A couple of days ago I received the second half of my birthday order beyond the Frogdog: Glow and the Survivors of Death 1 White Boxes. These were sent to me in a much more sensibly sized box compared to the Frogdog and immediately inspected by the Feline Entity. She is very diligent when it comes to customs duty.

Anyway, Glow was one of the new releases shown off at Gencon earlier this year and her box caught my eye in particular.

Legendary Survivor Glow contains 4 plastic minis, no special bases, a character card with a legendary power, 3 patterns you gain from the character card’s ability, a set of Glow-themed reminder tokens and 3 art cards. She is based on the Holy Mage from the Generic line of minis, with her final miniature most closely resembling the original design.

Much like we have seen in the past, with certain releases previewing new and upcoming systems in a way, Glow feels like a non-GCE preview for Wanderers as she is basically a Wanderer-light.

The 4 miniatures all show her in various different stages of her life. The first having only a Founding Stone and Cloth (which she uses more like a hood or cape). The second mini is wearing rawhide armor, whilst the third mini’s armor seems to be Screaming Antelope based.
Finally the fourth figure depicts Glow at the height of her power in King’s gear holding her Holy Sword Whip. You get a choice of legs for this one and can decided if you would prefer her legs to be armored or not.

_{The Stone Face bases do not come with the set and are from the Stone Face Bases box.}

As mentioned before she is basically a Wanderer-light. As Glow ages, you gain the various patterns in a set order beginning with her Voluptuous Bodysuit, then the Mage’s Hood and finally her Holy Sword Whip.

All 3 items offer additional options for a dedicated tank, combo-ing with one-another.
The Voluptuous Bodysuit adds 1 Armor to all hit locations and turns any 2 the monster rolls when attacking the wearer into a 1. It is an item with a right green affinity.
The Mage’s Hood is a 1 armor head accessory with a left green and a right red affinity, that for a puzzle-piece-green and normal red affinity, on the first attack per round made against you adds 1 armor to all hit locations for each attack roll that is a 1.
And lastly the Holy Sword Whip (1/6+/9 – sword, whip) has a left red affinity and Reach 2 and Savage. With a chance, if you get the 4 affinities for its ability, to turn another number during any attack against you into a 1 as well.
All three of these nicely lead into each other with the affinities.

But, the question most people have is likely: “Is the box worth it?”
Well, this is a White Box and as I mention on the FAQ page (and this is partially because I made that page to begin with) buy whatever White Box seems cool whilst being affordable to you. This is a blanket statement that will hold true 99% of the time. You like the minis or ideas behind Glow? Go for it. That’s what I did.
For gameplay content alone the price tag of White Boxes is hardly ever ‘worth it’.

This box in particular has seen some initial scrutiny I feel and for somewhat understandable reasons. We are set to see the release of several Wanderers with the next wave hitting fulfillment, probably (hopefully) early next year and as Glow lives in a similar design space but with no further lore or story attached to her, somewhat unfavorable comparisons seem unavoidable to begin with.
Also the legendary abilities on the character cards seem highly contested already and with the limitations of officially only adding a single one to each campaign, she pales especially compared to Aya – the Red Survivor and third of the 3 large White Box released at Gencon (the one I did not get), whose ability gives all weapons each weapon keyword, which is mind-blowingly powerful in comparison, and more or less instant and constant.
Also, seeing her once in every 4 or 5 campaigns on average is pretty rough when playing the rules as written for the character deck. This limitation especially seems to be holding her back from a gameplay perspective.
Adding to all of this the price tag of $75, which is more than 5(6) of the gameplay expansions, she is admittedly a bit of a tough recommendation on that front.

Despite all of this I personally wanted Glow from the moment I first saw the community coverage over on Lantern’s Reign, because I enjoy the idea she represents, how she develops further with time, the minis representing different stages of her life, even just the idea of having a wanderer-esque character outside of the Wanderer-system.
I also really like the gear she comes with – slightly strange tank gear, wooh – and of course, I want to paint the minis.

For now I still need to think of a way for how to include her and the other character cards I own to my currently ongoing settlement as I don’t have nearly enough character cards for a full deck at this point. I might also just throw all character cards I have together in future and when I draw add a limit like “no more than 1 legendary in the settlement at a time”.
For now though, I just need to find a good trigger to actually draw the cards. But, then again, as Deno put it so simply in one of this recordings: its your game play with your toys.

Glow will make an appearance in Bogstop in the decently near future, that much I do already know.

Thank you very much for your time and may your lantern shine brightly,
Amathul