Arc Philosophy & Knowledge: Part 29 – Verminism Knowledges

It's time for the Verminism Knowledges and so pardon me while I burst into flames at excitement over this because I think alongside Marrowism and Faceism this makes up the third member of my favourite philosophies right now (I also love Deadism, Romanicism, Lanternism, Regalism, Gourmandism and Gatherism) what we have here is all just so thematically amazing while also giving loads of mechanically unique tools to play with. I am historically not a fan of paired weapons due to the second weapon basically being a +X Speed gear card and that's often not worth the gear slot. Verminism provides that little extra bit of oomph that pushes it over the line and becomes something I really engage with.

Enough preamble, I want to just get to writing about these cards.

Hissing Arms – Core tenet

Type: Offensive and Defensive

• Stages: 3

• Observations Required: Make Paired Attacks

• Advancement: 3/8/-

• Lumi Costs: 2/4/5

• Bonuses: Spend Activation for Deflect 1/Deflect 2/Deflect 3

• Parallels: Ambidextrous

Paired

A gear special rule. Paired weapons are two weapons that are used as one. Add the speed of the second weapon when attacking with the first. These weapons must have the same name, and both must be in your gear grid.

If you want to get me using Paired weapons this is absolutely the way to do it! Paired's major downside is that additional speed tends to result in additional reactions, these wear down your defenses, especially your armor (soak) and as such they mean that the monster's attacks against you are more threatening than otherwise. Deflect X is absolutely worth it.

Sometimes there are weapons worth pairing that naturally have Paired, the Sonic Tomahawks are one such example and Lion Beast Claws or Acid-Tooth Daggers are others. However being paired doesn't automatically make a weapon good, especially if it lacks affinities.

Hissing Arms opens us up to using every single one handed weapon out there which means that we have so much more freedom to line up the best possible pay off for our higher speed paired weapons. This doesn't just apply to what we have now, it's for the entire foreseeable future of the game. As long as Hissing Arms is valid alongside a one handed weapon then we can use them together.

Also this isn't locked to melee weapons, so when Team Death finally give me a good Throwing Weapon selection and Proficiency/Mastery card then I can start dual wielding thrown darts, Chakrams, axes, knives, bottles, sharp rocks, Kpinga, Boomerangs, Mambele, Harpoons, Bolas, Chains, Slings, Clubs, Spears, Arambi, Cateua, Falaric, Shuriken, Javelins, Onzils, Plumbata, Kunai, Sticks, Valari, Shruiken, Mesangylons, Kestros, Pocket Sand, Captain America's Shield, Giant Stone Faces, Pillars and Harsh Language. Free the Batarang already!

What I mean by that is, this is primed for more mechanical expansion and I like that.

Also, while it's almost impossible to put together imagine the joy of playing a Hissing Arms + Shieldarang survivor.

I'm not Tier Ranking these, but if I was this would go straight into S tier without hesitation.

Mirror Eyes

Type: Offensive

• Stages: 3

• Observations Required: Hit the monster 2 times per attack/hit the monster 3 times per attack/-

• Advancement: 3/3/-

• Lumi Costs: 0/4/6

• Bonuses: Theory/Paired Attacks gain Precision 1/Paired attacks gain Precision 2

• Parallels: Acid-Tooth Daggers/Counterweighted Axe/Founding Stone

While Mirror Eyes very much has the symmetrical aesthetic, the card's mechanics do not lean into that outside of the thematics of holding two identical weapons with one in each hand. It however does support the overall philosophy design of high speed + two weapons = high pay off.

Precision X

A gear special rule. On a Perfect hit, inflict an automatic critical wound to the first X hit locations you resolve.

Precision is one of those really powerful abilities that provides the pay off that Perfect hit junkies like I adore. The reason I keep going back to Deadism is because it provides a higher chance of Perfect hits through the Dark Eyes philosophy. I'm such a Perfect hit addict and Precision is absolutely what I want to see as a pay off.

