Kingdom Death: Monster - Shut Up & Sit Down Review 

You know how people constantly die in this game and you have to make up new names? (You can only use survival abilities after you've named a character. That's a rule.) One of our players solved this problem by constantly inventing new names based on the old one. Edmure. Edmoor. Eddmure. Etmure. Ettmure. It was starting to drive us crazy, which was funny to him, so he continued. Then we fought the phoenix. It saw him. It unnamed him. He lost his name. Nobody could remember his name. He could no longer use survival abilities. And he could never again go by the same name, or he would cease to exist. The game literally made him break his naming scheme, lol. His new name was Edless, and his next character is called Ariah.

So is going Super Saiyan a part of the game or was that an unrelated event for the guy Quinns was playing with?

This is the first SU&SD video I ever saw, and it remains one of the best. I love Paul's presence in his reviews, and the general approach to thinking about board games that he encapsulates.

A phoenix looked at my character and their future children died.

KDM is a great game, when your friend owns it.

I've been following this game for years, and your review is going to make me finally pull the trigger. Great, now I can have another board game nobody will ever play sitting in a closet.

I keep coming back and watching this because it's such a wonderful piece of content. Love you Paul.

My favorite part of this review was Paul's recognition that people are just going to hear what they want to hear about the game.

"Fuzzy Groin: you hit the monster right in the ding dong." I can't take any of it seriously now.

Yeah, it sounds like a complex blend of tabletop RPG wedded to a full-fledged miniatures game, combined with the first few millennium of Civilization, In Darkest Dungeon.

lol that guy with "look at me" Goku hair XD

I rarely comment on RU-vid, but: This is one of the shortest reviews of KD:M I've seen, and still the best by far.

I can't believe you're friends with sonic the hedgehog.

That guy's hair is wicked sick dude. EDIT: That's not meant in a mean way btw. I think it's quite impressive.

Looks far to overwhelming, I'd absolutely love to play it with 3 people who know the rules perfect, but to buy this, learn it, then teach it to 3 other people? No way.

Looks like this wanted to be a computer game.

Great finishing line. Never before...did punching the balls off a lion, produce so much paper work.

Probably the best closing remark of any RU-vid video

It's really interesting going back and hearing that initial ramble. Kickstarters are so core to a lot of games, you now routinely expect a second one if the game turns out good. They very often hit the common market now with very little exclusives in a lot of cases. Kinda just funny looking back and remembering "Oh yeah, they kinda started out as a weird niche with a promise you'd only get the game from here".

that moment when you realise all the Spinal Tap references are a call-forward to the prog rock analogy at the end of the review

So thrilled to have your take on this. Thanks for the work! Love the snow!

What ON EARTH is that guy's hair doing at 4:50?! Is that a requirement for playing?!

The Random Event Combinations in Kingdom Death Monsters sound like Dwarf Fortress

"You dont really win, you just do a little better each time"- Cleveland Brown

"None more black" - SUSD. If that's not a box quote, I don't know what is.

And you forgot to mention the add-ons that can vary the campaign quite a bit, you can replace many of the huntable monsters with others, get new events and even change the basic structure of the campaign through some of the bigger expansions (like immortal heroes etc.).

I counted 3 This is Spinal Tap references. Bravo.

"You are masticated" If a game doesn't tell me this then I don't want it

Really good review, and I like all the footage of snow. That raccoon was so cute!

Amazing review Paul! One note is that the random event deck exists because of encounters like the lonely tree where you shuffle another card in the hunt deck I believe. This game is definitely polarizing and I for one am on the side that wants to live in said blackest of boxes.

I came back to rewatch this with the arrival of thr Gambler's Chest. I wonder how can they create such masterpiece reviews. You guys are insanely good, this video is really a great content

I feel like the In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida comparison is a very apt one, as "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida" means nothing, and just comes from how Doug Ingle slurred the words "in the garden of Eden" while he was off his face on cheap red wine, which is probably a pretty decent analogy for Kingdom Death as a game.

Great review! Thanks for making detailed, subjective opinion instead of worshiping this title as a matter of principle. You guys are the best board game reviewers because they comes from playing and testing, not from agreements with board game companies and from sponsoring.

