Whosoever is delighted in solitude is either a wild beast or a god: The Comprehensive View of the Lion God (Patreon)

NOTE: This is an old, out of date review and my opinions have changed a lot on this expansion. This is uploaded for the sake of completeness, new reviews are coming this year. 

Nants ingonyama bagithi baba (There comes a lion)
Sithi uhhmm ingonyama (Oh yes, it's a lion)
Nants ingonyama bagithi baba (There comes a lion)
Sithi uhhmm ingonyama (Oh yes, it's a lion)
Ingonyama (lion)
Siyo nqoba (we're going to conquer)
Ingonyama (lion)

-- Traditional song sung by the People of the Sun as they head out to claim another Lion God. Taken from the opening song of the play crafted by the greatest survivor Dalt Wisney's -- The Lion God King.

Alright, it’s time to address that over-sized puddy cat, we call The Lion God. A creature that has through gossip mongering become this mythical beast that will slay anyone and everyone who even thinks about attacking it, oh no there goes another survivor, I guess he shouldn't have read this review.

This review has two purposes, the first is to explain why you might want to own the Lion God and hunt it in a campaign and the second one is to beging to quash these silly rumors that this is the hardest non-legendary monster you can hunt. It’s not, that title is reserved for the Level 3 DBK – a monster that currently less than a handful of people have successfully hunted (I’m proud to say that as of last week I am one of those people, in fact I've done it twice because all the ladies want a shiny Griswaldo in their lives).

As always, spoilers will follow, so if you want the short, spoiler free version of this review skip down to the Why? Where? and Score? sections of this review. You have been warned.

Now that we’ve disposed of the Bug Catchers let’s get our safari gear on and go bag ourselves a really big game, hand me that Digging Claw katar will you? There’s a Storm coming.

Who?
The Lion God is one of the ultimate ‘prestige monsters’ currently in the game. One of the remnants of the once mighty Silver City, this giant cat is now reduced to sitting mournfully in the ruins of its civilization infected with a parasite known as The Knowledge Worm. This strange little creature will insert itself painfully into a living creature and in exchange for a place to live it will give its host great powers and silver for blood.

It is not entirely clear exactly how many Lion Gods there are, the name suggests that there is just one, but the actual hunt mechanics and experience suggests that there are many. As always with the world of Kingdom Death a lot of the information is hidden from you and has to be teased out over time and multiple campaigns.

While there is a long, sad tale behind the existence of the Lion God, what your survivors are going to experience is an over-sized cat that is suffering petrification. But despite it's advancing years and hurting joints it will engaged in hurling lawn chairs around at them and shedding their blood in copious quantities. They might not appreciate the plight of the Lion God, but that is because it is not very good at sharing its feelings.

What?
Well you get a bit less than normal in this expansion and to be brutally honest this is one of the Wave 1 expansions with the lowest amount of physical content. There is the usual rulebook, with the usual problems (i.e. it has a fatal weakness to fingertips). Terrain tiles and some cards. You get less cards than you’d expect, it’s more on par with a nemesis than a quarry and this is because the Lion God is pretty awful for crafting gear. It does not have any monster specific resources, instead you just get some unique gear handed to you immediately, plus some Iron. The big negative here is that there are no survivor sculpts for the gear you can get.

Which is a shame, because we could have had a few male and female heads with necromancer circlets, some torsos wearing the ancient breast plate, arms with the ancient Lion Claws and even a Lion God Statue for someone to look ridiculous while they either carry it or strap it to their back.

Unfortunately we do not get any of these pieces of gear, which I feel is a serious negative. So as such it has to be admitted that you get a lot less physical content for your money. However, this is intended to be made up for (somewhat) by the size of the Lion God. It is one of the larger and more imposing models, dwarfed only by the Sunstalker and Dragon King.

How?
Before I launch into the what’s hot and what’s not of this expansion I want to take a moment to just write a little more about the silly myth that has built up around the Lion God. People write and talk about it being this huge unassailable monster, this thing of doom where you send your people to die.

It’s not. It’s really not. Now I’m not going to undersell it the Lion God is tough, but it has manageable and exploitable weaknesses. After I read a Facebook post about someone who effectively soloed the Lion God with a Katar Master I took my current Katar Master against the Lion God in LY13 for some test games and it worked pretty reliably. With an improvement in the Katar I was using (the Dragon King or DBK katars are ideal as they are low speed, high damage) I could even tackle the level 2 Lion God with a similar strategy.

Extrapolating from this it also seems apparent that the Lion God is also weak to Grand Weapons (specialization causes knockdown on crits, which cancels reactions) and that it is hurt badly by the Pulse Lantern (which will negate rampage chains before they even begin to happen). With some tweaking, the addition of the Spear Specialization to deal with the trap and a refined support character we approached a point where the Lion God was relatively comfortable. Never easy, always risky, but comfortable – and this is all because the Lion God doesn’t target the blind spot much and also struggles vs. Evasion and reaction cancellations.

