C3G Strategy - January 2019
Posted January 16th, 2019 at 04:01 AM by HS Codex
C3G Strategy Guide
Speedy (Mia Dearden)
By: Lazy Orang
My second review of a low-cost, female archer, it seems. An odd little statistical anomaly given the volume of units in the game.
Analyzed Statistics
Left Box Breakdown
Species – Human (minor synergies, such as being healed by Alfred Pennyworth; also by far the most common species in C3G, making it somewhat clunky for Star-Lord builds)
Uniqueness – Unique Hero
Class – Sidekick (can be extracted by Alfred and get a bonus to his healing; also allows Speedy to team up with Aqualad and Spoiler as bonding options—as well as the other Speedy and Red Arrow, for purely attack bonding; has interactions with Batgirl (Barbara Gordon), Superboy (Kon-El), Raven and Starfire; perhaps most notably, can be activated by Nightwing’s Titans Go! special power)
Personality – Determined (adamantly does nothing)
Size/Height – Medium 4 (manoeuverable, can use ladders, and can be affected by a number of beneficial powers such as Carry, but also vulnerable to a number of enemy powers, like Graviton’s throws)
“Sidekick” allows her some solid (if low-level) bonding options, gives her small perks in a number of vigilante, Titan and archer builds, and allows her to be activated by Nightwing, so, all in all, it’s a very valuable class.
Statistics Breakdown
Life – 4 (Average, especially for a human)
Move – 5 (Average)
Range – 8 (Crack shot)
Attack – 3 (Low)
Defence – 3 (Fragile)
Points – 80 (Cheap)
Most of those stats are on the low end of middling, but with a nicely cheap cost and a range like that, it’s hard to complain, especially when you start looking at her powers.
Powers Breakdown
Diamond Tip Arrows Special Attack
Range 6. Attack 2.
Choose a non-adjacent figure to attack. If you roll a skull on every die, the chosen figure cannot roll any defense dice.
This is a potentially exceptional attack, though on the flukey side. With 25% odds of rolling all skulls—not exactly favourable, but not terribly unlikely either—this has a one quarter chance of inflicting two automatic wounds on just about anyone, even Thor or Superman. Picking the right target, even a single one of these shots getting through will justify Speedy’s cost. Any more and she starts to become an amazing value.
Tactical Advantage – High
Close Combat Expert
When attacking an opponent’s adjacent figure with a normal attack, add one automatic skull to whatever is rolled. When defending against a normal attack from an adjacent figure, add one automatic shield to whatever is rolled.
This is normally a great power—for a figure who doesn’t mind engaging in melee combat, an auto-skull and an auto-shield in melee is a significant boon to both attack and defence. However, Speedy is a figure who doesn’t want to engage in melee combat: she’s fragile, and her main assets are her long range and purely ranged special attack. However, it does give her a better defence if an opponent engages her in melee, and allows her to charge in for a solid hit if the conditions are right (height and Captain America could give her an attack of 5 + 1 auto in melee). As such, it’s far from useless for her, but still not as good as it is on, say, Black Widow.
Tactical Advantage – Moderate
Delicate Health
At the end of each round, if this card has any wound markers on it, roll a single attack die. If a skull is rolled, place one wound marker on this card.
This power is clearly a pure negative, and another reason to keep her out of engagement when possible. Though there is a chance to play off your opponent’s expectations and strategic sense to try to subliminally convince them to keep her alive longer (I’ll get into that later), in the end, it’s still a weakness, not a strength.
Tactical Advantage – Negative
In Depth Analysis
For the purposes of this strategy article, I will be using a slight variation on Agatagary’s chess-based unit evaluation system; for those unfamiliar, it can be found in a previous article.
Speedy is fairly inexpensive, and far from indispensible. That being said, throwing her into the fray recklessly wastes her value, so she’s best classed as a bishop.
