One of the Lion Knight's aesthetic directors, a trio of ageless muses. She concerns herself with the experiential opulence craved by her sponsor. She sews every seam and fills every frame with sumptuous delicate detail to inspire the emptiness hidden behind her patron's razor sharp claws and violent moods.

Like Pillar – Forge Priest which I reviewed previously, the Lion Knight Scholar beta release is trying something new and experimental with the rules. This time instead of introducing a separate minion with a non-combat focus (if you stay out of his way) the Scholar can function instead as a kind of temporary ally to the survivors.

The Lion Knight Scholars are a trio of ageless, eternal muses who travel with the Lion Knight as his directors. In addition to appearing specifically during the Lion Knight expansion as his entourage, stagehands and supervisors they also turn up during the Dragon King hunt phase on the hunt card “Thespian Troupe” where they are sat inside an enormous rickshaw pulled by “an enormous man in a lion mask” (the Lion Knight). It's always been an interesting quartet of characters to consider because the status between these four is not entirely certain. The Lion Knight is one of the Golden Entity's lieutenants as he has been referred to as being the “2nd Lion Knight” but there's always been a large question as to why he has been allowed to roam free playing theatre with survivors instead of collecting tributes like the Manhunters or being imprisoned in the Labyrinth as is the fate of the 1st Lion Knight. We've now learnt from this release that the scholars are sponsored by the Lion Knight and the Scholar depicted here seems to be The Silent Barterer (based on the hunt event name), however we've never been told which of the three names we know belongs to her. We were told a long time ago that the three scholar's are called Sam, Ash and Rand, but which one is which has never been specified and in fact not having a name here leave us asking if those names have been retconned or not.

I do love these little peaks into the realm of the Golden Entity because Kingdom Death: Labyrinth is the game I most want to see realised. Seeing a dungeon crawler using the gear and AI/HL mechanics set in a place so bleak and lost as the Holy Lands is what I would so love to see announced some time in the future. For now I'll have to make do with the Manhunter, Lion Knight and his Scholars.

The Miniature

Because of the gameplay of this release the miniature matters a bit more than normal, the Scholar will be joining the survivors on the showdown board, so we want a miniature that not only looks good, but is also functional and has few to no frail parts. This is especially important when we're looking at the Photoresin releases as that material is more brittle than plastic, so knocking her over or handling her too roughly has an increased chance of breakage.

The scholar has only a few points where she overhangs her base, her hair, her scimitar and part of her loincloth. It's the last one I'm most concerned about (you can see multiple angles of the model over here on the KDM-Collector site, support them if you can afford it), this is in the kind of place and angle where another miniature base or a finger could put too much pressure on. This ultimately means one needs to be delicate and careful when using this miniature during her time on the board, so exercise caution.

The miniature herself is frankly stunning, the versions of these scholars we have had for the longest time are the three positioned on the Lion Knight's base and to be honest they've never really been up to the same standard as they're small and lacking in detail. Compared to modern sculpts they really do suffer a huge amount. Not so here, this model is beautiful, with layered hair and jewelry/decorations that look very different from the kind that we see in the plain of stone faces. This scholar looks like she's come from a different place in just about every aspect of her design. Even her lantern has a decorative pattern that we've not seen before. I really like this and it makes me excited for a potential Lion Knight redesign in the future.

The Gameplay

As mentioned above, this expansion is going in a new and fresh direction in that it is providing a framework for an 'ally' who will fight on the showdown board alongside the survivors. However, there's a step before we get to that because this is a basic hunt event replacement card which alters the first time that the hunt event 96 (Cloaked Stranger) is rolled. That triggers the Masked Barterer hunt event replacement.

This table is relatively simple but there's a weird inconsistency with this card, if you have the Lion Knight specific Secret Fighting Art Ageless Apprentice then you get to skip straight to the 8+ result. Which is of course a Lion Knight expansion specific interaction. Otherwise we have to offer a piece of gear by archiving it and roll on the table. The 1-2 result is just a net loss while the 3-7 result on the other hand has the survivor gain what is almost (but not quite) exactly the Hideous Disguise rare gear card also from the Lion Knight expansion. It is not mechanically the same, because the Hideous Disguise is a cursed gear card with other text and its cursed nature makes it possible to remove it from the survivor with the right tools and this roll result is effectively -1 gear slot +1 permanent strength. However, thematically it is this mask that is being stuck onto the survivor.

