Tarred & Feathered: The Phoenix's Hunt (Patreon)

The first gate for facing the phoenix is its hunt, the Phoenix is one of the only monsters that has a severe 'hard' gate on accessing it, while similar tier monsters like the Dragon King, Sunstalker & Co have minor 'rules' that make things like courage important or soluble gear vulnerable to loss; nothing comes close to the shenanigans that the Phoenix pulls. 

This is not to say that the Phoenix hunt is nothing but misery, it does have some decent high points and benefits, but they are not the norm and in fact are outweighed by the downsides.

We're not going to look at every single card in full detail, but I am going to group them into a three categories; positive, neutral and negative then talk about the few really exceptional cards.

Positive

• Fertile Field - Trading brain event damage for understanding and the possible gains of resources is worth it.
• Filth from the Sky - A chance at gaining resources (or regrowing a limb) on a dice roll is good, especially as the negatives are damage rather than permanent harm.

Neutral 

• None - no filthy neutrals here.

Negative

• Wind Tunnel - Forcing players to go through additional hunt events trends towards negative.
• Bird Brained - Mostly negative, sometimes it can shorten the hunt in a beneficial manner, but this can result in a loss of mineral gathering or being ambushed.
• Fateful Feather - In many circumstances this is a negative occurrence. More below.
• Glimpse - if you are lucky (and roll low) this one drags the hunt out, if you are unlucky you end up inflicted with Hunt xp gains.
• Recurring Nightmare - The only positive result on this one is if it happens early and you get to skip a bunch of spaces at the start of the hunt.
• Unmake - a risk of having an item archived is not worth it in exchange for a temporary boost, but this can be turned into a useful positive. More below.
• Time Flows Backwards - This one is absolutely negative, but it can be gamed for positive uses. More below.

9 Cards, 2 that trend positive, 7 that trend negative. You can see why the Phoenix hunt is so harsh and unpleasant. Now lets look at the three major points of interest and how one can leverage them as best as possible - either through mitigation, or consideration of the times at which these cards can be made positive.

Fateful Feather

Now the reset of hunt xp to zero, with the allowable (re)gains of Age benefits again, plus the loss of disorders does have positives. But the price paid for this is huge, you're losing all your fighting arts and weapon xp - plus this is a straggler targeting card, not one you have any choice over. You can slant things in your favor, via abilities such as Prepared (yes, it actually has a use, you can ensure that the newest survivor gets hit here!)

Fighting Arts and Weapon Mastery represent a huge portion of what makes a survivor unique, losing these and regaining the ability to trigger age again is going to turn this survivor into a (potentially) huge pile of stats and not a lot else. I consider this kind of mechanic unengaging, as I have seen many players disheartened by it hitting their survivor.  

There are situations where this one is nothing but a positive however, if you have just hit Age 2 and therefore have no ticks in Weapon Mastery (and likely few if, any useful fighting arts), then you are gaining a second Age 2 without any weapon proficiency loss. A second situation is when you have a completed master who has moved onto a new weapon type, they are likely quite aged at this point and having them reset, but still keeping their mastery benefits (it doesn't touch any previously gained masteries, just the weapon xp - and as we know from the way the Storm constellation works, survivors keep their mastery even if they move onto a new one).

Hours Ring does give mitigation against this one at the cost of survival, and as we'll see later on, the Hours Ring is one of the high power crafts in the Phoenix pool of gear. But it's also an awkward, messy card that causes a lot of rules problems that you will have to just wade your way through. I know why it was changed, but I really do miss the 1.31 version of the Hours Ring, it was way cleaner mechanically.

Also Fateful Feather followed by Time Flows Backwards is a nice one-two unavoidable erasure punch. Fun with your feathery friends. 

Time Flows Backwards

This card is in the area of design that breaks one of the cardinal rules of game design, I've quoted it before, but it always bares repeating.

