First released in March of 2024 for general sale on the Kingdom Death webstore, the Black Knight is a Nemesis Node 3 monster seeking to challenge a lot of things you have come to know about nemesis encounters as a whole.
It features not only a fight in the crumbling Citadel high up on the side of the Inverted Mountain – free falling to your death included – which takes place on its own unique randomized board, but also a whole host of rewards you can actually chose from, the first ever multi-card piece of gear, a 5 Lantern Year mini campaign and of course the novelty of being the only replacement for The Hand to date.

The Black Knight expansion is one of my personal favorites, which is why I really wanted to talk about it!

Obvious Spoiler Warning!

When I was looking at the Pariah I was keen on asking you a question at this point, to help set you on to the right path of what to expect, yet with the Black Knight there isn’t really anything that would merit the same approach despite it having no less of a theme. Except maybe:

Are you tired of fighting the Hand?

That’s a bit of a meme to be honest, but it is probably the most relevant question I could pose to you at this point – which might very well double as an early tl;dr for this whole thing. Especially as I have been praising the doggo almost every time I have mentioned it in the past.

Still, I want to take the time and give the expansion as a whole a closer look today and share with you why I have come to like it so much

A polar opposite to the Pariah, the Black Knight does not live with the settlement nor does it even undertake the journey to your home to fight, but instead the survivors get shepherded to the Citadel by the Squires in an attempt to quell this monster’s restless and rambunctious nature.
Whilst the Pariah feeds off of vitriol and the settlement’s suffering or a foe like the King’s Man has a duty to fulfill, the Black Knight does not care for you or your survivors in the slightest, even when they are presented to it as more or less eager playmates under a pretense of valor.

Well, maybe it cares a little bit if any of them have red hair.

Should you be able to best the beast in combat without all survivors being flung off the side of the Inverted Mountain, before you know it, it will have scurried off into the darkest recesses of its ruined home, all tuckered out and ready for bed, leaving you just enough time to gather a few of the scraps remaining in the dim workshops below the arena.
And once you have arrived back home, heads held high with lofty ideals of honor taken root, ideas for building novel armor sets will undoubtfully emerge.

Somewhat similar to my post on the Pariah, first I will be looking at the Black Knight from a non-arc gameplay point of view, both in regards to how it affects the settlement as well as during combat.
Afterwards I will give you a quick overview of the Squire Campaign and why it is the single largest point of contention when it comes to this expansion for most people, as well as why I personally think it should be held in higher regard than it usually is.
And finally I would like to briefly touch on this monster’s associated lore as well.

Again, from here on out There Be Spoilers!

***

The Gameplay

***

It would have felt weird starting exclusively with either Settlement Phase or Showdown for this monster as the Black Knight spreads its gameplay elements out quite well between both the lead up to the encounter and its aftermath – so we are going to do it in one this time!

Whilst the Black Knight does generally replace the Hand, removing the Regal Visit story event alongside it, the by far biggest difference right out the gate would be that you fight it 3 times over the course of any given PotLantern, PotDream or PotStars campaign instead of just once.
Yes, by adding the Black Knight to your game, you will get to hunt 2 less quarry monsters than you would usually do.
But, on the flipside, there is a decent chance for you to gain at least a hand full of resources from this fight, so, whilst it doesn’t exactly even out, you should still be fine overall.

When the stranger – a Squire – first arrives in Lantern Year 13, the large black bell located in the settlement suddenly gains ominous significance.
Oh, you didn’t know there was such a bell?
But it has always been a part of the settlement! It has been waiting for its purpose ever since you decided to make your home in these parts.

With a deft strike by the visiting Squire a challenge is issued towards the settlement as the ornate bell gets rung each and every time you are about to fight the Black Knight. This breaks with another of the typical lead-ups to nemesis encounters: there is a certain amount of ceremony to the procedure.
Which in this case means you will have to make is past 2 events every time you are about to fight the dog: The Bell Rings & The Mountain Ascent.

The Bell Rings is the call to arms and will typically have an effect on either your settlement phase or who may or may not be allowed to depart, varying wildly between the different Lantern Years in regards to what you might be able to gain, which restrictions you may face or which survivor is even supposed to roll.
But, most importantly, the first time the event is resolved it also adds the Bell of Challenge innovation to your settlement.
This innovation will grow in rank each time you mange to successfully defeat the Black Knight, offering more and more boons to survivors with Honorable (D) as well as a means of gaining this particular disorder.

The Mountain Ascent on the other hand could be viewed as a fairly soft one-table Overwhelming Darkness facsimile.

Of course, even with a couple of restrictions in place, with your team assembled, getting to the fight isn’t going to be the hard part.

