Tarred and Feathered: The Phoenix Showdown (Patreon)

Note: We have had to travel via boat, moving everything we own over this week and I am finishing this article in the absolute chaos that is the office right now, so if there are errors or omissions, please politely point them out and I will fix them. It has been a disruptive period.

As we have discussed, the Phoenix showdown is one of the most unpleasant ones in the game currently, it is right up there with the King's Man, Lion God and Slenderman (this last one can be very frustrating and difficult, but it is also very rewarding when you master it). Its rewards are also (mostly) on the weaker side, with few standout items and little reason to face this monster repeatedly once you have what matters.

It also has the strange situation where its own armor set is (often) inferior to the hybrid armor sets built from its parts and there is also a strong, viable alternative with a superior showdown experience available in the Dragon King's armor set. 

No joke, the Dragon King showdown is magnificent fun, easily one of the top 5 showdowns in the game.

Now all of that aside, the Phoenix is the flagship quarry monster from the core game, and it does have some worthwhile gear and benefits, so there is value in understanding just how the showdown works, what you can do to mitigate the Phoenix's multiple attack vectors plus the best ways to position, control, defend and attack.

 This piece will be broken into multiple sections, they are as follows:

• Rewards - Discussion on what the carrot for the monster is, why would you hunt this in the first place? This matters because one should know what you are aiming for in a hunt.
• Stats - a look at the baseline statistics for each level of the monster.
• Traits - a breakdown and discussion of each important trait the monster has
• AI - a look at the monster's general AI behavior aka Active behavior
• HL - a look a the monster's general HL reaction/trap behavior aka Reactive behavior
• Power Spikes - Any individual cards that are way more dangerous than normal
• Troughs - Any specific cards that create moments where the monster is weaker, or provide opportunities to exploit

Finally we will close out with some discussion that will put a bow on things and give you food for thought on how to approach hunting this monster with an aim for success. 

Rewards

So, what are the carrots that the Phoenix has to dangle before us? Well, they are a few key pieces of gear, which can almost entirely be dragged out from the Level 1 Phoenix and apart from that there are a couple of L3 specific rewards. In my opinion, unless you are going to stop it into the curb then the L2 is not worth the effort (but if you are stomping the L2 then you should be on the L3). In short, the first thing to note here is that the L2 Phoenix is lower value than the L1 and the L3. If you can skip it and just handle the L1 then later on direct to the L3, you should.

In no particular order, the gear which is the highest value at the moment is:

• The Phoenix Placart - For Warlord Armor and Mixed Armor sets. 
• The Phoenix Helm - For Dancer Armor and Mixed Armor sets.
• Full Phoenix Armor for core only campaigns or set ups where you do not have access to the Hybrid armors, Dragon Armor or Cycloid Scale Armor.
• Arc Bow - the second best bow in the game (behind the Sunshark Bow and ahead of the Ink Bow & Vespertine Bow).
• Hollowpoint Arrow - Powerful if you have one, ridiculous if you have four, game breaking if you have four plus four Shielded Quivers.
• Crest Crown - L3 Phoenix only, will let you avoid the trap almost permanently when combined with scouting and careful speed control. Broken.
• Timeless Eye - gained from beating the L3+ Phoenix when you have Face Painting. However half the time the survivor who slew the phoenix is punished with +1 speed, -1 accuracy.
• +1 understanding for all survivors with age tokens
• Hours Ring - because it is overpowered as heck (and REALLY fiddily to use).
• Understanding gains and free Insight

There are a few other items that are situationally solid:

• Bird Bread - if you need a decent right Green for the Phoenix Placart activation.
• Feather Mantle - for mitigating certain monsters who like to knockback in dangerous manners. However there are better options elsewhere.
• Bloom Sphere - it is weaker than the Fecal Salve overall, but for DPS characters who want to double surge attack then it is a viable alternative. 
• Rainbow Katana & Blood Sheath - utterly ridiculous offense when paired with Screaming Armor. Mostly for meme-lords and weebs though, as it should always be with Katanas. 
• Hunt xp ticks - depends on the situation, see the hunt article earlier today and last week's primer for more. However, the showdown gains are so severe that it is rare that you can leverage these.