  "It's not best practice to punish the player because of things they have no control over." -- Yahtzee Croshaw, 2019 

TFB (Time Flows Backwards), is one of the exemplars of the weak 'gotchya' moments that pepper Monster and undermine the better parts of it. It's true "Ameri-trash" random at its finest and I've spoken about how this design was mostly abandoned in the 1980s-90s where long term games are considered. 

Now, in a silly, one off game such as Munchkin, a card like this is mostly fine, because the amount of time invested by the player is relatively low. However, Monster is a game that can take dozens of hours to complete, typically by the time that people first encounter the Phoenix they're around 2 months into their playing time (assuming one session a week) - nothing up to this point has ever said 'hey being too low in hunt xp will get you erased from existence'. So this card can just suddenly land on the table and effectively kill all four survivors (arriving at your first ever showdown against the Phoenix with a lost survivor is typically going to result in a TPK). 

However, later on; when players are experienced and have honed their powers of abuse, this basically becomes a tool to be exploited. You take survivors who have just hit Age 1 (and therefore just gained weapon proficiency), or sometimes (as a calculated gamble) survivors who are near retirement but need more time to complete their mastery because things went wrong. This allows you to gain more hunts to complete your mastery, and with clever abuse it can even result in survivors who get multiple masteries.

However, one must remember that even though the phoenix can taketh away those xps, it can give them back and more besides during the showdown if you are not careful.

I have strong objections against the elements of this game that seriously harm players the first time they encounter them, and then become objects of mitigation/abuse afterwards. Examples of this also include the Harvester event, King's Man victory aftermath, Lion Knight    victory aftermath, Spidicules introduction event and the Spidicules victory aftermath. Every single one of these (potentially) has death as the downside if you are not prepared; and when you are prepared it creates a bunch of 'rules' that players have to follow in advance. i.e. Always have a sacrificial lamb for Spidicules/King's Man/Lion Knight and don't have more than one male with 1+ hunt xp before Spidicules turns up unless you're abusing it for an early DPS strength gain. 

The Phoenix has similar rules to its hunt, I'll list them all at the end of the second article, but the hunt one is.

Always have at least as much hunt xp as the level of the Phoenix +1.

And as mentioned before, git gud and don't experience Fateful Feather before TFB.

Unmake 

Oh Unmake, you are so nearly, nearly a great piece of design. The first time you encounter this one it can be an absolute disaster (and it can really fuck you over if you get this then TFB erasing the survivors holding the resources) because you're not prepared for it. But later on you just end up having to sacrifice one gear slot to include a lower value item that you don't mind losing or want to get a refund on.

Monster has only 9 slots per hunter (11 if you include the Sunstalker Quiver - fun if that gets unmade btw), so this is a tight problem and it's actually one of several reasons why I prefer to create 8 slot builds. 9 Slot builds which require every single item to function are prone to disruption by events like this or even basic hunt events. It can be an absolute disaster of an experience - so I prefer to build 8 slots and then have a 9th slot for a support/disposable item. It also makes fitting Pickaxes into builds a lot easier.

So again, this one is a bit of a gotchya, however at least you are not losing your survivor outright here and you can (if that is how you play), be cautious and not risk gear which is vital to your survivor's loadout. 

As such, when you are experienced, this card does move up into the neutral category, but it is the only one I consider to do this.

Finally, to surmise a few of the Phoenix rules in general terms:

1. Never hunt with a survivor who has less hunt xp than the level of the Phoenix +1. 

2. Always have one disposable piece of gear that you can survive the showdown without or want to get the resources back from.

3. Never select 'other' gear for Unmake unless you really do not care about losing it.

4. Be very insane or ageless (more on this in the next article)

Showdown section of this to follow, either Saturday/Sunday I hope. As I have just moved offices yesterday I might need a little time to finalize things if I cannot get the article completed in advance. Showdown articles are always a massive amount of work and the internet in this place has had some teething troubles that mean I can't start work yet.