First Story - First Steps (Patreon)

It's been a while since I've written any monster/showdown specific strategies and in honor of all the new patrons who have arrived since Gencon  I felt it would be interesting and beneficial to go back and take a very deep dive into the showdown that everyone knows relatively well, that fateful showdown against the first White Lion.

Quantum Monsters

One of the greatest difficulties about writing guides for specific monsters is caused by the randomisation that the game has, every single monster in the game is this vague collection of behaviors that you cannot specifically lay out ahead of time; to misuse a term, they are all "quantum monsters" or Schrodinger's Cat if you prefer (let's really misuse this shall we, I apologise to my Quantum Physics professor in advance and I'm very aware of what I'm doing wrong here, so hold your comments on this one thank you).

By that I mean, each monster has only a few known traits at the start of it's selection, we know what level it is, how many of each given card type it has (hunt, AI, HL) and the ratios these are in. If we're very familiar with the monster we'll have a rough approximation of its general preferred showdown terrain, typical targeting, attack types, any moves with a large power spike (Déjà Vu anyone?) and how it reacts when it's hit in addition to its stat lines. But we're never completely sure what ratios the cards are present in, what order they have, and how the shuffling is going to occur. In fact, the first time you have solid information about how a monster is likely to behave throughout the showdown occurs at the first time you get to see the entire deck (which is normally after the first pass through the AI deck).

That's why I consider monsters to be "quantum", they're capable of everything their species can achieve at the start of a showdown, and you only get to collapse the waveform of their behavior when you either scout the decks (Headband, Trash Crown etc) or they draw those cards.

However, the Prologue White Lion, with its curated deck, is one of the most predictable monsters in the game alongside the Legendary monsters (who are also curated). This is because it has a pre-built AI deck that never changes and always has the same first action (Claw) and first reaction (Strange Hand). On top of this, we also have the fact that the survivors' load out and stats is always known; this isn't a lantern year 16 fight against the L2 Dragon King where survivors could have anything up to and including Blacksmith gear. At this point the branching paths of the settlement are a big, thick trunk - outside of house rules everyone has a founding stone and a cloth.

So, this gives a very unique opportunity, it is possible to come up with optimal strategies for fighting this particular monster because it is very limited in how it's going to behave along with the tools available. And that's what we're going to do here.

Optimal Results

There are in fact two optimal results you can get from fighting the Prologue White Lion and landing in one of these two situations is very important because of how 'snowball' a settlement's lifespan is, if you are in a good situation (which early on is almost entirely dictated by gear + stats, not innovations) then you can gather more resources which will improve your situation more and more and protect your population. It's a classic cycle which is gear protects survivors who gain resources that makes gear. This loop is the most important one in the game because your survivors are a "resource" that dictates if you are going to lose, while gear is a resource that dictates if you are going to win. Setting up a strong cycle can put you in a constant position of winning, and the Prologue fight is a big part of that because you're trying to ensure that your Lantern Year 1 fight (which is one of the hardest fights in the game because of how poor your gear potential is) goes as well as possible.

We will look at each optimal situation in turn, starting with the one that you are probably thinking is the best (spoilers, it's the second best outcome).

Everyone Survives

If all four survivors make it out of the initial showdown relatively intact, this is the second best outcome you can ask for (ignoring any resource generation achieved), that might feel a little odd to read, but it'll make more sense in a bit.  

In this situation you've got a baseline of 4 population and if you happen to roll a 7+ on the First Day settlement event card (40% chance) then you've got a total of 14 population. This is exactly 1 survivor away from the trigger for gaining your Society (15 population) and that should be your primary focus. Gaining either Accept Darkness for additional durability and practical "immunity" from brain trauma + Leader and Orator of Death or picking up Collective Toil for additional endeavors and Timeless Eye in exchange for trading a population is huge early on. Personally I pick the Toil version because I love to put it on Sculpture (keep that survivor in the settlement until that happens) but I think that both choices are roughly equal in power and utility.

The main downside here is that you now need to focus on population because the Armored Strangers (if in Lantern) are likely to take punitive steps against you and you may need to resist, fighting a King's Man early is rough, and although it doesn't make the next King's Man a higher level (You'd still face an L1 in Lantern Year 9, this is something people mix up) generally a LY6 fight against a King's Man is hard even for experienced players to win without losses.  

So if going this route I will focus on population hard and pick collective toil, sacrificing survivors to the King's Man to generate endeavors via Graves and use those endeavors to replace the lost population. However, things get tricky if you roll <6 on the First Story, you have no easy hit to a principle outside of birth...

Three Live

This brings us to the "optimal" situation for the start of a settlement, having 3 survivors live and one die means that you get to kick off your settlement with a Death Principle. In contrast to the Society choices above, there is really only one death principle worth having - Graves.  Graves is the safety net for a settlement, losing survivors gives you endeavors that can be reinvested into new survivors - staving off the Game Over situation caused by total population collapse.  Cannibalize is absolutely the choice for players looking to play 'hard mode' for a weird flex, but for anyone who hasn't yet reached the final nemesis in Lantern you should always be picking Graves.

