Fully Grounded #12: Lonely Tree (Patreon)

 This is part of the terrain series, other entries can be found at the contents page here.  

Most terrain from Emporium Miniatures. (Not in this case)

Link: https://www.etsy.com/shop/EmporiumMiniatures 

• Number: 1 
• Size: 3x3
• Passive: No
• Activate: Yes
• Obstacle: Yes
• Classification: Benefit

 Contained entirely within the Lonely Tree expansion, the terrain version of the Lonely Tree is the first form you will encounter this monster in. Here it is in the dormant phase. During this time, the tree is nothing more than a collection of terrain pieces.

Before we start, please note that the Lonely Tree card has a typo on in (this expansion is rife with them, only the Dung Beetle Knight expansion is worse). I have shown the correct additional monster traits in the text above. The correct text should be:

The monster starts the showdown with (S) Monster Fruit and (S) Nightmare Fruit in play.

If the survivors are victorious, and any Nightmare Fruit miniatures remain on the showdown board, they gain the Lonely Fruit strange resource.

I have included all of the relevant images to be as clear as possible.

The tree is first encountered either via drawing from the terrain deck, or via the Object of Desire hunt event, which, if investigated by a 3+ courage survivor forces the Tree onto the board as an additional terrain piece. It also displaces the nominated survivor, they will start the showdown adjacent to the tree, sometimes even knocked down with the priority target token.

Oddly, Object of Desire archives itself after it has completed, but the Lonely Tree terrain card does not. So you can encounter multiple Lonely Trees during a campaign (and I have). It is not clear at this stage if that is intended or just due to an oversight - I've asked, but never got an answer.

For the most part, the Lonely Tree works as an obstacle in a similar fashion to the Nightmare Tree, however, you cannot directly interact with it and it is "monster impassable" which means that the monster cannot move through it. That means you do not need to worry about the monster 'hiding' inside the tree. But it also means that the monster cannot just run through the tree to get to the fruit. Which is very important.

This is because of the Monster Fruit trait, if the monster is within 5 spaces of the fruit it will run over and gobble up that fruit, both removing a route to getting the Lonely Tree unlocked (you need a fruit on the board to get that) and also giving the monster heal 1 or +1 damage (if fully healed). Needless to say, our objective is to avoid that because we want the extra fight against the Lonely Tree. It is both one of the best fights in the game, and we also do not want the monster getting stronger.

As a consequence the best thing to do is to set up the tree in the far corner of the board and never go near it. (Note: Against the Screaming Antelope, this gets more complicated because of how the Antelope runs around the edge of the board when it is out of AI cards, it's best just to kill it quickly if it starts running towards the fruit). 

I typically deploy the tree as close to the edge as I can, and then put the fruit behind it (as far away from the monster and each other as possible). While you can interact with the fruit to try and move it, the odds of doing this are... not good (40%), so you basically want to ignore the Nightmare Fruit trait almost entirely, it's not worth the time of day. But if things are super urgent, and the monster WILL eat that fruit because it is within 5 spaces, you can take a hail mary and try rolling it out of range. But that is against the expected outcome, so it's a desperation play.

If you do successfully keep the monster away from the tree and its delicious fruit, you will be rewarded with a Lonely Fruit. Don't just mindlessly eat that, you want to be calculated and careful about when it is used, because it has consequences and varying rewards. 

Which means, next Friday we'll take a deep dive into the Lonely Tree! See you there!