Character review: Gideon Argus

In my last post reviewing characters, I looked at Diala Passil. She’s a support character who’s no slouch in combat (and she can be run in several different ways – and what we talked about there wasn’t even exhaustive). Today, we look at the king of the support class: the aged general Gideon Argus.

Gideon is, for both the campaign, and the skirmish game, one of the best figures Fantasy Flight Games has come out with so far. Gideon, like Diala, is included in the core box and fills a role that no other player has done yet: get more mileage out of your teammates. While Gideon thrives on making other people’s lives easier, you can run him to be a powerful piece in his own right.

Gideon Argus: The Playmaker

Gideon’s core ability is Command and it allows him to give one of his actions to someone else to use to either move or attack. This means that if you run him near a hero who specializes in killing things (Gaarkhan, Fenn, Biv, Onar, Davith, Diala, Shyla, Verena…you get the picture), you can give that character more time in the sun and a better shot at doing what they do best – and you don’t need to pay the cash to equip two characters with great weapons/damage upgrades. This is a fantastic economy of team resources and makes the game more fun for the person that you’re empowering (and you feel better because you let them do it). J

Gideon improves on this Command skill with three of his upgrades: his Air of Command upgrade is perhaps his best skill, as it not only improves his Health for 2 XP, but allows him to Command figures that are in line of sight (as opposed to within 3 spaces). The three-space range is sometimes quite useful even after getting this upgrade (as you can choose someone that you can't see either because they're around a corner or because there are figures in the way), but being able to look down a hallway or across a field and give a free action to a friend is invaluable. For 2 XP more, you can get Mobile Tactician, which gives you movement points each time you use Command. Finally, for a whopping 4 XP, you can get Masterstroke, which allows you to resolve the effects of Command again, but without having to use an action or suffer the strain penalty. When using Masterstroke with Mobile Tactician, you not only get to lend 2 actions to friendly figures, but you also get 4 movement points (which in most cases is like getting a free move). Not bad for 6 XP. Gideon also has the ability to make friendly figures remove strain or become focused, but these skills tend to cut into your 4 XP options, so you can usually only get one of them if you purchase both Air of Command and Mobile Tactician. Oh, the choices…

With this in mind, let’s look at three different builds for Gideon Argus.

End-Game Weapon #1 - The Commander: Holdout Blaster with Spread Barrel

Gideon’s Holdout Blaster is not particularly good – the unfortunate side-effect of running a Yellow-Blue weapon is that occasionally you’ll only get Surge results on your dice (happens 33% of the time on a Yellow and 16% of the time on a Blue, so you can expect these two events to coincide pretty close to 5% of the time). In statistics, we call this a "non-zero probability" which is a fancy way of saying "it basically never happens, but we need to acknowledge that it does happen" (and in my experience, it will happen when you need to do damage the most).
When you actually get a damage result on one of your die, however, the Holdout Blaster is a neat little weapon (especially since a healthy Gideon can surge for Stun with his Disabling Shot skill). This means that Gideon can use the maximum possible 3 Surge to gain Pierce 2 + Stun + Recover 1 Strain, which is pretty good for a base weapon (compare that to Jyn Odan’s Vintage Blaster or Fenn Signis’s Infantry Rifle – it’s not even close). The limitation of this weapon (what makes it balanced) is that you can’t get extra accuracy with it – so you want to be close to your target. In general, you should get 4 Accuracy (3 from the Blue and 1 from the Yellow), but you want to be within 2 Accuracy to be guaranteed a hit. Not bad per se, but not great either.

The point of taking this weapon, though, is not to fight very much. When you need to finish someone off, you can. The Spread Barrel guarantees that so long as you’re within 3 spaces (and you should be – you can’t get extra accuracy as stated previously), you can add a damage to the results of your attack. This means you’ll at least get 1 Damage + Pierce 2 + Stun on your attack, which in general should result in doing at least 1 Damage to your target (unless he gets 3 Block on the Black or the Dodge on the White). And that’s your WORST RESULT.

Gideon is then free to use his activation issuing Commands, focusing a friendly figure who attacks (during a Command, perhaps?) via For the Cause!, pushing himself to move a little further, and resting (to both keep himself healthy and strain-free). Every turn he can start free of strain and end free of strain, while empowering his buddies to do the killing on his turn that he could do (but chooses not to do). And you paid…300 credits for this weapon build, so feel free to get yourself some armor (I like the Admiral’s Uniform, though the Responsive Armor is also good), perhaps a Portable Medkit, and the Combat Visor (to get that accuracy you need!) with all the cash you’re not spending on weapons.

Upgrades to purchase - 11 XP: Air of Command (2), Mobile Tactician (2), For the Cause! (3), Masterstroke (4)

End-Game Weapon #2 - Guns Blazing: A280 with Plasma Cell and Sniper Scope

If you want Gideon to go in guns blazing and bust people up, the best gun to use is the A280. This weapon is one of a handful weapons that can surge for both Damage 2 and Pierce 2 (melee and range included). At only 600 credits, it automatically gives 4 Accuracy (but likely 5-6 Accuracy) and it gives you two mod slots.

The down-side is that while its surge abilities are good, it doesn’t surge very reliably – the Green-Blue combo should get you ~1 surge each round, but you need to boost your surge potential in order get your money’s worth out of it. The raw damage that it does isn’t going to be great if you’re surging on those die, so…what do you? Well...

You're Gideon: surging is what we do.