In addition to the Endeavor gains from Graves (which reimburses you if you fluff your rolls on the first Intimacy), you also get a 50% chance of gaining +1 Luck on a survivor, this survivor is going to be your lynch pin hunter and we'll discuss what you do with them shortly. 

This is why I consider three survivors living to be optimal, you have a 50% chance of hitting +1 Luck and you have access to Graves for Intimacy fluffs.  However, it is worth acknowledging that having 4 survivors live gives you the chance to generate Survival of the Fittest before Graves and that gives you re-rolls on the story event table to increase the chances of getting that super powerful +1 Luck.

So "optimally" you are looking to either go:

• 4 survivors live
• Roll 7+ on First Story (14 Population)
• Intimacy to 15 Pop and Pick either Accept Darkness or Collective Toil + Survival of the Fittest (SotF)
• Kill off a survivor (or two) with the terrible Intimacy odds of SotF (no rerolls)
• Pick Graves and reroll on the story event table to get +1 Luck.

Or:

• 3 Survivors Live
• Pick Graves for Death Principle, 50% chance of getting +1 Luck
• Work on increasing Population to hit SotF and Society

Either way, it is very, very important to make it clear that you should only be letting survivors who are not hunters (no hunt XP, no unique stat boosts) perform intimacy at this stage. General population are nicknamed 'Plebs' and until they distinguish themselves in some manner they should be the survivors who roll on any settlement based things that can cause death.

Quick Note re: Survival of the Fittest (SotF) vs. Protect the Young (PtY) here before we move on to how you actually fight the Prologue White Lion for maximum resources and optimal success. SotF is absolutely the more powerful of the two birth principles, no contest, but PtY is 100% fine for players who are still learning how to manage population (and it's great in People of the Stars also). You're not wrong for picking PtY if you have problems with running out of people.

Now, lets get onto the White Lion itself!

Fighting the Prologue

As mentioned in the Quantum Monsters section above; Prologue is one of the most predictable monsters in the entire game and it's also one of the two weakest (L1 Flower Knight is the other). We know for certain the following facts about Prologue.

• AI is Claw, Chomp, Size Up, Power Swat, Grasp, Maul, Terrifying Roar, Enraged
• Toughness is 6
• Total Wounds it has are 9
• First AI card is always Claw
• First HL is always Strange Hand
• No Terrain
• 2 "Impervious Hit Locations" (Glorious Mane, Trap)
• 6 Movement
• Accuracy 2+
• Damage is typically 1 but can climb up
• 2x Brain Trauma causing Cards
• 1 Mood

In addition to this information, we also know that the 'power spikes' from the White Lion's behavior are linked to a few specific cards. These are Enraged, Chomp, Maul, Grasp, Size Up and Terrifying Roar.

The two Intimidate actions (Size Up/Terrifying Roar) if they hit a survivor without any insanity, are an immediate brain trauma aka a 20% chance of death. That's really fearsome and scary, but fortunately you have time to build up a buffer against these by clever use of the Monster Controller bonus. Whenever the monster controller targets themselves with the monster's attack, they will gain +1 insanity. This is why 100% of the time the monster controller should be the first target of the White Lion's attack and why each turn you should be rotating the monster's target to the next monster controller - we'll talk about how you do that a bit more further on.

Grasp and Maul essentially read 'do nothing unless there is a knocked down survivor/grab has happened' and in order to mitigate these two cards you want to dodge heavy injuries when they happen (light ones are fine) and very importantly make sure that before attacking there are no survivors standing right in front of the monster. We're going to talk about the Prologue rotation a bit further on, but the White Lion's tendency to push forwards and Grab when hit means that your first action(s) each survivor turn should be to get anyone in front of the monster out of the way.

Chomp is dangerous because it's a head hit, which causes a heavy injury aka knock down the first time it connects and then you're vulnerable to Grasp/Maul plus the next head shot will have a 40% chance of killing you. There's not much to do here except dodge if it connects (if you can).

Enraged is the single nastiest result you can experience however, while this mood does cause the White Lion to 'self wound' it also pushes the monster's damage level up to effectively "twice" it's natural state. When this happens you have two choices, either you try and burst it down as fast as possible, or you feed it one survivor by having them tank all the hits until they either lose a limb or die. This is a change to the strategy I'm going to write about next and it's vital for success.

So we've identified roughly what Prologue likes to do, where it power spikes and a little of the general mitigation tactics you can undertake to handle this. Now we're going to get into how the showdown plays out and the dance moves that you'll follow.

The Prologue Dance

This one can be a tad complicated, I'll demonstrate with images the first two turns, and then once you have the principles you should be able to work it out.

The objective is to have the White Lion initially target each survivor in turn when they are the Monster Controller, this gives all of them +1 Insanity and the best chance of avoiding death from the Brain Trauma, it also spreads out the damage/survival expenditure as best possible. 

Initial Deployment looks like this:

1 is the White Lion's first target and 2 is the next player in line to receive the Monster Controller token. I've not labelled the other two, but 3 is on the left and 4 on the right.

