Are we the hunters or the prey?

Today was Kingdom Death: Monster day. After getting our feet wet yesterday, we explored the game a bit more. 💪

The fundamental game systems are quite basic. You mostly resolve everything by rolling dice. However the enjoyment comes from the kind of emergent story-telling that comes from the different things that happen during a game: be it critical hits, permanent serious injuries, disorders or just random rolls on an event. Also the monster AI cards and hit locations are quite clever.

For those not familiar with Kingdom Death: Monster. This game is not a story-based campaign game, it resembles more a video game instead. You create a settlement that you can improve and where you can craft things, then send out your characters to hunt and earn more resources which you use in turn to improve your settlement and characters further. All the while the years keep counting and the difficulty keeps ramping up. You could be wiped out entirely too, meaning you have to start over.

This is the basic flow of the game:
1. You go on a hunt to stalk a quarry, which is basically drawing random event cards and encountering things on the way.
2. The showdown phase, where an arena battle happens against your quarry.
3. The settlement phase where you improve your characters and settlement.
4. Repeat from 1. 🔄

While we enjoy the game we simply cannot understand the pricing. The amount of miniatures, cards and gameplay content is nowhere near Gloomhaven or Middara Act 1 for example, however the price is somehow 3-4 times of those games. 🤷🤷‍♂️