Penthesilea : Amazon Warrior [HTW]

As a primary Troops booster, you can best compare her with Leonidas.
They are both 6/7, 1 movement and 6 vitality, 3RP, 4 Activations and 2 AoW.

Bolster and Charisma don't stack; you can only boost a stat once. Hence they overlap a lot. But that is also true for Leonidas' Born Leader.
The 2 passive talents always work though, the individual powers only when they are activated.

She has climb where Leonidas has Phalanx. Making Leonidas stronger. Also, Leonidas special skill makes all Troop units in and adjacent to his area Guard him, making him far more survivable.
Not sure where Penthesilea needs Climb for as hardly any Troops have it. Perhaps to hide from enemies and/or to give her range 1?
Leonidas starts off range 1, Penthesilea with range 0.

- Leonidas basically has Leader and Bolster with a range of 1 (so including adjacent areas). So he can search for a Troop card, activate and boost +1/+1 for the rest of the turn.
- Penthesilea doesn't have an adjacent Leader skill but she boosts for and additional +1 movement as well. Although she can't run with them as she only has 1 speed.
If you want to use it on an adjacent Troops though, you will have to have an Activation card in your hand, where Leonidas can search for one for free, which is far more card efficient.

In comparison, Penthesilea has less consequent and coherent skills.
She has a lot of boosts for adjacent Troops but can't draw a card for them. She gives speed but can't run with them. She Climb but hardly any troops can Climb with her to make use of all the passive boosts.

I find her a bit of a subpar hero.
Her only added value is +1 movement, for the rest all her abilities are inferior to Leonidas'. I'd pick Leonidas (or her sister) over her any time :-)
Suggestion: give her Phalanx (instead of Climb) and 2 movement so she can roam around the map with her troops, preferably with +1 range as well.

Might be better for troops though if they can get more boosts than one for their stat. Seems like a good houserule to use.
In that case she would be very usefull.

My main problem with her is her movement. Why the heck can she only move one? She is an amazon. They just need to change her armor a bit so it goes higher, then she can move faster without her bust slipping out of her armor.

Rhalius.. look at that art.. if she walks too fast.. thins bounce out of her armor... it's all about modesty!

Didnt read the second part of your comment. hehe.

Rhalius wrote:Might be better for troops though if they can get more boosts than one for their stat. Seems like a good houserule to use.
In that case she would be very useful.

Yea. But that isn't the case. If boosts would be cumulative, troops could eventually overpower monsters - and still be recallable.

I agree though that I'm a bit torn about the Troops.
And subsequently all the heroes that seem to only exist to boost them .. sometimes in extremo.

Either way she seems underpowered for an amazon and daughter of Ares.

I really hope this will not be her final stats.

Penthesilea can give +1 move to troops, so she could potentially be used to make troops more mobile (actually able to move) against Persephone or turn an already fast Omphalos runner into the most ridiculous fast-moving fetcher. Can you imagine Stymphalian birds running 4 areas across the map? Or moving 3 and picking up, only to run back to your god on the next turn?

Her mourning power is a little weird to me, but Minos' ability comes to mind, where you could force your opponent to kill Penthesilea and recieve the token. For the most part though, it's just a deterrent like Hera and Aphrodite's tokens.

Could be good, could be underwhelming, who knows...

MaxC wrote:Penthesilea can give +1 move to troops, so she could potentially be used to make troops more mobile (actually able to move) against Persephone or turn an already fast Omphalos runner into the most ridiculous fast-moving fetcher. Can you imagine Stymphalian birds running 4 areas across the map? Or moving 3 and picking up, only to run back to your god on the next turn?

That sounds optimistic. The Stymphalian Birds have a normal speed of 2 though, so they will get 3. Not for the way back, though. Fortunately they can fly and don't have to run! I absolutely love their sculpts, by the way.

Benoit already indicated that movement is an underestimated stat. I can understand that it is a bit of a waste to use an Activation just for movement (especially if you only have range 0 as well) and since the board is only approx. 5x5 areas, 1 movement can make a lot of difference. Still, a movement boost just for Troops feels a bit limited, especially if you see how subpar Penthesilea is compared to Leonidas. On average you may only have 1, max 2 Troops on the board.
For example, Artemis gives +1 movement to all unit types, which already seems a bit more justified as special power. If Penthesilea would be able to boost the speed of normal units as well she would go from subpar to good.

Teowulff wrote:
That sounds optimistic.  The Stymphalian Birds have a normal speed of 2 though, so they will get 3. Not for the way back, though. Fortunately they can fly and don't have to run! I absolutely love their sculpts, by the way.

If they use a run action on the way back they would still move 3.

As for her power only working for troops, I do agree that it would be nice for it to affect other units. However, I think that would be kind of broken and really hard to balance with everything else. Besides, it's probably not a good idea for a hero to have a god's exact same power, or that god becomes boring. Remember that most gods have a unit that somewhat imitates them to a smaller degree.(Hector has a troops-only version of Athena's power for instance)

That being said, with all the choices this game has to offer for troop support heroes, Penthesilea probably wouldn't be my first choice either.

Charisma is a good ability, but I just feel that it would be better to make it a passive effect instead of on acvitation for troops and replace the bolster ability with something else.

That would make her pretty unique too since she would effectively be providing bolster to troops in areas next to her in addition to the +1 movement which would only be used on activation anyways.