The other weapons vary in quality: the Finger of God is alright if you happen to not have a better spear choice in the mid game, but the Sonic Tomahawks and Hollow Swords are absolutely terrible in the worst manner. 

Adam has confirmed that the Tomahawks are being buffed and I pointed out to him publicly that the swords should also get the same treatment. So I am hopeful we will see some stuff sorted in the future, however there is a LOT more that I am trying to give to him for review without success.

However, it is important to note that on the whole, when you do not have a specific objective/gear goal the Screaming Antelope and White Lion are superior for generic resource drops and Iron farming. This is why I consider the Phoenix to be a 'splash quarry' (a monster you hunt as few times as possible and drop once you have the specific gear you seek). 

Stats

As you can see, the Phoenix starts out appearing to be slightly "below" L2 White Lion level; being faster, but with the same level of toughness, less wounds, more attacks and a more dangerous AI deck. Of particular note on the L1 is it has access to a legendary card, this is an absolutely massive spike in power as we will discuss later. 

You're looking at 5-6 strength weapons (including survivor strength) as a baseline to wound the Phoenix a reasonable amount of the time and because this monster tends to put you on a clock (haha, puns by Phil Ken Sebben) the more strength and accuracy you have here, the better. Or, alternatively, as we'll see, the Deadly wounding route has a lot of benefits also.

The Phoenix's scaling is pretty normal as well, with wounds, speed, damage and toughness all climbing up in a steady pattern (+2 then +4 at L3 is pretty normal for monsters).

The Phoenix has the following average speed and damage at each level (L1/L2/L3) printed on its attack cards.

Speed: 2.3/3.3/4.3

Damage: 2.7/3.7/5.7

And the following wounds: 13/18/23

Typically the Phoenix has a 2/2+/2 attack profile, but it can spike up to 5 speed for one attack and 10 damage for another (see peaks below). 

Movement-wise the Phoenix has technically unlimited movement due to its ability to Materialize (see traits). This makes it one of the monsters that is difficult to kite and a few of its attacks cannot even be dash-cancelled. Very powerful.

The L3 Phoenix gains +1 Luck and +1 Evasion, the luck gain is pretty massive, but the evasion one isn't really that much of an impact on its defense.

Traits

The Phoenix is a tricksy bird in that it attacks survivors on more vectors than most other monsters in the game. This is because it is absolutely an overbloated pile of mechanics, these are expressed in the traits and the AI deck. 

The Phoenix seeks to kill survivors via:

• Damage
• Insanity
• Aging/De-aging - including a potential turn 1 kill
• Bleeding tokens
• Direct severe injuries (head, disemboweled)

It also disrupts via:

• Knockback
• Knock down
• Reducing movement
• Reducing Speed

In all, it's got an absolutely ridiculous amount of attack vectors, some of the highest in the game. And it's one of the few monsters who introduces a new and unique way to kill survivors by ageing them out of existence. This mechanic is very much laid out in the traits, so you can see it coming, even if you can't do much about it unless you've already prepared.

That is because of, Spiral Age - which has an inbuilt 'counter' in Dreaded Decade. 

Here they are:

Spiral Age is one of the most damaging and powerful attacks a monster can inflict on a settlement, as you can see it not only erases survivors from the timeline (No death principle - they never existed in the first place), but in addition to that one also suffers extra losses if you have Family. 

As an aside, always make sure each family has a unique surname, the Phoenix would harm two separate families with the same surname even though they are not actually related. That's just how the mechanics work here. An additional note: As People of the Stars do not get Family (they have Bloodline instead), they are not impacted by this - though honestly the Phoenix is typically a monster you should avoid in Stars if you are being optimal.

Dreaded Decade is one of the two primary protections you have against Spiral Age harming you, by using your activation before the Phoenix triggers Spiral Age you can get rid of them, but if you fail then you are getting hit by Spiral Age automatically. 

If you recall above, the Phoenix attacks via brain damage as one of its stronger vectors, so being very, very insane is useful against it. Fortunately (for us, not for the game), there are a few ways you can push your insanity up a huge amount - Hiccup from the Gorm being the most broken as it is unlimited insanity gains (I have fed this to Adam, I hope he fixes it in the card pack by having Hiccup hurt everyone's insanity when it's triggered or replacing the card entirely). The other seriously reliable one requires being deaf + Screaming Helm, so that's harder to engineer.

