Kingdom Death Monster: 1st Butcher Fight - Part 1

Transcript

We’re finally fighting the butcher. This is going to be a two-parter because of how late it is and the editing needed.

The Butcher’s Mechanics

Right away, the butcher’s trait is intimidating: at the beginning of each monster’s turn, reshuffle the hit location deck. That means we can’t stack the deck in our favor across turns. Our spear guy used the cat eye circlet to peek at hit locations—one of them said “Butcher is killed at this location. It is beheaded.” We definitely want to try for that.

Using the rawhide headband to look at AI cards revealed some terrifying options. One card would give a random severe head injury—very likely to just kill someone. I opted for the screaming card instead, which deals one brain damage per monster level to all survivors. I’d rather risk brain injuries over a couple turns than someone definitely getting killed immediately.

The Archer Falls

Our bow carrier kept missing with bone darts—she’s just not very accurate. When she finally hit with the catgut bow, the failure reaction triggered a head hunter attack. The butcher moved five spaces to her and hit twice, both to the head. With her minus four on severe injury rolls, an eight became a four: decapitation. She died instantly.

All because she couldn’t hit anything. Rest in peace.

Fighting Back

Clenestra came in furious, landing three hits from the blind spot with the lion beast guitars. Sophia pounced with the bone club and landed hits too, but then the trap card triggered—everyone got knocked down and knocked back. The butcher teleported to the furthest survivor’s lantern, got free attacks, and things spiraled.

The fight became a desperate back-and-forth. The butcher’s screaming kept dealing brain damage each turn, Sophia was bleeding heavily with four tokens, and we were struggling to get wounds through the hit location deck.

Cliffhanger

We end part one with all survivors knocked down and the butcher about to take his turn. Can they survive and come back from this? Find out next time.