Aria Grande

Okay, now we can talk about Esters as a whole. Let’s get the simple ones out of the way first. Resilience is the new name for Gluttonous Mass. The only other change to this ability is that it now protects Esters from parting blows, well, one parting blow per turn if it’s the first time she is attacked. Handy for walking out of melee when you’re only going to get hit once. Additionally her Heroic Play, Soothing Voice, hasn’t changed because it’s wonderful just the way it is.

Now we move onto the main feature of Esters’ new card, and it’s a fantastically small and simple rule, Aria. Aria is the replacement for Esters’ old Empowered Voice abilities and legendary play. Those mechanics just asked so many questions of players. Which buff to choose, when to use it alongside when the best time is to activate Esters, when to use her legendary play, which abilities to choose then, which models to use them on and when. SO many questions that just made Esters extremely tactically complex to use. All of that has been cut out and replaced with Aria.

Perhaps the thing we love the most about Aria is its simplicity, but even then, it can do so much for the Brewer’s Guild. Considering that all non-Mascot models have a heroic play (yes, including Mash), the Brewers can get up to four free heroic plays out of Aria every turn. That’s 4 extra MP back in the pockets of Brewer’s players each turn and a boat load of tactical questions being thrown out the window. Activation order is no longer a problem, since the Brewers don’t need to generate MP before using their heroic plays when playing with Esters, and Esters doesn’t need to activate for the team to benefit from Aria. Choosing which ability to use where doesn’t matter anymore, since each Brewer comes with their own custom made and inbuilt buff with their heroic plays. This is fantastic from a raw strength perspective, but also because as we mentioned, the Brewers are one of our ‘starter Guilds’. This makes Esters’ playstyle much clearer and easier for newer players, and that’s one of the big things we love about Aria.

Now it’s time to circle back around and talk about those character plays. While we didn’t like the complexity of Empowered Voice, we did like two of the benefits that it gave to the Brewer’s Guild. Being able to increase the damage output of one model per turn, including herself, was extremely useful and needed to stay. Hence, she gained Tooled Up. Also, being able to increase the speed of a friendly model by 2” was a fantastic ability for Esters to have. So she also got Quick Foot. Yes, she does have to pay influence to use these buffs now, but Aria has just replaced one type of efficiency with another in the form of free heroic plays all the time.

Overall, Esters is one of the models we are happiest with in all of our Season 4 changes. She represents perfectly what can be achieved by simplifying the rules of a model, whilst still allowing for innovative tactical use on the pitch and interesting choices for the players. However, it is important to note that Esters is not an accurate representation of what we have done to the Brewers as a whole in terms of the scale of the changes made. Esters is certainly the ‘most changed’ model in her Guild, we haven’t completely re-written every model in the Brewer’s Guild by any means. We were just so excited to show off what we’d done with her that she had to be our blog reveal.

That’s all for today folks. We hope you enjoyed today’s reveal of the all new Esters. Join us next time to see the reveal of the Season 4 player card for Boiler the Apprentice of the Butcher’s Guild.