Garnishing with Arrows
First we’ll look at viable army builds for her. In the end, at 80 points, Speedy is mostly a filler hero, not someone you’ll be building your army around, but it’s worth thinking about her best builds. Because of how cheap and valuable she is, she can find her way into a lot of generalist builds. Though she may struggle to fit into a Star-Lord build because of her species and class not being rare, Captain America (C3G) builds accomodate her perfectly well, and she’ll be a little tougher and have a stronger normal attack when paired with him—an attack of 5 at a range of 8 if you grab height is actually a pretty scary and solid alternative to her special attack. This can get even better if you’re willing to shell out the 50 or 60 points to pair her with Spoiler or Aqualad (Spoiler’s generally better, with slightly superior stats at a lower cost, though Aqualad is viable if there’s water on high ground). Speedy plus Spoiler together can easily equal some of the 130 point heroes out there, especially in an Avengers build. Plus, it’s a build where you might find yourself wanting to reach for some solid filler late in army building, and Speedy’s one of the better options around this price.
Another pairing would be builds that rely on order marker management or generalist bonding, such as Baron Heinrich Zemo,Wasp (II), Red Skull (C3G), Iron Patriot and Ms. Marvel. Since Speedy is a unit who wants to have turns sprinkled to her occasionally and judiciously (as I’ll explain later), the ability to activate her on a whim in this way rather than having to place an order marker on her is an enormous boon. Heinrich and Wasp have the benefit of being able to activate her at will, while the others tend to need a bit more setup, but can bond with her instead of just activating her. Helmut Zemo could be another good pairing, as Speedy is a good choice for a figure to activate with Master of Deception, due to wanting to go mostly unnoticed. It should be noted, though, that activating Speedy in any of these ways precludes pairing her with her own sidekick, so no Spoiler or Aqualad for you!
The third and perhaps most obvious place to take her is in a Titans build. Because you’ll probably only want to give her one turn per round, she works brilliantly with Nightwing’s Titans Go! power—you can activate her with it, and whether or not she manages to do anything with her Diamond Tip arrows, it isn’t a wasted turn, as you still have Nightwing and one other Titan or sidekick you can activate, maintaining efficiency while still going for the shot. Those sidekick synergies certainly pay off, don’t they?
Picking Your Shots
Speedy isn’t reliable enough or tough enough to act as a primary offensive force—but then, she doesn’t need to. Her job is to be thrown the occasional turn (approximately one a round is a good ratio), stay out of the way and make her shots count. With that in mind, let’s discuss her offensive potential.
Speedy has three basic methods of attack—ranged normal, melee normal, and, most interestingly, her Diamond Tip Arrow Special Attack. Her melee attack can be surprisingly strong if boosted, thanks to her auto-skull off Close Combat Expert, but shouldn’t be used too recklessly, since she’s too fragile to fight on the front line. This is, however, an option if an opportunity too good to miss turns up (such as a good opportunity for a boosted attack on a character who could be badly hurt or killed by it), or Speedy is forced into combat, either because she’s the only one left or because an opponent has slipped past your battle line to engage her. Her ranged normal is pretty basic—an attack of 3 at a range of 8—but the long range makes it fairly easy for her to claim height and remain out of danger while sniping. With an attack boost from someone like Captain America, this can be rather effective, especially against low-defence heroes, but isn’t really enough to make her a more attractive option to activate than your front-line fighters most of the time. Being able to bond with Spoiler does certainly help on that level, though; it’s not really stronger than most sidekick-bonding combos, but it’s certainly a budget option among such teams.
Arguably her best attack option, though, and the one you’re probably drafting her for, is her special. While only an attack of 2 at a range of 6, its ability to completely ignore an opponent’s defence if you roll all skulls is hard to overstate. While the odds aren’t in favour of that happening—a 25% chance—it isn’t massively unlikely, and if it does work, that 25% chance of two undefended wounds can be absolutely devastating in C3G ... if you pick the right target. This attack’s lack of reliability is one of the reasons you shouldn’t be massing order markers on Speedy—you don’t want to waste too much time going for hail-mary shots—but if you throw her the occasional order marker, even a single Diamond Tip Arrow finding its mark against the likes of Thor can be a game-changer, and absolutely justify Speedy’s cost. Even against someone like Captain America, it can be surprisingly valuable. If more than one hits, then Speedy’s really proving her worth to you.
