Commander Gia
Gia’s Skills:
- Turn 1: Poison all enemies.
- Turn 3: Kill all wounded enemies.
- Turn 7: Deploy 4 spies with 1 HP.
Skill Usage
Gia’s kit is very offensive and does not interact with your side of the board in any way until turn 7. In general, play her skills aggressively to keep the opponent’s board clear while developing your own. Gia’s first skill looks like a natural one-two combo with her second. In reality, you want more options than just her first skill to help activate the second. Lola and Skye are amazing options, with skills that lets the enemy injure themselves on their turn so that you can kill them when your turn starts with no prep.
Her first skill is generally used in four ways: pushing some extra damage so you can clear a merc; activating poison synergies in your squad; setting up for her second skill next turn; and wasting it to get to the second skill. As long as you have other activators for Gia’s second, do not be afraid to use the poison for edge cases like activating Lucretia’s poison buffs when she can’t attack for some reason. Better that than a complete waste.
Her second skill is her premium ability, and requires good judgement on when to activate. Knowing when to use it (i.e., waiting more in control-type matches and less against aggro) is something that comes with practice. The second skill can be far better than suppress since it removes the merc completely instead of leaving the stats on the board. Perfect for battling a squad that has higher power or raw stats than yours.
Her third skill is a mixed bag. While often irrelevant, they have a variety of uses, such as clearing out Sixtine blast stims, pushing for extra damage, creating a wall (better with Lola in play), pushing extra heal (with Skye), and fodder for Salma buff or Trixie. Definitely not something you want to work towards intentionally, but usually a pleasant surprise if you make it that far.
Synergies
Everyone refers to Gia as “the poison commander”, but she’s so much more than that! Freemen often have multiple ways to poison enemies already and rarely need that synergy. If anything, it’s her second skill that would synergize better with a poison squad, as you would expect the enemies to constantly be wounded from poison.
No, Gia’s best synergy is not with a freeman. That title goes to Lola:
- Lola’s set to 5 + Gia poison = kill ANY range enemy without a shield
- Lola’s set to 5 + Gia poison + Piercing alliance bonus = kill ANY shielded range hiding behind something unless it’s a skinned Kitty that blinds Lola
- Lola’s shield expiry on enemy turn lets you use 2nd skill straight after
- Makes some of the turn 7 spies require 2 hits to kill instead of one and do extra AOE damage
I’ll go as far as saying that Lola is the only must-have merc in a Gia-led squad, and allows your squad to punch above its weight.
Consider synergies with Skye, Bloom, Lilith with outfit, Eve for the same reason: activating Gia’s second skill. Gia’s poison works well with Lucretia and Ivy.
Counters
Gia doesn’t really need a counter, because the AI-controlled Gia counters itself pretty hard. Her poison is thrown out at turn 1 regardless of the board state, and it is extremely easy to bait out her second skill. In terms of worst enemies, Gia suffers against immunity mercs and most of all against Kitty. Her second skill is blocked by shields from executing wounded enemies; it just removes the shield instead. Try to cleanse poison and infect when you can, as they can wound your mercs and make them vulnerable.
Note that when Lola or Morana sets HP to 5 and 1 respectively, the affected mercs are considered not wounded (their HP number will be green). If you ever cleanse the “set to X HP”, the mercs will keep their 5 or 1 hp but will be wounded, meaning that they can be healed back up but are also vulnerable to Gia again.
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