Glad to see a review from SuSD! I like you guys a lot and was curious to see what you thought about the game. I wrote up some reactions while watching your video. Sorry it's quite long! Your point about not playing with 4 players is a good one and one shared by most of the community, from what I've seen. Player elimination is a core part of this game an An important thing to note about the version you're reviewing right now is that it includes expansion monsters (just in case folks are thinking all the content there is from the core game). Folks can go to board game geek to find lists of what's in the core game. Early game repetition is definitely a bit of a pain. There's a new expansion being introduced that lets you start developed at about the halfway point of the game. That's not an experience you'll get out of the core game, though. I've found the folks who tend to be most enthusiastic about the game are also fans of the roguelike video game genre, which can also involve large amounts of repetition while trying to achieve mastery, and I can imagine folks who don't like the roguelike genre are going to be more likely to dislike this particular board game. As to the sex: your response is exactly why I like this game's aesthetic. Kingdom Death juxtaposes the sleazy and the obscene/grotesque in a way that cannot be ignored. It's repulsive, and I'm not sure if that repulsiveness is the intent of the creator, but that repulsiveness reveals things about the way Western culture objectifies the human body (and especially the bodies of women), and, to me, what it reveals is fascinating and in keeping with the game's body horror motif. Does this justify it? I don't know if you can ever justify reductive objectification. I do think it communicates something worth thinking about, though. In addition, while this doesn't excuse some of the stylistic choices, there are actually some surprisingly progressive moments of representation in the game. Most of the plastic figures for men and women are equally represented, for instance, outside a few unfortunate cleavage windows, and there are quite a few instances of naked men in the book to go along with the naked women. There's a clear disparity in the intent of their representation, with the men never really being represented in a titilating way, but the new Kickstarter has taken some small steps to even things up again by producing "male pinups" that are explicitly designed to represent men the way that the game already represents women. If you're strongly opposed to sexualizing and objectifying human bodies, this doesn't solve the issue of representation, but there's an entrenched tendency in the miniatures industry to sell cheesecake miniature representations of women, and I can't think of any other company in the market that has acknowledged that representation and made a concrete effort to make up for the disparity in some way. If you compare the representation of women in games like Conan the Barbarian and Super Dungeon Explore, for instance, those games seem to exclusively represent women as objects to be observed and men as subjects acting in the world. I think Kingdom Death, in its bizarre, awkward way, is trying to represent men and women in both ways, and to do so in a way that does not masquerade as polite or acceptable. In the game itself, the women are equal to the men in every way outside of their biological ability to produce children, and they're as often depicted in the art defeating monsters as the men. Kingdom Death's explicit rules enabling same sex partnership is also something I appreciate. There's also inclusion of mechanics for transgender characters in certain of the expanded materials for the game, though those materials are bogged down by the company's tendency to rely on infantile humor. It's fun, to me, to see a game that's willing to include options for people to play characters who are like they are regardless of who they happen to be, and to have an equal (and equally bleak) chance in the world regardless of their sexual orientation and how they choose to identify. I really like your prog rock metaphor. You have me wondering, now, if my love for King Crimson is in some way related to my fascination with Kingdom Death.

The bit with the branch was fucking hilarious.

Paul I am not sure if you are really aware of this, but your choices of words and phrases and your communication throughout this review is BRILLIANT. Just a stunning, epic and well thought out review that really borders on poetic at the wonderful conclusion. I say wonderful because it's an amazing conclusion and so well worded, a conclusion that cleverly arrives at the realization that we are all different and will respond differently. Not sure how to say it well, but trying to point out that you did a tremendous job here, thank you!

"It's a fine line between stupid and clever." - "How much more black could this be, and the answer is ... none." - In other words Kingdom Death: Monster is the Spinal Tap of board games. :) (It probably even has a miniature Stonehenge in it.)

Me currently putting together the 3 busty female models from echoes of death 3: "what do you mean it's sexist"

Brilliant with the dribbling out of Spinal Tap references!

Great in depth review! Not a game I have the money for, nor one I'd have the time to invest in... but great to finally get a glimpse of how it plays and what it does. I feel like my curiosity is finally sated!

One thing about tokens/cards/character sheets: Permanent information is on your character sheet, random information is drawn from cards, and tokens are temporary and are all wiped away after a showdown. There are also the square gear cards, but that's intuitive enough. They're items. Information is in a lot of places, but it makes sense once you get into it.

I am definitely one of those people who absolutely love this game. I’ve played it for hours at a time and only stopped cuz the other people playing with me got tired.

nice raccoon

I dropped a $700 bollock on v1.5 Kickstarter. It's just a game right up my street. Did I just see a "Lion Testes" card ?

As for the Hunt Cards, because you can gain special things that you mix into the deck to randomly appear in some campaigns.

