Это амери с созданием истории своего поселения. Пролог вообще отыгрывается за 30 минут и не вызывает никакого челенджа, т.к. там спецом выбраны простые карты поведения монстра, типа ударь, наори. Да и сам лев весьма предсказуемый монстр. Но по факту, это самый слабый монстр, нужный для того, чтобы собрать первые сеты оружия/брони. А вообще, для знакомства с игрой лучше всего играть в виньетку Гигальва, где даются сразу прокаченные персонажи и уникальный лев. И да, игре 10 лет уже почти. Потому многие механики уже не воспринимаются как новые. И на счёт lifestyle game согласен.
Тут любой обзор по игромеханике может быть воспринят как сполер. Т.к. часто описываются особенности дополнения и монстра, которые приятнее постигать партией в процессе игры.
Есть сполеры!!! Spidicules - Speaking of Spidicules. This spider's got a rather expansive expansion. I wouldn't say he/she adds a lot of new mechanics to the game, but his/her (its? Q's?) rulebook is packed full of thematic events and interesting abilities that play around with the theme of the monster. I'd say Spidicules feels more like a particularly fleshed out huntable monster rather than a game changing expansion that really alters the way you'll play the game. The Phoenix gets one event, for instance, whereas Spidicules seems to get around five.
The biggest mechanical things I'd say the expansion adds are a hunt event that changes the "overwhelming darkness" hunt event on the hunt track board (this is the card that it shares with the Flower Knight), spiderling mini monsters (they're in the box! don't worry!), which can show up in fights with non-spidicules monsters as egg terrain which can hatch over the course of a battle, and a fighting art that can "level up" over the course of a campaign, becoming more and more powerful assuming you can keep a survivor around long enough.
A final thing that might be important to folks: the expansion rulebook recommends replacing the Endless Screams hunt event with the hunt event that lets you meet Spidicules if you want to include Spidicules in a new campaign. That means Spidicules seems to actually be closer to the Gorm and the Screaming Antelope in terms of power level and time in the campaign you'd be hunting him. If you want a later monster, one of the other beasties is probably going to be a better pick.
Есть сполеры!!! Slenderman - Slenderman includes a few minor mechanical changes to the game. It includes an innovation that can be leveled up multiple times over the course of the game, for instance, which is pretty neat. Its theme also seems like it'll play really well on the table. Slenderman is all about isolating survivors and messing with them when they're alone. It can disappear off the board in the middle of a fight and keep attacking while not immediately reappearing, for instance, and its events largely center around only specific members of a settlement realizing that its chilling out around the fire and the like. Very slendermanlike.
A thing to keep in mind is that the expansion rulebook recommends that slenderman's introduction event replace the Armored Strangers event. Now this is awesome, because Armored strangers goes a long way to define how core game campaigns play out (its one of the first things repeat players learn to start planning for). Changing that event changes the way the whole campaign can develop. On the other hand, Slenderman might not play nicely with the two major campaign variant expansions, neither of which include that event. You can probably still slot it in, but you'll probably end up changing the intended feel of the campaigns and you'll also significantly increase difficulty. If you're looking for an expansion that changes the core game experience, I think Slenderman's one of the better small ones for that. If you're looking for an expansion that you can plug and play with all of your other expansions, you might want to look elsewhere.
Есть сполеры!!! Manhunter - Manhunter's, uh... you know when I mentioned other nemesis monsters having special encounters but being more than brutal enough to make facing them still a worrying proposition? Yeah. Manhunter. Manhunter for days. The gear I've taken a look at from the expansion is pretty sweet, but if you decide to take the Manhunter on you better never lose a battle against him. Imagine combining the Plague event with Armored Strangers. That's basically the Manhunter. He'll be back, again and again, and if you don't beat him as he gets progressively stronger and stronger he's going to hunt down, enslave, and murder all of your best dudes again, and again, and again.
That's not to say he doesn't look awesome. He looks totally awesome. He's just looking, to me, like something you'd put into a campaign if you really wanted to enhance difficulty. It's great to have that option, but be ready for it.