When you make it to the fight, you will not be using the familiar showdown board, but instead a randomized, largely unrevealed 4×4 grid of Citadel tiles, each themselves consisting of 4×4 spaces filled with all manner of breakable terrain your survivors can get smashed through.
To reveal these tiles you either need to spend an activation and shine your lantern in from an adjacent space or, easier if more reckless, just get flung into them via knockback.

The monster in cold, hard stats:
Lvl1 AI: 8B/4A Stats: 6MOV 10TGH +4TGH-Tokens
Lvl2 AI: 9B/6A/1L Stats: 7MOV 10TGH +1SPD +6TGH-Tokens
Lvl3 AI: 11B/8A/3L Stats: 8MOV 10TGH +1DMG/SPD +1ACC&+8TGH-Tokens

Another interesting quirk presents itself here: no rising TGH, just extra +1TGH-tokens. Whilst this ties in to in-fight-mechanics (you can remove these tokens with a terrain interaction), the overall stat-progression for the Black Knight isn’t actually all that high. And whilst the Lvl3 encounter is without a doubt a formidable foe, it should rank lower than any given Node 2 Nemesis monster – which is further corroborated by the Lantern Year you fight it in (24 as opposed to 26 or 28).
What also recently started to stand out to me is how it usually only draws 1 AI card per turn.
So, if anything, as soon as you have a bit of experience with fighting the Black Knight, it might actually feel a little too easy on Lvl1 and 2.
Which of course will breed complacency and lead to you getting flung off the mountain again. Life works in roundabouts and such.

Speaking of which, if your survivor ever moves across the edge of the 4×4 Citadel-tile-grid, you will be rolling on Scramble to Survive, with any remaining knockback being subtracted from your roll result. Of course, any 1s, natural or with modifier, will kill the survivor instantly as they plummet to their doom.

Knockback is the name of the game in this showdown.

Between Black Resin statues on the citadel tiles that bounce you around if you get flung into them, further increasing any of your remaining knockback by 4 and the Black Knight prone to picking you up and full-sending you into one of these statues on reaction or via After Damage effects, the survivors will get bounced around A LOT.
But you don’t have to be all fancy about it: the Flee Brain Trauma will do just fine in sending you over edges you get too close to as well.

Between the Citadel tiles being cluttered with all manner of breakable pots that limit your movement (which deal 1 DMG each time a survivor collides with them, because of course they do), the, at first, mostly hidden Knockback-enhancing statues and a brutish, yet mobile monster, much of this fight turns into a precarious dance with positioning at its center.

• Are you going to take that 1 step further to the left and risk getting hit into the statue from a different angle, thus bouncing you differently?
• Where is the particle accelerator (read: “cluster of 3 statues on a single tile that adds +16 knockback if flung into just right)?
• How many survivors are Honorable (D) and can they even attack right now?
• Will the monster reveal new tiles if it walks over to you .. and do you even want that?
• Is there a way to get to another Bell Altar?

And once you are fighting Lvl2+ you will have to add “not being able to spend survival while on Rubble” to that list as well.

But movement is only half the dance, you do still need to deal those wounds if you want to get anywhere and the Black Knight is prone to reactions.

Roughly a third of his deck will trigger Smash under various circumstances – which picks up the survivor and flings them for 8 knockback into the closest statue.
A couple more cards knock everyone down on the most populated Citadel tile, and it is a knight by design, so it does know how to parry if push comes to shove – luckily not all that well though.
But that isn’t something LCK builds and daggers couldn’t overcome. Just don’t hit one of the few bad crits in the deck.

And should you not get lucky with critical wounds, and the TGH prove too high for you to overcome easily, you might also consider ringing a few of the Bell Altars found scattered around the map. They even come with handy instructions on how to use them if the survivor interacting with it has 3+ understanding.
Each successful interaction will remove a +1TGH-token from the monster, making inflicting wounds easier bit by bit.

As far as AI goes, would it surprise you if I told you there is more knockback?
Typically dealing 3DMG per hit at 3SPD (for Lvl1) the monster does deal a manageable amount of damage with each AI card, with the odd outlier in between.
I have once seen how a survivor get turned to mist by a point-blank Juggernaut Slam.

Once the monster has been beaten up sufficiently, it will retreat into the depths of the Citadel where it falls into a regenerative slumber until it eventually wakes again (in Lantern Year 17), ready to face a new set of challengers.
With the Squires ready to assess the scale of repairs needed to the Citadel, you will have just enough time to collect your REWARDS! Wooh!

Depending on the outcome of the fight, whether or not you have a Portcullis Key, how well you can roll and how smart your remaining survivors are. the range of rewards can be fairly large.
You might find yourself in the possession of one of the best weapons ever printed in the whole of Kingdom Death: Monster or you might get Aichmophobia (D) and a loose bundle of resources.
In any case, for a victory you will be able to upgrade the Rank of your Bell of Challenge (I) by one, gain the Black Knight Badge – yes! there are tactics cards! everybody could indeed be Honorable (D) at all times! – and at least 2, but hopefully 3, armor patterns.
And these are the meat to the potatoes.

