A Review of Deathmas Percival
Relentless mirth spread across the table. The gathered survivors shoulders heaved, distended stomachs jiggling with ceaseless laughter. Their muscles seized, chests aching with exhaustion, tears seasoning their festive meal. The laughed and laughed until they collapsed.
Contents:
1x Install guide
1x Deathmas Shearling Boots rare gear cards
1 x Heart of the Sword Saint strange resource card
1x Gift of Passion Atnas AI trait card
2x Atnas sword craft cards Lonesome Death, Shockwave Cleave)
1x Deathmas Percival hard plastic miniature with sculpted base
1 x Large matte art print
As we suspected with the 2024 holiday release, Atnas has become the monster who gets a new update each year in the form of the Deathmas [Survivor Name] series. Like the Cockroach Queen last year, Percival comes with a new gift trait to add to the previous one, a new associated strange resource and rare gear card plus two new Sword Craft cards that are added to the previous ones.
The Miniature
Last time we saw Percival I critiqued that the miniature failed on most aspects as a depiction of Percival, so to be completely fair I'll not that it is not the case here. There is no mistaking this character for one of the other survivors as her hair has been restored. On top of that, despite Percival wearing mostly Deathmas themed clothing, she's still carrying a Blackguard Sword, her puppy “Black Knight” and her robes even feature the iconic quilted design on the back (see image below).
There's not much in the way of in game use for this miniature if we are honest, but it is an excellent portrayal of the character and if we get an unarmored survivor version of Percival in the future this may help with continuity. This is a nice little piece, it's well sculpted, Kingdom Death remains one of the few miniature lines that really get curly hair right (this is a curly hair household, we judge curly hair on miniatures very closely and to a high standard) and I like the dynamic nature of this sculpt.
The Gameplay
In the same way as last year, this release immediately adds two new Swordcraft cards to Atnas's selection, they're always included in every showdown against Atnas, which makes this a mini-expansion to Atnas. I've not fully broken Atnas down in an analysis yet, but one of the main balancing issues with Atnas is the showdown is incredibly uneven (by design apparently). Atnas alternates from being close to ineffective and clownishly slapstick to being incredibly deadly in an instant. It's kind of a frustrating experience where you're driven to just burst the monster down with as many overwhelming tools as possible because letting him do his thing may result in disaster from nowhere. Yes, every monster is a disaster if they're left “to do the thing” but Atnas feels like the Nemesis version of the Smog Singers, but with a less well realised thematic design.
The crux of why Atnas is what he is revolves around who he was and what has happened to him. It appears that Atnas was once a normal survivor who became an incredible sword master; like many sword masters he felt the call of Storm and I assume went to go find the Sword Castle in the Sky. However, at some point he was attacked and then infected by a parasite, some creature that is a related to the Watchers in some manner. This is known as the Noble Jellyfish, and like Watchers its bell (the bell-shaped body) is constructed from cloth. I don't fully have the picture of the relationship between the Noble Jellyfish, the Watcher and Storm, but there are themes shared between all of them.
Atnas's parasitic passenger has bloated and harmed Atnas's form until he's the gigantic grotesque form that we know, a giant that towers over even the King. It also seems to be why he's so clumsy and clownish, he's greatly addled as his memories have been suppressed or even partially devoured. However, old instincts are there under the surface and that's where the Sword Art cards come into play. These cards work like boss attacks in games such as Undertale or similar, except you're rarely ever warned about what the attack pattern will be until it happens. This is the portion of the showdown where everything spirals into chaos and it's never felt good to me due to how poor the signals for attacks in KDM are. Atnas does have tools to let you get advance warning, but they're few and not even fully effective. This means that these new Sword Art cards are just making that chaos worse without providing tools to navigate them.
As I mentioned, if you love all of this Atnas flavoured jolly nonsense, then here's more of that. If you're hoping for something else, Atnas just isn't the Node 2 Nemesis monster for you.
The Gift portion of this release is another mechanic that's gradually getting built upon, you reveal these cards one at a time at the start of the showdown and add them to the dashboard as additional traits. You can stop before revealing cards and the rest won't be added. They provide Atnas with additional abilities that make the showdown harder but also offer additional rewards in the form of strange resources and rare gear.
Last year had the Gift of Arms that made Sword Craft attacks gain speed in exchange for gaining a Deathmas Lantern Dagger (it has noisy so yay) and the Lungs of the Sword Saint that allowed you to improve weapons crafted with it (perfect, organ) with +1 speed and the Sentient downside. This time the Heart of the Sword Saint (still perfect, organ) offers Savage in addition to the Sentient downside, this is an interesting offering because sticking Savage onto Deadly weapons is a good boost even if you have to deal with Sentient.
The rare gear is a bit more enticing this time to boot, the Deathmas Shearling Boots are 4 armor point footwear with Irreplaceable and Sentient. Sentient here on worn armor is far more interesting than when it is on a weapon, because if you're not insane a Sentient weapon is just eating up a slot and maybe providing affinities, sentient footwear still protects your footsies even if you can't activate them.
The activated ability is also very reasonable with a mixture of a strong ability that has limited windows it can be used in. If the monster is knocked down we get to stomp them for an automatic wound. This has been limited to once per round, which is wise, but it's not limited to once per showdown. So if we can knock the monster down again in a later round it can be stomped a second time and so on. That's very interesting and reasonable as design goes.
The limiting issue here is that these boots do not have the Outfit ability, so the only armor set we can combine them with is Clothed & Satiated. That may still be worth it if we have a survivor who is very good at knocking down the monster, but you combine this armor awkwardness with irreplaceable and the method of gaining this gear and it's not a strategy you'd be leaning into often. I briefly entertained the thought that one day we'll get a Deathmas Suit to cover the Body, Waist and Arms along with a Set Bonus card as one of these holiday releases, but this card hasn't been future proofed with the Set keyword so that isn't really possible without official errata.
Final Thoughts
As always with these Deathmas releases, if you don't own the Gambler's Chest or you don't play with Atnas then there is little value to be gained here and if I am honest, even if you do have Atnas this isn't going to improve the showdown if you do not already enjoy it. Last year's release was underwhelming, this year is also a bit underwhelming but that is simply the Atnas life, being underwhelming.
Deathmas Percival is currently not available in the store. If you do want her, it will become available again next December.