Vespa - Character Spotlight

I like big bugs and I cannot lie

When looking at a faeries stat card, three things are normally expected: 6 or less health, -2 evade and weakling/feeble. Vespa by comparison ignores all of these basic rules and brings some very unique stats and skills when compared to the rest of the faeries. In fact, her stats more closely resemble those found on a human stat card with the added benefit of some weird faerie abilities and the faerie trait itself!

To continue her theme of not sticking to traditional faerie stats, Vespa has a relatively low melee stat, but a high melee range and damage thanks to 'Stinger'. As her melee stat is not as high as other faeries she will not always find the card she needs or crit. However, when she does successfully play a: rising attack, thrust or falling swing (thanks to her piercing falling swing signature) she will deal an exceptionally large amount of damage. This isn't the end of her melee abilities though as she has a couple of faerie tricks to enhance her combat prowess in the form of two active abilities.

'Out of reach' is an unusual active ability that makes Vespa untargetable with melee attacks, essentially turning her into an airship! Unlike the airships though, Vespa can still engage other models whilst she hovers above the battlefield. There are some excellent uses for this ability such as running into the middle of an enemy troupe and tying them up with melee zones whilst remaining untargetable. It can also make Vespa a brilliant harvester as she can use her non 'Weakling' energy to harvest a bunch of moonstones early in the game and then use 'Out of reach' later in the game to keep them safe! A fellow faerie who can assist Vespa in both of these tasks is Silvertongue. With 'Whispered secrets' he can help Vespa overcome her relatively low, for a faerie, energy and with 'Mind control' he can make Vespa use 'Out of reach' if she suddenly wants to avoid melee for any reason. 'Out of reach' isn't Vespa's only 1 energy ability though and she has another 1 energy ability which Silvertongue can use with 'Mind control' too.

'Antagonise' is a strange ability that confers both a stat buff and debuff to any target character. This can be done for 1 energy and buffs a target character with +1 melee and debuffs them with +1 evade. Additionally 'Antagonise' is not once per turn so Vespa can potentially use this 3 times, with her base energy, on a single target for a whopping +3 melee and evade! As this ability provides both a buff and a debuff, timing is the most important thing to master with it. Generally, targetting enemies later in the turn who have already activated means they won't be able to make use of their melee buff whilst you can still utilise the evade debuff. On the other hand, targeting your own models when most of your opponents' models have activated means you'll be able to make the most of the melee buff whilst mostly offsetting the evade debuff.

Vespa's final ability is 'Throw javelin' which has previously been seen on Wasp. Generally, this won't see too much use as she has better things to spend her energy on, but in a pinch, it can be useful for finishing off low health enemies which are out of range. Overall this is Vespa's biggest weakness, lots of great abilities and melee potential, but not enough energy to do everything at once. Therefore she's best only doing one task every turn, either committing to supporting, attacking or harvesting for the troupe. Otherwise, you can bring along other faeries, like Silvertongue, to grant her enough energy to do a bit of everything. This doesn't mean Vespa has to play exclusively in faerie lists as her support and harvest abilities can be appreciated by everyone. When she does play alongside other faeries though, she often receives the best support due to her faerie trait and brings unique skills to their troupes. This is mainly her non-weakling energy which is great for deep moonstones and her damage in combat which is phenomenal normally and absurd by faerie standards!