So, considering it was an EU warehouse order, .. it actually got to me quite quickly. Only took them 2 1/2 weeks? Probably average. The repackaging done by the delivery company had me a bit spooked – it wasn’t even in a box , and had a partial boot-print – but thankfully my stuff got to me unharmed.

I am a bit late to the party, but this month’s haul includes the stunning 15th anniversary survivors, the brand new Jackel and Guinevere.

Gameplay-wise these 3 boxes add both 1 more seed pattern and 1 more character card for me to forget about, as well as an extension for the blacksmith, powered by a new type of iron you gain via a new innovation, which you get from a new strange resource.. which you get from a new terrain (that’s quite the sentence).
Anyways.., the items you can craft sure seem worth it!

All these items range from good to incredible (possibly busted – the Wrought Sledge – basically anything with devastating on it – is incredible). Besides getting a new keyword to work with – Perfection X, more on that in a moment, we get a mid to late-game katana, bow, spear and club to add to any current campaigns, that are not reliant on any specific monsters. That alone is quite the boon.
Add to that Perfection X – which does exactly what you might expect from it – increase the range for Perfect Hits by X (so a weapon with Perfection 1 would get a Perfect Hit on 9) – and a bunch of interactions with Perfect Hits, and we have ourselves quite the set of gear.

For all that power these items can hold, they are gated behind Lantern Year 15, in addition to having to find the terrain first AND rolling well enough to snag the new Strange Resource as well.
A Frogdog-based settlement in particular, might well struggle finding these new pieces of gear simply because that particular monster is not putting any random terrain into play.
And to top it off, crafting the items is also linked to a 70% dice-roll costing an Iron no less.
Whilst these requirements are by no means impossible, they do increase the opportunity costs of actually getting any of these items by a significant margin.

The other “big” things is, of course, the starting four with LY15 themed minis. They have come quite the long way and especially Zac bulked up like crazy! That man comes with his own size of base!

Erza is still my favorite of the four and I’d love to get a figure of her standing up-right for once with these sets – like the Death High one (or like Alistar’s 15th anni pose).
Putting them side-by-side with their previous counterparts the increase in scale is pretty noticeable, even just from the 10th anni set.

Next on the list, I guess I’m doing the title backwards, Guinevere is a single model with a character card, taken straight from one of the art works included in the Black Knight expansion rulebook.

She has trained all her life to be ready to go defend her settlement! Her character card grants the survivor a +1LCK-token whenever they depart to fight a nemesis encounter.
This is a very monster dependent ability, but having extra LCK is generally a positive thing. Yes, there are a few hit locations out there you’d rather not crit, but generally speaking she is a good ability to have. One which might just shape a fight against the Kingsman or Black Knight on 1 lucky roll.

And finally, Jackel. She is a possible female option for the Count Armor set from the Black Knight expansion, who strangely did not get a character card. A bit weird at this point, especially as Willow – the other box titled “Seed Pattern” – got a whole new Weapon Proficiency with the mini and the gear.

Jackel ‘only’ adds a seed pattern for the Spinal Sickle – a whip that is both a sickle and a good weapon. What does it cost you? Well, it needs 1 leather, 2 bones (from a Node 3 monster) and 2 Broken Lanterns.
Again, the opportunity cost will be higher, as you not only need to get the pattern first from a deck that could potentially be quite large, but it also kills a survivor AND you need a whip specialist to even build it in the first place. Realistically speaking that last part is the real cost you need to pay – you need to get somebody to whip proficiency 3.
The weapon itself comes in at 2/7+/6 with Barbed 4, Reach 2 and Unwieldy. It has a left and down red affinity and for a red puzzle piece affinity and an additional green one the weapon gains: “When you Perfect Hit with this, transfer a luck, speed or accuracy token from the monster to yourself. Limit once per round.”
A lot of monsters will gain at least an ACC-token on Lvl2 or more stuff for Lvl 3, so the higher the quarries power level the more potent the weapon becomes.
It should be noted that you can also take negative tokens from the monster with this ability, so it’s probably best used as a back-up weapon. Or, well.. you could just fully lean into it. The weapon is a dream come true for anybody using the count set – which Jackel is, of course, already wearing.

That’s a lot of things I am looking forward to trying out right now. I’ve incorporated everything into the decks of my game, so maybe Bogstop or the People of Stars I’m playing on the side might get to see some of them (though I doubt it will get used – again – opportunity costs).

I’ve also did a little bit of painting, which the Feline Entity graciously already signed off on.

I also got EoD3, bow-girl with the Sunstalker gear and the SoD1 Machioness sniper painted up.

For monsters, I mentioned before that I finished my entry for the official painting contest. We’ll see how well Slendy does. I’ve felt unsure if I should post a picture of hit here as well – I know the contest rules say that we can freely show it off on social media – but for now I figured I’d hold off. There is still an encounter left in Bogstop for the memory-wiping plant-fiend, so…

And that’s all I got for today. Mostly at least. Waiting on these items was a bit of a fool’s errand and it took so long that we are already looking at the next sale incoming in about a week’s worth of time (as of writing this). And the next update is going to be another important one.
As CNY is slowly nearing its end and thus production will pick up again across the country, we are also going to get an updated timeline for releases. Of course, the 2 big things I’m looking out for will be any news on the current wave of expansions as well as anything for Campaigns of Death.
At this stage I want to be cautiously optimistic, but it feels like any fulfillment around Gencon at the earliest would seem most realistic. CoD surely is a different beast, being still much farther out.
Last year, it would seem, the pledge manager got briefly re-opened for this update, so I guess, I’m hoping for a chance to pre-order a few of the upcoming items (Screaming God hype!).
In any case, we will know more by the end of next week when the update and sale arrive with hearts, kisses and new white boxes filled with plastic and/or resin.

As always, thank you very much for your time, if you know somebody holds a grudge against you.., watch your spine,
Amathul