So.., I did it after all. A day later, just as I had just gotten my shipping notification from the HQ warehouse, I ordered Kale from the EU one. Now the question that remains is: which package will arrive first?

I’m not going to prolong this any further – this Lantern Year is going to be very interesting for the people of Bogstop. So far, the Butcher Lvl 3 (in any variant) is my least favorite encounter I have seen in the game by quite a bit (the mountain lion from the Squire Campaign might be a competitor though). This stems mainly from the trait Invincible it gains at level 3. Which is also why I’m not too opposed to sending out fodder into this fight in particular.
As I was shuffling the settlement event deck I was thinking that I might just come at the Butcher bearing the big guns this time though. I wanted to send the people who were just on the hunt. If I could. I had been a while since I won this fight.

But, of course, first came the Settlement event!
Slender Blight. I rolled a 1… oh no. We did still have Blotted Out (FA) on Jerryn, Sir Hermes and Calys.
Jerryn was the one to bite the bullet. I DID NOT want to fight an extra Slenderman at this stage. So, the only thing left to do was for Jerryn to blind himself in a horror-movie-esque attempt to chase away the cruel vision of something unrememberable (a 5 on Forgotten Fear).

This did also kneecap my plan in certain ways, as Calystea who was insane, could no longer depart for a hunt this Lantern Year. She was one of important ones to head out as she could have gained 3 points of cleaver spec from this sending her well on the way towards the novel mastery. And just like that she would have to find a newbie to replace her for this now, as all established people outside of the last hunting party had 4+ insanity.

For our endeavors we began by rolling on Founder’s Eye on Face Painting (I). Eyelids stained black Calystea, together with Ghurt drank the love juice. A 3 and 4 after bonuses. A first reroll was spent by the settlement, but it only reduced the 3 to a 2. Only after the second one we were looking at a 10 and a 4 – a healthy child. Wooh!
Cleavelette Axtolotl (Tough FA)was born, taking on the Cleaver spec from her mother with a point filled in, ready to defy death in her first Lantern Year alive.
*At this point in time I spent some time checking rules, and it does appear that you can indeed use Family (I) to pass down these proficiencies. Including Twilight Sword – which I had no idea you could.*
For obvious reasons she wasn’t intending to actually take the one-of-a-kind cleaver along to the fight though.

We then used Ghurt’s Match Maker to set Calystea and Ghurt up again. A 10 and a 4, again: another child was born. This time, the boy, Weed Cutter (+1ACC and sword spec 2) got added to the settlement.

Praying at the Shrine (I) only gave us 1 insanity this time.

We ended the Lantern Year by first smelting an iron from left-over scrap before I ultimately sent Fyrn below the Exhausted Lantern Hoard. He was quick ot return with 4 Broken Lanterns. That might well end up being my source of iron for the Marchioness set by the looks of it.

In the wake of this we stored the rest of our resources, preparing to hopefully either build 1 or 2 Marchioness items next Lantern Year (or the one after) or oxidize our lantern glaive and have enough junk to eat during the Hands of Heat event coming up!

With a sharp drop in temperature the Butcher’s arrival was foretold as the outskirts of our settlement fell into waves of lingering frost.

The Chosen Defenders:
Weed (Wrath, Marchioness bits)
Cleavelette (Beast Knuckel, Dragon Armor)
Ruby (Lantern Glaive, Frogdog Armor)
Celestine (Bullfrog Mace, Bullfrogdog Armor)

This would be my bid to kill the Butcher Lvl3, as opposed to just feeding him 4 people. Of course, with any higher level Butcher the fight could just escalate into oblivion (especially with KillyB). But we’d just have to be mindful about that.

At level 3 the Killennium Butcher has 2 “new” traits.
It gains the Butcher staple trait Berserker, meaning it will draw 2 cards per turn and it is, of course, Invincible. Ugh. On an 8+ his rage will just soak the wound(s) we potentially dealt with any one attack. This remains to be the one trait I have encountered that I just can’t stand. For weapons like Wrath, or huge hits with a club, only the initial wound will be looked at by the trait. So it takes either all the potential wounds the hit caused or none.
It also comes with 2 +1ACC-tokens and a +1EVA-token.

With the Killennium Butcher 6 spaces away from the survivors I was wondering if I should just hide in a corner for a turn. We do have a full 10 survival though, so I figured we could afford the dash up to the monster.
As the fight began Ruby gained her 2 tokens from Delirium (D).. -1ACC and -1LCK. Just what I wanted.

