White Sunlion Armor Full Release Review (Patreon)

Erza of the Sun wears modified armor adapted to the scorching conditions created by living under the sleeping sun. This White Sunlion hybrid armor is added to People of the Sun campaigns. It grants the wearer more movement, less armor, and the ability to ignore the extreme heat that prevents survivors from wearing heavy furs.

Some how we've already reached the point where some of this beta content has moved from being beta to a full release already, and before we get into a look at this updated rendition I do want to express disappointment at this. Not only are we now seeing design resources being committed to beta content instead of all game designer hands being on the massively overdue kickstarter; but we're now also seeing that this beta content isn't preview stuff for upcoming Kickstarter releases like Campaigns of Death, no it is more shop exclusive content. That honestly feels like yet another betrayal on an already large pile of betrayals and broken promises. Don't get me wrong; Monster remains a fantastic game, but the brand of Kingdom Death is so tarnished at this point thanks to the Kickstarter that it would be at home in the Rust Ocean.

All of that written; we're going to now go and look at this content with fresh eyes and try to give it a completely fair assessment. This release is a plastic version of the previous photoresin miniature and it is an improvement over its predecessor with an alternative “mask on” head and butt cloth. Options like this are great because while the previous model sculpt is excellent; she is 90% exposed booty; for players who already have the photo resin miniature they now can also build and paint a version with variations in her appearance. Also if your partner or gaming group have problems with Erza backside now you have a more modest option; more options for build load outs is always welcome, it allows players to set up models to match their preferences.

There is one noticable change in this set compared to previous ones and that is the armor point icon on the hybrid armor. The number is far, far larger and chunkier than previously and it's not a great look when compared to the older hybrid armor sets and the armor point shield used on the White Sunlion Mask. It looks very cartoony and not at all as elegant as the previous versions.

There is also the decision to have the two new gear cards be pattern cards and use a new pattern format that doesn't have any of the flavour of the previous pattern card design. It is an odd choice and feels a bit lazy; there may however be new mechanical reasons for having an alternative pattern design; so I'll withhold final judgement until we see both the Gambler's Chest and Campaigns of Death's patterns. With that all written, let us get to the cards!

Bleeding Corpse Lily

This new piece of terrain represents one of the few campaign specific terrain pieces (The Tyrant's Obsidian Gate is another) and it is a magnificent expansion of the game's design space. The concept of having terrain only appear in certain campaigns is a very exciting one and this first rendition is already full of potential.

The Bleeding Corpse Lily will be added to the terrain deck at the start of People of the Sun campaigns; it is a Perfect Organ (Flower) resource, the unlock mechanism for both pattern crafting cards and a key crafting component of each one. That means if you want to get both new pieces of gear then you'll need to encounter this terrain at least twice in a campaign.

On top of that; as you can see from the terrain card, it's not guaranteed that the terrain card turns into the resource; half the time it will self archive, and it only yields the resource 30% of the time. The remaining 20% lightly punishes you but the terrain sticks around for another try.  That means you're going to be wanting a Screaming Armor set in the early portion of the People of the Sun campaign because the Screaming Bracers have a +2 bonus to the result when interacting with any terrain that involves a dice roll. That'll push the odds to a more reasonable amount – which is important because this is a terrain card that can only be randomly drawn in the first place; it's a random roll on a random draw and you want to stack the odds in your favour when dealing with things like that

The resource itself is a solid one because it is not only a crafting component of the two new gear cards it is also a crafting component of the Blue Charm – something that is very powerful in People of the Sun because of how their campaign specific survivors work (they have inbuilt Cycloid Scale Armor set bonus, it is really fun and full of strategic depth). That means you'll be grabbing these all campaign because this flower remains useful at all times.

Let us now get into the two new pieces of gear and then the armor set itself.

Beast Kunai

Requirements: People of the Sun campaign, 1x Bleeding Corpse Lily, 1x Lion Claw, 1x Perfect Bone

This weapon is an absolutely ridiculous expense because it requires not one, but two perfect resources, one of which is used by the Zanbato. That means it is automatically in competition with the Zanbato and it needs to be really special to justify crafting it beyond simply grabbing another Zanbato.

It is a (2/6+/4) melee, dagger, bone, tool with no ability keywords and the additional ability that when you finish attacking with any melee weapon you can place yourself in any unoccupied space adjacent to the monster. Note that this applies to absolutely any melee weapon in your gear grid and it even triggers on reach weapons – the intention here is to have additional interactions with the White Sunlion Armor; I'll discuss those specifically after each individual item – however I'll briefly mention that the Red affinity on this weapon is terrible, it needed to face upwards.

The design intention of this weapon is for it to be a solid mid-game weapon that becomes a support item for blindspot attacking survivors later on when its strength falls off. It doesn't quite manage it, but with the assistance of the White Sunlion Set it can have a decent enough strength to last for a while when used in combinations (especially with the right kind of Warrior of the Sun).