In all honesty now I have to move the Lion God to the position of ‘not as scary as the Level 3 Dung Beetle Knight’. It is a challenge, it is a horrifying tower of power. But it is not the destructive force the legends have made it out to be. It can be controlled, it can be beaten. It is a farmable quarry, especially for the People of the Sun.

And that’s a good thing, because if it was an impossible engine of death then it would need to be an end game monster rather than a LY13 nemesis. We’ll leave it becoming death incarnate for the Silver City expansion shall we?

So, the Lion God is hard, but not impossible. Therefore the question becomes is it worth adding to a campaign, it the rewards worth the risk. So it’s time for the old pro and cons list.

These things just can’t wait to be king:

Necromancer’s Circlet
This is the encounter specific reward for beating the level 1 Lion God and it is worth the price of admission. It is the Cat’s Eye Circlet’s big brother. A head accessory that gives 2 armor points and provides the Cat’s Eye Circlet scouting ability, but for 4 cards instead of 3. If you’re not already on board Team Cat’s Eye Circlet then I can’t convince you why this item is amazing, but for the sane part of the community who does appreciate the control that items like this give – you know why it is grrrrrrrrrrrreat! (Shut up Tony).

Ancient Plate
The Ancient Plate does exactly one thing, it sits in the middle of your Lion Armor and makes it viable in the late game. This is huge and it’s just one of several reasons why I tend to recommend hunting the Lion God for anyone who really likes katars. Yes the -1 Evasion is quite a downside, but if you are at the point where you can get the Ancient Plate you should be at the point where you understand how to avoid your damage characters from being in the line of fire too often. So the loss of evasion shouldn’t be too bad to manage.

Lion God Statue Terrain, Sinkhole and Necropolis
This whole event is just great, it is in essence a series of dice rolls to gain strange resources that may become useful items, but it is filled with character and good design. You can’t be automatically killed by this event, but you can be put in an awkward situation where you need to be rescued.

For the record, the main thing you are looking for here initially is the Old Blue Box (and you can get that from the level 1 showdown if you are fortunate). It contains the next item on our list.

Ancient Lion Claws
This is the other piece of the ‘make Lion Armor great’ suite that the Lion God expansion includes. Now normally I scoff at +STR items, but Katars are one of those pieces of kit that tend to land a little on the lower side of the power spectrum. So the +2 STR you get here is useful. The main reason I rate this as a piece of kit however (despite the -1 Evasion) is the way the ancient lion claws help to fix the problems the Lion Armor has with affinities and the +2 range increase on the Pounce ability. Pounce is a good ability, it’s even better when it has +2 Range.

Lantern Mehndi
This often comes along with the Ancient Lion Claws, which is a huge bonus in itself. But the Lantern Mehndi is an incredible tool. Not only does it give you a red affinity and half of a blue affinity, but with just one extra Red affinity this item allows you to start the showdown wherever you like. That’s powerful, you can start the fight sat right in the blind spot against a monster who never targets it, or you can be adjacent to some terrain tile that will give you benefits when you use it. This one is superb on both archers and damage dealing characters, especially ones who wear Sunstalker armor and therefore operate best in the blind spot.

Glyph of Solitude
Accuracy is one of those stats that always remains important throughout the game, the Glyph of Solitude provides you with that, the benefit of being Deaf (without the drawback of actually being permanently deaf), a red affinity and two well positioned green affinities to boot. It’s an understated but powerful piece of gear. In addition, unless I am wrong in my understanding of the lore surrounding this one, it references the Lonely Tree.

Bone Witch Mehndi
Bone Witches suck, the Bone Witch Mehndi rocks. It’s got three affinities and a great ability which allows you to freely exchange insanity for survival on a 3:1 ratio (and change it back if you wish). This is powerful and with the right build can mean that you never need to worry about insanity or survival ever again.
There are quite a few builds in the game that leverage insanity to perform a variety of effects. This beautiful piece of gear would provide excellent fuel for any of these builds.

Iron
Iron is a requirement for many late game items, having a monster that produces it when you beat it is a good thing. There are easier ways to get it and therefore the quantity of Iron you get could have been a little more generous than it is.

Necromancer Secret Fighting Art
I have left this one till last on the positives list because it is probably the centerpiece of the expansion apart from the Lion God itself. When you slay a Lion God you have an opportunity to gain the Knowledge Worm. This in turn can infect one of your survivors, leaping down their throat and settling inside them in the way that the Whampyri act in the Necroscope series (I recommend this series for people who enjoy Kingdom Death, they share a lot of philosophies).