Manhunter's also pretty grimdark. He adds Masochism and Sadism to the game, for instance, and, thematically, slavery. He'd fit in great with that Accept Darkness/Dragon King/Lion God combo, but I have trouble imagining him in the same campaign as the Lion Knight.
Есть сполеры!!! Lonely Tree - This one's a lot larger than the Green Knight Armor mini expansion, with its own rulebook and the whole nine yards, but it IS quite different from the other expansions so I feel it fits here. Essentially, rather than hunting the Lonely Tree as a quarry or facing it as a traditional nemesis that follows a timeline, you can randomly run into it as a hunt event while out looking for other monsters.This is a pretty neat intro mechanic, in my opinion, and I think, as long as its not oddly priced, the Lonely Tree's value just for the opportunity to expand the ways in which you encounter monsters. As promised in the Kickstarter updates, the Lonely Tree can also upgrade other monsters. Rather than just upgrading the Lion and Phoenix, however, it seems that the Lonely Tree's upgrades can impact pretty much any monster. This means the Lonely Tree expansion's also liable to function well as a supplement to pretty much all the other expansions.In terms of major changes to the way settlements function or really cool/must have gear, I'm a little less impressed, from my initial look, so if those are things you're looking for then you're liable to be a bit disappointed. This is an expansion for the hunt and showdown phases more than the settlement phases, and there seems to be more for the monsters than the survivors.
Есть сполеры!!! Lion Knight - Lion Knight just gets added to year 6 of a campaign, rather than replacing an event, which means the big, adorable, cheesy git's likely to have been balanced to fit into variant campaigns better than slendie. He's also one of the three knights (Dung Beetle and Flower being the two others) required to construct Green Knight armor. His rulebook is pretty darned hillarious. I'd say that, if you want your Kingdom Death campaign to be grimdark all the time, you're liable to be disappointed. If you like the idea of a bit of levity once in a while, though, Lion Knight's awesome. I audibly chuckled reading through the way he melodramatically orders a settlement about. The main mechanic that the Lion Knight seems to introduce is an update to special showdowns and heavy reliance on that particular mechanic. Fighting the Lion Knight never seems to take a Lantern Year, which means you're not concerned about opportunity cost fighting him over other monsters. One or two of the other nemesis monsters also rely on special showdowns over regular nemesis encounters, but they tend to be a bit more brutal if you fail to defeat them, making it much less appealing to encounter them in a campaign. The Lion Knight ends up feeling like something you can reasonably enjoy slotting into every campaign, as long as you like his theme.
Есть сполеры!!! Lion God - It turns out the Lion God is a quarry monster, too. Its recommended to be introduced to a campaign in Lantern Year 13, which is almost twice as many lantern years into a campaign as the event for meeting the Phoenix. The Lion God's a late game quarry. Its theme is rather dark and most of its mechanics seem to center around survivors internalizing the traits of monsters like the Butcher or the Bone Witch and the entire process of hunting it seems pretty brutal. I could really see an accept darkness Dragon King campaign working amazingly with this guy from a thematic/mechanical perspective. Dragon King's all about survivors becoming individual power houses at home in the darkness, and the Lion God seems to take that concept up to 11. The main mechanical introduction from the Lion God is a fighting art that transfers from survivor to survivor but can only ever be known by one survivor. The fighting art creates a specialized injury roll table that a survivor rolls on rather than the one in the core book, which seems pretty unique and interesting to me. I've got to say that, despite its (relatively) smaller size compared to things like Spidicules and Gorm, this expansion still manages to offer a lot of substantial changes to the way the game operates.
Green Knight Armor - It's about what you'd expect, I think. Insanely powerful and insanely difficult to craft. I expect it's theoretically possible that you could craft a full set of Green Knight Armor in 25 lantern years, but that it's probably exceedingly improbable. Like, the Perfect Slayer looks like a rawhide headband next to a full set of Green Armor in terms of difficulty actually managing to craft. That said, individual pieces of the set are really enormously powerful in their own right and, depending on price, the set could be worth grabbing just to have access to the chance to put together one or two bits in a campaign.
