A few weeks ago, around the beginning of September, the Lantern’s Reign discord erupted in fervent discussion regarding the Squire campaign. Old rules questions were re-opened, the Mountain Lion was cursed, as was the forced restart on Squire-death and new insights had been gained once it was all done and things settled down again.
Whilst I was too late (and too lurker-y) to chime in myself, it gave me the necessary drive to finally attempt the challenge of this 5 year campaign once more.
Shortly after my birthday I set up the game and got to playing and just about 9 hours later I was done. I had not taken many notes, or pictures, just a few – but I had done it. I had finished attempt #9. And I can now say from my own experience, the definitive best way to kill the Mountain Lion and thus the hardest challenge of this particular set of encounters is:

Just roll better.

If you have not played with the Squires before, or not heard about them at all – the Squire campaign features a narrative set of 5 vignette-style encounters included with the Black Knight expansion.
You play as 4 set characters – Cain, Iola, Elle and Owen – with pre-determined stats, abilities and gear and instead of a traditional settlement phase you get curated lists to spend endeavors on, and, at times, tables to roll on in place of hunt events.
All Squires also harbor suspicions against one other member of the group which will be advanced as certain events and mechanics trigger to ultimately reveal more slices of narrative should these come to be resolved fully near the end of these 5 Lantern Years.

The whole experience gets complicated by the fact that you are also meant to fully reset the campaign each time a Squire other than Owen dies.
Yes. Fully reset – as in back to Lantern Year 1.
My very first attempt ended by Cain getting barked at and running off the side of the Inverted Mountain to fall to his death in turn 1. Good times. Pretty funny if you ask me.
Overall this is a tough proposition as the Black Knight can send you flying off the mountain, the Mountain Lion is legitimately one of the hardest fights in the game and can get eaten by a *REDACTED* for all I care, and both King’s Man and Phoenix have the ability to just bullshit you to your death should they feel like it.
As someone once put it so eloquently:
The Black Knight’s Squire campaign sadly showcases both Kingdom Death’s best and worst aspects equally.

But there is one shining ray of hope, in a way: Apparently the rational applied to mini-campaigns by Team Death takes into account the Node the “parent-monster”, in this case the Black Knight, inhabits.
So a campaign based on a Node 3 Nemesis should be one of the hardest and/or most grueling challenges the game ever puts in front of you.

For clarity’s sake, and so I don’t need to refer to them constantly – the four suspicion triggers:

• Cain: whenever Iola repairs his armor
• Iola: whenever Owen would die but doesn’t
• Owen: whenever Elle would get targeted but isn’t
• Elle: whenever Cain takes damage to his arms

All of these besides Cain are pretty difficult to achieve in a controlled manner. Luckily there are some additional story events that may or may not give suspicion as well.
If you get enough suspicion going amongst the group, the Squires will start to go insane on arrival and ultimately if you get 4 boxes ticked on any one of them, at the end of the campaign you will get some more or less insightful story beat to read through.
And there’s even some extra sugar on top should you get all 4 of them to max.

Before I finally get started I have a few last clarifications:
1.: When spending endeavors during the Squires’ settlement phase, multiple Squires may make use of the same endeavor (this had just been re-clarified at the time),
2.: I don’t see why Tinker would not work as an ability in the context of this campaign, therefor I attempted to get it on Elle quite early on and made use of it throughout.
I mention this because there have been quite a few arguments in the past about this and whether or not Squires are “Returning Survivors” – I don’t know why they wouldn’t be? Especially as the rulebook specifically calls them that on page 25!
3.: The Squires have access to Oath, a survival action that can remove tokens from other survivors. More on that below with the relevant Lantern Years.
4.: I have fully played this with the intended hard resets – I just got lucky this time. You’ll see. And if I can do it – you can too! You just need some of that Deno-luck at the right time.

Lantern Year 1 – The Black Knight Lvl1

This is my favorite part about the Squire campaign, perhaps the whole of the Black Knight expansion – the ability to try out the new boss fight immediately! Especially for a Nemesis Node 3 monster this is such a nice feature and should be a much bigger deal! It is unfortunate that it gets overshadowed by the Mountain Lion oh so much.