Weed was the first of my survivors to activate, checking out the top cards of both decks with the Frogdoggles. The crit location was right on top! Weed dashed up to the monster’s side immediately and attacked. He managed to hit. And he would crit as well! The roll for invincible – a 5! The damage stuck – that’s a great start! 4 wounds and Weed learned Mighty Strike (FA) on top of that.
Weed continued and surged, and whilst he would have hit and wounded, the Butcher just soaked the damage with its rage before Shoulder-ing Weed away.

Cleavelette spent a survival to help Weed back to his feet just in case. Celestine was up next and she activated her armor to charge forward. She hit twice (on 2+), activating Onslaught. She clobbered the monster for 46 against 16TGH. Between Surpass 10 and Club Mastery, that would cause 3 wounds and Invincible failed on a 3!
This also knocked the Butcher down and spreads courage throughout the group. Weed (+1STR-token) and Cleavelette (+3survival/insanity) triggered Bold, as Celestine lost an eye for gazing behind the veil: She did See the Truth! Her death tasted bitter. And as she found no wonder, no mystical force to cling on to other than herself, she learned Berserker (FA) enabling her to use survival even while Frenzied! With that she had come a little closer to turning into a Butcher herself.
The second attack from Celestine hit for “only” 34, which would still deal 3 damage, but Invincible, once again, soaked it. Rerolling that was tempting.., but I wisely held off.

Celestine dashed away from the monster before her turn really ended.
Ruby then tried her luck next. (Looking at her positioning, I noticed a little too late that she should not have been able to attack because of Honorable D, but the trap puts and end to this anyhow.) She hit twice – the trap amongst the hit locations! She did have spear spec though! And she rolled a 9!
But I just drew the trap again anyhow.
Ruby was subsequently knocked down, immediately fenzied and the monster turned to attack her. She was insane at the time, so Immortal (D) was active (8 insanity). The Butcher hit her twice on 8+ dealing 6 damage in total, which got soaked by Immortal, so he didn’t actually gain any tokens.
Fully in support mode, Cleavelette moved over to Celestine and used her First Aid Kit to remove the bleed token she got from being blinded.

14 cards remaining in the deck, the Butcher revealed Forbidden Light. It’s an A card so he played it. This will be sapping our strength for a while. I also set up a second card to play this turn and the next card on top was Bite! Oh no! The Butcher found its target in Celestine, but she would just be running away from this. Drawing another card via Berserker, Hack was revealed and it started swinging at Cleavette, hitting twice. She dodged 1 hit whilst taking 3 damage to her hands.

Cleavelette started off the survivor turn by running away from the monster, removing her freshly gained bleed token.
Celestine charged in again managing to get 2 hits again. I wasn’t any good at shuffling either as I drew the same 2 hit locations from before. She only hit for 30 due to a fairly botched roll, which was just 2 wounds. Invincible would soak this as well, but I used her reroll in a questionable decision to get the knock down. Courage was spread around yet again and Ruby Sees the Truth as well. Her death tasted sour and she could self-encourage from that point onwards.

Celestine’s second attack outright failed on a 1.
With Ruby unable to attack whilst the monster was downed, Weed dashed up to it and attacked instead.
He would wound but the Butcher soaked it with a Lantern 10 of its own. Weed’s surge failed afterwards on a 1. Indomitable pulled the Butcher to its feet and Ruby could strike again.., but early iron prevented the attempt from going anywhere. She couldn’t use survival because she was frenzied so the monster activated.

11 (12) cards remaining, the monster discarded Wild Carve and played Infinite Kick instead, setting its sights on Cleavelette. She ran away a few spaces further. The follow up was Devour Lantern, switching its attention over to Celestine. After going down an unexpected rabbit hole I found out that this – thankfully – did not archive the Final Lantern as the monster hit her twice for 3 damage each, removing all 6 remaining survival she still had had as well. A rough turn for the worse and it hadn’t even been the final cards for the turn.

That very special honor would be reserved for Hack City. Celestine had to take a casual 11 hits. All in all, after hit locations had been rolled I was presented with a good spread honestly. At 3 damage each the Butcher set out to demolish her Bullfrog Armor but not much else. Legendary Lungs (SFA) was not a great Fighting Art for her though.

As our turn finally came around again, Celestine dashed over to Cleavelette (she had gained 3 survival from the Legendary Lungs event).
Cleavelette removed one of the -1ACC-tokens still left and Celestine was free to charge back towards the monster. Hitting on 5+, she somehow missed both her attacks.
Weed followed after her, saw Lantern Hunger on top and decided that card needed to go. He swung and wounded, Invincible not holding strong enough that time. The reflex caused Weed to frenzy though. Ruby also moved in to attack, but her attack failed as she now needed a 7+ to hit.