Either way, a lot of insanity is essential for survivors who have not entirely opted out of the Spiral Age package. Which brings us to the other protection and the one that I recommend you collect as much as you can if you want to hunt the Phoenix as often as possible. That is:

With Ageless you can take advantage of the Phoenix by allowing yourself to be aged right up until just before that retired box and enjoy the benefits of all the age milestones without any worries of being erased from existence or retired. Once you have 4x Ageless survivors the Phoenix becomes a normal monsters, but this ties into my objections about the aging mechanics. A mechanic with a hard counter just isn't that interesting.

Its other traits are Zeal, Materialize and Top of the Food Chain (L3 only). Zeal is very straightforward, it is a basic attack at the end of each turn and Materialize is a special way of moving that is in essence an aggressive teleport, the Phoenix seeks to land on top of your survivors without passing through the intervening space, it steps outside of time for a moment before coming back in when it has redeployed. Top of the Food chain is a straightforward power spike, allowing the monster to secure kills more often by subtracting 2 from all serious injury rolls.

AI

The ratio of for the Phoenix are 8/3/1, 10/6/1 and finally 13/7/2. One of the largest things to consider here is that every phoenix always has the potential to resolve a legendary action, and as we will see in the peaks section, these legendary cards are extremely powerful. As a consequence the Rawhide Headband at end of survivors turn is a potent tool in mitigating damage (it always is, but the Phoenix almost demands it).

First up is the Basic Attack, as Zeal will be triggering this most turns.

The most threatening parts of this are the age gain and the Razor Wind. We've discussed age above, Razor Wind is one of the reasons why bandages are recommended for this fight and also why players tend to recommend having Dash before you face a Phoenix, otherwise you will be pushed well outside of a reach of the bird and bashed. There are other methods that let you mitigate or ignore this; Iron Will Ability, Immovable Object Secret Fighting Art and the Feather Mantle from the Phoenix are some examples - but Feather Mantle is the only one you'll typically get in a regular fashion. I actually quite like it as a piece of gear, it has good affinities, so it is a valid option. Dancer Armor is another good option to handle this, but to be honest one doesn't want to be tanking this attack if they are in Dancer armor (if they can avoid it). The last option is Phoenix Armor or Dragon Armor + Encourage. Both of those armor sets put you at 7 movement in your turn, and in fact you can take advantage of the knockback very well with Phoenix Armor, allowing you to charge back in each turn and score hits with massive strength bonuses. Yup, Phoenix gear is good for hunting phoenixes. That's part of this monster's design I like, it is elegant (and there are things to appreciate about the ⏲️🐔.

Disdain: When the Phoenix has no targets it is a very punishing situation, not only does it withdraw back to the tree (possibly putting it out of range) but it attacks survivors mental state with brain damage and causes Spiral Age to trigger. Ageless survivors who have accepted darkness tend not to worry much about this, but most others will be seeking to avoid it if they can. Too many Disdains will burn through your Dreaded Debacle protection very quickly and then allow the phoenix to attack your age directly.

We will walk through the AI Cards now:

Basic Cards break down as follows:

• 3 Moods
• 3 Single Target attacks
• 4 Area of Effect (AoE) attacks
• 1 Single Target Intimidate
• 2 AoE Intimidates

Advanced are:

• 1 Mood
• 2 Single Target attacks
• 4 Unique effects

Legendaries are:

• Deja Vu - See below
• Life Pattern - A Full Heal that can also full heal all the survivors (almost a showdown reset)
• Top of the Food Chain - Subtract 2 from all severe injury rolls
• Predator's Aura - see Troughs

Typically the Phoenix will attack 'the last target to wound it', hit in an AoE, do everyone or a random survivor.