Есть сполеры!!! Gorm - Unless I missed something, it seems like the Gorm can't actually be fought in the very first showdown of the game. You're still going to have to battle that prologue lion. It is available starting the first lantern year, however. Similar to Spidicules, Gorm seems to largely be about theme over major mechanical changes. It adds a couple new settlement locations and a slew of gear, much like most of the other major expansions, and an absolute ton of awesome events, but doesn't add many huge changes to actual gameplay. The major change I've seen is the inclusion of an item that covers two different parts of the body rather than one. I do really like its armor set, though. Defensive oriented in a way the eschews armor for maneuverability and synergy with shields.
Есть сполеры!!! Flower Knight - So. It turns out that we're actually getting three variant campaign expansions. Flower Knight's variant is significantly less developed than the other two campaign expansions, but its still pretty different. You basically set up shop in a lantern hoard near a flower knight and decide to worship it as a god, which gives you a few bonuses and special abilities while balancing itself out by providing you with a couple penalties and forbidding you from hunting the Flower Knight (turns out its a quarry and not a nemesis). Seems like it could be fun, but don't expect it to be at the same level as Sunstalker or Dragon King. It doesn't provide a new boss (you still have to use the watcher), for instance.
As to special abilities: You get perishable resource cards. (They basically get archived if you don't use them within a certain time limit.) You also get a lot of addiction and disease themed abilities, events, and items. The Flower Knight's got kind of a sad story, honestly, as, from what I've read of the rulebook, it really feels like its the survivors who are the villains in the encounter with it rather than the other way around. Talking about theme/story, the Flower Knight also shares a special forest themed hunt event card with Spidicules, which creates this pretty neat feeling of actually delving into a specific biome that both of the monsters share.
Есть сполеры!!! Sunstalker - The Sunstalker expansion has a number of fascinating new mechanics, most of which seem to be focused inside the "People of the Sun" campaign variant that it contains. I especially like the idea of Prismatic survivors, who can match squares on gear regardless of color (a red/green square, for instance, just counts as a full red, green, and blue square for the purposes of completing affinities). One of the weapons in the expansion counts as both a ranged AND melee weapon, with different rules depending on how it's used, which is cool. Katana specialization is made available in the Sunstalker expansion, but, unlike other specializations, it seems you can't just earn specialization in Katanas right off the bat. You can only gain it through an event that is made available in the People of the Sun campaign. I found this to be a bit of a bummer, to be honest, though its certainly going to make a people of the sun campaign unique.
Another thing that makes the People of the Sun Campaign unique is the fact that it locks you into taking survival of the fittest. That is, you can't choose protect the young at all. A People of the Sun settlement is going to be rolling two dice and taking the lowest whether they want to or not. In return, however, they get a significantly friendlier intimacy table with greater access to bonuses to rolls and less chance of deaths (only double 1 and 123 result in a net population loss). I'd say, if you wanted to try out Survival of the Fittest without tweaking how it works then this would be the campaign to do it in. The People of the Sun Campaign variant might also be the best variant before the arrival of the Lantern Festival to try out resource intensive builds. It seems to have far fewer nemesis encounters than the core game or Dragon King campaigns.
Есть сполеры!!! Dragon King - Holy Moly. This expansion is insane. The variant campaign where you serve under the Dragon King looks so different from the core game that I imagine, when I get to trying it out, I'll be wondering if I'm playing the same game. If you're playing the Dragon King as a regular quarry, then the game recommends you encounter it around Lantern Year 8. That's a turn after you would normally encounter the phoenix, and there's no mention of removing the Phoenix Feather event, so it looks like you'd do the Dragon King equivalent event right after and in addition to rather than subbing the Dragon King in for the Phoenix.
