In our previous posts in the
“Slasher” series, we’ve looked at Verena
Talos and the ability to shoot people at point-blank range and Davith Elso who carves through enemy
figures with his Lightsaber. In today’s post, we’ll be looking at the
Mandalorian bounty hunter Shyla Varad,
who has the ability to use a melee weapon with the grace and elegance that few
(if any) can match.
Shyla Varad: Melee
vs. Tactical
Shyla has four upgrades available
to her that benefit melee weapons: she can do more damage (at the cost of
surge) with All-Out Attack, she can reroll an
opposing and a friendly die with Proximity Strike, she can gain a
free attack (at slightly weaker strength) with Swords Dance, and she can add
Cleave 3 to the attack results with Full Sweep. These skills are
incredibly powerful and can turn any attack into a powerful move (though all
four of these are exhaust skills, so they can only be used once per round).
While a straight-forward approach might make these four look more tempting than
her other options, Shyla has tactical options too.
Shyla has two equipment pieces
that can be used to either do damage to enemies (Remote Detonator) or cause a
hostile figure to become Weakened OR a friendly figure to become Hidden (Smoke Bombs), she can gain a free
movement point OR recover 1 Strain at the start of her turn (Responsiveness), and she can gain a
static Evade – good complement to her Black die – in addition to free movement
and extra Endurance (Deadly Grace). These four skills
are in no way weaker to their counterparts listed previously and the decision
for running Shyla is simply this: when you have eight good choices, which do
you choose? To answer this question, we’ll be looking at three exemplar builds:
one that focuses on melee, one that focuses on tactical, and one that mixes the
two. With no further ado, let’s dig into it.
When you look at Shyla’s upgrades,
there is a definite appeal to Full Sweep:
adding an automatic Cleave 3 is fantastic – able to clear out a basic unit with
ease OR deal good damage to a figure with more than one defense die. While
we’ve talked about several different Cleave-oriented weapons in our post on Gaarkhan, there’s one weapon that
outshines all of the rest: the Electrostaff.
Made available in the Grand Inquisitor Villain Pack, this
weapon is one of the most expensive Tier 3 weapons you can purchase. With an
impressive Red-Green-Blue attack pool and the ability to surge for 2 Damage,
your direct damage is incredible. However, when you declare an attack with the Electrostaff, you get to either add
Reach OR Cleave 2 to the attack results – this gives you an automatic Cleave 5!
We’ve chosen to add the Extended Haft
(which you can put on your Duelist’s Blade until you get to
Tier 3), which will add an automatic Pierce 1 if you don’t have any targets to
Cleave, but otherwise gives you Reach AND Cleave 2 from your attacks.
Another great thing about the Electrostaff is that it has three
attack dice, which means you can get better use out of the Swords Dance upgrade. This upgrade gives you the ability to perform
a free attack, but comes at the cost of one die from your attack pool. While
Shyla can get three attack dice from the Ryyk Blades as well (which allows
you to surge for Cleave 2), the die pool from that weapon would only be a
Green-Blue (vs. a Red-Green from the Electrostaff).
Shyla could also get three attack dice from the Force Pike (which would give you
Reach), and the attack would get a decent (though unreliable) attack pool
(Red-Yellow). While the Force Pike
isn’t a bad weapon, it doesn’t have the options of the Electrostaff and it’s nearly the same price. Ergo, we choose the Electrostaff.
Besides Swords Dance and Full
Sweep, we’ve chosen to focus entirely on offense and purchased All-Out Attack and Proximity Strike. Since the Electrostaff
has both a Red die AND a Blue die, it’s good to be able to reroll one of your
die (makes it hard for you to get Damage 1 on either of those dice) – Proximity Strike gives not only this
reroll, but also grants a reroll of a defense die – perfect for ignoring a
Block 3 result OR a Dodge result. All-Out
Attack allows you to get a free Damage 1 to your attack (at the cost of -1
Surge). This upgrade is much better when you have very little Surge being
generated (which this attack pool generally lacks). Even if you do generate 2
Surge, it basically becomes a free “surge for Damage 1,” which isn’t bad
(especially for a 1XP upgrade).