I don't agree with the statements from about 22:00 to 25:00 , but the rest of this was pretty much spot on. (Not counting the conclusion, but that's subjective to everyone.) One thing I would like to point out in the new Kickstarter is the expansion which will let you skip the early phases of the game and jump right in to a settlement that's pretty far along. Beginners should definitely fight the White Lion a few times to learn the flow of things and how to craft and guide the settlement. Once you're a pro, it's pretty safe to skip all that because you know what you're doing and ready to jump right in to the harder stuff. And yeah, it is definitely my thing. If you're not looking forward to this game beating you up, sometimes unfairly, it's not the game for you.

i love the humor of the game, its like the childish humor is the way the survivors get through the crushing depression they have to be constantly going through without just offing themselves.

Your kickstarter horse rant made me subscribe. Cheers.

"think of something that's really big" *imagines the Titanic* "no, no something bigger than that" *k, imagines... NY city* "right, double that" :o "now think of like, a whole shelf of those" :O

My friend bought the game and I played it several times. But I soon got bored of it: too frustrating and so little pay off. When you "succeed" ie. survived, (only to die some unimaginable death later...) it felt more like complete luck and random chance, than something I did. And I got the same feeling when my character died. I'd invested time and mental energy into seeing my character somehow survive several encounters and I would be happy, only to have one bad die roll or encounter snuff him out in the blink of an eye. For those who love that kind of emotional payoff, they will love the game: for me - not my cup of tea. For the same frustration, I'd rather play golf... At least the scenery is nicer...

It's a game that's also for sale in mass production now. I'm saying this as of April 2019. I'm pretty sure it was in mass production way before this date. Just back ordered a lot. Now I got mine delivered in about 2 weeks.

Great review. Very well done. It's also a beautiful video for all the snow and outdoor filming. I could watch this again just for the snow and animals. Lol.

25:40 is the moment when I felt like I might love this. Also that's a ton of spinal tap references

Just came back from a successful and very hard hunt. Pick a card: Murder... Your most experienced survivor was killed by your second most experienced survivor... Roll a die: low value... Your second (now most) experienced survivor got executed for its crime. Oh and BTW, on your next card you lose 50% of your total amount of resources you have been collecting for gear.

27:30 - "How much more black could a box be? The answer is none. None more black." Get outta here with your Spinal Tap references!

Aside from the excellent review, this is the best produced video you guys have ever done. really liked the flow of it and the simple location work. I'm pretty sure it was all in focus as well, which is no small praise in the world of board game review videos. EDIT: That's a very untrustworthy head of hair on that young man, what is he hiding? Or is he just moving much faster in his own dimension?

Missed the pledge for this. Now I can't find a copy for less than $350. It looks fun but anything over $150 seems like a real stretch.

And that is real Dark Souls/Bloodborne on board!

I love that dudes hair in the shots where they are playing the game.

As an owner of the game I can say the amount of paperwork involved is pretty intense. Especially when a survivor who had a glob load of stuff dies. I've found it much easier being able to keep it set up but the packing and noting down of gear for the departing survivors is quite a load to bear.

no one is gonna talk about the guy with crazy hair or the black hand sticking out of the wall? ...alrighty

Been playing KDM as a two player over lockdown. Yes it's messy and bitty and such a pain in the ass sometimes, and your getting punched in the face constantly, for reasons that are mostly not your fault BUT THEN..........you finally kill the horrible mess of thing that's been throwing your guys around like dog toys for the last hour and it feels so so very good. Then you harvest the carcass and build a bad ass weapon from it! And for some reason... you keep going.

Oh, what a good review. Not just of this game, but of any product. This, THIS is how you do reviews.

Bravo! It's reviews like this that separate SU&SD from the pack. I've already gone down a rabbit hole with Shadows of Brimstone, so I don't have time, money, or patience for this game. But still fun to see one Englishman's journey.

For the hunt event cards, the made those to future proof the game for expansions. As you get more expansions you add extra hunt events to the deck.

I'm gonna make a game that's just called Shitworld, a modern-set lite RPG where everything that happens is just as shitty as possible, without relief, for 25 grueling, wholly dice-based missions with names like "Pet Store Fire" and "Something Something Dark Souls." When you finish the last mission, you open a beautifully-made little wooden treasure chest. Inside is a cyanide capsule for each player. KS millions, here I come!

I feel like KDM might be better for more groups as a D&D thing where the DM can carefully fudge things to keep things difficult and deadly, but not completely campaign ruining because a single bad die roll ruined everything.

I'd say this is experimental black metal. Only a few will understand it fully, but those who do are in for something special.

I have a character named lucky, my group was fighting the Screaming antelope and my character got eaten by it. 2 other characters were permanently dead and the last character alive was disemboweled and had to injure wound it twice with fist and tooth with a -1 strength token. We did the math and it was a 6.7% chance for us to get out alive. The disemboweled played got the needed hits and my character lucky got the disemboweled character out, in which my character immediately murdered that character. Shit happens lmao.

