Desperate+Mercenary

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 * Desperate Mercenary, Outcasts Minion**

=__Overview__= At face value, the Desperate Merc is a very cheap minion with a gun who will do some respectable damage for the first half of the game before disappearing. She can also be used as a cheap sacrificial minion for your own crew, which is especially useful for Neverborn and Resser crews.

=__Mobility__= She's a little faster than an average model, but has no other fancy way to move.

=__Offense__= She wields a rusty sword and a second-hand pistol but do not underestimate her: she is cheap model and has 3 different ways to buff herself for battle:
 * **For My Family**: a (0) ability to buff her Cb and gives a :+fate flip to damage at the cost of sacrificing her in the End Closing Phase. You'll generally find yourself doing this in turn three before she disappears, unless you see a good opportunity to kill something earlier, or have plans to keep her around beyond turn three.
 * **Frantic**: If she gets hurt then she gets a :+fate flip to her attack duels. For this reason it can be worth dealing a single point of damage to her yourself, but remember she doesn't have too much health overall.
 * **Uncontrolled Fire**: She takes two ranged strikes at -3 Cb instead of one. The drop in Cb makes this a situational spell, but it's potentially quite useful against low Df targets.

She has a built in **Critical Strike** for her sword but not for her pistol.

=__Resilience__= She's not overly tough, but you wouldn't expect any more for such a cheap minion. If anything her best resiliance comes from the fact that your opponent will expect her to die at the end of turn three anyway, so why waste resources killing it now? You can use this to your own advantage, pushing her forward and daring your opponent to pay it attention at the expense of the rest of your crew.

=__Tips and Tricks__=

Killing it with a Nephilim while a Black Blood Shaman or Nekima is nearby will net you 2 blood counters (from Drain lood and blood sense) and a corpse counter to power the blood Shamans spells.

Coppelius could slowly torture her to death with Hallucination and the Remove Eye trigger over two turns. At the very least you'll be able to get two eye counters from the melee strikes, possibly more if you can cast Hallucinations on him a few times. This does require a good hand and some fine positioning to get the most out of this, but you can at least reduce the Desperate Merc's flee distance by using Defensive stance.

=__Master-Specific Tips__=
 * 1) Hamelin - she is an //Insignificant// model so you can hire her with Hamelin. You can use a soulstone to keep her after the 3rd turn and you can dispose of her by 2 ways: let her get eaten by rats so you can get a free rat off from her or you can sacrifice her via Drain Souls to get an SS back.
 * 2) Neverborn crews with terror tot maturing combos - neverborn crews involving Terror Tot(s) and a Black Blood Shaman can get many blood tokens out from her or even a healing flip after her death
 * 3) Ressurrectionist crews with Nurse included: you can inject her with deadly drugs, or even reactivate her and use her own buffs to shoot the hell out of something. The best boost for the desperate Merc is is probably Reactivate, which will allow him to pump out an obscene number of shots. The Melee boost would also be handy, although you need to remember that even with all those :+fate flips, he's unlikely to do more than 5 damage on the charge with his sword, although it does get better when paired with reactivate.
 * 4) Zoraida can also take pair a Nurse with the Desperate Merc to boost his damage output for a turn. She should also be able to add to the desperate merc's damage output with additional obeys and a bewitch on the desperate Merc's target(s).

=__Minion-Specific Tips__=

Nurse
For 2SS, the Desperate Mercenary is an excellent target for the Nurse's Massive Dose spell.

=__Playing Against a Desperate Mercenary__= Threat level, how to kill/neutralise it, what to watch out for etc.

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