As for pre-fight endeavors I had Cain gain 3 survival, Iola and Elle did an Armor check-up each for +2 and +1 armor at all hit locations respectively, whilst Owen, the little rat-boy poised to “die” each fight got himself a +1STR-token from a Full Weapons Check.
In this first year all the endeavors available only apply their bonus to the Squire performing them.

The fight itself is a nice preview of the actual Black Knight fight with the addition of a revealed map and some knockback mitigating gear on the Squires.
I tried to mostly keep the Squire Toolbelt activated to prevent deadly knockback and played aggressively with all four characters. Cain is wearing a full Marchioness Armor Set and thus equally set up for offense and Deflect based defense, and he crit off one of the +1TGH-tokens as well.
Owen activated 2 Bell Altars before he got strategically “removed” from the board. He was smashed through a bunch of Noble Urns and did not survive the final impact with his face. Of course, its Owen so he just “ran away”. Totally normal, nothing to worry about and not suspicious at all. Unless you are Iola. Then you might still find it somewhat strange.

I rolled well enough to consistently wound the doggo each round and we quickly unga-bunga’d our way through the encounter.
After all was said and done – we gained our hunt xp and weapon proficiencies. I switched Elle to Grand Weapon proficiency as I had already planned for her to use Fellbrandt later on (should we make it past the lion that is).

Current suspicion:
Cain: 1 Iola: 1 Owen: 2 Elle: 0

Lantern Year 2 – The Mountain Lion Lvl3

This is the big one.
So what is the fuss all about? Well.. the Mountain Lion is not only a White Lion Lvl3 with its inherent +1LCK, but it has the Life trait set to 20 as well and it comes with both Vanish on top of its small 9 card deck and a more-or-less guaranteed ambush round.
First off, that insta-Vanish onto any Squire besides Cain likely deals severe wounds, even if several of them use the Full Armor Check endeavor. Pair that with a hunt that is just “roll on this table 3 times” and for every 1 or 2 the lion gets extra +1DMG-tokens, you are in for a rough time.
But wait – there’s more!
The trait Mountain Predator adds tokens to itself whenever an enemy ends their movement (or knockback) further away from the monster than where they initially started, and at the start of the monster turn it removes tokens one by one from the card to draw additional AI cards for each. Did i mention that about half of its 9 card deck inflicts Knockback?

For our endeavors we had to Clean the Battlefield, which I sent Elle to do. She gained +1 understanding from this, Tinker and 1 additional endeavor for the round from the Insight roll. She spent that one on giving everybody a +1STR-token.
Cain prepared a Multicourse Meal for the group, giving everybody +3 survival – which I was burning through each fight like it was nobody’s business.
Iola and Owen each completed Full Armor Checks for a total of +3 armor to all hit locations. I was preparing for a slog of a fight.
I opted to forgo Forbidden Dance (I) partially because I did not remember it being such a large part of the Zero Presence event.

We got decently lucky on the hunt as we rolled a 3, a 7 and a 5, losing minimal survival from the two Rockslides and even re-gaining some from taking in “the view”.

And then stupid stuff started happening.

I drew a Dead Monster terrain for one during set-up. Dead Monster effectively canceled out the Ambush turn and had the monster start normally. The Mountain Lion still went first, but we did get a chance to search for it in the Tall Grass.
I suddenly saw a light at the end of a long tunnel.
The Mountain Lion used Vanish – as was preordained!
Filled with hopes and dreams I went searching for the monster. 9+ here we go!
I did not find it – so I was back to square one.
It reappeared besides Iola and tore into her viciously. A body severe got through to her – she rolled a 7 – a ruptured spleen – skip next hunt would be irrelevant!
Iola also learned Zero Presence (SFA) by rolling an 8.

Our retaliation was short and brutal.
Cain was the only one able to crit the Mountain Lion thanks to his +1LCK. He attacked once. He hit only once – the “Beast’s Chest” – I checked at least 3 times if I was supposed to remove that, but no, not to my understanding.
Cain dealt a critical wound to the monster .. AND HE ROLLED ANOTHER LANTERN 10 AFTERWARDS!

He one-shot the Mountain Lion on our first attack!

