Gundam Battle: Gunpla Warfare Part Featurette #3 - "Power A"

Welcome back for our latest addition to the Part Featurette!  This week we’re going to lay some ground rules, due to some community feedback I received last time.  There’s a few things I look for when determining these segments, and that’s actually one reason why this one is going to be published later than I wanted to.  My goal is to have these hit the site on Fridays, so everyone can expect when they’re going to drop, and we can get some good feedback over the weekend and throughout the week.

I’ll list everything in an orderly fashion, but the real prompt for this lies in one selection of Parts:  Sword Strike.  I had a ton of requests to go over what I think about the suit, and people asking me if I think it’s any good.  I really want to talk about Sword Strike, but rationally I can’t, because the biggest thing that I want to be the core of these Featurettes is that the Part is currently available, whether by participating in events, pulling Capsules from the Standard, Featured, or Sokai Banners, or even farming out a certain stage or game mode.  If the Part is available for a limited duration, it will be distinctly specified, but I just don’t want to really go over things that people can’t obtain anymore, or that we don’t know will be back soon or ever.

Having said that, let’s get down to those rules:

1. The Part you’re asking about needs to be currently available in some fashion, and can include Sokais.
2. The Part doesn’t have to have great stats, but should be stand-out in some way (unique effect, uncommon stats, powerful EX ability, underused mechanics, etc)
3. No Part featured has to have a natural 4* base. They can have a natural state of any star value.

Pretty straightforward, eh?  I had really covered this before but I had even failed to consider that some Event Parts are absolutely uncommon or powerful but go very underlooked because they have a natural 3* base, and that really turns people off to wanting to use them.  There’s a widespread notion that anything under 4* is bad, and while you are looking for 4* Parts to provide you stats and skills, many 3* Parts can be exceptionally critical to making builds work, or being stand-ins for 4* Parts that you don’t currently have.

So we’ll roll for awhile with this criteria, and if anything else noteworthy comes up we can add it all to the list.  Additionally, this week is going to be our Special Sokai Edition, and we’re going to explain a few things about some “Power A” Skills that will stack their buffs with the effects of Awakenings, and will not overwrite other buff effects.  Onward!

The Grandpa Gundam takes our first spot with the Gundam RX-78-2 Beam Rifle!  This was chosen as an entry this week because of this powerful buff that comes as a secondary effect of using the EX Skill, which applies before damage, multiplying your max output for that one big hit.  This ability is not only an able go-to for ranged builds in Arena, it can be a vital tool for clearing any game content due to the heal and damage potential that it provides for your entire team.  The stats are on the sort of middle tier, and that’s okay, because of the drastic increase to damage a modifier value of A can apply.  We’re not quite clear on the exact modifiers here, but these are the cream of the crop for damage abilities.

Here’s the thing about this particular secondary effect – it will stack with Buff EX and Awakening EX Skills in the same fashion, without overwriting either of the effects before applying its own.  Certain skills apply a texture change for your Gunpla, and these textures are what conflicts when buff effects are being overwritten.  As Last Shooting does not apply a texture change, nothing overwrites, and you can spend your days blasting your enemies into bits without worry of losing damage from your skill selection.

If you’re looking for a way to improve your Shooters and haven’t chosen a Part for your Premium Material Campaign selection, you may want to consider this beast.

Following suit, we’ve got the Red Frame Astray Legs and the insanely powerful Bisect.  Like Last Shooting, this is a melee go-to for Arena overkills, and will provide a similar healing and damage buff.

I will note, that without any consideration to any outside factors, yes, Trans-Am Raid from the Exia Back will do more damage.  Unfortunately, the texture applied from the secondary effect from Trans-Am Raid will overwrite Awakening skills that apply a conflicting texture (Super Mode, Hyper Mode, NT-D, etc), and will effectively cut your damage if you were looking to improve it in that manner.