Hit Locations - 22 cards total

The main areas to be aware of in the Hit Locations are the Trap Card and the Rewind Mechanic. The deck itself breaks down as follows:

• 1 Trap
• 2 Impervious locations with critical wounds that give resources, one Super Dense
• 1 First Strike Location that causes Destroyed Genitals (you may elect to avoid this)
• 10 Wound Reactions
• 1 Failure Reaction
• 2 Reflex Reactions
• 20 of the locations can be inflicted with Critical Wounds
• There are 5 Persistent Injuries

The Rewind mechanic is one of the main reasons why stacking as much luck as possible for your attacking survivors is key to a successful hunt. As you can see, only 2 cards in the Phoenix's deck cannot be critically wounded, the others are the trap and the deathblow (which is easy to wound and has no reactions). You are never punished for having as much luck as possible and also Axes are very potent against the Phoenix with how hard it is crippled by its persistent injuries.

Deadly/Luck is one of the key pillars on which a successful Phoenix hunt is built, if you are consistently causing critical wounds then you will be tearing down the monster fast (even faster with Devastating) and suffering few consequences. Needless to say, you don't need much Hit Location control here unless you are using the Zanbato - I find the Wisdom Potion to be very optimal for hunting the Phoenix and only want the Cat's Eye Circlet for when I am seeking to score the Deathblow.

Special shout out to the Trap, it disables almost any way of protecting against it with its super doom. Deflect tokens seem to work however, because they were created after Time Stop was designed and it is possible they were forgotten in the revamp (or it is intentional).

So on the whole, just stack crits as much as possible, you get punished for wounding the Phoenix normally - but if you have to do that because you don't have enough Deadly/Luck - make sure you clear out age tokens before you attack.

Power Spikes

Deja Vu aka the Card that should not be.

If I was allowed to erase exactly one card from Kingdom Death forever, it would be this (with Hiccup as a close second and the Zanbato/Rib Blade in third). Deja Vu is simultanously the most unpleasant 'gotchya', unanswerable turn one monster play (even worse than when the Manhunter has a Turn 1 Dirty Fighting) and mechanic that causes the most rule issues and power gaming situations.

So, as mentioned above, every Phoenix has one legendary card in its deck, on the first turn the Level 1 Phoenix has 12 AI cards, so it has a 1/12 chance of drawing its legendary card (without any answer unless you got an Ambush) and 1/4 chance of that legendary card being Deja vu. Which then has a 40% chance of erasing each survivor from the game. That means when fighting the L1 Phoenix there is the following chance that you get hit turn one with everyone having to make a 40% save against being erased (usual warning on the maths, I have had to do this in a rush, if it's wrong please provide the calculations so I can correct it).

(25/100) × 0.083 =  0.02075 or 2.075% 

So about 2 in a 100 L1 Phoenixes will do this on turn one. With only Lifetime rerolls as a possible protection (remember when we did Great Game Hunters on the Phoenix Survival of the Fittest didn't give lifetime rerolls).

However, that's just the first turn for a level 1 phoenix and the calculations can change wildly for L2, L3 and later turns. Also this card can pull that nonsense at any time if you're not Rawhide headbanding at the end of every turn until you're certain it doesn't have Deja Vu in the deck - and if it does, you're required to carry a lot of Spiral Age tokens around as protection and they have their own issues above.

But that's not all, if you happen to have 4x ageless survivors then you can game the campaign to get a full reset, bringing just your best survivors and gear along to beat on a new Prologue White Lion (be warned, you'll still be hurting from the Phoenix fight). That causes a huge amount of rules issues and is a munchkin paradise, I am guilty of having a triple Green Armor settlement because of this card - I basically stopped playing with it when I reached that point, nothing could stand up to even two sets, let alone three.

So ultimately your aim is to ensure that this card doesn't resolve unless you are looking to collect age tokens and hit a reset of your timeline for some reason (i.e. Jet packing out of a failed Stars or Green Armor campaign). If you're not paying attention to it, it can sometimes just reset everything and that in itself can be galling for players who have invested hours into a settlement and wanted to see the story through to the end (equally it can be a lot of fun to roll into a new timeline with badasses).

The Difference Between Us - You can just feel Old Man Phoenix's disdain for you through this card, it absolutely oozes flavor. But it is also one of the most damaging and threatening attacks in the game, up there with things like the One Finger Flick and Butcher's Bite. Unblockable 10 Damage with -2 on the severe injury table (that stacks with Top of the Food Chain's -2) that always hits the head is a massive concern for anyone. Can and often will kill. Peck is similar to this, but on a much smaller scale.