The Marchioness Armor set is by far the most expensive (12 Iron!!!) and gameplay-wise it is meant to be a sword-based off-tank. I built one of these in Bogstop (Season 1), but anybody can get a preview of how it plays in the Squire Campaign as Cain is wearing this armor set when he is leading the Squires on their quest.

The Earl Armor set is another set hungry for resources (7 Iron) and focusses on the encourage survival action and making it better. At 5 armor once the full set is assembled it could take a support role throughout the mid- to endgame, picking up multiple survivors at once, spreading deflect tokens between them.

Finally, the Count Armor set, which appears to be the budget option of the bunch, is a Leather-based set demanding Perfect Bones and Perfect Hides and will offer you a vicious offensive set that can discard attribute tokens (even negative ones) for an extra attack per round!
Whilst its defensive capabilities are practically non-existent, it is capable to cancel wound effects and if you are able to reliably generate tokens, it will go off as long as you pair it with a good weapon. (Pariah synergy!)
It should also be worth mentioning that this is a full bone set! The rise of the Bone Earring has begun!

If you manage to defeat the Black Knight at least twice you should be able to finish one of these armor sets over the course of a campaign, with the rare opportunity to get 2 full sets built if the stars align in your favor.

..

And if things instead go horribly wrong.., well.., you might alternatively end up with a 2-gear-card piece of equipment and a whole new innovation instead.

***

The Squire Campaign

***

Besides the Black Knight Nemesis monster, the other big part of this expansion is the Squire Campaign.
This mini-campaign stretches over 5 Lantern Years and presents you with 5 Vignette-style fights, including their own limited Settlement and Hunt Phases – I have completed the Squire Campaign successfully once and you can read about it here.

This is, sadly, also the main area criticism arises when it comes to the Black Knight.
It’s tough as nails. Hard as balls. As challenging as riding a *REDACTED*.
And you will die over and over again somewhere between Lantern Year 2 to 4 .. but who am I kidding? You are going to most likely die in Lantern Year 2.
Which probably wouldn’t actually be all that bad, if you weren’t meant to RESTART THE WHOLE CAMPAIGN if anybody besides Owen died during any of the first 4 encounters!

The main culprit: the Mountain Lion.
This variant of the age-old White Lion is incredibly deadly and can cripple or outright kill your Squires upon start of the fight if you get unlucky and poses a substantial threat throughout the encounter.

But you know, just roll better, that has proven to be a successful means of counter-play.

Whilst it would be easy to just circle the drain and pile on both warranted and unwarranted criticism and hate for parts of the rules when it comes to this mini-campaign, but I will instead focus on the things that seem more important to me.

For me the main thing I LOVE about the Squire Campaign is that it starts with a Black Knight fight. Considering this monster is introduced to the player in Lantern Year 13 – which is beyond typical breaking points for campaigns, and generally about as late as it gets right now (besides the King, Core & Finale monsters), the Squire Campaign gives you the opportunity to demo the monster in slightly altered circumstances.

Come to think of it: the Screaming God, a Node 4 Quarry monster which is set to be released in 2026, is shipping with a Vignette as well according to what Adam said most recently (09/2025 update) – this is the same thing! You get to play with a new (in that case) late-game monster in a curated environment, unbound from struggling campaigns maybe not making it all the way to Lantern Year 20+.
(We do not know when the Screaming God will arrive in settlements currently.)

And, again, in a similar fashion, Cain wearing the Marchioness Armor set will give you a chance to preview one of the most expensive sets in the game.

With all of the obvious out of the way, the Squire campaign gives a few flavorful insights into the Citadel as a settlement and how they care for the Black Knight.

And I will be honest with you, I think this all the reason this needs to exist.

***

The Lore

***

Here we are again.., Lore.
Apply grains of salt liberally as I will be going over the few things I believe to have pieced together. These are mainly my interpretation and you might very well arrive at your own different conclusions when interacting with the texts, monster or my writings.

If you are not interested in these musings, scroll on ahead, I promise I won’t tell on you.

When it comes to the Black Knight and the Citadel there are a few things we more or less definitely “know”.
The Black Knight is, or rather was, a dog(pole) and Percival of the Black Guard order was its owner. Given the command to wait for her return, the Black Knight has done so diligently, but its loneliness and possibly feral nature send it into raging moods ever so often, which is why the Squires build bells close to Lantern Hoards or similar points of interest to send survivors that settle close to them to the Black Knight and quell its fighting spirit through the age-old rite of combat.
Sadly Percival, as featured in her own content, has died a long time ago and thus the Black Knight’s wait will likely never end.
Over the Lantern Millennia, the once small dog(pole) warped into the towering Knight we face when we enter the citadel as it crudely imitates the Black Guard’s ancient fighting style from its memory.