Ultimately this weapon is just too reserved in its power level for it to be anything other than an occasional piece of fun, when your required resources include a Perfect Bone you need to be something really special. This is not quite that; without 6 strength, Deadly or good affinities this weapon is pretty much dead on arrival.

White Sunlion Mask

Requirements: People of the Sun campaign, 1x Bleeding Corpse Lily, 1x Bone, 1x Golden Whiskers

So this one has changed a bit in power level from when it was in beta form. The beta form is as follows:

This original form was incredible with slow weapons; the new version has a lower, but more consistent strength and it can apply that to all weapons you're attacking with. It is certainly an improvement because you have less variables to consider now. You know what your base strength is going to be; you don't have to consider that it's also gaining between 1 and 10 strength at an average of 5.5. Consistency is worth a lot.

The single largest issue we have with this item is that down red puzzle requirement. White Lion Armor struggles to find good up red affinities to activate it. Often having to rely on the Counterweighted Axe or Bone Dagger – which is why Red Charm White Lion Bone Dagger builds are a thing; there's not a lot else you can do (at least until the Hooked Claw Knife turned up).

The left red affinity is great; but the down one combined with that puzzle requirement is another pressure point for White Sunlion Armor and as such you need to build a big old inverted U shape (aka lower case n) of red affinities in order to activate the two important abilities for the set (Boots, Mask).

It is also worth noting that this is an Accessory; you can use other head gear with this armor set or use the mask with other armor sets, this includes normal White Lion sets if you have the Hellfire Secret Fighting Art:

This means that it's far more useful long term than the Beast Kunai which is often the case for non-armor/non-weapon cards like masks.

White Sunlion Armor Set

Requirements: People of the Sun Campaign; White Sunlion Mask, White Lion Gloves, White Lion Coat, White Lion Kilt, White Lion Greaves

First up we'll get the major criticism out of the way; the armor points on this hybrid set are terrible for the price you pay. Any time something has 2 armor points on all location the question is asked 'Is this better than Rawhide Armor?' and the answer is inevitably “No.”  White Lion Armor has always needed 4 armor points on all locations to make up for its aggressive playstyle and all the reactions that causes.

Secondly the affinity layout for this armor set is pretty garbage; you get a “bar” of three red affinities that need two up red affinities to complete them in order to build that “n” shape layout. That means with the arm and body pieces taking up two more slots we have very little room for anything else if we want to get an active Sunlion Mask. Even less if we also want to activate the Boots (and we do because 7 movement is a life saver with Dash especially when your armor points are this poor).

The set bonus is a bit of a weird bag. The +1 evasion is not very valuable; this is because pushing a monster from 2+ to 3+ or 3+ to 4+ is a marginal benefit. There's a reason most Evasion builds start at +2 evasion and try to climb from there. If the armor set had ways of leveraging Monster Grease to provide an additional +2 then we'd be in a good spot. Now there are some builds that can create a triple line of three green affinity gear cards to activate Monster Grease, but when you have a baseline 2 armor points on all locations that is just not a good enough foundation. Sure one could go: Zanbato →Flower Costume ← Monster Grease but that requires a low value promotional boxed set and we're still only at 3 armor points on all locations with only 1 slot free for a weapon. It's rough because this armor set has potential now, but it has inherited so many of the White Lion Armor set's issues and the mask can only do so much carrying when the rest of the armor pieces outside of the boots are holding the team back on the affinity front.

The speed bonus is a bit of a mixed bag, you're probably going to want to make use of this with a spear rather than the Beast Kunai; this is because spears are the best weapons to add speed onto thanks to that sweet specialisation bonus. The Counterweighted Axe is another solid candidate because more speed means more chances of triggering that automatic wound on your first perfect hit (it's in addition to normal wounding rolls, which is powerful) – Also if you play with the Dragon King in People of the Sun (highly recommended), the Nuclear Scythe is a superb option as it even provides one of the up red half-affinities you need.

The Counterweighed Axe and Spears are also able to make the best use of the new set bonus because Pounce increasing your distance to 4 means that you can't jump over 2x2 monsters and hit them without ease. The Beast Kunai can help here as well because it can ensure that against a 2x2 monster you 'stick' to them; but it is all awkward and I think I'd rather just try and use the Kunai elsewhere or perhaps even just not craft it.

Conclusion

It is an absolute shame that this release is not a part of Campaigns of Death and are instead some additional limited time shop content (as most shop content tends to be, though that may be unintentional). They do however represent some interesting new areas of design space for the game and one would hope that Campaigns of Death will bring specifically curated terrain decks that flavour the way that the campaign's gear runs in the future because that is a genuinely exciting concept and a route to hopefully see APG explore.

If you really enjoy People of the Sun and play it more than once a year, this is probably good content to purchase, but as the amount of content inflates we start to have a stronger and stronger need for short campaigns where one can experience things like this without committing to something that will take the typical play group over half a year to get through.

I think this one is another piece for the collectors and people with money to burn. I would be valuing this differently if they had given us a male White Sunlion Armor miniature as well as the original Erza, that addition would have made this a valuable proposition.