The really great thing about this is while it's really strong to get automatic critical wounds, it's not a 100% sure thing, monsters have hit locations without critical wounds, likewise they have trap cards. There's still a risk to the attack and that's what makes it so engaging for me, I'm not just spamming as much speed as possible (as one could do with the old Counterweighted Axes) instead I'm looking at the Hit Location deck discard, considering the overall %s of critical wounds vs. non-critical wounds/trap left in the deck and making the decision accordingly. It's a really, really well designed ability and I am thrilled to see it here.

Finally shout out to this absolutely incredible art. When I grow up I want to be a stitched together bug lady with two cyclops spider friends.

Envenomed Edge

Type: Offensive

• Stages: 2

• Observations Required: Monster suffers a wound from venom/-

• Advancement: 3/-

• Lumi Costs: 3/5

• Bonuses: When you hit monster 2+ times in 1 attack, it gains a venom token, 3+ venom tokens = automatic wound and then archive all venom/When you hit monster 2+ times in 1 attack, it gains a venom token, 2+ venom tokens = automatic wound and then archive all venom/

• Parallels: Counterweighted Axe, Acid-Tooth Daggers, Red Ring

Another Counterweighted Axe parallel, but this time it's the automatic wounds. Envenomed Edge takes its own spin on the entire design by having it trigger on hits which I think is an excellent piece of design to support speed. Even if the attack hits the trap, even if you fail to wound, as long as you scored 2+ hits you've made some progress towards wounding the monster. The break point being 3+ and then 2+ venom tokens is perfectly balanced and clearing the venom pool is cleanly designed.

This also works very well in multiples, as more tokens always means more chances of dealing the automatic wounds. It's a clean, powerful and thematic design that is strong without being game distorting.

Queen of Hands

Type: Offensive

• Stages: 1

• Observations Required: -

• Advancement: -

• Lumi Costs: 8

• Bonuses: +2 speed, +1 systemic pressure and you can read the rest above

• Parallels: Unique but luck gaining I guess

Our final knowledge is possibly more exciting than any of the rest but it's also a superb support to any other Verminsm knowledges you'd like to use. Unlocking Queen of Hands is always my primary goal as a Verminism player because it's not only incredibly powerful, it is also asking a challenging puzzle with a worthwhile pay off.

Creating a mirrored gear grid is quite a restriction, while we are free to put whatever we like in the middle column, the left and right rows need to match. That means we're looking at putting weapons there because we normally can't have duplicate items or armor pieces in gear grids (Duplicate Gear, main rulebook). The tricks that we utilise to help achieve a grid like this include Marrowism philosophies which can offer us armor points/protection without depending on gear slots and weapons with other utility such as shields which can be in the middle column or if you don't mind the second one being blanked you can even run them in the left/right mirrored position. There's some fun to be had with playing a survivor that marries Regalism's Sword & Board style, and of course Blood Paint is another fun little tool you could run if you really wanted to go crazy.

Mechanics like this, which take advantage of the spatial puzzle element that KDM's top tier equipment system uses are an area ripe for exploration. We already have affinities and adjacency arrows (Sheaths/Blood Paint etc), the ability to rotate them (Ageless Apprentice), tools that let us place gear outside the grid (Second Stomach, Sun String & Quiver) and now this. I cannot stress this enough, KDM's gear grid is transformative in concept, I'd love more slots even if they were for specific small items and armor eats up too many slots on the grid, but it is so much better than the ancient 1980s system of two hands, head, body, feet and belt slots that's used by so many other games even to this day.

Call to action here, if you like KDM's gear grid system, please point it out wherever you can. It's a spatial/visual tableau puzzle that works for any kind of dungeon crawler, it can even be adapted to card games or combined with the traditional “body location” style I mentioned above. There is so much being left on the table and I do not understand why other designers keep overlooking this pivotal element of why KDM is so engaging. It's not just the loop of hunt, craft, it's this min-maxing efficiency puzzle where we're asked to perform “circuit building” in a tiny arena while also ensuring that you're generating enough armor points, support and offense to work for your unit.

I hope one day we get the row version of this Knowledge (I dub it “King of Feet” or “King of Foots” to further push the mirroring), as combining them together would be some unbelievably sweet gear grid circuit building/pipe puzzling.

Final Summary

I love all of my philosophies equally, but Verminism? I love you the most.