Aristo Roles – Support

Today as part of this series I will focus on support characters. Like the other categories, I have resisted separating this category further. This mainly is because an Aristeia team only have 4 Aristo spaces, and whilst the support category is a wide one, there often isn’t a place for more than one of them on a team.

Support characters can help their team in many different ways. They can give out beneficial states, give healing and remove states from allies. They also can also do the opposite, giving out states to reduce the abilities of their opponents. They can also help with positioning, scoring and defending scoring zones.

So, let’s list the support characters. I hope this list is shorter than the previous damage category, writing that up almost killed me.

hEXx3r

Hannibal

Laxmee

Padre-Inquisitor Mendoza

Taowu

Oberon

Bachmann

Gaia

Eclypse

Ah, that wasn’t too bad. Let’s crack on then.

hEXx3r

Primary role: Support

Secondary role: Scorer

hEXx3r is probably the most powerful control piece in the game. Her defining power is the one she uses the most often- Vade Retro. This allows her to displace herself as a switch and her target, friendly or enemy on a hit. This power is reliable and versatile. It can be used early in a turn to give friendly models more threat range when they rush towards a scoring zone. It can be used late in a turn to displace enemies out of a zone.

She can also slow down and even immobilize targets with her other action. She can act as a force multiplier and allow damage and scoring models to do their job with more efficiency.

Her power is well known, so expect her to be a target. If she is dazzled she is reduced to being nearly useless. Her initiative is average and her defenses are below average, so she is liable to die if caught off guard.

That said, her cards make her a formidable threat, even if returning from the bench. Ultimate power affects the whole board and if she has returned from the bench the -2 action point penalty won’t apply. This is a potentially game-winning card, displacing the whole enemy team at once. It is potentially so powerful it may be worth holding on to your No! card so it can’t be countered.

Along this her cards can make her harder to hurt, able to dazzle targets, and slow them down. She is not particularly able to hold zones for very long herself, and she is entirely incapable of hurting anyone directly, so the rest of her team should be picked with care.

Taker her if you want to be able to control the scoring / frag game of both yourself and your opponent, avoid her if you feel like you will need more support in removing states and healing.

Hannibal

Main role: Support

Secondary role: Damage

Hannibal is a adaptable and versatile support Aristo. He is not capable of a great deal himself but he is able to make his team perform actions and attacks out of activation. He has no switches, average defence and health.

His main draw is his action Programmed Strategy. This allows any character to immediately make an action or attack as long as it costs 2 action points or less. So, depending on your team build, it can allow attacks or other actions potentially before (or after) an aristo has already activated. Although it doesn’t allow movement, it can allow actions that result in the movement or displacement of the character or target.

His cards allow you to recycle your discard pile, re roll dice, give characters more actions and allow a character to change their position on the initiative track. This tactical flexibility allows you to change plans on the fly. He also is able to boost the attacking power of any allies who can see him. Likewise, he has a weak attack, but if more of his team can see his target the power of the attack increases significantly.

Hannibal can risk doing little in his turn except allowing his team to take other actions, so care must be taken that his team has options that they can use. He also has a poor brawn and agility so he is liable to get tied up and engaged if unsupported.

Take him if you have a team with a lot of 2-cost actions or attacks that Hannibal can use; avoid him if you don’t have a team that can benefit from his synergies.

Laxmee

Primary role: Support

Secondary role: Scorer

Laxmee is pretty much a pure support piece – whilst I have given her a secondary role I think it is a bit of a stretch. That said, I believe she is a superb supporter.

She is able to give out the stunned and focused ability without needing line of sight, and if she rolls well she is able to do both at once. Even a poor roll will give her a bonus movement point or to, which is why she has some scoring potential. It is not uncommon for most, if not all of your team to have focused tokens on them all of the time, or stunned on your opponent, or both.

Focused effectively gives your allies a free focus card when they want it, with the advantage that they can use it to remove states due to Laxmee’s passive. Stunned can really help your team’s tanking potential, as well as hurting those who want to heal and do other crucial actions.