After I had stared at the dead lion in disbelief for a little longer I proceeded to the Victory result. Cain (Clutch Figher FA) reached Age 3 and Iola (+1STR) had reached Age 2.
Cain also ascended to the rank of sword master. After we had gained our resources, I was ready to move to the next part of the campaign.

What we did not gain from this fight was any suspicion or story event.
Cain: 1 Iola: 1 Owen: 2 Elle: 0

Lantern Year 3 – King’s Man Lvl2

This is a much worse match-up than it would seem at first. Whilst the Mountain Lion certainly is the big fish in this pond, we don’t have any Brain Trauma mitigation or shields for this fight.
Try and think back to the last time you actually fought a King’s Man with neither of the two. It’s been a while, hasn’t it? (No, sacrificing 4 survivors and moving on does not count!)

Surprisingly this was the most stressful year of this whole campaign for me.

As for endeavors someone needed to pack the bags and that duty would fall to Owen this time around. He gained both the Camping Bag (with its -1EVA) and the Portable Waterphone.
I also spent the time to have Elle exchange 5 resources for Fellbrandt. This was going to be a game changer – probably our single most important item – a grand weapon with both Sharp and Devastating 1!
Iola did another Full Armor Check for +2 armor at all hit locations.
But for the remaining 2 endeavors I really wasn’t sure what to do at first. Whilst I quickly decided that I wanted to increase our Survival Limit, I was torn between more armor, STR, the Everburn and even more Survival Limit.
And only after much internal debate I decided to go with more Survival Limit after all (+2, to a max of 8) – because I felt that this would be our best chance of making it to the final year.
We had killed the Mountain Lion by stabbing its heart – nothing else but getting to the end mattered to me at that point.

There was no hunt phase for this encounter so we got right into the fight.

I did not take any pictures of this fight as I guess I was still too caught up with the year prior.
The game plan was a pretty simple flowchart:
1.: Hope we don’t hit the trap, or hit it early – either or.
2.: Use Black Guard Code (I) and the Oath survival action liberally to remove the -1MOV-tokens.
3.: Have Owen learn King’s Step (SFA).
4.: Hit hard with both Cain and Elle, mostly have Fellbrandt do the heavy lifting when Battle Pressure is off the deck.

And for the most part that is what I did throughout.
As the Squires have no way to mitigate Brain Traumas and I was not keen on the 20% chance of instant Game Over, I used my survival during the first couple of rounds to remove the -1MOV-tokens that constantly came in from Silent Hymn.
Owen also learned King’s Step (SFA) decently quickly on his third attack into Battle Pressure.
Cain on the other hand has had better fights. He got flung around quite a bit, and even got hit at the arms once, but Iola swiftly repaired any damage he suffered (twice in all).

The 2 biggest “oh no!” moments of the fight came quickly one after the other. First Owen died to a normal sequence of attacks – the King’s Man had a deck mostly consisting of variations of its basic attack with additional effects attached to it. And whilst he had gotten away, as he would, for the risk I took of having King’s Step (SFA) on Owen I got punished. Cain still had 3SPD thanks to being a sword master so he was chosen to discard Battle Pressure for Elle instead, who was the real damage dealer of the party from this fight onwards.
And, more troubling, Iola got hit by a trap worth 11DMG. She took it to her arms and suffered a Severed Arm severe injury! The acid blood melted through flesh and bone alike!

Once we had managed to beat the King’s Man into submission, Cain and Elle were bruised, Iola severely injured and Owen came crawling back out of the shadows – and besides Owen, none of the others had any Survival left.

Elle (+1STR and Piercer FA) and Owen (+1STR and Escape Artist FA) both had reached age 2 after the fight, and Elle finally got to Grand Weapon specialization with Fellbrandt.
Strangely enough the Victory for this encounter does not trigger King’s Curse despite it being called out in the event triggered by Cain dealing the killing blow – which probably is for the better all in all.
We did finish the fight with 0 Survival so Cain (Dishonorable), Iola (Squeamish) and Elle (Hyperactive) each gained a random Disorder.

Current suspicion:
Cain: 3 Iola: 2 Owen: 2 Elle: 1

..

And then I took an hour long break dreading the birb.

..

