Agate might be the most impactful commanders to ever be released now that I see so many of the things she just comes in and just says yeah that’s not a thing for me. Now sure agate only affects one ship, but she is going to be on something big a heavy you need to kill, and if she becomes a popular commander, and I really think she is going to we are going to stop seeing a lot of upgrades, or currant upgrades start to become less optimal to run as well you might hit an Agate list. What cards will be blasted into oblivion with agate well let’s start with one that I think most people have already seen.
Avenger
Okay so the key point is that Agate can discard a defense token to get its effect this means sure I can’t spend exhausted defenses tokens, with Avenger, but I can discard it. Avenger list that rely extremely heavily on an Avenger boarding trooper combo or something around the lines have gone down, but Avenger has been a near mandatory upgrade on most ISDs, it can still be a nice tool, but if you hit an agate list it will have little use for you unfortunately. This card will probably still see some play as even against an agate list the ships agate is not on can still be affected by it, but you won’t be able to count on avenger getting your damage to stick to the big targets anymore.
Mon Karen
This is the same story as avenger, sure I can only spend one token, but I can discard a token so looks like I will still get to spend two. This does have the added upside of it might make an agate list discard tokens a little faster from green to gone, but Agate can still power around this defense token mitigation.
HTT
This is very similar to Mon Karen I can only spend my brace and no other token if I want the damage to be reduced by more than one, but I can discard another token, so looks like I will brace and redirect still.
XI7
XI7 key phrase is when your opponent spends a redirect they can only redirect 1 damage, but if I discard my redirect using agate well that card was next to useless for you and you won’t be drilling any damage through with it.
Agate does have the mercy of only being able to discard once per attack, but she is able to get around a lot of ways people have been using to get damage past defense tokens XI7, Avenger, Accuracies, etc. So how do we get around agates defense tokens? MORE DAMAGE!!!
While that is not 100% true extra damaging effects like APTs ACM, HIE etc will likely start to be seen more they started to fall off a little in popularity because Brunson, and SSDs with damage control officer, but critical effects are going to make a comeback as a way to get damage through Agate’s tokens.
And well just getting more damage by adding dice to an attack does work as well if they are going to brace might as well still take as much damage as possible after bracing.
Any other ways, well less damage.
Squadrons are not going anywhere they are incredibly powerful this is because they do so little damage they effectively bypass defense tokens or at least the important ones. 2 or 3 damage is hard to spend a brace or a scatter on creating an effect that the squadrons are “bypassing” the ships defenses, ships can do this too, but they need the small dice pools of Hammerheads, CR-90s, and arquines. However this tactic might be short lived as Expert Shield Tech and Agate rather like each other.
EST
Okay so why do EST and Agate like each other so much well EST lets Agate kind of cheat a bit so while Defending the defender cannot spend any single defense more than once per attack and cannot spend more than one defense token of each type per attack. This last rule normally makes it so if a ship has EST they have to pick the EST ability or the redirect ability however agate can get around this rule, with here discard ability she can spend a redirect to trigger EST then discard that same token to resolve the standard redirect effect, this makes EST very powerful on agate ships and since the small attacks are a threat to her EST is a solid choice for an officer.
Agate is a tough nut to crack she is going to have a greater impact on the game than I originally thought she has ways to work around pretty much every strategy to mitigate defense tokens, she won’t be impossible to kill, but she is really going to make you work to get your points, and she will likely nearly singlehandedly change the landscape of the game.
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