I would have found it a lot cleaner and more consistent with mask design (all masks are accessories that provide additional head armor) if this release had either provided an extra copy of the Hideous Disguise mask, had alternative text that referred to it or instead put a different gear card into the slot via the cursed mechanic. The current “mask” design we have here feels both messy and detached from the Lion Knight expansion despite the express connection given via Ageless Apprentice in the opening paragraph. So as someone who enjoys thematic mechanics that tie elements of different releases together I am disappointed by this.

The 8+ roll result is the part of this mini-release that breaks new ground, in exchange for that gear (hopefully stone noses, which is my go-to “hold this in the gear grid for trades” card) the Scholar joins the party for the upcoming showdown. This mechanic is covered by the following Trait card which has rules on the back and front of the card. The rules are mostly intuitive, the Scholar can't move through the same things survivors can't pass through, if any survivor is knocked back into her they stop and suffer collision, if the monster ends its movement where the Scholar is she repositions to the nearest unoccupied space are on the back of the card and the front of the card has the rest of the rules to cover her start space, what she does, how she avoids being hit by the monster and the way that she impacts rewards.

Like the Forge Priest this is a fairly elegant design that results in an additional unit that deals a consistent trickle of automatic wounds as long as you can keep the monster close enough to her. This is of course strong, but because the monster never targets her you can't automatically get away with leaving her to kill the monster while hiding somewhere else, many monsters move faster than her and even if you can remove all targets from the monster to try and force an instinct that's not guaranteed to be a safe solution because some instincts punish.

After the showdown we lose monster level resources and are given the Thespian Scimitar instead of those. So to complete our picture we'll look at that.

As a Scimitar this weapon currently has no viable mastery, so that is the first black mark against it. I am hopeful this will change in the future because I would love to see Scimitars, Saws, Tools and of course my beloved Thrown Weapons all get masteries. Weapons like this are never useless though because they can be utilised as the main weapon for someone training Fist & Tooth or especially Shield Mastery.

Our other keyword of note is the Finesse one, which works with the Blacksmith's Polishing Lantern, so that's a nice thematic keyword with some synergy baked into it. The affinities are solid enough and as the weapon doesn't need them that is all they need to be.

The interesting part of this weapon is the combination of its attack profile and abilities; this weapon is a (1/9+/4/Irreplacable/Barbed 4/Combo Finish 3) weapon. Combo Finish X is the new ability that comes in this box and it works as follows:

Combo Finish X: A gear special rule. At the end of your attack with this, if you inflicted X+ wounds, inflict another wound.

That means if this scimitar wounds the monster 3+ times in a single attack then it'll deal one extra wound, that seems a bit implausible when you consider the attack profile and in a similar way Barbed 4 looks odd on a 1 speed weapon unless you're running Frenzy. However, as you will have already read, there is another ability on this weapon and it is how the weapon can gain additional speed and accuracy. Each music innovation is +1 speed and each art innovation is +1 accuracy. This is a fun little piece of design that I like quite a bit, as a Thespian weapon it is dripped in thematics and this expresses that.

However this weapon's base strength of 4 is not great, Barbed 4 and higher speed numbers can help this, but that's not a consistent increase in strength and that means you'll need to lean on outside sources as the campaign grows towards the later parts. Because the timing surrounding how you'll gain this weapon is so unpredictable at times you'll get this early and it'll be very effective and at other times you'll gain it very late and it'll be almost useless. It's a similar story with the Scholar herself, the lower the level of the monster the faster she helps cut it down because monster design has earlier monsters have less wounds and be slower, the only real benefit she has against higher level monsters is that Hit Location/Toughness bypass the automatic wound represents.

Final Thoughts

The direction that this release and it's associated Forge Priest release are headed in is interesting, they are adding an additional element to the showdown which helps bring the world to life more, however this one demonstrates how a beta design is so much rougher and more awkward than the things that get to white box releases these days. There's a lot less polish here even if the miniature is leagues ahead of the one in the Forge Priest box. I like the concept, but I think that unless this one comes back as part of a white box release with the other two Scholars in the same box you don't need to worry about it. As such I don't recommend it for the gamers and if you missed out on it, that's OK.

Footnote:

Sorry this is less content than usual, our dog got sick last weekend so I've had a lot less time this week to test and write, we're also travelling to the mainland for a few days in May and the Screaming God is arriving next week so I'm working on getting some campaigns set up ready for that monster while also trying to write a few additional weeks ahead. As a teaser for the big projects, I've nearly got the Visual Guide for the Smog Singers put together and I need to finish one more campaign before I'm ready to review both the Pariah and the Red Witches!