In terms of general gameplay changes outside of the campaign variant, the main draw for this expansion seems to be a new weapon proficiency: scythes. Once I get into the cards I'll try to update here talking about what the proficiency does. The idea's neat, but not really huge. The part of this expansion that really impressed me was the variant campaign, the "People of the Stars" campaign. Not only do you end up with a completely revamped settlement timeline that features its own unique, campaign specific nemesis monster, but you also get a revamped character sheet that represents settlers literally transforming into dragon power infused demigods. Freaking DRAGON POWER INFUSED DEMIGODS. Okay. Sorry. I'm better now. Really.
There's a grid of abilities that settlers can gain throughout the course of their campaign. Similar to a bingo board, gaining a vertical or horizontal row of these abilities grants your survivors a rather special reward: an even more powerful ability and status as one of the Dragon King Tyrant's chosen "People of the Stars." The whole campaign actually centers around training up as many settlers as possible to reach People of the Stars status and, if you fail to do so adequately, your settlement's essentially doomed. This focus on "leveling up" your individual survivors is interesting to me because it looks like it's going to require a very different macro level strategy from the core game's "level the settlement, not the characters" approach. In the Dragon King expansion, the settlement is fairly well provided for. In return, however, you're absolutely forced to keep your settlers up to snuff. The expansion gives you some options for keeping settlers alive and functional longer to keep this theme going with things like prosthetic limbs, a slightly less dangerous intimacy table, and slightly fewer nemesis encounters (guess the King's man doesn't much care for the idea of messing with Big Daddy Tyrant's pet civilization...)
A final note on Dragon King: its variant states that it's not built to work with other expansion monsters but, after looking through the rules in the expansion in depth, I see no reason, mechanically, that the variant campaign can't work with any other non-boss monster. I plan on using expansions liberally in my People of the Dragon campaign. If something comes up to break the game due to doing this then I will update my description here to describe the issue.
Это амери с созданием истории своего поселения. Пролог вообще отыгрывается за 30 минут и не вызывает никакого челенджа, т.к. там спецом выбраны простые карты поведения монстра, типа ударь, наори. Да и сам лев весьма предсказуемый монстр. Но по факту, это самый слабый монстр, нужный для того, чтобы собрать первые сеты оружия/брони. А вообще, для знакомства с игрой лучше всего играть в виньетку Гигальва, где даются сразу прокаченные персонажи и уникальный лев.
И да, игре 10 лет уже почти. Потому многие механики уже не воспринимаются как новые. И на счёт lifestyle game согласен.
Лучше вопросы по игре спрашивать в группе вк или тут https://t.me/+0BHKwDRyRYg0ODhi
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Новая версия игры
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/456615294/machina-arcana-from-beyond?ref=nav_search&result=project&term=%20Machina%20Arcana
Тут любой обзор по игромеханике может быть воспринят как сполер. Т.к. часто описываются особенности дополнения и монстра, которые приятнее постигать партией в процессе игры.
Есть сполеры!!!
Spidicules - Speaking of Spidicules. This spider's got a rather expansive expansion. I wouldn't say he/she adds a lot of new mechanics to the game, but his/her (its? Q's?) rulebook is packed full of thematic events and interesting abilities that play around with the theme of the monster. I'd say Spidicules feels more like a particularly fleshed out huntable monster rather than a game changing expansion that really alters the way you'll play the game. The Phoenix gets one event, for instance, whereas Spidicules seems to get around five.
The biggest mechanical things I'd say the expansion adds are a hunt event that changes the "overwhelming darkness" hunt event on the hunt track board (this is the card that it shares with the Flower Knight), spiderling mini monsters (they're in the box! don't worry!), which can show up in fights with non-spidicules monsters as egg terrain which can hatch over the course of a battle, and a fighting art that can "level up" over the course of a campaign, becoming more and more powerful assuming you can keep a survivor around long enough.