This process can be a somewhat lethal experience, but once it has completed you’re left with a unique and powerful survivor who has a lot of benefits. They have their own special serious trauma table that reflects their increased durability, they always perfect at the Death Reading events that happen with the items recovered from the Necropolis and they have other varied benefits.

Additionally, if they die, the worm returns to the settlement as the Knowledge Worm innovation, ready for another round.
Considering you can get this from beating just the level 1 Lion God it’s an amazing boon and easily my favorite part of the expansion.

Now it is time for the issues; these things will remind you that Mufasa is gone:

No Monster Resources
Overall this isn’t a massive problem once you realize how differently gear works in this expansion, you don’t craft it, you discover it. That said, some people may miss the options and freedom that the crafting system gives you. The Lion God steps back away from that and returns more to the old ‘draw treasure this is what it does’ format of dungeon crawling games. This might be a problem for you, it might not.

Insufficient Gear Cards
I may be incorrect in my understanding, but I believe you can gain multiple Mehndi over the course of a campaign. There are not sufficient gear cards to cover for this situation. This is a problem which tends to occur across a lot of Kingdom Death, there are assumptions made that players would not want some items in multiple. Considering how freeform and sandbox the game is in general, it’s an odd restriction.

Lion God Statue
This piece of gear is the reward for beating the level 3 Lion God. It’s really awful. -1 Evasion and +1 STR for each Red Affinity you have. The further you get in the game the less important STR becomes and the more important Evasion is. I do not care for this piece of gear at all, it’s thematically stupid and mechanically awful.

Difficulty
I have written a few times that the Lion God is not as hard as people have made out, but it is still difficult. It’s difficult to the point where it might be inaccessible for the normal, average, everyday player of this game. So if you are still struggling with phoenixes and the like then this might not be the expansion for you. In fact I’d say that the general agreement is that the Lion God should be one of the last three expansions you purchase (along with the Lonely Tree and Spidicules). The Lion God isn’t flawed the way Spidicules or the Lonely Tree is however, it’s just very challenging.

Little Point in the Level 3 Version
The Level 3 version of the Lion God represents quite a spike in power and difficulty, it is not the biggest power spike in monster power out there (that is going from a level 2 to a level 3 Dung Beetle Knight) but it is severe. As always I would be fine with this if the rewards were worth it. They pretty much are not. All you can get extra over the Level 2 Lion God is the Lion God Statue (as listed above), +2 Basic Resources, +1 Iron and the potential to get the Death Mehndi (which you will not see anywhere in the pros or cons list because it is just decidedly average piece of gear which is… fine).

The Model
The model is an impressive looking thing, it’s large and very dynamic. However, not everyone will be OK with how this looks because it features a lot of aspects that may be questionable for some of the more conservative people out there. You’ve got a total of four aspects that may offend (I’m going to keep the exact descriptions vague here), its tail, its undercarriage, its head and its face whip (if you are not sure why the face whip may offend, you don’t know enough about Lion anatomy). Now as far as I’m concerned, it’s just a piece of plastic art, it’s not possible for it to be offensive because it is not a part of the real world in any way (and also Kingdom Death is very careful to keep away from certain aspects that less savory types might want to introduce to the game). But you may feel otherwise and if you do, you’ll want to give this one a miss.

Why?
It's sort of similar to the Flower Knight in some ways, in that you only fight it a couple of times per campaign but instead of making the campaign easier it provides an additional challenge for you to really test your builds, tactics and strategy against. I think that is a valuable part of the game, so get outside of your comfort zone sometime and come over to the lionside.

Also I can recommend this if you are going to be playing one of the alternate campaigns, especially People of the Sun, the extra power your survivors have means that the Lion God is not as terrifying a creature as it could be.

In addition, the upcoming expansion to the Lion God expansion (I love expansions that expand expansions, it’s so expansive) promises to flesh out the entire experience and unleash the Lion God in its true form. That’s exciting, but even as it stands I consider the Lion God to be a good expansion for the price paid.

Where?
Somewhere the lion cubs can’t see it, they’re going to realize what the face whip tentacle is and maybe they might be forever scarred by it. Oh no! In actual truth I keep this one nice and safe on the shelf because it seems that kids adore the way it looks and want to play with it more than any other monster I own. I can understand why, it is very cool looking.

Score?
This one gets seven maimed survivors in a death reading. It’s a solid expansion that you can insert into a campaign without having to dedicate years and years to hunt it. Most of what you want you can get by beating the level 1 or level 2 Lion God and for the really advanced and efficient players the level 3 provides one of the real challenge showdowns in the game along with the L3+ DBK and the legendary monsters.

Until then...

Hakuna Matata! What a wonderful phrase
Hakuna Matata! Ain't no passing craze
It means no worries for the rest of your days
It's our problem-free philosophy
Hakuna Matata!

Watch out for that impale son... Oh... Nasty...