0:26 common reaction to a post-2000 dungeon crawler. Some are so overwhelmingly complex and drag so much, they had rather been made into video games instead of board games. KDM is clearly a great example of this.

This is Spinal Tap mark 5 jazz improv opening for a puppet show

Are we ever going to see Cthulhu Wars?

The only review where i can hear "river of poop" and know for sure it's not a metaphor

Thanks for the review SuSD! I backed the first KD:M kickstarter way back when, thinking it looked like an excellent RPGxBoard Game hybrid. In the time between backing and receiving the product though, my wife and I went through some traumatic events and found ourselves feeling a little sensitive. As a result, we ended up bouncing off KD:M like a brick wall. I opened the box, flipped through the manual, closed it, and put the whole thing up on ebay without playing a session. I wanted to share my experience to highlight to potential buyers that this is a horror game, emphasis on the horror. There is gore and dismemberment, a lot of disconcerting psycho-sexual elements (you can google the Forge God if you'd like an example of what I mean), and a tone that seemed constantly oppressive and disheartening. Not saying it shouldn't exist, and I think it's a perfect product for a certain audience, I just wanted to comment that it wasn't for me and its a lot of money, so think hard about whether its for you or not. Beyond that, I wish the creator all the success in the world with the update on KS and hope everyone who buys a copy has a wonderful (in the most horrific sense of the word) experience.

Kingdom Death has many issues, one of the biggest in my point of view is that while your survivors are nothing more than throw away characters there is too much work involved handling and bookkeeping them. Each one has a stat sheet and equipment cards but on top you also keep track of things like fighting arts where you can not keep the card and have to remember (?) or write down everything. And the list goes on and on. The worst thing is that while there are many unnecessary cards like shown in the review you have too few cards otherwise: why are there only 3 cards of each item, even for basic thing you will want to craft 4 times so that each survivor can have one. We started to photocopy these things to make things easier... And i completely agree that it is overblown and over designed: there are so many things in it that could have been left out without changing the experience at all. And keep the bookkeeping nightmare down... Where I do not agree is that it has excellent miniatures: I'm a miniature gamer so I own quite a lot of them and I'm not sure what the target audience for these miniatures is. For a board gamer the miniatures and especially the survivors are a nightmare as you have to assemble them all and they sometimes have dozens of fiddly bits for a single miniature. For a miniature gamer the same survivors are also not very good: they all look very samey due to the limited poses. The only exceptions are the monsters but unfortunately I think that the miniatures included in the base game are mostly boring: a lion with hands ... come on ... So as a boardgamer I would rather like to have pre-assembled miniatures while as a miniatures gamer I would want possibly fewer but individual miniatures. Like the ones now coming in the new kickstarter gamblers chest. My conclusion: the game could have profited immensely from streamlining it in almost every aspect. As it stands now it is a huge money and time sink and while we have played it over the last year I'm not sure if we should not have played something else ...

He says "...like it's turned up to 11". Subscribed on that. Long live Nigel.

I have played Kingdom Death:Monsters for going on 90 hours now,i play it with my girlfriend and every now and then a 3rd party. Best comparison? Dark souls, it will never give you the full story, everything is brutal, it is random, and when you beat an obstacle for the first few times it gives that "Hell yeah, we/i did this!". For the sake of the emotions this game will bring to you and the quality of it all, and how differnt it is is why i love it, a single session will have brought Joy,Sadness,Exitement,comradery,rivalry,wonder,arguments,feelings of being terrified. No other board-game have ever brought anywhere near what this game does. And a sidenote: If you wanna try it before you buy it, there are really good versions on it on tabletop simulator. This guy´s review is a bit vague on the game, but the game itself is pretty vague and dark, and gritty,evil....You should try it atleast once, if its for you its gonna grab your soul.

The reason they have multiple basic hunt event cards is that each monster and its levels have a different hunt track layout. Sometimes they have more basic hunt events and sometimes less, and they are all in different positions so it wouldn't make sense to print them on the table itself. Not a valid criticism at all.

I got this on Tabletop Simulator so I could play this with a friend across the world, it's definitely justifies the purchase of Tabletop Simulator

You mistake one thing. This is a glorified RPG. That puts all the paperwork in its proper context.

The duplicate hunt cards are so you can track if you have done a hunt event for that space. When you are done you remove the card. This is so you do not accidentally roll on the hunt event table an extra time by accident. Lots of things like that are not automatically apparent, but become apparent when encounter a situation that makes it apparent.