Gouge & Feast - Any attack that removes armor before damage is something that has to be paid attention to. Dodge/Block this one if you can't stop it happening in the first place. But also this thing inflicts Disemboweled, which cripples your movement and kills you if you are the only survivor alive (two disemboweled survivors can mechanically carry each other home somehow, perhaps they take it in).

The Trap Card - No joke, as mentioned above, this trap despite using Basic Attack for its mechanic, is a beating and a half.

I missed it out on this first past because the Patreon text editor sucks and has no preview function, but Pustule Cannons is another massive power spike and should be dashed away from. The amount of damage that attack deals if it hits with just one of the dice is devastating.

Troughs

Analtorium & Excrete

Amazing name aside, Analtorium should most of the time be a trough, you have to be in the blind spot with 4+ age tokens to suffer a negative (and 4 is basically an automatic escape from the showdown for that survivor). As long as you are aware of this card, it is nothing but a benefit, especially if you can abuse it by leaving the Phoenix with nothing in its AI deck except this card and a method of giving survivors age tokens (like say its basic action!), you can then rotate survivors to gain +1 understanding or Insight over and over.

Excrete is similar, but there is the threat of that hand parasite causing one to suffer a severe injury if you cannot dodge. But if you can, you have a way to farm out all the droppings from the Phoenix's deck, which will improve all other resource drops.

Unspoken - Losing all survival hurts, a lot, but either nothing happens or you gain understanding, clear all age tokens and lose your survival. There is the price that you have to pick a new name and cannot pick your old one - but there is no reason to pick your old one ever and no mechanic that forces you to do that. So you're fine. Another card you can potentially loop with some work.

Predator's Aura - This Legendary mood creates an aura extending 3 spaces in all directions from the Phoenix that knocks down survivors unless they either have 6+ understanding or they can roll equal to or under their courage. This card has a huge amount of counter play options possible, high courage, high understanding, Encourage, Fist & Tooth and so on. And even if you can't counter play, you're getting knocked down at the end of your Act and standing up at the end of the Phoenix's turn. Unless you have something like Harvestman it's not an issue and if you're using Brawler Armor it is straight up a benefit.

It can be annoying, but compared to many of the other things the Phoenix can do, it is just annoying rather than lethal. Honestly, this thing is weaker than some basic actions. So be happy if you draw it.

Bored: This one gives you a nice window to beat on the Phoenix as long as you move into the correct positions in order to avoid the Spiral Cyclone. It is not too hard to mitigate this and the punishment for failing is not too severe. Having an automatic trigger of Disdain can be rough for some survivors though.

Chatter: A Peak for survivors who do not have access to reach/ranged weapons, but any party without at least two of these is doing themselves a huge disservice. It also doesn't really stop Shield tanks from activating as they can move a single step away and then activate.

In Closing

So to add to the rules from the Hunt article:

- Bring Deadly weapons and as much luck as possible

- Dash good

- Bandages good

- Shields Good

- Reach/Ranged good

- Whips, so so but have benefits, especially with removing Haze.

- Be ageless

- If not ageless, be insane and have as close to the bare minimum of hunt xp as you can (Phoenix Level +1)

- Blind Spot positioning is good if you have 3 or less Age tokens

- Rawhide Headband at the end of every survivor's act until you know what this particular phoenix can do

- Basic Cards tend to be scarier than Advanced ones

- High Movement and anti-Knockdown stuff is good

- Phoenix Gear often has benefits against the Phoenix, great design.

Next time we'll do a piece on the Resources and Phoenix Gear in specific, including all of the stuff (along with notes on what is hopefully being fixed in the fabled card pack - I don't have any special insight in this matter by the way, I just know that the Tomahawks are getting the treatment and hopefully the Hollow Swords will also) and then follow that up with a public 'Visual Guide to the Phoenix' in the same way as the other visual guides in the past. That'll shorthand what we've put into this set of articles.

Until then, please feel free to add your own neat tricks and tips for fighting this most threatening foe as it is virtually impossible for one person to cover everything even if they have spent a lot of time refining the process. 

Together, we can ensure that the Phoenixes are wiped out and everyone gets their share of The Tyrant's Obsidian Fried Time Chicken! 

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