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Summer Goth Twilight Knight Review
🕑 Added 2022-10-28 08:27:38 +0000 UTC
On the glass coast of the boiling sea, Twilight Knight Allison waits. She has paid the dark seamstress a vial of her own tears of anguish for the dress and finery that is acceptable at the court of the uncrowned king of Teltia. She awaits a summon at the domain's edge so she may learn how he has created this slice of miserable, sunny paradise.
Unlike Summer Aya, the Summer Goth Twilight Knight lands in the promotional category of Big plastic seasonal pin up sculpt, small somewhat-playable-in-universe-ish miniature and some cards. In this case three new patterns.
These patterns require the Watcher to be a part of the campaign, so until we (maybe) get a Watcher quarry for high level settlements the three cards in this campaign can only be used in People of the Lantern. This isn't a huge deal because Pattern cards are already excluded from People of the Stars due to that campaign currently not having Insight events. People of the Sun also doesn't have access to this trio due to the lack of a Watcher Quarry (missed opportunity here I think, People of the Sun would be great fun vs. a Watcher). This continues the trend of the core campaign getting most attention while the (honestly superior) two expansion monster campaigns get less. We all live in hope that one day People of the Sun & Stars will get more promotional content!
Not only are these three patterns requiring the Watcher in the campaign, but the resources they use require access to the post Watcher game, which means that no matter how strong these gear cards are, they remain firmly a 1% player kind of card. By that I mean they're going to be relevant in around 1% of Lantern campaigns, in other words these cards are for the hardcore gamer who plays Lantern multiple times a year. That's a small audience.
As a reminder here is the sheet for Pattern card rules, this means we all know what we're dealing with as I break down each individual gear card. I'm not going to put the full Pattern cards up in each entry because these recipes are really straightforward to understand and the only key detail is that each of these pattern cards is limited to once per campaign:
Blackstar Bikini
Recipe: 1x Leather, 1x Perfect Hide, 1x Cocoon Membrane.
Requirements: Oxidation story event to be activated. Final Lantern and a Survivor with Analyze present in the settlement.
This Pattern gear is number -021 (Promotional Pattern cards have negative numbers, which distinguishes them from 'cannon' ones). So that's pretty standard.
What we're getting for this cost is a very interesting Body & Waist armor card that has no set. It is constructed around the concept of evasion and hit cancelling rather than using armor points to protect the survivor. Naturally the main location where this would fit is in the Rolling Armor set (which has no armor keyword pieces and doesn't take up location slots) and it adds to that armor set by providing another way of ignoring hits entirely (Ripple Pattern works in a similar fashion to this bikini). That loadout can also be combined with the Green Helmet (Green Armor set, but only requires Dung Beetle Knight resources and TOM (The Old Master) to be on the quarry list, so it's essentially a DBK gear card if you want it to be one).
There's no mistake, this in a campaign with the Dung Beetle Knight is really strong and just an auto craft. Outside of that it's still an interesting and powerful base for mixed armor sets. Phoenix Armor's Helmet provides additional evasion for example, so you can add shields, bits and pieces of armor sets and construct some mixed protection for a bikini survivor. They're going to be less powerful than some builds, but stack enough evasion from sources like Monster Grease, Survival of the Fittest and add onto it that 40% chance of ignoring each hit and you've got a powerhouse evasion tank character. Unfortunately, due to the armor keyword this piece doesn't work with the Leyline Walker White Secret, but it does work with the Silk Body Suit (Spidicules) and that's really interesting.
So overall, yeah this one's very strong, very unique and can be a lot of fun for an alternative way of avoiding damage. But, it needed to be powerful in order to justify players sacrificing an armor set bonus.
Ghost Garters – Legs
Recipe:1x Perfect Hide, 1x Black Lichen
Requirements: Secretive Survivor activating the Exhausted Lantern Horde
Despite its appearance, this gear card has the positive number of 029, which means it's probably coming in some future set or that it's effectively 'cannon' for the setting and the matching Ghost Garters – Arms have the number 030 making them also 'cannon'.
This accessory is pretty much another variant of the Cloth Leggings from Before/Beyond the Wall's Vagabond Armor set. Instead of limiting the amount of bleed tokens you get from certain severe injuries the Leg Garters have a broader application of allowing wounds to remove bleed tokens. This is either limited to once a round, or if you have no leg armor it'll multiple times in a round.
Honestly? The benefit for not wearing armor is minor, removing one bleed a round is enough bleed durability for most builds, so you're only going to really see these Ghost Garters on survivors who have Crystal Skin or builds that inflict some self bleed and need the affinities. It's a pretty weak item for something that's locked in the End Game tier.
It does have some applications, and it is fine for some Pattern cards to be a bit medium/situational. However, this is an aggressively average card that isn't going to excite anyone apart from people with fetishes for garters. If that's your thing, then check if the Cloth Leggings will suffice for your kink, because they're gained earlier and belong to a really strong armor set. Otherwise, you do you.
Also, amusingly it seems that you can wear both cloth leggings and the garter if you wanted.
Ghost Garters – Arms
Recipe: 1x Lantern Tube, 1x endeavour
Requirements: Lantern Research activated by an Insane survivor
Being as cheap to manufacture as this would make one assume that the Arm Garters are going to be the weaker of the two Ghost Garter items, but that's absolutely not the case at all. These arm accessories are super powerful, if worn with armor you're gaining +1 armor to all hit locations once per round when you wound and that's huge for any kind of survivor who takes damage (Tanks or melee DPS). But for survivors with Crystaline Skin, mixed armor sets that exclude arm slot gear and (again) Rolling Armor survivors you're getting 1 armor to each location per wound.
This is a gear card that rewards risky aggressive play with higher levels of speed. It's actually a version of design that's appeared before, however it was stuck on a very mediocre weapon:
It's also similar to Spidicules' Green Ring, but instead of being tied to the Monster Controller token it just works. And while we're mentioning that don't overlook that the three Rings all provide arm armor points while being an accessory themselves.
I really can't understate how welcome and powerful the Ghost Garter – Arms are, it's a shame that the legs don't sit at a similar power level, because this is the kind of gear which should be coming out of a Watcher's corpse.
Summary
The Summer Goth Twilight Knight gear cards are mostly a hit, while one of the three is stuck in the doldrums the other two are unique and fresh gear cards that can either create new builds or assist existing ones. The Garter Arms promoting an aggressive, loose and high speed attacking style is very interesting and could be fantastic with a set of Pair Katars, a Spear or a perhaps even with the Black Sword on a mostly naked True Blade sword survivor.
What must not be ignored however is just how rare these items are to get. Not only do you need to kill a Watcher, which currently means they're viable in just one campaign's end game, but you also have to draw the pattern card and have the relevant requirements in your settlement. This means they'll rarely hit the table for the average gamer. Still there is potential for a future high power campaign with an adapted Watcher as a quarry and that would expand the area in which these items are used.
It's likely that you'll use each of these pattern cards 0-2 times in your lifetime, so if you're a gamer and not just a collector, you'll have to work out if that juice is worth the squeeze. I'm not entirely sure it is, but it is still always nice to see gender swapped Allister out in the world having her adventures.
