Screaming God Early Impressions

As you may be aware if you're in the Discord, the Screaming God Expansion arrived this week, I prepared in advance for this one by setting up a campaign that is at a suitable level to start playing with it, so that means I'll probably be reviewing it, the Pariah and the Red Witches all around the same time (as it's the last campaign before I write reviews for those Nemesis monsters). There won't be many pictures here, this isn't an unboxing post, it's more just some early thoughts and impressions, all of which are subject to change over time.

This is the second ever Node 4 monster, which means that unless it is a disaster (spoilers, it is not), it's a welcome release because I don't want to always be fighting against the King in the late game. I value novelty, variation and theme more than anything else in my games. One large advantage about this being the second released Node 4 monster is we're now getting a picture of what these monsters are going to be like and the power level for them.

One really neat aspect of this box is that it has a baked in Vignette, which serves as a part of campaign progression (if you want, it is optional) and also as a low stakes introduction to the monster and its mechanics. I'll get a little more into that later on, the main things I wanted to note here are that it is really neat that this has been included. Giving players the option to have a dry run against the Screaming God means that the first settlement showdown has players with some familiarity with the mechanics, the monster's tricks and the overall power level. I've run through this vignette twice now at this point and I think it's really well balanced, my first attempt didn't have any showdown deaths, though there was a number of severe injury rolls and only one survivor was lost in the repeat.

Part of that I think is because I'm already very familiar with the mechanics of "Rolling Road" games; one of the earliest board games I played was Thunder Road from MB Games (The other was Dragonquest from Games Workshop) and I also played a fair bit of Necromunda: Ash Wastes back when I was in Wales. As such the way that the terrain slides across the board and the units have to avoid falling behind is something that's quite intuitive.

The showdown has two new board pieces which are placed on either short edge of the showdown board, one of these represents "The Horizon" (aka the front of the board) and is the place where the large blocky Labyrinth pieces (which remind me of Mario's Thwomps) start before they hurtle onto the showdown board. I noted almost immediately that one doesn't want to stand on the far left side of the board if you can help it, because otherwise you may get slammed by one of those rocks.

The far right of the board is where the stampeding herd of Antelopes is located, it is basically a death plane and avoiding being knocked into this is a key part of the showdown's puzzle. It's also the first place where there was a bit of friction. You see it is designed to sit over the top of the rightmost column (#22), shortening the entire showdown board slightly, this isn't a problem if you have a printed neoprane mat board, it's also not a huge problem if you're using the cardboard board, but if you're using the 3D Plastic board you'll either have to live with a slope, use lifts to even out the herd board or remove the tiles and still have a little bit of lift.

I went with the last option as you can see here, it looks the best for readability and really makes it clear where the playable area ends. It's also still a little sloped. Not a big deal to be honest, but it is something you'll want to solve if things being at a disorganised angle are not your jam.

Before I get onto the various other bits of praise, there are a couple of shortcomings I noticed. First of all, the vignette survivors do not have miniatures to represent them. When I saw their cards I expected to see them all on a sprue, but they're not there among the six sprues that came in the box.

There is also only one single Screaming God Indomitable Resource and associated Pattern. I expected to see at least three of them here in order to provide some variety and match The King, but that's not the case and considering what happened with the Frogdog (less Indomitable Patterns with an extra one coming in Survivors of Death I) it is hard for me to not be cynical about this. I am now wondering if we'll get the vignette survivors in some separate box and if on top of that we'll be getting multiple Screaming God Indomitable Survivors over the coming months. I hope that's not the case, but if it is I really hope it's just one box with the vignette survivors and multiple Indomitable Resource/Pattern cards all together.

Also there is a low amount of Gear cards when compared to the King, this compounds with the low Indomitable Resource situation, however if all the gear cards are interesting and high quality this may well not be an issue. We'll see how things shake out, but I must admit based on the early artwork I saw I was thinking we'd get a prosthetics based settlement location in addition to the main one. Perhaps it is the King that is the exception here.

The actual miniatures in the box are all incredible, the Screaming God has looked great since its early concepts and it still remains a phenomenal sculpt that looks really imposing on the board. Likewise the Parasite Queen is nothing short of stunning. She's had some revisions since the early 3D renders, but I think the updates still look incredible. There's even a choice of heads now, you can either have M3gan or a veiled cowl. I suspect we're going to see more of the veil head than the unveiled one because it's far creepier. Here's a picture of them both as I haven't decided which one I'll use.

There are also four Illuminated Figures, which are minions associated with the Parasite Queen, we've seen some of the miniatures before hand, they're just as gorgeous in plastic. I do hope that supplemental boxes are made available if people want to purchase more. Like Spiderlings they are technically unlimited in number, but we've never had the opportunity to purchase additional Spooders. The spawn rate of the figures is what matters for this, 4 may be more than sufficient, we'll see over time. I just know that 6 Spiderlings is not enough for the L3 Spidicules, the Parasite Queen may be different.

In truth before receiving the box I thought the Illuminated Figures would be a new Encounter Monster and I was rather excited about that, but instead they're minions which is fine, but it also means I don't know how they impact on things until I play through the back half of this campaign. Likewise I can't really comment on how the Queen showdown is until I've been through it at least once. I'm hopeful it'll unseat the Gold Smoke Knight as my prefered finale, but we'll see. I hoped the Godhand would take the #1 slot, but I still prefer Old Smokey.

I've not assembled the Screaming Armor miniatures at this point, I'm going to see which loadouts I like using the most and then build those. As Big Deno was also saying on his Marvel Champions stream, there's so many survivor miniatures to paint and I'm having to be more selective with which ones I paint because I don't have much time spare each week.

I haven't played the Parasite Queen showdown, but because I set up a settlement at Lantern Year 15 in advance she has a relatively smooth swap in over the Gold Smoke Knight so I should be able to get my first play against her completed this month. I have read through the rules section and she seems to be a very tight, thematic design. However, be aware that the miniature is very complex and at time of writing there is not a build guide on the official site, I hope that is addressed very quickly because this Queen is I think the most complicated miniature since the Phoenix hands (which feels somehow appropriate given their nature).

So far then I think I'm very positive on the expansion overall, the importance of good positioning and constant motion in the Screaming God showdown is such a delight, as is the moving terrain. It's wonderful to have something that really showcases how dynamic the game's movement can be in a different way to how the Black Knight did it. I suspect this is going to be a darling expansion for years to come.

If anyone has any specific questions, shoot them in the comments and I'll do my best to answer them but please avoid spoiling anything too much. Overall this is an exciting release and it's filling a space in the game that benefits from more options, just like the Black Knight and Red Witches have done.