A Blast from The Past

We determined that Salvo didn’t need an overhaul of his playstyle. Salvo was always intended to offer supporting ranged damage for his team, to assist with the recovery of a free ball, and to serve as a backup goal scorer when the opportunity arose. Salvo still does all of these things but does some of them a little better than he did before.

Starting off with the smallest element, the one change to Salvo’s playbook is that his non-momentous 2 damage result shifted down from his fifth column to the third, and Salvo gained a non-momentous 3 damage on his fifth column. While Salvo’s playbook damage isn’t going to set the world on fire, it just made sense for him to have a more standardised set of damage results. Additionally, Salvo gained 2 more points of health to take him up to a total of 16, which is a little above average for a squaddie. Being part of one of the more resilient teams in Guild Ball, Salvo’s own resilience certainly comes into play when considering him versus the other models available to the Engineer’s Guild. It also just makes sense to bring Salvo into line with the majority of Engineers who are also a little above average in their resistance to take outs.

Next we move onto the main feature of Salvo, his character plays. Ultimately, if you choose to take Salvo or not, it will probably be because of the character plays he brings to the pitch and whether you feel like you want them or not. The first change is that Flurry has gone, that character play now only belongs to Egret in the Hunter’s Guild. It has been replaced by a new and improved version of something Salvo used to have back in Guild Ball Season 1, Floored Bolt.

With the introduction of the kicking team gaining 1 momentum point (MP) at the start of the first turn, an Engineers team that receives the ball is a little worse off than it was before when led by Ballista. This is because in Season 3 Ballista was often able to collect the ball and knock down the enemy model that performed the kick off by using his signature character play, Deadbolt. This would leave the kicking model stranded because their team lacked the MP to clear the condition and give the Engineers quite firm control of the first turn. But in Season 4 the kicking team can use their starting MP to clear the knocked down condition and charge straight at the Engineers to recover the ball for themselves. Salvo has regained Floored Bolt in order to give the Engineers an additional method of knocking down enemy models at range, which is important to let them play their ball control game even with the advent of starting MP in Season 4.

The second change to Salvo’s character plays is a much smaller one. For a little while, Salvo and Theron both had slightly different versions of the same character play, Snipe and Arrow to the Knee, the only difference being that Arrow to the Knee was ‘once per turn’ and Snipe was not. In Season 4, Arrow to the Knee is no longer ‘once per turn’, so it can be used as many times as Salvo can afford to use it! For any Hunter’s players reading this, Theron also has Arrow to the Knee in Season 4, although for him it’s effectively just a name change for one of his character plays.

Salvo’s stats and melee zone are both unchanged, these elements of Salvo have always worked as intended.