A final thing that might be important to folks: the expansion rulebook recommends replacing the Endless Screams hunt event with the hunt event that lets you meet Spidicules if you want to include Spidicules in a new campaign. That means Spidicules seems to actually be closer to the Gorm and the Screaming Antelope in terms of power level and time in the campaign you'd be hunting him. If you want a later monster, one of the other beasties is probably going to be a better pick.
Есть сполеры!!!
Slenderman - Slenderman includes a few minor mechanical changes to the game. It includes an innovation that can be leveled up multiple times over the course of the game, for instance, which is pretty neat. Its theme also seems like it'll play really well on the table. Slenderman is all about isolating survivors and messing with them when they're alone. It can disappear off the board in the middle of a fight and keep attacking while not immediately reappearing, for instance, and its events largely center around only specific members of a settlement realizing that its chilling out around the fire and the like. Very slendermanlike.
A thing to keep in mind is that the expansion rulebook recommends that slenderman's introduction event replace the Armored Strangers event. Now this is awesome, because Armored strangers goes a long way to define how core game campaigns play out (its one of the first things repeat players learn to start planning for). Changing that event changes the way the whole campaign can develop. On the other hand, Slenderman might not play nicely with the two major campaign variant expansions, neither of which include that event. You can probably still slot it in, but you'll probably end up changing the intended feel of the campaigns and you'll also significantly increase difficulty. If you're looking for an expansion that changes the core game experience, I think Slenderman's one of the better small ones for that. If you're looking for an expansion that you can plug and play with all of your other expansions, you might want to look elsewhere.
Есть сполеры!!!
Manhunter - Manhunter's, uh... you know when I mentioned other nemesis monsters having special encounters but being more than brutal enough to make facing them still a worrying proposition? Yeah. Manhunter. Manhunter for days. The gear I've taken a look at from the expansion is pretty sweet, but if you decide to take the Manhunter on you better never lose a battle against him. Imagine combining the Plague event with Armored Strangers. That's basically the Manhunter. He'll be back, again and again, and if you don't beat him as he gets progressively stronger and stronger he's going to hunt down, enslave, and murder all of your best dudes again, and again, and again.
That's not to say he doesn't look awesome. He looks totally awesome. He's just looking, to me, like something you'd put into a campaign if you really wanted to enhance difficulty. It's great to have that option, but be ready for it.
Manhunter's also pretty grimdark. He adds Masochism and Sadism to the game, for instance, and, thematically, slavery. He'd fit in great with that Accept Darkness/Dragon King/Lion God combo, but I have trouble imagining him in the same campaign as the Lion Knight.
Есть сполеры!!!
Lonely Tree - This one's a lot larger than the Green Knight Armor mini expansion, with its own rulebook and the whole nine yards, but it IS quite different from the other expansions so I feel it fits here. Essentially, rather than hunting the Lonely Tree as a quarry or facing it as a traditional nemesis that follows a timeline, you can randomly run into it as a hunt event while out looking for other monsters.This is a pretty neat intro mechanic, in my opinion, and I think, as long as its not oddly priced, the Lonely Tree's value just for the opportunity to expand the ways in which you encounter monsters. As promised in the Kickstarter updates, the Lonely Tree can also upgrade other monsters. Rather than just upgrading the Lion and Phoenix, however, it seems that the Lonely Tree's upgrades can impact pretty much any monster. This means the Lonely Tree expansion's also liable to function well as a supplement to pretty much all the other expansions.In terms of major changes to the way settlements function or really cool/must have gear, I'm a little less impressed, from my initial look, so if those are things you're looking for then you're liable to be a bit disappointed. This is an expansion for the hunt and showdown phases more than the settlement phases, and there seems to be more for the monsters than the survivors.
Есть сполеры!!!
