So.., this was going to be a big one. The first Butcher is always a big one. Besides probably being one of, if not the best timed fights in the game, this year would definitely shed some light on how well we were doing.
There was also the question, should I send 4 noobies or risk established characters?

But, that decision would have to wait until after the bookkeeping was done.

The first hurdle: the Settlement Event. We drew Jousting.
Uuuh, a new one. This one came from the Black Knight expansion. I nominated Hawk and Hermes, and rolled.

Hermes absolutely destroyed Hawk! Wow. Lantern 10 vs 1. That’s two more endeavors and the winner would be called Sir Hermes from now on. And he even instantly gained club specialization. Nice!
On the flipside, Hawk was hit with a severe head injury at -2. I rolled a 7, so a 5… Intracranial Hemorrhage. Honestly, he’d be better off dead. Thus, I rerolled into a 4, so a 2 – extra dead.

This did give us our death principle, and well, this is likely going to be one of the contested choices, but I chose Cannibalize. (I also noticed at this point that I missed another Survival Limit increase last year – we were up to 5 at this point.)
For the principle event I rolled a 6 and Calys gained +1 SPD. The founding stone probably would have been better, but oh, well.

There was a lot of stuff we had to go through this lantern year. I innovated Hovel over Pictograph (what a choice), trying to get closer to Clan of Death. This led to the Hooded Knight arriving. As planned Calys received the Tattered Parcel and switched to Twilight Sword specialization immediately.
After activating Face Painting, we augur for that +1 Understanding on Lucille again, but to no avail. We trigger intimacy and I decided I wanted to try out Glow. It cost us a reroll but a new survivor is born.
(Non-GCE rules for character cards just have you draw it “next time” so .. more or less “whenever”.)

Finally I build another rawhide chest, bandages, a luck charm and frogdog boots before setting up the gear grids.

After a little consideration I made up my mind to send 4 non-Glow noobies to the Butcher. The gear felt a little awkward and I would not risk my Twilight Sword or bone blade against this monster.
The chosen defenders:
Hysteria (frogdog bits, bone darts)
Honey (nothing, founding stone)
Thalas (rawhide bits, bone club, bandages)
Ragnar (rawhide set, bone dagger)

We draw debris as random terrain and the Feline Entity, which delays everything by 30 minutes. I would have preferred Tall Grass, but this could also be incredible.

As the Feline Entity left eventually, the Butcher drew its first card: Gaze of Truth, targeting Ragnar. Fortunately it was a little too far away to trigger the effect. The Butcher is, of course, a Berserker and draws 2 cards per turn. Wild Carve. Ragnar is only hit on 7+, the Butcher missed twice. With a dash, he evaded the bleed.

The debris had the potential of giving us a Scrap Sword – so I started with that. But it was a mushed up monster hide instead.
Thalas dashed in with the bone club, hit and wounded the Butcher right of the bat, knocking it down and granting everyone a courage. What a great start to the fight proper! Bone darts only hit a cleaver, but Ragnar’s dagger hit three more times and wounded twice even! Wow!

9 cards remaining. The Butcher is also a Fast Target, and thus every monster activation, its Hit Location deck is shuffled. It then drew its first card: Butcher’s Roar. Luckily only Ragnar was knocked down. The second card was much worse: Infinite Kick. It runs up to Hysteria, who dashed out of the way to avoid the attack. And a third card: Bite. That’s horrifying! It his once and we dodge,..
Or, well, I feel down a bit of a rabbit hole at this point, looking up whether or not the severe injuries caused by bite were dodgeable. See my FAQ page. I chose to treat them as undodgeable. Hysteria luckily only rolls a 9 – shattered jaw.

Finally it was back to my turn.
But it turned out to be a complete bust! Not a single wound!

9 cards remaining. Hack City is drawn. Hysteria dashed away from the Butcher. She survived the card and rolled on Legendary Lungs. This felt cheesy, but so be it. She even learned the Legendary Lungs SFA. The second card was Hew, but thankfully it just missed.

As the rest of the group needed to just catch up to the Butcher, Hysteria ran around it and threw a dart at its back, managing to wound.

