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Screaming Sun Armor Lucy – White Box Content Review
🕑 Added 2024-01-05 10:00:05 +0000 UTC
So she's here, KDM's best girl (accept no substitutes) has received the same treatment as Erza with a full People of the Sun plastic “white” box release. This set continues the Sunlion Armor trend in that it rebalances and expands on the beta content by tying it into the pattern system, this time however it is not a piece of terrain that unlocks the set, it's a new vermin card. It's honestly wonderful how significantly the pattern system has evolved and been expanded upon from its initial 'pile of random things in a deck' design to include patterns from Indomitable monsters, terrain and bugs.
I've reviewed this model before and I can say that it's one of my all time favourite sculpts, it has an antelope-like grace to it while also giving Lucy that continued “tomboyish” charm that she's always had. I love the dynamism of the pose and she has a lot of presence on the board while also avoiding too many risks to the delicate parts of the model. Also, unlike the plastic version of Lune, everything fits together well. My only disappointment is we do not get an alternative head where she is wearing the mask on her face the way that the armor set art depiction is.
She's Lucy, She's Great. Lets get into the game content.
Game Content
The first step is looking at how we gain these new patterns, which is via this brand spanking new vermin. The Crimson Cochineal. If you are not familiar with them, cochineals are a natural source of the carmine dye and are named for the scarlet/carmine dye that they create. This insect lives in areas where their primary source grows, cacti and they're used not just for colouring fabrics, but also as a natural source of food colouring. If you see carmine in your ingredients, that's bug juices!
The Crimson Cochineal as such is almost a perfect fit for People of the Sun as it is set in a dry, hot part of the world where the Ancient Sun's heat beats down mercilessly. It also suggests that there are cacti in Kingdom Death, which honestly I would love to see.
On top of that, we get to continue the trend of Pareidolia (or Faceism) in that the physiology of this bug features an Oni style face on its back, indicating that the bone skull used as the framework for the Screaming Sun Mask influenced by the vermin (and the crimson dye from the critter is used on it). I'm not as confident about what parts of the cochineal that the Tanto uses. I guess parts of chitin? Maybe?
Overall this is just a huge thematic flavor win and it makes me wish I'd done more research into the corpse lilly (the flowers that inspired the Pokemon Gloom) because I do love reading about the parts of nature that inspire these creations.
Screaming Tanto
Pattern Costs: 1x Carmine Cochineal, 1x Large Flat Tooth, 2x Scrap
The second completely new part of this release is the Screaming Tanto, this is the weapon that is held by Lucy (so we can expect a rope dart, kyoketsu-shoge or similar with Aya I think? Though what we really need with the plastic Sunlantern Aya release is Thrown Mastery). The Tanto is another correctly balanced dagger which helps expand the space in which daggers are viable, Daggers have had a lot of love in recent promotional releases as well as the GCE which means at this point they're mostly at a power level which is similar to the average weapon option.
Whether this weapon is powerful or not for you is going to depend on when you draw it, the (2/6+/4) weapon profile in combination with Persistance 1 (same ability as printed on the Bone Dagger), Savage and a Perfect hit ability that combines with PotSun's Embolden survival action. That suggests that if you want to make this sing in the late game you're going to want to use it with Luck stacking. The ability doesn't work super well with Dagger Mastery though, which is a shame, but that is an issue that surrounds many Daggers leaning into Perfect hits over backstabbing.
I've enjoyed using this weapon a fair amount though, it's just the right level of powerful without feeling too pushed. It also has lots of fun synergies that you can discover here and there which is always a great part of the KDM experience.
Screaming Sun Mask
Pattern Costs: 1x Carmine Cochineal, 1x Spiral Horn, 1x Skull
This updated revision of the Screaming Oni Mask has two significant changes, the first is the name change, ensuring that the Screaming Oni Armor is a distinct entity from this sun variant and the second is the removal of the 'once per round' limitation for Scold. The name change is mostly irrelevant except for keeping the two armor sets distinct so you can't stack both armor bonuses like a cheeky git. Removing the limitation helps this mask perform its role in Sun, which is giving a way to “encourage” survivors up to their feet in a fair fashion. There's really not too much more to write about here, its affinity is a fine direction for Screaming Armor to utilise (it goes in slot 6 instead of 2, which is honestly a better place in the early to mid game because it leaves a row open on the gear grid rather than a column – open rows tend to be more powerful than columns because of the directions that staple items have their affinities pointing in).
The crafting cost still needs that Spiral Horn, which is a 1x resource drop from the Screaming Antelope. Same cost as the normal Screaming Horns, that does create a bit of tension when you draw the horns ahead of the Cochineal. Do you craft the Screaming Horns right now or hold out for the Sun Mask? I like decision moments like this.
Screaming Sun Armor
Finally we have the armor set itself, which is toned down from the Beta Oni variant by not having as nuts a version of Flay. I think this is a lot cleaner version of the ability as it causes less potential rules questions or breaking things in an unexpected fashion. We're looking at Perfect hits on a 8 to 10 here and you can gain additional stacking from things like Timeless Eye or Dark Eye.
This new version of Flay also still synergises well with the Tanto and that means it feels a lot better than the Beast Kunai did in combination with the Sunlion Armor set. Getting a second Cochineal feels really exciting as you get to stick these two elements together and build upon the synergies they offer. With the Beast Kunai/Sunlion I have more recently found myself often not crafting the Kunai as there were better options at the time I got that second Corpse Lily.
To return to the Screaming Sun Armor, I think that this is not a strictly better set than the Screaming Armor itself because of how powerful spears are, it is however very easy to use this set if you are alternating showdowns between dagger/spear users or if you hunt a lot of Screaming Antelopes and make the second set. Having flexibility in your build space is a huge deal and hybrid armours are one of the best ways this can be achieved because they give new life and variety to one of the most dominant part of many gear grids. I honestly prefer hybrid armor sets over outfitgear cards because most of the time having a different armor set card over an alternative gear in one slot just does more in this game's design space.
A slight negative here is the change in name from Oni to Sun means that this release has created one of those rare situations where the plastic version and the previous beta version result in two different armor sets which overlap but have different applications. This didn't happen with Sunlion Armor because that set bonus was locked to People of the Sun even in the Beta. That is not a great situation and I hope it doesn't happen with the Sunlantern Armor if that is remastered into plastic.
That is, however, a problem with the beta content system rather than this release. The Screaming Sun Lucy is an excellent product and assuming it is kept in stock for the foreseeable future I think a copy of this is worth picking up alongside the Sunstalker/People of the Sun.
Final Judgement
Situational by design, this is something worth picking up in time for your first People of the Sun campaign if your budget can stretch to including it. If you can only afford one of Sun Lucy or Sun Erza in plastic then I would choose Lucy because the game content is stronger.
If you want additional thoughts on the original Screaming Oni Armor Lucy, the review is here. Some of it can apply to this release, some of it is specific to the Oni variant.
Sunlion Erza is here.
Beta Sunlion Erza is here.
