Adam Poots has come out of his secret design lair providing some Kingdom Death: Monster updates for backers, and those interested in the project.
For context, Kingdom Death: Monster's Kickstarter campaign started back in 2016 and is the passion project of board game designer Adam Poots. The campaign was a massive success, earning roughly $12 million on a goal of $100,000 and reaching all of its intended stretch goals. While the core game itself has undergone multiple iterations, currently up to version 1.5 with 1.6 being available for pre-order on their website, the past six years or so has been dedicated to polishing and producing these stretch goal expansions for backers.
In a series of comments on the Kingdom Death: Monster's Kickstarter page Poots gave players a look at how things were coming along. The first big announcement was an update on the farthest along expansion, Gambler's Chest, specifically that the plastic miniatures have finally arrived. It's just a matter now of making sure that the models reach Poots' notoriously high standards. As it stands right now, the aim is to have the expansion ready to go to the printers by August, but that will most likely change. Poots was quick to mention that if shipping does happen during Q4 of this year, a logistical nightmare for all involved, that he would happily be paying additional shipping costs out of pocket to prevent any additional fees going towards backers. However, he mentions such generosity may not continue to future shipments. Once this ships, Poots said that he'd provide some more information in the struggles they've run into over the past couple of years, but right now all his work is on the Gambeler's Chest Expansion.
As for the other expansions and material still coming to Kingdom Death: Monster, marking Wave 3 of ongoing content, updates were brief but informative. For Campaigns of Death, the expansion which, in addition to adding new narrative scenarios will allow players to partially make their own campaigns using a new Node system, Poots mentions that over a year of work has been put into it already. Basic scripts have been written for the scenarios, and the sculpts for the new monsters it will introduce have been made. The Inverted Mountain has gotten all of its monsters finalized except for its endgame encounter known as the Mountain Man which needs more playtesting, and there is more balancing that needs to happen given the expansion's focus on the Insanity mechanic.
In a brief sidebar, he was mentioned that tiles like the Showdown Board is still being tweaked since it would effectively add modular terrain to the game and all the side effects that go with it. Furthermore, he mentions that The Wanderers will most likely ship alongside the Gambler's Chest given how much of their base is built into that material But the one with the least amount of work done so far are The Abyssal Woods, mostly due to Poots helping coordinate training an entire team of developers to his vision for the game as well as logistical issues that happened due to COVID-19.
Considering how much of a labor of love Kingdom Death: Monster is, it is great to see updates like these keeping fans informed. Given that Poots himself wishes for this game to stand the test of time, it shows in every little considerate step being taken and a testament to his team's work ethic to be so willing to share.