Upgrades to purchase – 10 XP: All-Out Attack (1), Proximity
Strike (2), Swords Dance (3), Full Sweep (4)
End-Game Weapon #2 – Tactical
Build: Duelist’s Blade with Focusing Beam and DH-17 with Charged Ammo Pack and Plasma Cell
Like we talked about in our post
on Verena Talos, most characters are
not rewarded for having weapons of different weapon types. Some other
characters (such as Fenn and Drokkatta) have upgrades that give
them static attack results that ignore the weapon type (e.g. can be used with a
blaster or a melee weapon). Shyla doesn’t have any of those upgrades. So this
begs the question:
Why split your
focus between two different kinds of weapons?
The answer is pretty simple: because having a
gun makes you more flexible. While Shyla’s Mandolorian Whip upgrade can force
non-adjacent hostile figures to get close to her, Shyla needs to move towards
figures in order to carve them up. While this isn’t a bad thing, it often means
that she needs to spend time moving instead of attacking. This need not be the
case. With a gun in hand, Shyla can rely on some of her more tactical upgrades
to gain movement and still attack twice (perhaps with a melee weapon, perhaps
not).
I debated for a long time about
what ranged weapon to give her, but the melee weapon was obvious: Shyla has a great
starter weapon – keep it. While a Yellow-Green attack pool isn’t the
best attack type, her weapon CAN be a Red-Green (which is a very good attack
type) and it can turn almost all surge that it generates into Damage or Pierce.
With a reliable output of Damage 3-4, you’re looking at being able to do damage
with your attack against anyone that comes your way. If the target has been
properly softened, you don’t need to do a lot of damage in order to kill them.
So how can we do that…
We begin by looking at two very
excellent (though incredibly tactical) upgrades: Smoke Bombs and the Remote
Detonator. If Shyla is attacking a White die figure, I recommend she uses
the Smoke Bombs on the target to
apply Weaken – this is particularly
good against enemies with Cunning,
as it removes the Evade before it can trigger an additional Block. Against a
Black die, you’ll probably want to become Hidden
instead, since the Black die doesn’t Evade very often. With the Remote Detonator, you can do a Green
die worth of damage (1-2 expected) to a target BEFORE you attack them, which
makes it more likely that you’ll be able to carve them up with your starter
weapon.
Finally, if you really want to
soften someone up, you might want to consider shooting them. J As I said before, it
took me a long time to decide which blaster to pick up and while the EE-3 is a fantastically reliable
weapon, I figured you would benefit from something with a higher potential
damage output and a shorter range (to coincide with the Remote Detonator and the Mandolorian
Whip). We’ve talked about the DH-17
twice in our post on Jyn, but the short version
is this: the DH-17 is guaranteed to
hit at least 3 Accuracy so long as it gets 1 Surge past your opponent’s
defense: if you lead off with the Smoke
Bombs, that’s easy. When you shoot, you’ll not only get a static Pierce 1
from the Plasma Cell, but you can
turn any surge you get into Damage 1 + Pierce 1 or just Damage 1. The maximum
result you’ll get is Damage 5 + Pierce 2 with Accuracy 3-5.
To polish off this build, we take
both Responsiveness and Deadly Grace. Not only can this give us
3 free movement points at the beginning of our turn, but we also increase our
Endurance (which allows us to move even further without spending actions. If we
don’t need as much movement, we can always use Responsiveness to recover Strain – perfect for triggering the Mandolorian Whip if we need it and are
strained out.
Upgrades to purchase – 10 XP: Responsiveness (1), Smoke Bombs
(2), Remote Detonator (3), Deadly Grace (4)
End-Game Weapon #3 – Strain
And Recover: Vibrosword with Focusing Beam and Balanced Hilt
While playing with a gun is fun
and while cleaving into people is really fun, Shyla is a “slasher” – she’s
really good at carving people up. So, what kind of build to you make for
someone that you want to deal TONS of damage? We recently talked about the Polearm with Vibrogenerator and cited it as one
of the best overall melee weapons you can use. I know what you’re wondering:
Why not talk about the Polearm
with Vibrogenerator again?