After the White Lion has performed Claw the board will look like this and the following moves are taken:

• #1 moves around the White Lion to the blind spot and attacks
• #4 moves into the blind spot and attacks
• #3 steps forward and attacks
• #2 attacks and then moves in front of the White Lion - making her the target for the monster's next turn.

Note this all assumes the White Lion doesn't move forward, positioning gets complicated a little if it does, but you still end up with 2 being the next target as you can make the White Lion travel towards the right hand side of the board and keep 2 nearest.

If the White Lion doesn't move then we rotate #3 in like this.

#3 will be the last survivor to move in this situation and #2 is the first. This is to ensure that when attacking there is no survivor directly in front of the monster in order to reduce the number of grabs it performs (therefore avoiding knockdown). 

This will continue and because the monster will occasionally move in reactions it is very difficult to plot out everything that's going to happen. However, the important principle here is to try and get 1 insanity onto each survivor and rotate the target so that the least damaged survivor is attacked each turn. If you spread around the way that it hits then you'll end up avoiding concentrating its damage onto any one survivor.

As mentioned above however, when the White Lion Enrages early on this changes, your objective is to stick the same survivor in front of the monster over and over so they take all the damage and hopefully lose a limb (or die) asap. If the Enrage is a late one then it's time to burst the monster down.

Founding Stones, Fist & Tooth and Bursting

There is a fun interplay between using Founding Stones and Fist & Tooth in this showdown, the ideal plan is to score as many critical wounds as possible against the White Lion as this generates the highest potential number of additional resources, and resources = gear (no not innovations, no innovating in LY1, bad settlement, no!) 

However, switching from the Founding Stone to Fist & Tooth has a dramatic impact on your accuracy, you go from 7+/6+ to 8+/7+; which is effectively a 1/4 drop in accuracy (1/5 drop in the Blind Spot). However the trade off on the strength side is very favourable. While your chances of wounding drop from a 5+ to a 6+ (60% to 50%) your odds of scoring a critical wound increase from a 10+ to a 9+.  That's losing 1/6 of your wound roll in exchange for doubling your chances of scoring a critical hit.  This is underpinning why F&T is employed as much as possible by experienced players in this fight, the loss of strength vs. the monster toughness is one of the lowest drops you can have; and you get double the chances of avoiding reactions plus potentially gaining resources.

In practice however it's a constantly shifting situation where you need to judge how wounded your survivors are, what AI cards the White Lion has employed, how wounded it is and survival reserves. From one moment to the next you need to figure out which of your two offensive options is the most viable, or if it's time to take the nuclear option and sling that stone.

Throwing the Founding Stone

Prologue has 9 wounds, however in practice it you only need to deal between 5 and 6 by attacking. This is because you can throw your founding stones in order to score automatic wounds (except on the Trap and Glorious Mane). Hitting the Trap is absolutely the worst feeling because it's a lost wound and no resources, hitting the Mane is great, you just immediately archive it for +2 hide and shuffle the mane back into the White Lion's resource deck, meaning that you might get to do it a second time (yeah it works that way, white lions grow their mane very quickly I guess).

There is one additional downside to doing this, and that's the White Lion's dingdong, crit that location and you're in for a world of hurt, it's pretty much like facing an Enraged lion, essentially you're probably dead unless you can burst the White Lion down.

I do not save any founding stones against Prologue, not one, because having extra resources early on in the game is so powerful I'll toss them all at the White Lion and hope for a couple of extra resources from the experience. Generally I throw them when the White Lion's movement has made it awkward for a survivor to physically reach, or when it's Enraged/Dingdong mad, or when it's near death. 

There is a cost to this strategy, it greatly increases your success rate vs the Prologue White Lion as while you're auto-wounding it up to 4 times out of it's total pool of health, these founding stones become much better at generating resources once you have some Hit Location scouting (Circlet, Wisdom Potion). So saving them is not a bad strategy either, my desire to burst down the White Lion is higher variance than spending them in LY2 or 3. But I am of the position that if I get a really shitty Prologue result I'll just dump the settlement in solo play and replay it. You might not have that luxury of scrubbing it because you're playing less often. I've played it both ways and if I'm not willing to scrub the settlement (which is a artificial and cheesy way of playing) then saving the stones for use with HL Manipulation and trading during hunt events can also be optimal.  You'll have to get a feel for what works for you, it's a matter of play styles.

If you do go with throwing stones, the absolutely best time to do it is right after the White Lion performs the trap, the more HL cards in the deck, the lesser chance of hitting the trap with your magic bullet.

So there we are; this is all of the different things I am considering when facing the Prologue White Lion and these all contribute towards a higher than normal success rate, both for the fight and for my settlements in general. Getting ahead in this game early on is a huge benefit and that's why really knowing what you're doing during the Prologue fight can make for easier times later on.

On Monday we're going to go through what to do with these resources, it'll back up what I provided in the visual guide to the early game and help cement the philosophies behind picking gear. I've also got a few Lantern Year 1 "builds" that'll peak some interest!