Lunar Twilight Knight Review (Patreon)

The Lunar Twilight Knight was one of two game content items which dropped into the store recently. Both of these follow the trend of packaging a small miniature and a “Painters Scale” one in the same box along with some game content. The Lunar Knight in particular is a very egregious example of this ethos with the painters scale model just being the exact same model of Allison the Twilight Knight in a “non-cannon” outfit but larger and with a few more sculpted details.

What this means is for people who are seeking just the game content (not collectors or hobbyist painters, just players) that you are getting a large pile of plastic alongside two $60 cards. There's not even much resell value in these miniatures; maybe a few lucky people will find someone or have friends who don't mind paying a few dollar-euros for the bigger miniature to paint, but those lucky people are going to be the exception not the norm. In short; I'm not going to bury the lead here, this is bad value for money.

The game content itself is another basic hunt event card (at this point it just looks like the entire basic hunt table should have been basic hunt event cards) which has your survivors find an eroded stone face with a bunch of lanterns strung around it. This turns out to be a trap 30% of the time (resulting in blinding and deafness); but 70% of the time it's an offering of a fish dish surrounded by twelve skulls (more Christian iconography here, but it is blended with the 12 Zodiac signs from the Chinese new year). In China fish is one of the most popular dishes for the new year dinner; often being either Carp or Perch, but most famously there is the Red Grouper which is a combination of both the lucky colour (red) and a fish. The Crucian Carp is the one I am most familiar with, and it is steamed and then served whole; representing a wish for a year of abundance.

If you are a Binge Eater, you consume the fish and gain some survival and +1 permanent luck, instead if you have Marrow Hunger then you consume the skulls which have a distinct tannic aftertaste. Tannic acid is a weak acidic substance that is found in plant tissue and it is most commonly experienced when drinking some young wines. It provides a very bitter, bright “green” flavour. This gives the consuming survivor -2 accuracy tokens and +2 permanent strength.

If neither of these happen then you gain the Fish of Abundance rare gear.

All of these three results are good; with the Fish being probably the best result (but we shall discuss that below). The Binge Eater result gives a permanent +1 Luck, meaning that the survivor becomes a very competent resource farmer as long as they are able to go out hunting. The main trick here is that if you have a Binge Eater in your settlement you should always be taking them out on hunts once you have already gained the Fish rare gear,

Even the Marrow Hunger result is decent, trading +2 Permanent strength for a temporary -2 accuracy is a great deal and I am glad that the design here demonstrates an understanding that accuracy is a more important stat than strength. Temporary punishment that can make the showdown harder to win in exchange for long term power. It's a well struck balance.

Last up is the fish itself.

This steamed, whole served, eternal fish dish is naturally a perfect fit with a Lucky Charm thanks to it having a horizontally positioned blue affinity and that means it represents a simple way to get to +2 Luck and Deadly for a Critical Wound result of a 7+ (40%). All of these luck gains are also gear based and that means they are transferable.

The downside to this one is if the survivor bearing this fish around is knocked down then they are going to get -1 luck for each of their luck tokens instead of +1. That's a fair penalty and it makes for a very engaging wrinkle to showdown fights; the survivor carrying this gear has to not only avoid knock down monster reactions and collisions, but they also need to stay clear of serious injuries.

The Gorm Secret Fighting Art Immovable Object provides permanent immunity to being Knocked down, however the usual way of avoiding negative tokens (The Dragon King SFA Altered Destiny) doesn't work here because of the use of 'flip'. Flipping a token is not the same as gaining a token; so Altered Destiny's protection will not trigger.

There are also gear options that can help reduce the chances of being knocked down; the Feather Mantle removes collision with survivors, Leather Armor allows you to ignore Bash, and once per round Rolling Armor allows you to substitute the knock down with Knockback 5. Also Gloom Hammer + Tank shenanigans can ensure that this Fishy survivor isn't targeted, which reduces the odds also. But on the whole I think Rolling Armor is going to be the best protection for a mid game Fish based DPS survivor as it has a repeatable protection that covers all cases.

On the whole the game content here is a good design; there's a risk to encountering this card, but the gain is worth it. In additon, even when you've gained the fish, the event still has things it can interact with if you are taking Binge Eater/Marrow Hunger survivors out on hunts and because this is a “top level” basic hunt event card you have a higher frequency of encountering this event over rolling on the table, which of course means lower odds of the Harvester turning up on a hunt. Always a positive.

I would like to briefly note that I wish this set came with a few survivor hands holding the dish so they could be represented on minis. The older sets like the Xmaxe did this and it was a wonderful little extra that could be used. I love magnetising hands (and just hands) so it was great when this used to occur.

I think the game content here is great, but the miniatures are of little to no value to anyone outside of painters and collectors; so it is not worth the price paid unless you are splitting it with someone who just wants the miniature content. I would not recommend buying this if you think you can sell the miniature(s) on the secondary market; that is a crowded place with few buyers unless you are fine with going low on your asking price.

As such, this one is a failure for me; but not a major one.

Final Score: D+

As always, kind thanks to timberwolfl for supplying the details of this content ahead of it arriving on my doorstep.