The answer is simple:
Because that would be boring.
To be clear, you can do a lot of
damage with the Polearm with Vibrogenerator – just read our previous
post for why that is. Instead, we’re going to talk about a different weapon:
the Vibrosword. We’ve talked about
this weapon in two other posts, both of which passed on the Balanced Hilt (for Diala we took the Energized Hilt and for Gaarkhan we took the Extended Haft). So what is it about
this weapon that we seem to like so much?
The Vibrosword has a few benefits
over other weapons (like the Polearm or even the Electrostaff we viewed
previously):
·
The Vibrosword
is available at Tier 1, allowing you to get it early (as opposed to waiting).
This is a minor benefit, as your Duelist’s
Blade is a perfectly good weapon (as we saw in the previous build).
·
The Vibrosword
gives you two mod slots, giving you greater flexibility in how you want to
build your weapon (like being able to get Reach from the Extended Haft AND something else).
·
The Green-Blue provides decent damage and surge
potential (which is good for a weapon that can surge for Damage 2).
While there are also disadvantages
(like the fact that it only has two dice in its attack pool), the biggest
advantage (and what sets it apart from other weapons) is the fact that you can
STRAIN to increase the Pierce of your attack. We talked in our post on Gaarkhan that this unique ability
for the Vibrosword enabled him to not need to purchase his Vicious Strike ability since they
effectively do the same thing.
For Shyla, straining for
additional Pierce is compensated for nicely by both her Responsiveness upgrade and by her Respite ability – giving you two
free Strain recoveries every activation. Even if you don’t
rest, you can add Pierce 1-2 (depending on whether you use the Mandolorian Whip ability), which is
as good as having a free Pierce 1 from a weapon. With 1-2 Pierce in the bag,
you’re guaranteed to break through the worst Black die and can trigger Full Sweep. If you’re fighting a White
die, you can tap your Focusing Beam
and use one of your Strain to remove a Dodge result OR take away whatever Block
result came on the die (or from an Evade if your target has Cunning).
While this is all fantastic, the
one thing that the Vibrosword doesn’t do is reliably generate surge. To
compensate for this, we’ve chosen the Balanced
Hilt. While it only benefits you once per turn, you’ll be happy you have it
if you manage to not get a single surge in your attack pool. We have taken Proximity Strike to round out the
upgrades, which will give you a reroll if you want it, but even then, you’re not
guaranteed to get good results out of the Blue or Green as far as surge is
concerned. While you may not need the Balanced
Hilt to trigger damage, you can always use it to recover 1 Strain, queueing
up a more powerful turn next round.
Upgrades to purchase – 11 XP: Responsiveness (1), Proximity
Strike (2), Full Sweep (4), Deadly Grace (4)
Shyla in the Skirmish
Game
Shyla Varad is a powerhouse – for
only 8 points, she has a Green-Green-Yellow attack pool and the ability to turn
most of her Surge into Damage/Pierce/Cleave 2, which is BONKERS! On defense,
she’s got a Black die with a free Evade (similar to Verena, who we talked about a few weeks ago) and a whopping 12 health (with a free
Recover 1 at the start of each turn if she of her activations), which means
your opponents will need to press their attack very quickly and very hard to
defeat her. Shyla is straight-forward to use and with both Hunter and Brawler
synergies, you can run her with bounty hunters (Trandoshans, Onar, Vinto,
Bossk, and Clawdite Shapeshifters are good choices) or with brawlers
(Bossk/Trandoshans from the previous list, but also Tuskens, Gamorreans, and
Wampas). Whatever army you want to run, Shyla will take up 20% of your cash and
provide a huge boon to your list.
In our next post, we’ll be
starting the final group in our series of character reviews with the “tank”
class. Our first character is Biv
Bodhrick, one of my favorite characters and one of the hardest characters
to kill. Until next time, happy gaming!
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