Team Planning: Shona Carano

Welcome, once again, to my team planning section. In this section (if this is your first timme, or if you can’t remember) I take an Aristo I like the look of and try and plan a team around them. Sometimes I even try the team out before hand.

As always, if you try out this team for yourself, or have any opinions about it, please let me know, either here, on facebook or on Twitter @Ihexadome

Today’s team is based around Shona Carano. She is a high damage dealing character, but she is relatively squishy and a little slow. What attracted me to her is her cards, they give her a high damage output and possibly also the ability to kill someone in a single hit, regardless of how much damage she actually does. So, let’s look at her card first.

She has some limited ability to displace herself before she attacks, which is helpful as Broadsword needs to be exactly 2 hexes away. This attack has gotten my attention due to the fact that it is the only attack in the game that has automatic 2 damage. It also has a handy displace against a lot of other targets.

Hit the blade gives her the potential to move quite far with displacements, especially when backed up with cards. Normally I would leave this bit until the end, but with Shona I think I want to talk about the two cards of hers I will be taking first.

I normally try and shy away from lots of cards that reply on a certain character in my team. But hey, I want to chop people’s arms and legs off! Let history decide how good an idea it was!

So, Shona wants to use these card, potentially more than once if she can (especially if one of the gets a NO! – which feels somewhat likely. She also wants some help being a bit harder to kill, and she wants to be able to have plenty of stunned and dazzled targets. She is also a melee character, so could do with some ranged support.

Wild Bill can draw cards. He can do so with a switch, and he can shoot stuff, very well. He has very reliable damage output, and he can use up cards to finish a target off if needed. In this list he will allow me to go through the deck fast, looking for cards I want by both switching and shooting people in the head.

ATTENTION!

I have two alternate lists for the remaining two spots, originally it was Laxmee and Eclypse…but as they have been in articles before I have written an alternate idea further down.

Laxmee again! She seems great in this list. D/Buff3r allows her to give Shona focused, meaning that she gets an extra yellow die to help her attacks and switches. Stunning opponent’s can also add to the survival of the team, though it may just be used on a different action. Purge ’92 and Fairy Dust allows the team to shake off conditions that hurt my team, notably dazzled, which is very, very bad for Shona and Wild Bill to be affected by.

Time for the final person.

I promised myself I wouldn’t do this…I won’t again. I know I have used Eclypse in several other teams….but hear me out.

First of all, she has Black Lightning which can dazzle targets. This works well with Shona due to her cards as shown above, but also allows her to use her Broadsword without fear of damage from the counter attack.

Her switch can mark people. This will let Wild Bill use his Twin Pistols and shoot someone through a wall. It can allow Shona to use Amputate on someone through a wall….and she won’t take any damage back. Also it means that Broadsword won’t worry about cover, which it would normally. Penumbra can keep my team safe when they start to take damage, as there is no healing in this list.

Now for the cards.

Amputate and Vigour allow Shona to kick out a lot of damage, and this is backed up with Ace of Diamonds, notable due to the fact that this card can be used by anyone. Only 3 of the cards in this selection are character linked, so there is flexibility in this deck in case a character is in the infirmary.

Ace of Hearts allows the same card to be used twice in a game, or be used when it was originally cancelled with NO!. 4-Kaleidoscope giving out stun to a huge area of the hexadome will help reduce the effectiveness of the opposing team, as well as it working with Vigor, though this requires Laxmee to activate directly before Shona.

Atom and Veil of Darkness add some much needed resilience to the list, and Luxumbra is versatile, meaning I can have a model displace (such as Shona or Wild Bill needing to get into position or disengage to make an attack) or to pull a model into line of sight or out of a scoring zone.

However, as mentioned before, it does use two characters I have used a fair bit before. So let’s see who else I could use.

I could replace Laxmee with Oberon. He can give out Stunned and dazzled, like she can, and allows me to search the deck for cards I need. Also, Silenced allows me to control any important actions.

He is more easily killed than Laxmee, but he also does not require line of sight. He can’t give out the focused state, so the team damage output may suffer slightly. If Eclypse is still in this team, the team still does have the ability to flip states, so we don’t suffer there. As my initial attraction to Shona was her tactics, Oberon helps with that a lot.

Desire and Despair really help with tactics play, Despair can be used on myself to search for a card, or try and find the opponent’s NO! and delay it. Desire allows me to re use an important card potentially for a third time.

I also considered Gata for this team.

Misdirection brings dazzled to the team, helping keep ranged attackers at bay whilst we shoot them (or stab them with a broadsword) ourselves. My concern with Gata is that if I take both her and Oberon at the same time it is potentially a very fragile team, as two of the Aristos have 2 health. That said, Oberon and Gata would ensure that lots of them would be stunned and / or dazzled, and neither of them care too much about line of sight so they can stay out of trouble.

Gata’s tactics also seem to help with this team a lot.

The utility of Go all-out is probably self-explanatory, a displace that can be used by and character is very useful to extend threat ranges, score more easily or move out of an engagement that is not looking favorable.

Swerve is a superb card. It works wonderfully with just about anyone. In this list it allows Wild Bill to attack at least twice with Twin Pistols and Shona to attack with Broadsword twice as well, or three Hit The Blades, or more likely two of them and a move, which could potentially result in a lot of displacements and movement to important zones. Combined with Vigor, it could result in a lot of attacks, though I am wary of stacking too many combinations together as it becomes less and less likely.

Anyway, there is a team idea, and some possible variations. As always, let me know what you think on Facebook, or on Twitter @IHexadome.

Bye!