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Thursday, June 7, 2018

Character Review: Onar Koma


As we look at the tank characters in Imperial Assault, we turn our attention today to the mercenary bodyguard Onar Koma – the character with the most health in the game and NO starting defense die. Even when he’s fully upgraded defensively, Onar gets very little defense results and must rely on having more health (and getting more out of rest actions) than other characters. This can make Onar tricky to use, but he’s a valuable Tank character none the less. Unlike Biv Bodhrick who we viewed last week, Onar is in many ways the best at playing the tank role, as Imperial figures are rewarded the most by shooting at him (since he will stop almost nothing of what they throw at him). While Onar isn’t as survivable as Biv, he draws agro far faster than Biv does. In this realm, Onar is king.

Onar Koma: The Rule of Three Red Dice
Onar has an amazing upgrade with Don’t Make Me Hurt You – exhaust the upgrade to add a Red die to one of your attacks (with the option to damage yourself if you killed your target in order to ready it again). While there are many ways to make this powerful (we’ll highlight a few in this post), in general I recommend that your goal with Onar is to find ways to roll at least three Red dice when attacking. The reason? 

Red dice can be unreliable

We’ve all had times when we really needed a good roll and our Red die (our one power die!) got a measly Damage 1. Even with two Red dice, you will occasionally get a single Damage out of each of them. With three Red dice, however, your reliably is kept high – AND if all three do get a single Damage result, you’ll still break through the vast majority of defense rolls.
Getting the required three Red dice can be achieved most easily by purchasing a weapon with two Red die in its attack pool. Because we’ve talked about weapon builds for the Polearm and the DXR-6 in one of our previous posts, you won’t see either of those weapons featured in this post (though I will admit they work really well with Onar). Thanks to certain weapon mods you can take, you can change an attack dice (or two, if you have the right weapon/mods) into a Red die if you want – which might cost more money in the long-run than buying a weapon that has the double-Red dice attack pool normally OR might limit you to one attack with a double-Red attack pool. Either way, once you have two Red dice in your attack pool the third is easy in coming with Don’t Make Me Hurt You.
Besides this upgrade, the only other upgrade Onar has that works offensively is Mutual Destruction – while this has distinct benefits when using Rush, the greater benefit is that in any attack you perform, you can suffer 1 Damage in order to add 1 Damage to the attack results. Taken with Don’t Make Me Hurt You, you can do even more damage than you otherwise would. For 6 XP together, you’re not spending that much to make your offensive game stronger. With that, let’s look at what we can do with Onar.

End-Game Weapon #1 – Point Blank Cannon Blast: Hand Cannon with Plasma Cell OR Under-Barrel HH-4
The Hand Cannon not only comes in the Jabba’s Realm expansion (along with Onar), but it’s the upgraded version of Onar’s starter weapon, the Bodyguard Rifle. Key differences between these two weapons include a Red-Red attack pool with a static +1 Accuracy (instead of a Red-Green attack pool) and the presence of a Mod slot. Since neither weapon begins with any innate benefit to rolling Surge results (besides recovering Strain), the presence of the Mod slot makes the Hand Cannon far better as a weapon, since you can turn your Surge results into something useful (at least, from a damage output perspective). With either the Plasma Cell (which gives a static Pierce 1 + surge-for-Damage) or the Under-Barrel HH-4 (which gives a static Accuracy 1 + surge-for-Blast), you can increase the damage you do AND give some kind of static bonus (either taking away enemy Block or hitting targets that are slightly farther away).
To supplement this weapon (which you can have kitted out at Tier 1 if you go with the Under-Barrel, and Tier 2 if you go with the Plasma Cell), we’re adding both Mutual Destruction and Don’t Make Me Hurt You. Regardless of whether you intend to do precise damage to your target with the Plasma Cell or spray damage with the Under-Barrel, the extra Red die and the additional Damage 1 is quite helpful (though the Under-Barrel certainly benefits more from the investment as it more reliably guarantees that you can Blast provided you get a Surge result on at least one of those Red dice). To balance out Onar, we’re taking the Black Sun Armor (to give some kind of defense, not to mention increase the health of our hero as we’re going to be damaging ourselves quite a bit) and Keep Up, as getting a free point of movement is quite valuable when your range is going to be low (1 Accuracy with the Plasma Cell, 2 Accuracy with the Under-Barrel).
Perhaps the best thing about this build, is that your weapons will cost you 850-900 credits, which saves you a little room to buy additional gear (I like the Portable Medkit the best, though the Personal Shields is good to supplement your defense and Extra Ammunition is great for offense). Your choice as to what you want to do.

