Overview
In this series, we will give you a quick breakdown of each champion. This is geared mostly towards people who have not played with this champion much, so it’s not an in-depth tactical treatise. This is more of a quick breakdown and assessment of the champion.
We will grade each champion’s offense, defense, support, mobility, and control. We’ll explain each grade and then give you a quick vision of a dream activation for that champion.
In a separate series, Grumpy and Dave M have written about how champions match up with each other. Definitely give that a look in our matchups category.
Here is the grading scale for each category:
Awful
Bad
Average
Good
Outstanding
Intro:
Jaak is a Guardian who specializes in using his flexible positioning to plant his banner almost anywhere on the board, while offering immense support to his allies as the only champion that can heal a model outside of his own crew.
Like all goblins, Jaak is heavily weighted towards his strength in the plot phase, though I think he’s probably the least unbalanced of the three currently released. Apart from the standard 3/1 speed, Jaak’s clash phase is about as strong as his plot, with the constant pressure of a Spider Stick and a solid forced movement effect from the Cauldron Cronies. In my opinion, Jaak is one of the best champions in the game, second only to Rangosh, so expect to see a lot of high scores as we take a look at what this strange alchemist has brewed up.
Cards:
Offense: Good
Jaak’s crew can throw out three attacks in a round. Not only is that better than any other Guardian or Shaper, but they’re all solid attacks that your opponent should be worried about.
With all their offensive skills at range 2, Jaak’s Spider Stick is usually very easy to make use of, and deals a solid amount of damage. In practice, I find that the Cauldron Cronies’ Aggressive Chant is rarely used, but it’s another solid attack if you can set it up, while the unique scaling on goblin followers ensures that they can be useful into any defensive profile.
Defense: Average
Defense is easily Jaak’s weak point, but that doesn’t mean your opponent is going to have an easy time taking him out. With 4 dodge, 2 armor, and 7 health, Jaak himself is quite tanky. Those are the same stats as you see on Rangosh, while Jaak is a lot less incentivized to run right up to opponents. He also has the ability to give himself an armor boon, but between his advance and spider stick he very rarely has time for it outside of his first plot phase, and he does suffer a bit from the fact that he can’t heal himself outside of his ultimate.
The Cauldron Cronies, sitting at only a 4/1 defense, are relatively quite easy to take out, and a savvy opponent will usually put some effort into killing them to limit Jaak’s options. With their numbers and a good spread however, that’s easier said than done. Even Luella, the bane of all armor 1 units, isn’t nearly the blowout you might expect when she’s taking 6 damage dice and a speed blight over, and over, and over again.
Support : Outstanding
This, of course, is where Jaak really shines. He brings the entirely unique ability to heal an ally, and he doesn’t even need to spend any of his actions on doing it. This creates a constant pressure on your opponent: where they might usually leave a champion on low health to kill them and get the points next turn, Jaak can throw a wrench in that by healing them up before the next turn. Where they have low damage output or you have a tough champion that they can only chip away at, Jaak makes that chipping nearly useless.
The only requirement for Jaak to heal is that his banner is on the field, which of course he was doing anyways! This creates even more pressure, because your opponent knows that if they don’t crush Jaak’s banner NOW, that just allows him to heal even more and buffs the Cronies’ chant. Then of course, even if they do crush the banner, he always has that ultimate for another solid chunk of healing.
Mobility: Good
Even as the slowest of the goblins, I’d still say Jaak has pretty good mobility. Most clash phases, he’ll either give himself a speed boon and move two hexes, or sit still and get the boon so he can zoom four hexes next round.
Of course, two actions to move four hexes isn’t very impressive, so why the “good” rating? It’s because he has the easiest time lane switching of any champion except Kailinn and Mournblade. With his Cronies sitting ready for him in another lane as they should be, Jaak doesn’t even need to get to the next cluster of hexes, he only needs to move a couple hexes closer so they can plant for him. The freedom that allows him; to float virtually anywhere on the board, I think earns him some credit here.
Control: Good
The crew only gets one forced movement effect, but they get a lot of mileage out of it. Although Aggressive Chant bottoms at 3 accuracy, most often you’re throwing 5-7 dice on it without much trouble. On top of that, having a range of 2 and with Cronies all over the board, you’ll usually be able to use it wherever it would be most effective with very little effort.
With the dodge blight it puts on the target at the same time, it both shores up the crew’s capabilities into high dodge targets and has excellent synergy with Spider Stick. Jaak giving out a speed blight twice a round is very useful on its own, especially against the low dodge targets he excels into as they tend to have lower speed.
Example Activation
This example is actually inspired by a very similar one that I got to do in one of my games! I had to alter it a bit since it used the campaign rules, with a unique scenario and crazy abilities on all the champions, but it does use the same six champions. Jaak is allied with Styx and Grimgut, and we’re at the top of our plot in late game life. Everybody’s got some damage on them, but we’re clustered up right next to each other, and the alchemist just might have a solution.
First, the Cronies go ahead and plant for Jaak. Jaak uses his Dubious Remedy, removing wounds from everybody on the team, then kills Raith’Marid with his Spider Stick, ending both actions by removing an additional wound from Grimgut. With average rolls, that’s a total of 12 wounds removed in a single activation! Styx still has The Reaping to take care of that pesky goblin, so now your opponent is going to have a hard time crushing any banners, meaning Jaak gets to heal another two wounds to kick off the clash phase as well.
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