Her cards can do similar, stunning or focusing a large area of the board at once, and they can also allow one of your opponent’s strong attacks to do almost no damage at all.

She has low survivability, she has poor defense as well as very low health. This can be helped a little by her actions not requiring line of sight, but she is still liable to be removed in a single shot by even a casual attack.

Take her if you want to be able to buff/debuff your allies and enemies and remove states, avoid her if you want any direct offensive output or you think she will be killed too easily.

Padre-Inquisitor Mendoza

Main role: Support

Secondary role: Damage

To put it simply; Mendoza is the best healer in the game. He heals allies as a passive ability and as a switch, so it isn’t uncommon for him to be able to heal 2-3 points a round minimum.

His damage output isn’t bad either- his ranged attack does average damage but he can switch to place burning on a target very easily so it is likely that anyone he hits will have several burning tokens on themselves after an attack.

His cards are powerful. He can convert burning tokens into healing; remove states from everyone on the board at once,; dazzle burning target and bring benched players back to the board. This is super useful, as he removes the action point loss from them as well as allowing theme to appear next to him rather than in a deployment zone. Whilst they can’t appear in a scoring zone they can appear next to one, giving them much more of a chance to have a meaningful turn when they re appear.

Also, if you are playing against a team that can give out lots of states he might find himself stretched too thin. Also if you have a team of low health / defense characters you might find your allies are either on full health or in the infirmary, and in no need of healing.

Take him if you have lots of targets that need healing, avoid him if you are facing lots of negative states, or if your allies are likely to be taken out of action in a single hit.

Taowu

Primary role: Support

Secondary role: Damage

Before you say anything – why have I put Taowu’s secondary role as damage? Because when your opponent punches the wall in frustration it will hurt. Simple!

Taowu is the buzz-kill of Aristeia. Everything he does will control your opponent. He can use smoke markers to block lines of sight, he can immobilize opponents. His most used ability is his switch; he can make your opponent discard a tactic card, potentially more than one at once. This can result in many of the attacks targeting you having less bonus dice, and generally less surprises in the game for you when a tactic card is used to win a turn unexpectedly.

His cards back up this plan. He has an extra No! card, he can force your opponent to lose more cards. He can force your opponent to activate models in a different order in the turn. This is probably only significant if you can predict when they will act, or if you know that a model that has already activated has been taken out of action. If that is the case, you could swap initiative cards and potentially prevent a model from activating at all in a turn.

He has to be relatively close in order to use his actions and so to activate his switches, and he is easy to kill, with low defense. That said, his defense has a built in switch, so it will result in your opponent losing card, and they can’t draw cards for Taowu being taken out. He also can’t remove states, hold zones well, or do any damage himself.

Take him if you want to control and lock down your opponent. Avoid him if you need to support your own models or remove states.

Oberon

Primary role: Support

Secondary role: Scorer

Like Taowu, I don’t think Oberon really has a secondary role – I made him a scorer as he can allow you to pick cards that can really make your team shine and win a turn out of nowhere.

He can allow you to draw tactics cards on a switch, and he has a potent action that can allow you to choose a card from your deck and put it into your hand. He can do this to allow you to pull off the ideal combos and tricks that you need, or simply allow you to pull out that NO! Card early in a game.

He can silence targets. Whilst this can’t prevent attacks, it can shut down actions and passives, turning off your opponent’s other support characters. It could be used to slow down Gata and her free run or misdirect, or slow down Miyamoto when he goes on a killing spree.

His cards can allow you to play a previously played card, and really prevent your opponent from having the cards that they need. He has a potent card that can shut down anyone playing cards for the turn, which is a double edged sword as you can’t play any either.

Like all pure support characters he is very easy to take out, he has low health and defense, and some of his power comes from his card draw, so it depends on how reliant you are on combinations and cards to win a turn.

Take him if you want to be able to have the cars you want in your hand, and if you want to shut down crucial actions.. Don’t take him if you want a support character who can more directly improve your team performance.