Upgrades to purchase - 11 XP: Keep Up (1), Mutual Destruction (2), Don’t Make Me Hurt You (4), Black Sun Armor (4)

End-Game Weapon #2 – Defensive Powerhouse: Gaffi Stick with Energized Hilt
Let’s face it, Onar is a tank – if we’re going to take damage, let’s mitigate it as best we can. One of the ways we can do that is by spending less for our weapon, plan on only attacking with one of our actions each turn, and then RESTING. Since Onar heals an additional 2 Damage after each rest, any amount of resting is valuable. To that end, our cheap weapon today is the Gaffi Stick. I’ll just say that I played a short campaign with Onar and all I had was the Gaffi Stick until . . . basically the end of the campaign (when I finally swiped the 434 Deathhammer from another hero – a weapon which we won’t be covering in this post, much to pity). With a static Pierce 1 and a wasted Yellow die, the Gaffi Stick is one of the cheapest weapons in the game and one of the most deadly when you get to the end-game. Onar can make this a Red-Red-Yellow weapon with Don’t Make Me Hurt You, but if you’re only planning on attacking once, you can spend 250 credits on the Energized Hilt to roll a Red-Red-Red – fabulous! For 450 credits, this is a one-action-per-turn-mega-bashing-stick with an automatic Pierce 1 (and the ability to turn your surge results into Weaken, recovering Strain, and . . . well, regret).
If you’re worried about the incredibly unlikely event where you get surge results you don’t like, you can bail yourself out by purchasing the Power Charger. This not only gives Onar access to Damage Power Tokens, but also makes him essentially surge for 2 Damage (just that you get the Damage on the NEXT attack, not this attack). Pretty cool, no? Since you’re not spending anywhere near the amount of money a regular person is, you can also pick up all of the gadgets we mentioned in the previous build (though I would skip the Extra Ammunition as you’re not running a blaster and instead take the Bacta Pump – this enables you to strain during the end of your activation for movement and not have to recover that when you rest).
As I mentioned at the start, we’re choosing to favor a cheaper weapon so we can focus on defense. Apart from the equipment you choose to take, we’re purchasing both the Black Sun Armor (something is better than nothing) and Stay Behind Me – a great little pip to your health and the ability to add a Block to an adjacent friendly figure who is defending at the cost of 1 Damage to yourself. The free health allows you to do this twice without any real penalty and if you’re not near any of your friends (or just don’t feel like saving them), you have a nice little health pip all to yourself. J
As a flexible option to either protect other people or yourself, we’re also taking Get Down – gonna admit the biggest pull for this upgrade is that you can give yourself more than one defense result – you want that Block, man. While this can be used to protect other people, you’re going to be a big fat target with that beat stick you’re carrying and very little defense to reduce the damage you’re taking. Use it for yourself (like any good tank).

Upgrades to purchase11 XP: Get Down (1), Stay Behind Me (2), Don’t Make Me Hurt You (4), Black Sun Armor (4)

End-Game Weapon #3 – Rapid Fire: DDC Defender with Disruption Cell
Alas, we’re going to break our “Rule of Three Red Dice” with this build – we’ll only be using two dice. When I looked at Onar, I had a semi-conversation with myself that went something like this:

Initial thought: “Self, do we really need to rest?” Answer: Yes.
Next thought: “Self, if everyone around me is dead, do I really need to rest?” Answer: No.
Follow-on thought: “So self, if I don’t need to rest if there’s no one around me, then getting multiple attacks into my activation removes my need to rest, right?” Answer: Correct.
Conclusion: “Glad we agree – what did we do with that DDC Defender?”