10 (11) cards remaining, Kick was discarded to make way for Hew. 1 hit only, knocking Celestine down. It wasn’t done quite yet and continued on to Hack, going after Weed next. 2 hits on 6+ took out his remaining chest armor.

Cleavelette helped Celestine up, before she once again dashed to range for charging at the monster. Cleavelette also removed another -1ACC-token from her.
No point in delaying it, she came running back at the monser again. 4 hits with Legendary Lungs, none of them perfect. The cleaver hit did nothing and the first wound faultered due to my favorite passive – Invincible.. as did the second as well.
It’s on the third hit only that we were able to deal wounds. Surpass and Mastery triggered for 3 wounds in total at least.
Weed and Celestine got shouldered out of range and knocked down, so it came at a price. Finally Ruby’s attack failed because of a 1 on the 4 dice she rolled.

7 (8) cards remaining, Hack got discarded for Infinite Kick. 1 hit on 8+, but Ruby’s Immortal (D) tanked it, canceling the after damage effect as no damage was dealt thanks to our disorder. Kick was drawn as the follow up, hitting once as well. If only Ruby could use her survival. The monster hit her once on the basic that was a part of Kick, drawing out her frenzy, empowering the Butcher.
No longer frenzied, Ruby was able to at least dodge the 1 hit coming in from Hew – the actual 2nd card of the turn.

As Celestine and Weed got up, Cleavelette dashed and surged the First Aid Kit to help Ruby with her -1ACC problem. Ruby then jumped into the Butcher’s blind spot. Hitting twice, one uselessly plinks off the cleaver, as she dealt 1 wound to the monster on the other hit. Raging along, the monster pushed people out of its way as it marched off towards its next target. Weed sadly was 1 space too far away even after the reflex, heartbreaking.

Ruby walked up behind the monster, hitting the trap, as she would. No longer frenzied, she was able to roll on spear spec and.. failed. The trap went off. Cleavelette suffered frenzy from the trap effect, whilst Ruby had to roll on the Brain Trauma table and she got.., frenzy. Huh?
Luckily on 8+ the monster failed all five of its possible hits. Celestine saw her chance and she charged in. 4 hits on 4+.
First hit into the monster’s Armored Pig Shoulder, she dealt 2 wounds.

Second hit dealt 3 wounds with 34 vs 16TGH.
The Butcher was not quite done though and it tanked the third.
The 4th hit was the strongest one, with 38 vs 16TGH.. 3 wounds slipping past the raging monster.. and that was finally enough! With a roar it crumpled to the ground.

Beaten up we quickly collected our rewards, eager to leave this Butcher behind. Nobody aged, and only Weed and Cleavette were able to gain weapon proficiency.
To go on a quick tangent as I’ve seen a couple of discussions on the nemesis specific weapon proficiency over the last few days. For me, I play it as you gain either regular proficiency points if you wound with your weapon of choice during a nemesis fight, or you use the monster as a showcase on how to use the specifically mentioned weapon, thus gaining the proficiency even without wounding with the weapon type should you chose this option. Keeping that in mind, Cleavelette was up to Cleaver (4) after the fight.
Everybody also gained 2 more courage as the frost settled in for a last lingering moment before the Butcher vanished in its trademark flash of light, leaving behind Brave’s Light.
We also gained a second Killennium Cleaver, 1 Forsaker Mask, 5 Broken Lanterns and Cold Living Flesh from the ordeal.

Oh, dearest Butcher. We got away with it today.
Getting lucky with unga-bunga again.

Ruby was a much more stable tank than I had realized when putting this together.. i did not account for her high evasion at all. Celestine also came out of Hack City much more alive than I would have ever expected her to, but it took quite long for KillyB to pick up speed as well.
Dealing more than 1 wound per hit is what carried us in this fight. The First Aid Kit also helped a ton getting rid of the -1ACC-tokens all around..
To be fair, if the Butcher did not have Invincible as a trait, we would have demolished the it in a heartbeat. It just feels bad whenever the trait does something. And for some reason it seems like it triggers way more often than 30% of the time.., but that is likely just conjecture.

Overall this was the best I probably ever did against a Butcher Lvl3 variant. whilst I have beaten it before a few times, it usually took a sacrifice or two.

KillyB feels also a lot more lethal to me at Lvl3 with its increased potential to frenzy and thus stack attributes, whilst also drawing an extra card per turn in addition to it discarding weaker ones (once per turn).

For now Bogstop stands triumphant yet again. Next up the Black Knight will issue its third and final challenge to us. Something to look forward to.

Before I leave I want to apologize for the distinct lack of Feline Entity today – I guess she wasn’t feeling the Butcher this time.

As always, thank you very much for your time, watch out of that lingering sour taste in your mouth,
Amathul