First off, we take the Sniper Scope (the Tactical Display works too and is available at Tier 1 vs. Tier 3, but can't be triggered more than once in an activation). So long as you’re shooting from 5 or more spaces away (which you should get the accuracy required for that), you get a free Surge (FREE 2 Damage with the A280). In addition to the Sniper Scope, we can take the Called Shot upgrade for a free surge or (perhaps should I say, “and”) the Military Efficiency upgrade to convert 1 Damage into 1 Surge. Both of these are 1 XP upgrades, so I think you should be able to afford them. With these two upgrades alone, we could turn a single damage result (let’s say one of those nasty single damage results on the Blue die) to Damage 2 + Pierce 2. If we have the Sniper Scope, we don’t even need to run this conversion (or save Called Shot for use on someone else’s turn – whichever). Add to this killer combo the Plasma Cell for a free Pierce 1 and the ability to surge for Damage 1, you can turn an absolutely horrid roll of 2 Surges on the Green and Blue to a final damage result of Damage 3 + Pierce 3 at Accuracy 4 (using Called Shot instead of the Sniper Scope). Maximum output, of course, is generated by getting double-damage faces on both the Green and Blue, which would result in a grand total of Damage 7 + Pierce 3 + Accuracy 5+ (and you could reduce your Damage by 1 to add Stun to the results – your choice). That’s…a lot of power.

To top it all off, you can take Hammer and Anvil instead of (or in addition to?) Masterstroke, allowing you to call a friendly figure to assist you with an attack for one of your actions. This gets all the power of Command with the added benefit of being able to attack also!

Total cost of this build is 1300 credits, which is more expensive than the majority of weapons you’ll find out there, but you’re not likely to rival its damage output. To make sure you get that required accuracy, again consider taking the Combat Visor since it’s not a weapon mod. J Also, this build doesn’t require a lot of his upgrades, so you can buy whatever you want with the remaining XP (it’s all good stuff).

Upgrades to purchase - 6 XP: Called Shot (1), Military Efficiency (1), Hammer and Anvil (4)

End-Game Weapon #3 - I Am One With The Force: Ancient Lightsaber with Focusing Beam

Gideon might be old, but he’s no Jedi. The good news is, this doesn’t disqualify him from using the Jedi’s weapon – and I’m willing to go out on a ledge here…

Gideon is better at using the Ancient Lightsaber than ANY OTHER CHARACTER!

There. I said it. Now to defend myself.

We just established that Gideon can make Surge results appear without trying. With a Yellow-Blue-Green, he shouldn’t need to surge as strongly as we showed before, but why not be able to do it? Let’s assume that you have Called Shot and Military Efficiency: you can then turn 1 Damage into 2 Surge. With this amazing Lightsaber, that means we can turn 1 Damage into Damage 1 + Pierce 3 – that’s a free (I REPEAT FREE) Pierce 3. Any other surge you get on the dice you roll (and you’ve got a Yellow-Green-Blue while you’re healthy) trigger the surge for Damage 2 (or save you from needing to use Military Efficiency OR Called Shot). With the Focusing Beam, we can also add a free Pierce 1 to our attack (if we need it) OR strain and exhaust to remove a Dodge result (oh White die foes, you are not safe anymore). How likely are we to get 3 Surge? Surprisingly often…and certainly more often than anyone else (including Mr. I-hide-from-everyone-because-I’m-Davith-Elso).

What’s even better: this uses the same upgrade skills as the previous entry, so if you want to buy the A280 at Tier 2, you can do that and then reconfigure your weapon of choice to the Ancient Lightsaber (giving your blaster to someone else who will use it - and if you use it a few times, someone will want to keep it).

Upgrades to purchase – 6 XP: Called Shot (1), Military Efficiency (1), Hammer and Anvil (4)

Gideon in the Skirmish Game

First off, let’s get something out of the way as we migrate to the Skirmish game: Gideon is better in campaign mode than in skirmish mode. That being said, Gideon Argus is still one of the best figures for the Rebel player to take (and is commonly held to be one of the best figures you can bring period). Gideon is cheap, fitting easily into any Rebel or Mercenary army (with Temporary Alliance) and he can spend the entire game moving people out of harm’s way (or into a better offensive position) and focusing them. If he’s required to shoot at people, he basically has an A280 (except that he can become Focused instead of doing Pierce - which is probably better).

Gideon is a Leader, so he can use Command cards that give you more Command cards (like Planning) as well as assisting your teammates in removing harmful conditions (like Regroup) or making people Focused (like Inspiring Speech). As a Rebel Leader in particular, he is one of the best characters to use with On a Diplomatic Mission (which we will talk about in a few days in a different post). All told, Gideon is fantastic to have on your team – in many ways, he’s very similar to an Elite Stormtrooper…which also hints at his weakness.

Gideon, for all his benefits, is very vulnerable to taking damage (like in the Campaign game). Gideon will not be able to resist damage very well – that black die is meant to stop a single die from doing something (and it very rarely stops two dice). As a result, after a few shots are fired at him, Gideon will fall. For 3 points, that’s not a big loss, but he’s not going to last forever if you don’t keep him safe. Still, as part of a Trooper team or assisting a team of Jedi (or Wookies!), he’s fabulous to have encouraging your soldiers on to victory.

In my previous post on Diala Passil, I mentioned Gideon is my second favorite character – for a while he was top dog because I thought that he was the character most suited to my own personality. While Gideon will always hold a very special place in my esteem, he has since been ousted by a different support class character: Saska Teft. We’ll talk about Saska more in our next post and you’ll be the judge as to whether she’s better than Gideon (though admittedly they do different things). Until then, happy gaming!