Bisect is powerful because of all the reasons that make Trans-Am Raid good, plus the fact that you can stack a Buff EX Skill and an Awakening EX Skill and go to town.  If you’re stacking values of an increasing range, you can potentially exceed the damage boosts given by Trans-Am Raid on your melee build.  Additionally, you can use a Buff EX Skill like Combat Stance, trigger Trans-Am Raid, and end the sequence with Bisect, providing a substantial gain in melee damage throughout the combo.  This makes short work of any content, and will be an extremely powerful tool in bringing down Big Zam when the finished content goes live.

My general advice about this Part is that if you’re still on the fence with your Part Selection, you should really consider this.  It is a vital tool in any melee build and can be the perfect build-around Part, or even the final addition that takes your build over the edge.

This entry may come with some mixed feelings for a few reasons.  This Arm is only here for a limited time, being from the Sokai Banner, and there is no guarantee that you can actually obtain it even with making draws.  Really though, if you did pull this beauty, you may be wondering if it’s any good, or if it has any place in your builds.

The Unicorn Arms on the surface have an amazing spread of stats, being heavy in both melee attack and shot attack and ranking at least in the top five in both categories.  All right, so it looks pretty good at a glance, but what about that EX Skill?  Shot Attack? Beam Resist?  It just so happens that as the latest Power A EX Skill, these arms are pretty nasty in the damage that the EX can deal.  With the impressive stats that it already unloads, they make a powerful addition to any team. 

The unfortunate truth is two-fold; they won’t stack their effect with NT-D (Unicorn Chest, Awakening Skill w/ conflicting texture), and they don’t provide melee attack.  They do, however, provide a great boost to your team if you’re packing any Shooters, and they make you a little more hardy vs beam-based attacks.

Because of the spread of stats and the power of the EX Skill, these are definitely a stand-out addition to your inventory, and you should definitely not discredit them simply because they don’t provide a melee attack boost for your own attack.  They can be used alongside other powerful EX Skills and even have a somewhat lower cooldown, and can improve the capabilities of your allies to support you.

Okay, okay…. Okay.  Yes, I really want to talk about Sword Strike.  I have received a landslide of comments and assorted feedback regarding this thing, and I just can’t not say it anymore.  I love this suit. For an Event Gunpla it has no reason being this good, and there are just a lot of things to say about it, including a few things that are not-so-great, but we’ll try to keep it slim.

The major stand-out point here is that they gave Sword Strike both Close Combat and High Firepower as Word Tags, and that is just exactly what you want to see in order to flesh out the final points of your own builds.  Furthermore, for a natural 3* suit, the stats are all fairly above average. The Back Part has over 500 melee attack, which is really good, and the Head is sitting around the 2k range for Shot Attack and that just can’t be considered terrible.  I wish the melee weapon included had a higher attack range, but as it stands it’s a fair weapon that clocks in around the low 2000s, putting it a good deal below Arondight.

Maelstrom is a fair EX Skill, but it requires some setup to use effectively (stage yourself a little ahead of your target so you can accommodate for movement more) but… the Schwert Gewehr EX is just incredibly difficult to land in general, and seems to be most effective when clearing low-power mobs.  The latter, however, can set you up to get interrupted easily with how erratically it moves you around the field.

But the biggest thing about Sword Strike overall are the Arms.

2593 melee and 1144 shot attack on a combined Arm Part (combined being counts as two parts, in this case Arms and Shield) that starts as a 3* base is amazing.  Sword Strike arms are definitely in the high end for Shot Attack, and this melee attack is only around 200 points below Red Frame Astray Arms, which are definitely not a low-grade Part. 

And you know what?  This thing just looks amazing and synergizes aesthetically with almost anything you can throw at it.

If you picked up a whole set of this when the Event was around, I feel that you have added an incredible array of Parts to your inventory.  These are so good that I feel they are likely to see use for a good deal of the foreseeable future in several builds.

Sound off in the comments for what you want to see next!  Or come visit the discord from the subreddit r/Gundam Battle and ask for Dazed Mika!  Signing off!