Being able to ignore a defensive roll completely to inflict two wounds can also be valuable to bypass special powers that dodge an attack based on a defensive roll, such as Speed Dodge and and Acrobatic Mastery—admittedly, defensive reduction powers are more reliable ways to achieve the same thing in this case, but you might not always have those sorts of characters at your command, and when all you have is a hammer ...
Basically, her Diamond Tip arrows have the ability to cut through almost any defence and inflict significant damage, if you get lucky, which is usually a chance worth taking now and again (and can absolutely save the day if your big guns have been taken out before you could quite finish Darkseid off). Since you can’t rely on too many of these shots getting in, make sure they count—she’s best used targeting high-cost, high defence titans, and figures with a skewed life/points ratio and a high defence. Bear in mind though, that she can only cut through defensive rolls—diamond arrows are too sharp for Superman and too fast for Flash, but that doesn’t stop Spider-Man from avoiding them with his Spidey-Sense. Shooting someone with a d20 based defence is likely a waste of time. Also, while Green Lanterns may seem like one of the best targets available with their high defence and shockingly low life for their cost, their ability to simply burn a marker to block the arrow can cause this to be less effective than you might hope.
Flying Under the Radar
Let’s be honest here—Speedy isn’t surviving concerted aggression for very long. Close Combat Expert can give her an edge in an emergency, but she just isn’t built for prolonged combat. The best way to keep her alive is actually deceptively simple—give her a low profile.
This shouldn’t be too hard—she’s a low cost figure, she should be kept behind your main battle line; she’s unlikely to be a high priority when an opponent’s making a casual threat assessment. This is another reason to only toss her a turn a round or so: as well as being about the maximum you can reasonably activate her without seriously hurting your efficiency, it’s also the most you can activate her before your opponent starts looking past your frontline fighters and tries to hunt your archer down. There’s a chance they might do so anyway, but if you have closer, more immediate threats actually engaging their forces, it’s less likely.
In a bizarre way, Speedy’s Delicate Health could sometimes help here. As soon as she’s received a wound, Speedy will fall—it’s simply a matter of time. To an opponent attempting to maximise the value of their attacks, this could make her a lesser priority, especially if she’s close to death—if there’s a chance she’ll die soon anyway, what’s the point of attacking her, when those shots would be better served elsewhere? In this way, if Speedy is caught by a stray shot or two and dying, this could strangely keep her alive longer if you control other threats—for all that her gradual deterioration might be a pain, it’s still only a 50/50 shot of a wound at the end of the round, and less likely to kill her quickly than a gunshot. You can’t rely on this, though—some opponents might not think about Delicate Health when planning their strategy, while others might see killing her quickly as worth the reward despite it. Still, it is a factor that you can try to play on. Remember, though—if an opponent has been burned by a razor-sharp diamond striking Superman’s eye, either in this game or beforehand, they’re more likely to be active in hunting Speedy down. Take this into account, and make it less feasible for them.
Closing Thoughts
In conclusion, if you keep her safe, pick your shots wisely and get a little luck, she can prove far more valuable than her low cost suggests. Until next time, may the Dice Gods bless you with victory!
Comments 2
Total Comments 2
Comments
|
Great read as always!
|
Posted January 16th, 2019 at 03:57 PM by MrNobody
|
|
|
Great review of a lesser known character!
My favorite line is for DTA SA. "Picking the right target, even a single one of these shots getting through will justify Speedy’s cost." |
|
Posted January 18th, 2019 at 03:10 PM by Tornado
|
Recent Blog Entries by HS Codex
- C3G Interview - Dr. Jekyll (May 16th, 2021)
- Scaper of the Month - January 2021 (February 21st, 2021)
- C3G Interview - GamerHusband (February 19th, 2021)
- C3G Interview - LordVenoc & MrNobody (December 24th, 2020)
- Scaper of the Month - December 2020 (December 13th, 2020)
