May the Power Protect You: Eddie Banks (Hyperforce Blue)

I do not get the hate for Eddie Banks. Every time I've played with him I've had a blast, and when I talk to some of my more technically minded gamer friends they can't sing his praises loudly enough. And yet most of the time when I read other people's impressions of him he is ranked as one of the weakest of the rangers. I mean, I think I get it? Most of us think in terms of "hard" styles. There is a reason why we favor karate (a very hard martial art) over, say, aikido, even if aikido is far easier for the average person to do.  And Eddie is just not a hard style character, at all. He sets up traps and helps you draw cards. But it takes a bit more set up to get your fair mileage out of the character, even though the results can be really freaking cool.

I'll admit, as time has gone on I've begun to value Eddie's Technician ability more and more. There are times I won't necessarily run out of cards, but will find that cards I have are absolutely useless to the situation. Technician lets you swap out up to three cards; you put cards you don't want on the bottom of your deck and an equal amount of cards go to your hand. That ability to swap out info when needed is really useful! Keep reminding people you have it, because they may need it and not think of it! And there's a lot more uses for it than that, even. Another situation Technician is useful for is when someone else who is keyed to taking a lot of the group's damage has a ton of three shield cards in their hands, instead of in their decks. Or you know there's a lot of damage incoming and folks are looking at those three shield cards in their hands and are crying a bit. You can soften the blow for someone by putting those three shield cards on the bottom of their deck, where you know those cards will stay because they are not shuffled back in, as an insurance policy. A lot of the time people will approach their character abilities rather passively. You cannot do that with Technician. Tinker, tinker, tinker!

Eddie has one of the most unique mechanics in the game: attaching his cards to enemy cards. Now, this comes with its own set of unique conditions. First off, it's not an attack, so that means you can place the card anywhere on the track. The sheer amount of flexibility with Maneuvers is fertile ground for the game to explore, and this has been one of the most ambitious attempts in what is a very young game. But, because it's not an attack, and because it's a "for later" move, it can be hard to justify in your mind using Eddie's attachments. And if your group isn't spec'd soft you would be correct! There would be no point.

Eddie is unapologetically soft in his approach. By using his attaching cards you are opening yourself up to enemy cards going off. This is not a bug, this is a feature. Why do I say that?

1) Reaction and Maneuver cards do not obey GUARD, which hoses attack cards. GUARD can just destroy more offensively minded groups. That's simply not the case with a more defensive group. When they do damage they should be doing it mostly through Maneuvers and Reactions, which are more flexible.

2) A lot of Maneuvers and Reactions usually deal flat damage. The dice in this game are not your friends. 1/3 of your rolls are going to end in an O. And yeah, that means the "potential" for incredible hits is going out the window, but I usually will go for something certain over rolling dice in this game. Your mileage may vary with that preference, but when in doubt I'd prefer 2 damage to 3 dice.

Oh wait, Serpent Strike gives me 2 damage for no energy. Holy crap.

With that out of the way, let's look at the two attaching cards that Eddie has: Serpent Strike and Python Grab. Serpent Strike gets you an energy and two damage on that card. There's a number of reasons why this card can be really useful. First off,  if your group is composed of bad rollers (ME! ME! ME!) you can throw this card on to make sure that the HP on a card will be within reasonable rolling range. Yeah, you eat the attack possibly, but would you prefer to take the attack on the chin after failing a roll, or to take the shot and then actually destroy the card?

Yeah, I'd definitely take the second.

The second reason you'd use the card is if you're using a soft team and have a ton of Reaction cards, particularly damaging ones. Put Serpent Strike on the target, have it go off, and then nuke the card. As the game continues to evolve more and more we'll get more of those, which means that this card will only get more and more useful as the character pool deepens, like Zeo Yellow's Intercepting Strike.

Python Grab is a bit more complicated to talk about. It costs an energy, but it reduces the damage from the card and strips it of GUARD. The card is less versatile, but it does block damage at a flat rate. That means if you put this card on a multi-target villain card the benefits will be staggeringly better than just your run of the mill damage reduction cards. Cancelling GUARD is not necessarily ideal, however. GUARD kind of cancels out other GUARDs next to it, which means that if you're going to cancel GUARD make sure you know what that does to the board. You may actually accidentally make other cards harder to target.

Oceanus Blades is one of the few cards in the game that lets you outright draw cards. You've got the opportunity to open up a situation mid-battle, but at an interval that's probably a bit safer to use, unlike the Sabretooh Tiger Zord. All that for no energy cost and you've got a good set-up card. Good. Solid. Use it.

Oceanus Trident is a pretty simple card as well. Grab up to three cards and shuffle them into the respective player's deck. You can either use it to set up for a future fight or to save someone's life by shuffling a couple of three shields into someone's deck. It doesn't deal a lot of damage and costs a lot of energy, but its set up and healing properties are not to be underestimated, particularly if this lets you save someone from having to Recover. That frees you up a bit on the strategic level.

The Serpent Zord is the panic button of Heroes of the Grid. Finished off the boss but you can't take out the footsoldiers? No problem, Serpent Zord is here to help you out! No, it doesn't help you actually knock out the footsoldiers? But sometimes you need to take out something of much bigger and don't want to deal with the footsoldiers immediately. Make sure you're not shorting yourself from getting to the megazord!

Eddie is the definitive soft character. This is the guy who epitomizes making openings that can be leveraged by others to create a stream of awesome combos. He also gives out a lot of draw power and recovery. He even gives you a panic button in the form of the Serpent zord, which is pretty uncommon in the game. He takes a bit of work, but the results can be pretty spectacular, if you use him right.