Lion Knight - Lion Knight just gets added to year 6 of a campaign, rather than replacing an event, which means the big, adorable, cheesy git's likely to have been balanced to fit into variant campaigns better than slendie. He's also one of the three knights (Dung Beetle and Flower being the two others) required to construct Green Knight armor. His rulebook is pretty darned hillarious. I'd say that, if you want your Kingdom Death campaign to be grimdark all the time, you're liable to be disappointed. If you like the idea of a bit of levity once in a while, though, Lion Knight's awesome. I audibly chuckled reading through the way he melodramatically orders a settlement about. The main mechanic that the Lion Knight seems to introduce is an update to special showdowns and heavy reliance on that particular mechanic. Fighting the Lion Knight never seems to take a Lantern Year, which means you're not concerned about opportunity cost fighting him over other monsters. One or two of the other nemesis monsters also rely on special showdowns over regular nemesis encounters, but they tend to be a bit more brutal if you fail to defeat them, making it much less appealing to encounter them in a campaign. The Lion Knight ends up feeling like something you can reasonably enjoy slotting into every campaign, as long as you like his theme.
Есть сполеры!!!
Lion God - It turns out the Lion God is a quarry monster, too. Its recommended to be introduced to a campaign in Lantern Year 13, which is almost twice as many lantern years into a campaign as the event for meeting the Phoenix. The Lion God's a late game quarry. Its theme is rather dark and most of its mechanics seem to center around survivors internalizing the traits of monsters like the Butcher or the Bone Witch and the entire process of hunting it seems pretty brutal. I could really see an accept darkness Dragon King campaign working amazingly with this guy from a thematic/mechanical perspective. Dragon King's all about survivors becoming individual power houses at home in the darkness, and the Lion God seems to take that concept up to 11. The main mechanical introduction from the Lion God is a fighting art that transfers from survivor to survivor but can only ever be known by one survivor. The fighting art creates a specialized injury roll table that a survivor rolls on rather than the one in the core book, which seems pretty unique and interesting to me. I've got to say that, despite its (relatively) smaller size compared to things like Spidicules and Gorm, this expansion still manages to offer a lot of substantial changes to the way the game operates.
Green Knight Armor - It's about what you'd expect, I think. Insanely powerful and insanely difficult to craft. I expect it's theoretically possible that you could craft a full set of Green Knight Armor in 25 lantern years, but that it's probably exceedingly improbable. Like, the Perfect Slayer looks like a rawhide headband next to a full set of Green Armor in terms of difficulty actually managing to craft. That said, individual pieces of the set are really enormously powerful in their own right and, depending on price, the set could be worth grabbing just to have access to the chance to put together one or two bits in a campaign.
Есть сполеры!!!
Gorm - Unless I missed something, it seems like the Gorm can't actually be fought in the very first showdown of the game. You're still going to have to battle that prologue lion. It is available starting the first lantern year, however. Similar to Spidicules, Gorm seems to largely be about theme over major mechanical changes. It adds a couple new settlement locations and a slew of gear, much like most of the other major expansions, and an absolute ton of awesome events, but doesn't add many huge changes to actual gameplay. The major change I've seen is the inclusion of an item that covers two different parts of the body rather than one. I do really like its armor set, though. Defensive oriented in a way the eschews armor for maneuverability and synergy with shields.
Есть сполеры!!!
Flower Knight - So. It turns out that we're actually getting three variant campaign expansions. Flower Knight's variant is significantly less developed than the other two campaign expansions, but its still pretty different. You basically set up shop in a lantern hoard near a flower knight and decide to worship it as a god, which gives you a few bonuses and special abilities while balancing itself out by providing you with a couple penalties and forbidding you from hunting the Flower Knight (turns out its a quarry and not a nemesis). Seems like it could be fun, but don't expect it to be at the same level as Sunstalker or Dragon King. It doesn't provide a new boss (you still have to use the watcher), for instance.
As to special abilities: You get perishable resource cards. (They basically get archived if you don't use them within a certain time limit.) You also get a lot of addiction and disease themed abilities, events, and items. The Flower Knight's got kind of a sad story, honestly, as, from what I've read of the rulebook, it really feels like its the survivors who are the villains in the encounter with it rather than the other way around. Talking about theme/story, the Flower Knight also shares a special forest themed hunt event card with Spidicules, which creates this pretty neat feeling of actually delving into a specific biome that both of the monsters share.