Bachmann

Primary role: Support

Secondary role: Damage

Bachmann is the king of states. If you want to control states, move them around and generally mess with them, he is your man.

His actions allow him to take states off a target, another action allow him to give them to someone else. His passive means he isn’t affected by them either, apart from a few that affect his statistics, like movement or action points. If you are facing off against a team that can give out lots of states, he can remove them and give them to back to the enemy team. If your opponent want to increase his teams’ power with states such as focused, he can remove them and give them to you. At the same time, his switch allows him to poison a target easily.

His cards increase this, allowing him to switch states and poison targets. It is probably not a surprise that he also works well with Hammerhead, allowing him to keep his brother on a good level of poison, giving him more combat prowess whilst not letting him die too fast.

He loses a lot of potency if you are facing against an team that doesn’t use states a lot, and to be honest if you think you are going to play against Bachmann that might be a good move.

Take him if you want states on the board to be exactly where you want them. Avoid him if you are facing against a state-lite team.

Gaia

Primary role: Support

Secondary role: Scorer

Gaia is both a very slow model and a very fast one at the same time. She has a low move statistic, but she can teleport between non-scoring zones easily, allowing her to cover very large pats of the board in a turn.

This has a lot of utility. She can appear in a deployment zone where your opponent has some key pieces, and potentially move them to a different area of the board entirely. She can operate as a taxi, taking a melee model with her deep into your opponent’s lines, then herself running away again.

Her minions, the -hard to spell on an iPhone- Gorgoneions, are superb at blocking movement and tying up low agility characters, or just forcing action point expenditure to move around them or destroy them.

Her cards are spectacular, allowing her to do more moving around the board and damage people in side of deployment zones. Tectonic shake is worthy of more discussion. It can change the scoring zone on the board to a new area, resulting in a turn that you were definitely going to lose into one that you can win. This has to be done in the planning phase, so cant be done mid-turn, but it can help you be near a scoring zone when you were over extended. It also allows you to effectively choose the scoring zone when you aren’t the underdog. The zone cannot be occupied by any allies, so if you save it until the end of a turn it might result in no one scoring, which can be a good thing anyway.

Like many support characters she is relatively easy to hurt. She is often limited to moving to non scoring zones which could make her with little in the way of moving options in some situations. Her cads are so potent that it may mean your opponent will save a No! card for them, which means you will need to find and hold on to your No! Yourself, which could mean that you can’t control any other cards your opponent wants to use.

Take her if you want to be able to surprise your opponent with mobility, and control dangerous melee characters. Avoid her if you are facing a strong ranged presence or someone who can shut down your cards.

Eclypse

Primary role: Support

Secondary role: Damage

Eclypse is a very well rounded character, and one of my favorites. I like her so much I forgot to include her in the first draft of this blog.

She has a good value, relatively cheap attack that can dazzle at range. She can mark targets as a switch as well. As such, she is very useful for picking off weak targets, or putting damage on harder to hit ones. Marked can also set up targets to be shot later in the turn, or used as a switch in defense.

She is able to flip (not remove) states- allowing you to get rid of states faster but also prolong states on opposing Aristos. This can make some of your states last a long time, taken with other supports like Laxmee it can make the stunned state last for a long time. Her versatility makes her a support character who can be paired with another without a significant loss of damage potential. Careful positioning can also allow her to hide team mates.

Her cards work in a similar way to her abilities; she can flip states, hide or mark targets, or displace targets that are hidden or marked. None of these cards require Eclypse herself to be the one using them, which is nice.

She has below average defense and average health, so is likely to die if she is attacked by a strong damage character.

Take her if you want a versatile damage/support character. Don’t take her if you don’t own the Human Fate expansion.

…and that’s it! Support characters are potent, but must be balanced by their (probable) lack of strong damage and scoring power.

As always, let me know what you think, either here on on Twitter @Ihexadome.

Thanks!

Bye!