8 cards remaining. First card: Kick. Uh oh, this could be bad. Ragnar was close enough now for the Butcher to switch its target, 2 hits and a Basic to follow up. 1 more hit, but we dodged that. Second card: Hack City. 2 hits on 6 rolls. That was still okay, but it gave me a fright. Ragnar gained 3 survival from the experience.

Thalas dashed in again for the attack, and he even managed to deal a wound before he and Ragnar got knocked down and away. Quickly Honey stood up Ragnar before running in. She managed to hit twice and even to wound once but got hit hard by a reflex on the second card. 2 hits to the head – that was a severe for her. I rolled a 5, more intracranial bleeding.
No other successes followed.

6 cards remaining. Infinite Kick on Ragnar. 1 hit. Second card was Bite. I dashed away from that one. Thanks to the Kick we drew an extra card, so third card: Wild Carve. That one missed twice, thankfully, just the bleed effect at the end hit.

This already felt like we were wounding off the wrong cards. Hysteria threw her darts. 2 hits! 1 wound! The Butcher was knocked down once more. Ragnar even triggered Bold (+1STR). And she even got a second wound in! Seeing the opportunity Ragnar plunged his daggers down. One more wound!

3 cards remaining: Kick. 2 misses, but there was still the basic follow up. 2 hits to the head, outch! Second card: Oh no, Hack City is also still in the deck! All misses thanks to the 7+. Luckily Ragnar.

Thalas was close enough again to dash in and attack with the bone club. 1 more wound dealt meant there would definitely be no more bites. Everybody else missed.

2 cards remaining. We would now be drawing Kick and Hack City every turn. Yikes. We began the turn with: Kick. The Butcher switched to Hysteria. 2 hits but the basic follow up whiffs. Hack City churned out 1 hit, and she learned nothing from it. Not that she needed to.

Hysteria simply blocked for the turn. Ragnar ran in and hit, but shoved away again. So Honey saw her chance and as she hits the monster, the wound failed and it retaliated on its own. Another hit to the head, another broken jaw severe injury. The worst thing about this: the Butcher had turned to her.

2 cards remaining. First up on the agenda was Kick, missed twice. The basic hit twice to make up for it. But none of that would matter. The Butcher had had enough of Honey and went wild in Hack City. 12 rolls for 8 hits. 4 severe injuries. She bled out after 3 of them.
The first trophy had been collected.

Furious, Thalas dashed in a final time. A hit! Finally a wound! The darts flew wide. But Ragnar still had some life in him! Another hit and.. a Lantern 10! We were down to only the basic remaining!

0 cards remaining. This would mean 2 sets of basic attacks. Only 1 hit on the second attempt. 1 hit, we dodged.

Thalas now found himself in position to swing. The club connects but it fails to wound! He is shoved away. The next hope is the bone dart. Hysteria threw it and… it hit the trap! After all that we drew the trap! It left Ragnar and Hysteria on 3 bleed each.

Ragnar still had a turn at this point. He also was carrying a founding stone. I had read something about people bringing founding stones to the first Butcher fight just chucking them to kill it and thought to myself that seems dumb. That’s never going to work. It’s a high-stakes gamble at the best of times. And yet I couldn’t help myself but contemplate.
In the end, I threw it. I wondered what my odds were and I made the mistake to count the number of HL cards. 1 in 15 to hit the crit turned out to be pretty awful. But if figured I would have enough leeway to do this.

It was the perfect choice! Ragnar’s stone hit the crit! And looking at the deck, the trap would have been the next card on top as well.

Oh, wow, what an ending. Scripted. It felt scripted. The allegations will never cease. The game loved me that day, so I will have my comeuppance at some point later down the line, surely. Of course, Ragnar learned Mighty Strike FA (+2 STR on perfect hit).

The Butcher did us a solid and exploded into 5 broken lanterns, Hysteria chose to learn axe proficiency and we picked Honey’s body clean for a monster bone.

I both hate and love the Butcher fight, especially the very first one. It feels incredibly well balanced in terms of measuring up to the player’s potential power level. So often the fight turned out to be a brutal nail biter, and this felt no different to me. The Butcher was dangerously close to going infinite at one point and even just the last 3 cards – Bite, Kick and Hack City – were a terrifying assortment.

Thank you very much for your time and watch for the madman in the dark,
Amathul