Whether or not you have been waiting for this as much as I have, today we are finally ready to start Season 4 – Fullmetal Gormchymist!

The Feline Entity has definitely been really excited to get things going again as she showed up as soon as I put my survivors onto the board!

Now, obviously, what I set up here today is not a Gorm.
But, unfortunately, at least until the reprint of it is released, the Gorm remains the only Node 1 monster without a proper Prologue at this point in time.
And whilst I could have used one I found out in the wilds of the internet, I also wanted to apply all the Game Over unlocks I have managed to get until now .. which is all of them .. and decided to not jank it any more than I have to.
You could also say that I’d rather fight a White Lion with +1DMG instead of a Gorm which I have less experience with.

As always, we will deal with the Prologue first, then we talk nodes next time.

Somewhere in the Place of Stone Faces, 4 slightly uncanny survivors woke from a dreamless slumber, faced with the hunger and fury of a somewhat overweight White Lion.
Today, armed with nothing but a shard of bedrock and a piece of cloth, Magorm (green), Algorm (blue), Gormward (red .. obviously) and Gormwry (yellow) were the ones roused from their sleep.

As I am going to be using the Ocular Parasites milestone, each and every survivor this campaign will be gaining a permanent +1ACC. However, the first White Lion we have to face will gain both a +1DMG and a -1MOV-token as a trade-off.
This does represent a significant increase in difficulty for the Prologue, but the rewards are well worth it – I mean, it’s a permanent stat-upgrade for everybody!
Fighting a juiced up Prologue will also put a lot of the early Lantern Years into a wholly different perspective for us.

With the pre-built deck for the Prologue assembled the White Lion had its standard 8 cards to work with and started the fight by drawing Claw – as was preordained!
I picked Magorm to be the first target and the White Lion hit her twice in the chest. She dodged once to avoid the instant severe injury.

Edgorm immediately retaliated by throwing the first Founding Stone. It hit the White Lion’s Strange Hand .. as was preordained .. and naturally Edgorm spent his 1 survival for the permanent +1STR.

Gormwry was the first to step up to the monster, hitting once as she used her Founding Stone as a melee weapon .. and she dealt a critical wound!? A -1ACC-token was applied to the monster, which would hopefully swing the odds into our favor for the rest of this particular fight!

Algorm then joined Gormwry in the blind spot and struck the monster as well. And whilst he hit the Beast’s Knee, he ultimately failed to wound.

6 cards remaining, the monster readied its counter attack: Terrifying Roar. I chuckled lightly – mostly out of resignation – and watched as all 4 of my survivors ran away from the monster.

Funnily enough, the lion was too thicc to catch up to any of them, which had the basic follow-up attack fizzle out.
Magorm did trigger a brain trauma roll by getting knocked back through the Survivor Corpse, though. She suffered Megalophobia (D) – our first Gorm disorder – meaning she won’t be joining us on the hunt for our Node 1 monster anytime soon.

Unfortunately, this did leave us a little too far away to do much of anything this turn.
Magorm moved up to the corpse and removed its Skull, putting her up to 8 insanity already, whilst the rest of the team merely moved closer as the White Lion already prepared its next attack.

6 cards remaining still, it drew Chomp, targeting Magorm again!
The White Lion easily hit her and dealt a severe head wound. She rolled an 8 for her severe injury, which was luckily only a Concussion. As she hit the floor yet again, she gained Quixotic (D) – all in all good disorder to draw!

Algorm rushed over to attack but he was surprised by the trap! Already?!
As the White Lion swung around, Algorm was hit in the face which dealt another severe head injury! Intracranial Hemorrhage was a much worse outcome than a concussion as well! Unfortunate!

Gormward ran up, but failed to even hit, whilst Gormwry followed shortly after him, getting a hit in and dealing 1 wound against the monster’s 6TGH.

5 cards remaining, Size Up was played next. The White Lion stared at Gormward. He lost the 1 insanity he had gained earlier from seeing Magorm take the Skull from the corpse and he hit the ground as well.

After Magorm and Algorm had gotten to their feet again, Gormwry tried her best to defend Gormward by attacking the monster, and I got a good scare as the Beast’s Paw was revealed, but she thankfully managed to wound it with a 9 – preventing a basic attack reaction with 4DMG per hit!
Algorm tried to attack afterwards as well, but he failed to wound and was hit with an unmodified basic attack! Only 1 hit to his arms sent him sprawling as the White Lion swatted him aside.

Finally, Magorm also got her chance to attack for the first time this fight, but failed another easy wound against the Beast’s Knee.

4 cards remaining, the AI deck had just been reshuffled and Claw was drawn as the next attack. I got lucky as it only hit Gormwry once, giving her the opportunity to dodge to stay on her feet this time!

At this rate the fight was progressing slower than I would have liked and I felt like my survivors were in a slump of bad rolls, especially as the White Lion stormed off towards the upper board edge after another failed wound attempt by Gormwry!

But I was wrong in my assessment I as I would soon find out, as Algorm charged after the White Lion and wounded it twice with the edge of his cracking Founding Stone!
This did give Algorm the Priority Target token though.
To eliminate the risk of drawing Terrifying Roar again, Magorm then threw her Founding Stone in the wake of this.

Hitting the Soft Belly she got to loot an extra White Fur as the monster has suffered its second Persistent Injury for the fight: Organ Trail.
Finally, Gormward moved up a little but remained too far away to attack.

1 card remaining and I already knew it was going to be Claw.
Organ Trail did not deal a wound, so the White Lion got to attack unabated. Priority Target on Algorm meant that he was going to get hit this time, and it was for 2 severe injuries no less! Each of them killed him on its own and we were looking at getting our death principle right out the gate.

Down to 3 survivors I took a moment to think things over and a part of me wanted to throw another Founding Stone, but reason prevailed for the time being.
Ultimately I sent in Gormward first. He was furious after losing his brother-in-spirit and hit the monster’s Straining Neck, getting my hopes up in the moment, but he failed the wound!
Gormwry was up next and she dealt a wound, avoiding getting run over by the reflex in the process. She was turning out to be the most reliable one of this group by far!

Magorm got a little closer to action during her act, but was still too far away.

0 cards remaining.. and the monster was about to attack with its basic action but it died to its open wound! I rolled a 1 on the Organ Trail roll!

With the White Lion dying in such a sudden manner we were free to collect our rewards: 1 hunt xp each and 10 resources in total.

The loot from this fight felt quite organ-centric to me at first glance, but with 3 (4) bones and an equal amount of hides it was much more evenly distributed than I originally thought.
In any case, we should be able to get going nicely with these!

***

Between these resources and us going Gorm-hunting next Lantern Year this is definitely going to be an axe campaign, and I can’t tell you just how much I’m looking forward to that!

As with previous seasons, we will be looking at nodes and such next time. But as a quick general overview: it’s is going to be a PotLantern campaign (as mentioned in the title of this post) and we are going to also be using all 4 Game Over milestones as well as all 4 Pillar cards I have currently available to me.

Because of a busy week-end coming up for me with a CoC session that still needs adequate prepping, expect Lantern Year 01 after the monthly update

As always, thank you very much for your time, next time we actually hunt the Gorm!
Amathul