Lantern Year 4 – Phoenix Lvl3

The injured Iola was chosen to first Set up Camp which would get her a 3rd understanding and trigger Insight, giving her Tinker and an additional endeavor from the roll on the table – we got lucky there, but I was set on sending Iola to activate Tinker the moment I saw the birb’s statline.
Of course her second endeavor was spent for a Full Armor Check.
Owen, who didn’t need survival, went for a Full Weapons Check.
Cain ate some Grass Roll-ups to not instantly cease existing if he got hit with a 1 token’s worth of Spiral Age.
And Elle Ate Apothermum twice, which would get her to full Survival upon arrival. Speaking of arriving, we now also had the required 8 suspicion to gain +3 insanity at the start of the fight.

This is the only fight with an actual hunt phase triggering basic hunt events. Though you still ignore all aspects of the events that include movement on the hunt board.
First the Squires got Lost (basic HE37) for a while, clearly unsure where to go, before wildly chasing after a Gregalope (basic HE38) until they came back to their senses. Finally they made a brief stop at a Stone Fountain (basic HE64) but did not drink from it.

As the Phoenix intervened, trying to stop the Squires from spreading their salty tastes all over the place I fully realized that this was quite the nerfed Phoenix Lvl3! No legendary AI! Only +2/+2 for additional stats and only a single +1LCK-token!
This birb is tiny!

And with that my morale surged!

Elle basically tore the birb 2 more hand-filled buttholes before it went down in a pile of feathers and bile. Cain even managed to sneak in a critical hit that gave us a couple of extra Small Feathers to work with.
But sadly it wasn’t all just sunshine and rainbows.
Whilst Owen did not die – though not for a lack of trying on my part, he hit the Glorious Primary Eyes and did attempt the attack – dealing a wound to both the Phoenix and his own genitals in the process. (He won’t need those anyway.)
Iola got brutally Pecked in the arms (always with her arms), causing a ruptured muscle severe injury, barring her from using any Fighting Arts ever. And whilst i briefly tried to land the Killing Blow with her, she got flung away by knockback so far that I just had Elle take care of the wounded monster.

There are also 2 things that I would call “technicalities” that happened during this fight, which I would like to mention.
1.: The Oath survival action on Black Guard Code (I) reads: “Once per round, if you do not have a shattered jaw, spend 1 survival to recite the forbidden words to another survivor and remove one of their tokens.”
I used Oath to remove Age tokens.
2.: When Elle suffers Spiral Age for the first time it triggers the event Black Roots. She did suffer Spiral Age because the Phoenix sighed at us and flew back to its tree looking at us with Disdain, but she (like all the Squires at the time) had no age tokens.
I still triggered the event.
This feels a little more contentious than the first one, but I will go with RAW in this case.
This filled up Owen’s suspicion towards Elle to its max.

After the fight Iola (one other FA I quickly forgot about and Feral Strength FA) hit age 3.

Current suspicion:
Cain: 3 Iola: 2 Owen: 4 Elle: 1

Lantern Year 5 – The Black Knight Lvl2

Archiving just about 30 resources, the Squires began their work on building the summoning bell.
Cain, Owen and Elle got to work and each gained a permanent stat of their choice. Both Cain and Elle took +1LCK, whilst for Owen I chose +1STR instead. +1SPD could have also been good on Elle.
In the meantime Iola did both a Full Armor Check and Full Weapons Check for the group.
Elle’s final endeavor was spent on her eating more Apothermum, so she had all the survival that she could possibly need to lunge at the Black Knight like a rabid dog.

Instead of a hunt phase, this time, with their duty fulfilled, bodies jittery from exertion and minds flush with a great many emotions, we saw how much the suspicions they harbored revealed:
Final suspicion count:
Cain: 3 Iola: 2 Owen: 4 Elle: 1

Turns out, it’s not that much.

Owen lashed out at Elle for dyeing her hair red to appeal to the guardian, hoping it would attack the others instead of her despite her familial ties to Iola. We also learned that Owen reveled in their emotional upheaval caused from this accusation.

And as we finally were able to depart the sky basket in wounded silence, the ferocious howls of the Guardian pierced the Citadel once again. With statues and pottery repaired in our absence, the Squires did not know the layout of the sparring grounds as well as before and we were confronted with a normal Black Knight Lvl2 set-up and a map kept face-down for us to discover during the fight.