Alright, so my conversations don’t usually happen like this (and NEVER happen out loud . . . obviously . . . why are you looking at me like that?), but the fact remains: because Onar has the ability to ready Don’t Make Me Hurt You, it makes sense that you’d want to be able to use your weapon as much as you can to do as much damage as you can. We’ve talked about this weapon three times already: first with Vinto Hreeda (as a means of maximizing his special splash damage rules), again with Loku Kanoloa (as a means of getting the greatest opportunity to recover strain), and most recently with Jyn Odan (as a means of getting the most attacks and movement out of your character). For those keeping score at home, each time we’ve reviewed this weapon, we’ve chosen a different modification to go with it:
·         For Vinto, we chose the Under-Barrel HH-4, since our objective was to do as much splash damage as we could;
·         For Loku, we chose the Plasma Cell, since we knew we wanted precise damage against our targets with the end-goal being recovering strain;
·         For Jyn, we took the Charged Ammo Pack, looking for cheap damage options instead of expensive direct damage options
Today, we introduce a fourth upgrade: the Disruption Cell. In the interest of getting close to three Reds, we’re instead going with a Red-Red-Green combo. Thanks to the Disruption Cell and the Green die, we’re guaranteed at least 3 Accuracy, which makes this a more reliable range weapon than the Hand Cannon we viewed earlier (and only marginally more expensive). Until you get to Tier 3, you can go with any of the mods listed in the bullets above (the Plasma Cell will be the most like the Disruption Cell), but once you hit Tier 3, you’re in business with LOTS of damage.
For upgrades, we’re purchasing two offensive and two defensive upgrades: for offense, we’re using Don’t Make Me Hurt You and Mutual Destruction, and for defense we’re using the Black Sun Armor and Get Down. You’ll want to rest every other turn in order to keep your damage intake down (or you can just blaze forward towards getting wounded and have a good time), but every time you attack you’ll be able to damage yourself to add +1 Damage and damage yourself again to reset your Red die. Against most figures, you’ll blow three of them to pieces with this. Assuming there aren’t too many more than three hostile figures nearby, you should be fine.

Upgrades to purchase - 11 XP: Get Down (1), Mutual Destruction (2), Don’t Make Me Hurt You (4), Black Sun Armor (4)

Onar in the Skirmish Game
In the skirmish game, the biggest draw for Onar Koma is that he’s got a massive amount of health for only 6 points – that’s the same cost as basic units. As a Hunter, Onar can get huge benefits to his offense with the usual cards (Tools for the Job, Assassinate, Primary Target) and he gets HUGE benefits from Glory of the Kill. In many ways, his Guardian attribute works against him – since he doesn’t have a defense die, he can’t benefit as well from some Guardian cards (Defensive Stance) though he does benefit a lot from Parry. Additionally, if you ally him into an Imperial force, he can’t benefit from the static Block from Royal Guards because of his Guardian status and he can’t be shielded by Wing Guard either.
Besides these unfortunate circumstances, Onar is one of the finest bounty hunter characters they’ve released to date – with plenty of health and the ability to get a free attack via his Extra Protection Command card, Onar is a power-house. Use him with any bounty hunters (Jabba is great, so is Bossk) and other Guardians (Elite Gamorrean Guards for example) OR ally him into a Rebel (with Saska Teft) or Imperial list (with Temporary Alliance) if you want a little extra power for not a lot of cost.
In our last post on Rebel heroes, we’ll be covering Jarrod Kelvin. Jarrod is the only hero who always comes with a Companion to aid him and is not only (in my view) the best tank available in the game, but also has incredible offensive potential. Until next time, happy hobbying!

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