The Seasoned Hunter: Prologue White Lion - Babby's First Monster (Patreon)

This is the start of a written series on each individual monster, I'm going to work through each and every single monster, highlighting general strategies, monster behavior/targeting, tactics, changes at higher levels and what resources/rewards you are seeking.  I will initially start with the quarries and I will work on them in the order they appear.  This first post will be public for everyone, but later posts are going to be for $5+ patrons only as these involve the highest amount of time, knowledge and work outside of custom content/painting.  For everyone else, you still have access to the Great Game Hunter podcasts, that contain similar material.

I will eventually be supplementing this series with videos.

We start where all stories in this world start; the Prologue White Lion!

Targeting and Behaviour:

The Prologue White Lion (P-Lion) is the most predictable but uncontrollable monster in the entire game, while it shares all of its Hit Locations in common with the actual White Lion it's AI deck is set to a specific set of cards.  This means it's more like a hybrid between a traditional quarry monster and a legendary one in it's construction.  It gets the following AI cards as it's pool: 

• Claw (always played 1st turn)
• Chomp
• Grasp
• Power Swat
• Size Up
• Terrifying Roar
• Enraged
• Maul

This means that it is 5 Basic, 3 Advanced and has a total of 9 wounds with no ability to self heal.  It has two intimidate actions, one which will hit everyone and the second that will pick a random threat.  The most dangerous actions it undertakes are against knocked down survivors, and at this stage you do not have encourage to mitigate this; plus it's mood (Enraged), most lost Prologue fights are because of those two behaviors.

Primarily the P-Lion's targeting is against the closest threat in front facing, but it also has a preference for knocked down targets (as mentioned above) and it will very rarely target non-threats or survivors in the blind spot.  For the most part if your survivors are all at the same distance from the P-Lion (adjacent is best) you will have a lot of choices in manipulating its targets so it cannot just focus down one survivor and score a kill quickly.  One of most dangerous cards outside of Enraged is Maul, but this does nothing if someone has not suffered Grab or been knocked down. Mitigating those two events is a huge part of making the prologue fight easier.

Reaction-wise the P-Lion is the same as the White Lion and I will go into more details on that when I tackle the White Lion proper, but for the most part the P-Lion punishes failed wound rolls and people positioned directly in front of it more than anything else.  Your positioning should be such that there is never someone in front of the White Lion when you attack, doing so is inviting Maul to come into play and cause massive damage.  You should be fighting with 1 survivor on each flank and 2 in the blind spot, rotating the survivor(s) on the flank(s) around and giving them time in the blind spot so you can spread out the P-Lion attacks across the whole group.

Strategy and Tactics:

As mentioned above, your positioning each turn should be as follows:

The survivor that takes the hit each turn should be the Monster Controller if possible (+1 Insanity for protection vs. the 2 Intimidate actions), but it is very important that the survivor with the most protection (Dodge, most healthy) should be on the flanks so she can be targeted.

Under almost no circumstances should you attack with someone in front of the White Lion.  This is asking for trouble to come crashing down on top of that poor survivor, it is normally better to have someone skip their attack and be patient.

Oh and it's totally OK to lose survivors during this fight, an early Graves principle can turbo charge a settlement's resource gathering.

Weapons:

This fight is one of the few where specific weapon decisions and actions can be made. In essence you should use fist and tooth wherever possible in this fight.  The first hit is against the Strange Hand, and most people throw the founding stone to automatically crit this location (there is some debate from fun-sink personality types that this shouldn't be allowed because you should follow the tutorial exactly - insert eyeroll here).  This is a very valid strategy, because the +1 strength for your survivor helps a lot when fisting the P-Lion in the butt.

The reasons for attacking with F&T over founding stones are simple, White Lions have a LOT of critical hit locations that cause resources to drop. The Prologue White Lion has the lowest toughness in the game apart from the Flower Knight, so this first fight is one of the most prime times to undertake what is known as 'crit farming'.  

The maths also support this, when attacking with a founding stone you have a 60% chance of wounding, with a 10% chance of a critical hit (that will cancel all reactions).  When you switch to fist and tooth, you get a 50% chance of wounding with a 20% chance of the critical hit + cancelling those reactions.  50% chance of wounding is the threshold for safe attacking (outside of high crit builds).  The survivor with +1 strength is even better off, they are at 60% chance off wounding with 20% chance of critical hits.

However, you should note that fisting the P-Lion has a penalty, you only hit 80/70% of the time instead of 70/60%, so the P-Lion will last longer and you may hit bad streaks where you can't hit.  To be honest, I just let those fights be a loss and start again if it happens.  Sometimes the P-Lion just wins, and losing the prologue fight has the least risk, you have literally nothing to lose.

However, if you have generated a lot of resources from the fight, you should consider switching to hitting with founding stones to end things early.  I do not recommend throwing your founding stones if you can avoid it because they are better used when you have a Cat's Eye Circlet or if you are in a desperate situation vs. an early White Lion/Gorm/Antelope.

Resources:

You do not have much control over what you get from the White Lion, but certain resources are worth holding on to and not using until after you have beaten the LY1 L1 White Lion.  

These are: 

• 1x Golden Whiskers (Whisker Harp)
• Eye of Cat (Cat's Eye Circlet)
• 1+ Lion Claws (Katar/Spear)
• 1x Great Cat Bones (If you want to rush Spear)
• 1x Sinew (Cat Gut Bow)  

Everything else can be used in the settlement phase as you deem fit.  If you're not familiar with it by now, the Shimmering Mane should always be turned into 2 Monster Hide.

Crafting Goals:

• Bone Darts (if you are out of Founding Stones)
• As much Rawhide as possible (hat, body, arms, feet, waist is the order - make full sets before starting a new one)
• Monster Grease for everyone 
• Bone Sword(s)
• Skip innovating 

Optional Variations:

• Bone Axe if you have little hide but a lot of bones and organs. 
• Bone Club if you had little hide or organs.  Bone Club is a very good investment for the long term, as it's a weapon you can use for many, many lantern years.

There's a bit more info in this fun 'What's the Play?' article on the early game build decisions. 

Next time we'll look at the White Lion proper!