsters (minions essentially) and a handful of more dangerous creatures you can stumble upon. Drawing events, we’ll try our best to find treasures, perhaps bury a friend and make it out alive.

5. New painting contest

I have already made up my mind which expansion to paint for this. I don’t think I’ll stand a chance, but might as well try. If any of you decide to take part: Good luck!

I should also mention the Terrain pack for the ultimate showdown board. I do not plan on getting the board or the terrain pack, but I will say that these pieces also look gorgeous. And the partial compatibility with just the regular board is an interesting idea to be sure.

Oh, and lest I forget, I LOVED the minis with the philosophies, and the artwork for plants for Gatherism.

There is just so much to this update, but of course that is only half of the fun of any KD:M Black Friday – there’s also the huge sale going on over the weekend!
Besides the chunky 50% discount on most of the expansions – including both Frogdog and Black Knight(!) – we also had GCE for $333.33 – which is a good price but a little over my personal budget I had set for this year (so, yeah, no GCE for me this time) – and we saw a bunch of bundles. All 4 Echoes of Death for $120, all Indomitable Survivors for $85, all 1-mini survivors for $99 and the gigantic New Survivor deals for $1200-ish (which are already not available anymore). Those included Core, GCE, EoD1 and both Frogdog and Black Knight as well, but with Slenderman and Green Knight Armor being sold out in a lot of places those were missing from the bundle.
Stars of the show, however, are, without a doubt, the 15th Anniversary Survivors – adding not only 4 new stunning versions of the 4 core mascots Alistar, Zac, Erza and Lucy, but also an extension to the Blacksmith settlement location and a new way to refine iron. Yes – no seed patterns/patterns. What little we see of the gear seems really strong and should make for a great addition to most settlements.
The Naked Future 2024 bundle this year includes the hauntingly beautiful Oblivion Mosquito and the Steel Wax Armor (from the Honeycomb Weaver likely).
Finally there is also the plastic release of Sunlantern Armor Aya, which I initially wanted to get, but held off of in the end. Same with the dice sets.

So.., what did I get?
Well, with a few of my initial plans not available (Sun Erza and Lucy, naked lantern armor – which both since have been put on the store), I opted to fill in a few gaps in my collection.
Lion God, Spidicules and Sunstalker are the big ones, whilst I also added some Stone Face Bases, a second rulebook, Echoes of Death 3 and the Satan minis.
Just now, for a moment, I thought about adding Sun Erza and Lucy still, but I don’t mind playing the Sun Campaign “as intended” the first time around. I’ll buy those 3 (together with Aya) another time. With all these discounts the real killer is the shipping to Europe for most of these orders. The rulebook alone adds $30 to have it shipped over. Oof!
In any case it has been an expensive day, if still covered in discounts. And now I can shift modes from pre-Black-Friday-excitement over to giddy-waiting-for-stuff-to-be-shipped.
I also held off from making any pre-orders on backerkit. $250 for Campaigns of Death is surely a good price to get it at, but I felt content with waiting on that one. (As things are looking, I get the feeling I might end up getting CoD before GCE.., but I’m more interested in the Inverted Mountain right now.)

That should be all of it, for now. This has been loads of text, the official update has all the pictures. So, if you made it this far, an extra big thank you very much for taking the time and reading these loose ideas and impressions of mine!
The future looks awesome in regards to what is going to be released in the somewhat near future. Of course, I should acknowledge the fact that this is also another delay of sorts as the last timeline saw all these expansions as to be delivered right about now. I’ve said before that I don’t mind the (*cough* constant) delays too much, so I will not comment further on the matter.

As always, thank you very much for your time and I hope you were able to get everything you wanted,
Amathul