A Review of Wanderer - Preacher | Kingdom Death: Monster

She arrives with benevolence. When the settlement falls under her spell, strange dogma takes root. A wanderer who's charisma and strange beliefs will transform the settlement's faith.

• 1 x Preacher illustrated rulebook

• 1 x Preacher hard plastic miniature + base

• 3 x Rare gear cards

• 2 x Disorder cards

• 1 x Fighting art card

• 4 x Innovation cards

• 3 x Knowledge cards

• 1 x Divider

• 5 x Arc survivor record sheets

The Miniature

The Preacher miniature has that distinctive style that makes KDM's miniatures stand out from other miniature ranges. However, the team still cannot find a method to sculpt and cast glasses in a satisfying manner. While forgetting them like they did with Forget isn't great, what has happened here with Preacher is more ugly. Only the bottoms of the frames are present on the miniature, the lenses are missing, which is understandable. Less understandable is the complete lack of the top portion of the frames. Preacher doesn't always wear half moon glasses, she has full frames in almost all of her artwork except for the postcard art which is what I assume her sculpt was based on. We're not going to be looking at the postcard art when playing though, so having her match the art in the booklet is more important to me.

By itself that wouldn't be so bad, but we have to also consider how overly thick the frames are and the look is just not good, in particular around the nose doesn't work for me because this is where a thick frame makes functionality of the glasses worse. I haven't decided exactly what I'm going to do to resolve this situation. Carving the frames off or reducing their overall thickness both require delicate work. Sculpting the top frame is a possibility, but it's still going to look – not great; and when you are dealing with the face on a miniature; which is the place that the human eye spends most of the time looking, you don't want this kind of issue being there. I'm kind of at the point where I think the glasses for KDM miniatures should always be sculpted separately from the face and allow us to make our own decisions about if we want to attach them or not. Separate glasses would also let me carve transparent plastic for the glass and attach that.

To move onto the praise, the rest of the detail here is fantastic, with crisp textured detail on layered clothing with lots of fun details such as lace trim, a laced, stitched bodice and sensible shoes. You have no idea how much I like those flat shoes. Also, religious types should have a silly hat in my book, and Preacher delivers with her tasselled cap. I couldn't identify exactly what kind of hat this is referencing, but given the heavy Christian undertones to a number of portions of Kingdom Death's world (including the Preacher which has the term “feet of clay” from Daniel 2:35-45) it is likely some form of Christian hat. The closest I could find is the Maronite hat, a stylised nun wimple or perhaps the woollen camauro, but even they are not similar enough to call it. I'm open to suggestions if anyone has seen a better fit. It might be some pop culture/anime reference that I wouldn't get because outside of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, Berserk and One Punch Man Season 1 I haven't consumed much Japanese content.

Also, shout out to her Holy Lantern, excellent design, very happy to see it. More lanterns like this please, I like these open designs a lot more than the ones with intricate wrought iron patterns as they are more straightforward to deal with when you're considering how light interacts with the lantern itself.

In respect to the base, She's currently listed as having a scenic base insert:

That is not the case in the shots, not a big deal but something to just be aware of.

Over all this is around the upper portion of the middle of the pack for APG's current line, lots of good stuff here but the final look is held back by those glasses. As far as wanderer sculpts in specific, she's above Luck but below the other four for me (and it's all those glasses that are dragging her down).

The Gameplay

The Preacher offers something very interesting when compared to the other Wanderers we have seen to date, that is an alternative focus to an aspect of the settlement's society. With the arrival of The Preacher at the settlement's gates we get to see an alternative form of faith, with the survivors turning to follow the tenets evangelised by the Preacher. One where the survivors who are devout will turn away from intimacy outside of partnership and those who are not devout are seen as being unworthy unless they subscribe to the Preacher's doctrine.

Occasionally Kingdom Death's various game releases manage to not just provide interesting content, but also deliver commentary on aspects of human life. When this happens, the game elevates itself above being just a game and instead demonstrates that games are art. Wanderer – Preacher is the latest in this lineage, joining alongside releases like the Killenium Butcher, the Gorm and the Dragon King to name a few.

In the case of the Preacher, this message feels very relevant and is in conversation with the current world we live in, it is absolutely at its heart an exploration of organised religion and both the positives and negatives that such an institution can bring. It is also absolutely a criticism of the hypocrisy that senior members of societal institutions can demonstrate, a real “do what I say, not what I do” situation. While the overt and clear target of this criticism is in respect to Christian organisations due to the theme and wording used, (unsurprising given that the United States of America was born in part under the influence of people considered too religiously puritan for Europe and as such it is a deeply Christian country with puritan values), it is also a shot fired across the bow of any power structure where those at the top act with impunity while also condemning others for the very same actions.

The idiom “feet of clay” which is printed on one of the new faith innovations is used when talking about weaknesses or character flaws of people in power or importance for society; as mentioned above it comes from a Hebrew/Christian Bible passage where Daniel is describing a gold statue of the king Nebuchadnezzar, but the statue isn't fully gold, it is gilded over other less valuable materials. With the feet being a clay/iron mix hence the origination of the saying. Also shout out to the 1996 Terry Pratchett novel “Feet of Clay” which is part of the City Watch series and also a rather excellent murder mystery involving golems.

This is why Wanderer - Preacher is very much in conversation with its players in addition to allowing the exploration of an alternative way to experience most of the Faith line via new mechanics on the replacement faith Innovations. It's so interesting that one is justified in sandbagging the Preacher's ranking up in order to not let her reach Rank 4 and her departure from the settlement. That's when you know something is really interesting, she demands a lot but what she offers may only stay while she's around.

This is the kind of expansion I really like in KDM, not only is it saying something, but it's also revolutionising an aspect of the game's mechanics in a way that's offering new challenges and changing up the priority order that you want to get innovations in. If you can't have Intimacy without Partnership then you need to get digging into the Home innovations and invest in some traditional family units.

Final Thoughts

I'll will have to come back to this release with a deep dive soon because there's so much I want to write about here but I don't want to spoil the narrative here any more than I already have done. So to wrap it up I found this little box to be one of the most thoughtful and engaging little experiences I've had with KDM in recent times and I'm excited to explore it some more over the coming years.

Put this one on the “Fen's Essentials” purchase list along with the following items:

• The Gorm

• The Sunstalker

• The Slender Man

• The Dragon King

• The Killenium Butcher

• The Gambler's Chest

• Wanderer - Candy

• Wanderer – Death Drifter

• Wanderer – Aeneas

• Ringtail Vixen

• Legendary Survivor Red

• Indomitable Survivors

• Dung Beetle Knight

• The Red Witches

• The Black Knight

• 15th Anniversary Survivors

• Philosophy of Death Gatherism

• Glow

• Other items I can't remember right now because there have been so many KDM releases over the years