Есть сполеры!!!
Sunstalker - The Sunstalker expansion has a number of fascinating new mechanics, most of which seem to be focused inside the "People of the Sun" campaign variant that it contains. I especially like the idea of Prismatic survivors, who can match squares on gear regardless of color (a red/green square, for instance, just counts as a full red, green, and blue square for the purposes of completing affinities). One of the weapons in the expansion counts as both a ranged AND melee weapon, with different rules depending on how it's used, which is cool. Katana specialization is made available in the Sunstalker expansion, but, unlike other specializations, it seems you can't just earn specialization in Katanas right off the bat. You can only gain it through an event that is made available in the People of the Sun campaign. I found this to be a bit of a bummer, to be honest, though its certainly going to make a people of the sun campaign unique.
Another thing that makes the People of the Sun Campaign unique is the fact that it locks you into taking survival of the fittest. That is, you can't choose protect the young at all. A People of the Sun settlement is going to be rolling two dice and taking the lowest whether they want to or not. In return, however, they get a significantly friendlier intimacy table with greater access to bonuses to rolls and less chance of deaths (only double 1 and 123 result in a net population loss). I'd say, if you wanted to try out Survival of the Fittest without tweaking how it works then this would be the campaign to do it in. The People of the Sun Campaign variant might also be the best variant before the arrival of the Lantern Festival to try out resource intensive builds. It seems to have far fewer nemesis encounters than the core game or Dragon King campaigns.
Есть сполеры!!!
Dragon King - Holy Moly. This expansion is insane. The variant campaign where you serve under the Dragon King looks so different from the core game that I imagine, when I get to trying it out, I'll be wondering if I'm playing the same game. If you're playing the Dragon King as a regular quarry, then the game recommends you encounter it around Lantern Year 8. That's a turn after you would normally encounter the phoenix, and there's no mention of removing the Phoenix Feather event, so it looks like you'd do the Dragon King equivalent event right after and in addition to rather than subbing the Dragon King in for the Phoenix.
In terms of general gameplay changes outside of the campaign variant, the main draw for this expansion seems to be a new weapon proficiency: scythes. Once I get into the cards I'll try to update here talking about what the proficiency does. The idea's neat, but not really huge. The part of this expansion that really impressed me was the variant campaign, the "People of the Stars" campaign. Not only do you end up with a completely revamped settlement timeline that features its own unique, campaign specific nemesis monster, but you also get a revamped character sheet that represents settlers literally transforming into dragon power infused demigods. Freaking DRAGON POWER INFUSED DEMIGODS. Okay. Sorry. I'm better now. Really.
There's a grid of abilities that settlers can gain throughout the course of their campaign. Similar to a bingo board, gaining a vertical or horizontal row of these abilities grants your survivors a rather special reward: an even more powerful ability and status as one of the Dragon King Tyrant's chosen "People of the Stars." The whole campaign actually centers around training up as many settlers as possible to reach People of the Stars status and, if you fail to do so adequately, your settlement's essentially doomed. This focus on "leveling up" your individual survivors is interesting to me because it looks like it's going to require a very different macro level strategy from the core game's "level the settlement, not the characters" approach. In the Dragon King expansion, the settlement is fairly well provided for. In return, however, you're absolutely forced to keep your settlers up to snuff. The expansion gives you some options for keeping settlers alive and functional longer to keep this theme going with things like prosthetic limbs, a slightly less dangerous intimacy table, and slightly fewer nemesis encounters (guess the King's man doesn't much care for the idea of messing with Big Daddy Tyrant's pet civilization...)
A final note on Dragon King: its variant states that it's not built to work with other expansion monsters but, after looking through the rules in the expansion in depth, I see no reason, mechanically, that the variant campaign can't work with any other non-boss monster. I plan on using expansions liberally in my People of the Dragon campaign. If something comes up to break the game due to doing this then I will update my description here to describe the issue.