The doggo also had one additional ability: every time he lost a +1TGH-token, he gained a +1DMG token.

With Elle growing more and more proficient with Fellbrandt I expected this fight to be fairly one-sided, especially as I realized that I did not actually need to remove the +1TGH-tokens. She had made short work of the birb with its 15TGH, what was 1 more?
And it definitely could have been as one-sided as I had expected. We never even attempted to really explore the map and instead just fought the Black Knight in what little we could see from being knocked about the place. (This also had us, at one point form a 3-person-pile at the edge of the map as all the Squires kept getting flung down the same path.)
For this fight it was no longer relevant if somebody died besides Owen. In that sense, we could finally fully cut loose!

The Black Knight was able to stall us out for a little bit by barking at us, sending Elle and Owen running away, whilst both Iola and Cain stood their grounds, even losing an eye for it as they See the Truth to no major effect throughout this particular fight. The -1ACC did hurt a little though.

All in all, the Black Knight did a fairly good job at flinging the Squires away, though only ever down the same 3 pathways, preventing us from dealing damage too quickly.

But steadily we added more and more wounds, as Iola patched up broken bits of armor. And eventually the doggo was defeated by a whack with the same working hammer from Iola.

All it took was one full afternoon and a 1 in 100 roll on the second fight, but here I am – I did it! From a grand total of 5 larger story boxes unlocked via the suspicion mechanic I only got to read 1, so there is clearly room for improvement, but I am happy nevertheless.

I did it with full resets – yeah!

Just fyi: the table over on the stats page includes all of Owen’s deaths for “Survivors Lost”

For the trouble I went through I can now apply .. uhm,.. red hair to people for rolling 10s on the Mountain Ascent event.
I’m sure this will only ever happen for minis of survivors whose hair is already painted red.

And a final look at how each of my Squires looked after this ordeal of a journey.
Owen did not wound any of the monsters even once… and even whilst there is no Aftermath for Lantern Year 5 – he still just didn’t.

I am sorry that I don’t have any grand tips to offer you for this campaign or the Mountain Lion in that sense. Over these 9 attempts I have defeated the Mountain Lion a grand total of 2 times. I clearly don’t know what I’m doing, but Unga-bunga protects.
In general (for the whole of the campaign) I would say, use the Squire Toolbelt against knockback, the Squire Hood for Mountain Lion AI, Oath against -1MOV and Age tokens and make sure you have at least 1 capable damage dealer. Both Cain and Elle can easily fit that roll if either of them gets to use Fellbrandt. Keep in mind that it is both a sword and grand weapon. Cain will be a beast with it as well.
I tend to play fast and loose, burning through my survival on the regular. So in a way this campaign suits me, I guess. Your mileage may wary.

For what it’s worth, to regurgitate some useful knowledge: during the discussions at the start of September, Dark Tastemaker, the Team Death member most actively present on the Lantern’s Reign discord commented that applying 2 Full Armor Checks (one ideally initiated by Iola) will increase survivability against the Mountain Lion’s Vanish drastically.
They based this on their personal experience from testing the campaign.

The biggest tip I can probably give you is to not get burned out over the Mountain Lion or the Squire campaign in general.
Take a step back if you need to. Don’t force it unnecessarily.

That being said, even now, almost a month after playing this campaign in one sitting more or less, getting this post ready to be published I am just so happy that I managed to pull this off!

Will I ever play this mini-campaign again? Probably. But its not going to be that soon I think. Maybe with my friends that I got hooked on KD:M. If they want to experience it more thoroughly than what happened last time, that is.
What happened last time? Oh, the usual. A nice showcase fight against the Black Knight into a juiced up (we rolled a 1 on the hunt) Mountain Lion Vanish instantly exploding Cain of all people.

I have since celebrated my victory by buying and building a storage solution for my Core game box.

It’s looking quite different in there now, but there is space to work with again. I would not have been able to fit the Pariah and Wanderers into the box with the old storage insert.

As always thank you very much for your time, I am currently out of town and country, as mentioned like five times by now, have a good week or two, I’ll be back in a bit
Amathul