In regards to the Citadel, we know that they were once a “human” settlement living on the side of the Inverted Mountain hunting Dragon Kings, and have been mentioned to be at least partially responsible for their almost extinction.
This is mirrored in game by a few pieces of gear, some exceedingly potent at killing Dragon Kings – most prominently the nuclear sword Wrath.

At some point in the past the knights of the Citadel seemingly all went on a crusade with an unknown goal (I believe it might have simply been to conquer the darkness?) and none of the knights has ever returned. Curiously, if the Citadel was a “human” settlement it stands to reason that they once had a Core monster of their own, and it would seem they managed to defeat it at some point.
You could see a connection to either the Heartwyrm mentioned in the Red Witches expansion or the Red Haired Dragon mentioned with the Pariah, but I don’t think there is much tangible evidence to support either besides the fact that Squire remains have been found in the mines.

Ever since the remaining Squires have been the ones preserving, but also warping the legacy of the Citadel and the order of knights that once lived within these halls.
Elastomer Resin, secreted by Gryphons and found in the Elastomer Mines were one of the few substances they could find to repair old statues with in a way so that they could withstand the Black Knight’s violent outbursts.
Over time, the culture of the Squires shifted into servitude towards becoming worthy enough of finally being allowed to advance into an Inner Sanctum at the heart of the Citadel, whilst they worship the Black Knight as their protector (a stand-in for a Core monster?).
During all of this time the Squires have created a strickt code of honor to be kept within the Citadel based likely on misunderstanding the Black Guards tendency of attacking Dragon King’s from the front to hit their exposed “hearts”, confusing tactics with being Honorable (D).

Through the Squire Campaign we can learn that the Pariah has been actively meddling with the Squires and their efforts and it remains uncertain what, if anything actually remains in this coveted Inner Sanctum.
In turn the Pariah seemed keen on acquiring the Black Guard Code (I) for its collection of stories towards a further unknown goal.

***

Final Thoughts

***

The Black Knight has a lot of things going for it.

In conclusion:
Whilst the fight itself can be a little swingy, as a lot of the danger comes from knockback and the threat of going of the edge of the arena whilst the monster is on the easier side of things; and the Squire Campaign, despite looking like it at first glance, being NOT a good way to introduce new players to the game (the Mountain Lion will just eat them up), the box offers you a very thematic monster with a whole host of interesting rewards to chase after.
Each of the new armor sets offers different support for different play styles and should you end up with 1 of the 2 rare weapons from the fight, I am sure they will leave a mark on your campaign.

From my point of view the Black Knight was always going to be an easy recommendation.
I love the fight, story and miniatures and thus consider it a part of my “big 4” – Dragon King, Sunstalker, Frogdog and Black Knight – all of which add a decent chunk of content or new systems to interact with to your game.
But this box in particular does something no other expansion currently (01/2026) does: it replaces the Hand.

Whilst the Hand definitely has its place even in modern KD:M, especially for new players, it is one of the most “solved” encounters as well and you will likely have a fixed strategy for that short king after “fighting” it just a couple of times.
Further adding to that is how the Black Knight, technically, works with all currently available campaigns. I say “technically” because I do not think you would want use it with PotSun as you only fight it once right at the end of the campaign.., but it does still replace the Hand though, so knock yourself out if you truly want to.
Sun Percival sends her regards .. or something like that.

In the end, if you enjoy it when your Nemesis monsters have further rewards for you after you win, then the Black Knight will sit particularly well with you.

So, should you get the Black Knight expansion?
Yes.

If it should be the first or only expansion you buy is a slightly different question though.
Node 1 Quarries will typically see the most play, so those get extra points for that. The same should also be said for the alternate campaigns packaged with Dragon King and Sunstalker (and possibly Gryphon in the future).

***

And there you have it, the Black Knight expansion – an overview, review, whatever you want to call it. I love this box in particular, especially the fight and the alternate board, which to be fair, I also thought was going to be a lot more fiddly than it actually turned out to be.

Originally I wanted to use this space down here to go into my thoughts on Nemesis encounters and rewards in KD:M a bit, but I realized most of what I wanted to write would either sound bitter or overly positive. So, I cut it down to a minimum of what I wanted to say originally.

The game is about persevering and conquering obstacles at its core even if they are unfair at times.

That was a quick way to lose 45 minutes to a single sentence. If you have read stuff on the site you probably know by now that I think King’s Man hate is overblown and I just don’t think Nemesis monsters need to be all that rewarding is all.
Which is a slightly strange take at the end of gushing over the Black Knight – the single most rewarding nemesis monster available, I guess.

But that’s all for today,

If you have made it this far, thank you very much for your time!
The Black Knight will wait for its master, stoically, but it will also forget for a moment and rush to play fetch if the survivor gets flung far enough.
Amathul