Character Profile
- Best Attack: Unload
- Best Personal Support: Speed Loading
- Best Team Support: RPG Launcher
- Primary Damage Type: Projectile
- Secondary Damage Types: Fire, Cold, Lightning
- Worst Card: Shock Rounds
- Nemesis: Citizen Dawn
Guns make everything better. Expatriette employs an arsenal with a great deal of firepower, and can use varied ammunition to apply further effects to it. She can throw down a bunch of cards with her Load power, and has some powerful utility options as well.
Attack
Guns
Expatriette has access to two of the best unenhanced powers in the game. First, the Tactical Shotgun deals more damage to a single target than any other power with no preparation necessary. This is my primary gun of choice. Assault Rifle releases a spread of bullets at three targets, and is the weapon for mowing down a field of baddies.
Pride offers something new, allowing you to use a whole extra power – Prejudice. Unenhanced, firing both of these guns is no more powerful than either the Tactical Shotgun or the Assault Rifle, though the flexibility of acting like either of them is handy. Pride & Prejudice come into their own when Expatriette has damage boosts available, and especially if she has had time to load them.
Rounding out her list of guns, the Submachine Gun affects every target, something you need to do sometimes. This can be a great choice for ammo, since the potential number of targets can eek every bit of advantage out of your cards. Unfortunately, the low damage can make it an ineffective tool anyway.
Ammo
Ammo is tricky. In concept, it’s a modular way to enhance her attacks. In practice, the ammo cards act like so many one-shots. There are some ways to reuse them, and they can theoretically be placed on a gun for future use. By nature, the ammo works well on guns that affect multiple targets, as you get more for the play. As often as not, though, all of my ammo gets poured into the Tactical Shotgun anyway, since I just need single-target damage.
Hollow Points are the big deal here, boosting your guns by two. Incendiary Rounds are inferior, but I suppose you may be grateful for them against Gloomweaver, Shu, or Gene-Bound Soldiers, or if you’re on a team with Absolute Zero.
Liquid Nitrogen Rounds rock, but they are really limited by their temporary nature. This can be a great ammo to load into the Submachine Gun to affect the whole field – if you can break through armor, that is.
Finally, Shock Rounds get a global attack from any weapon. Since I find that one damage is easily soaked by most villains, I don’t get much use from this. Like most of Expatriette’s stuff, it has great potential when her damage is boosted.
Tactics
Expatriette has two potential setups to work towards, and they are at odds with each other.
One route is for her to get into a situation where she can Unload for devastating effect. This means she wants to get out as many of her guns as possible, hopefully with some time to load them to the brim with ammo and accumulate some damage boosts. When you’re ready, you can play any card during your play phase, play Unload during your power phase (using Load) and fire all of your guns. Even though Load counts as a power use, you can still fire every gun if you have them, since Pride lets you use Prejudice. It is turns like this that remind me why I play this game.
Her other setup involves Speed Loading and any two ammo cards (preferably Hollow Points or Liquid Nitrogen). This allows you to endlessly recycle and play your ammo for free, letting you get other things done with your play every turn. While the free play is great, overusing Speed Loading will make you run out of other cards to play. As a result, this really only works if something is helping you draw. This conflicts with the Unload plan because you stop drawing new cards and thus can’t find all your guns.
If you have the card assistance to pull of Speed Loading and not totally stall out, that’s fantastic. That usually takes specific heroes on your side, though. I generally build towards Unload by playing out guns, and do fancy Speed Loading tricks if the opportunity presents itself.
Utility
Expatriette’s base power Load is best used when the enemy has turned to defense. I generally prefer to use my best gun for her power phase, but if that won’t do much, playing two cards or drawing two cards will put her in a good spot going forward.
RPG Launcher is one of the most powerful and versatile cards of its kind, and Reload lets you extend the usefulness of the good ammunition. Flak Jacket is her only defense. It blocks one attack, but it can potentially be for a lot of damage, so try to guess when those big attacks will come.
Quick Draw gets you your unique guns, even out of the trash, so it’s hard to complain about that. Arsenal Access is usually better, as her main method of deck manipulation. Sadly, it has a decent chance to offer a class of card you don’t need (Ammo when she needs a gun, or vice versa). Try to play it when you have a gun out – that way, if you only draw ammo, you have someplace to put it. Failing that, at least you get to put it in your hand.
Hairtrigger Reflexes is the last card, and it has some fun applications. If you’ve never boosted Expatriette by +3 or 4 and watched her waste all of Voss’s minions as they come out of a Forced Deployment, you should try it. Normally, though, it’s good for a little bit of free damage on everything. It’s optional, too, so no harm no fowl. Excuse me.
Weaknesses
More than any other character, Expatriette suffers from a lack of card draw. She can pull equipment from her deck on a limited basis, but anything else is really hard to find, especially the RPG Launcher. (You’d think she’d keep that in her Arsenal.) Her Load power exacerbates the issue, seeming to give her fewer options for the rest of the game. As consolation, her cards are strong on their own merits, with Tactical Shotgun, Assault Rifle, and RPG Launcher particularly edging out any similar cards in terms of sheer power.
Expatriette has a fair amount of hit points, but no hit point recovery. She has only one defense, and that only against attacks of three damage or more. This makes her especially weak against villains who plan to kill you one or two hit points at a time.
Teamups
As the two repeating themes in this article point out, you should pair Expatriette with heroes who can let her draw cards or boost her damage. Legacy, Visionary, and Argent Adept are generally Expatriette’s best friends. Legacy can also help protect her life total, to mutual benefit.
Expatriette gets a gold star against villains and environments that boost her damage – she’s always been one of the first volunteers for a Plague Rat infection, and there’s not much more satisfying than Unloading on Citizen Dawn.
). They asked to play specific characters and had me play Absolute Zero to see how it went. Turned out, that wasn't the best learning experience of the game, though. One of the group made a comment that The Scholar just doesn't do a lot of damage. Once I lifted my jaw off the table, I asked him to talk about how he played The Scholar. After a short conversation, he started to see the serious potential in the Elementals and other cards, then he proceeded to do some amazing damage.