4:54 what is happening with that man's hair? Did he go super saiyan and forget how to go back?

I died seeing the queen with her yellow baby attached to the penis frog. Holy crap. I almost laughed and woke up everyone in my home. That was too great, 11/10 game, will con my friends into buying it instead of me.

That guy's hair is super saiyan 1 without the blonde.

I'm sorry but that guy's hair in the flashback just wiped my mind of everything I just heard till this point.... I'm not far in to the video, but I'm not sure I can get that epic do out of my mind... it's encapsulated my attention

If I get this, I'm painting the box over with vantablack.

I really appreciate the depth of this review, I was super excited to pick this game up but I think I might hold off until I can get a consensus with my playgroup of if this is something we would all be into and enjoy.

I already had your prog-rock metaphor in the chamber, ready to go. I think the art style evokes it naturally. I am one of those music lovers who has to try everything, and ends up really appreciating the little nuggets buried under all of that. I cannot really fathom having the income to afford this level of esoteterica.

Maybe an App or software tool would help keep all those modifiers in check and reduce paper work. I've been working on an app for Twilight Imperium because it too can have a lot of modifiers and what if's? that players tend to forget during game play.

This actually sounds amazing. I wish I had the time and money for it. I understand the point about playing it is time lost not playing other games, but that's honestly the same opportunity cost that comes with every game, as well as every movie, book and play you consume. The question is what you get back from it.

These reviews are absolutely amazing. Just want to say thank you as I was looking for a channel like yours for some time. I am happy to have found you. Keep it up. You are the Angry (Funny) Joe of the board games world.

Thanks for the honest review. Now my wife will punch my bald off when I buy it.

This is my favourite nature documentary :)

Watching this with 1.6 pre orders announced this weekend. Considering if £270 is worth it!!!

This is a good review, and a fair one i think at that, i differ for the conclusions as i do think that KDM is the bohemian rapsody of boardgames... the BIG DOWNSIDE for this boardgame is that requires you to find 3 other people willing to invest the time for it... and with the dark theme (i dont even like it) and the amount of time neded to play it is a hard mission. I have found playing by myself, with 1 or even 2 other people that the amount of paperwork drowns the game experience, especially if they are not investing the time, reading the rules or paying attention to the game (you play catan and TtoR with these kind of people), but the campaing i got to play with 3 gamers its by far the BEST boardgame experience in my life to this point, and im just hoping to give it another try in the close future. On other topics the new KS is adding a way to enter a campaign in an advanced lantern year, theres also rules for skipping the prologue. Mi conjclusio Mi conclusion: This is a GREAT game but you need the right people for it, same can be said about other GREAT grand games, TI3, Dune, D&D... you need the right people, or it will be a miserable experience ;)

Seeing the same table set up with several different boards reminds of how few tables I own.

That Descent flashback is older than the oldest video on the channel. I assume then that 12 year old videos from the channel were taken down?

As a somewhat older gamer, this game fits into a very familiar space for me. Once games like this were advertised in Dragon Magazine as mail order specialty products designed by some guy who was willing to put his huge, messy works out into the public space. One game a friend of mine ordered came on hundreds of xeroxed sheets in a huge three-ring binder and promised to be the most detailed RPG ever created. Later, actual books would show up in game stores by strange people with odd philosophies; games that didn't quite work and were overburdened with detail. To me KD:M is a bad game on its face. The rules systems are super-antiquated, being driven by huge matrices of randomly generated outcomes. The difference is that it arrives in the era of Kickstarter-funded games with lavish components and the designer is good at soliciting talented sculptors and artists to produce something extravagant enough that people will throw real money at it. But underneath, it's that same old silly game from an ad in the back of Dragon in 1980. For me, I want more out of a game system.

"First published on 16th Dec, 2016." I appreciate WHY you wrote this, but it's still funny to me.

I'm a little confused by some of your review, in particular your statement of the basic hunt cards as being an example of unnecessary overproduction. The hunt track is populated by the different event card types in an order specific to the quarry you're hunting. This means it can't be printed on the track itself and I'm not sure how much of the price tag is increased using cards over tokens or something similar. The second part is about the level of paperwork involved. As a long time pen and paper role-player I find the way KD:M handles character progression to be quite streamlined especially considering the short life expectancy some of the survivors have. The primary goal of the game is to keep your settlement alive and this involves crafting and expanding using the resources you find and to do this some level of bookkeeping is required. Apart from a few disagreements with your review I still found your closing comment priceless. P.S. there's nothing wrong with excessive Prog-Rock ;)