A Hero's Guide to Tachyon

Character Profile

Best Attack: Lightspeed Barrage
Best Team Support: Blinding Speed
Best Personal Support: Pushing the Limits
Honorable Mentions: Fleet of Foot, Hypersonic Assault
Primary Damage Type: Melee
Secondary Damage Type: Sonic
Worst Card: Sucker Punch
Nemesis: The Matriarch, Iron Legacy

Tachyon plays her cards.  Tachyon frequently plays all of her cards.  For this reason, she has an extremely consistent deck that can reach its zenith almost every single game.  She is also fairly unconcerned by ongoing and equipment destruction, making her very hard to disrupt.  She is a fun, fast-paced (duh!) hero who can be relied on for group assistance and a few very high damage assaults.

Attack

As far as damage goes, Tachyon's essential goal is to just dump as many bursts as possible into her trash, then unleash hell on one troublesome target with Lightspeed Barrage.  This will almost always be the villain card itself, but don't forget it can target other things in an emergency.  Tachyon can easily dump enough bursts to deal 10-15 damage with a single card, and the attack maxes out at a staggering 22. 

Sonic Vortex is another burst attack, this one dealing 3 damage to x targets. It's very nice to have, even though you will run out of targets and feel slightly disappointed. Hypersonic Assault is where the real fun is, but it's hard to qualify it as an attack, since the real point of the card is the contingent effect.

Her other attack cards are minor and situational, and as such, I often find myself using them as discard fodder.  These include Accelerated Assault, Nimble Strike, Supersonic Response, and Sucker Punch.  Supersonic Response is especially great if Tachyon is buffed and attacking something that hurt her.  Nimble Strike is great for the attached card draw, since Tachyon can never have enough of those.  Accelerated Assault is nice for attacking everybody, but I often find myself discarding it because the targets I most want to hit have armor.  Sucker Punch, on the other hand, is great when armor is around, but only if a target has 2 or fewer hit points.  The relative rarity of this circumstance, combined with usually having other heroes willing to kill the same thing, makes me declare this one the worst card in her deck.  It's still a burst, though!

Of particular note is Synaptic Interruption.  One of Tachyon's few defenses, this can also be employed to kill targets out of turn.  You might be able to save yourself some damage or effects if you kill a target that would activate later in the environment or villain turn.  The most fun use of this is to completely ignore Omnitron's Electro-Pulse Explosives.  When it triggers, put yourself up to get damaged first.  Redirect its damage to itself, and save the rest of your heroes the trouble.  (Just, uh, don't get damaged for 3+ on the environment turn.  Embarassing AND painful!)

Support

When she's not Lightspeed Barraging, Tachyon is far from useless.  Fleet of Foot helps keep your allies in cards, and Hypersonic Assault is great for buying a turn of relative safety from damage for everybody.  Blinding Speed, her answer to ongoing and environment cards, might actually be the best card in the deck.  She is perhaps the most likely of all of the heroes to have her ongoing/environment destruction on hand, which can be a lifesaver.

Tactics

The nature of Tachyon is to have a quick flow of cards through your hand. To facilitate this, Hud Goggles and Pushing the Limits let her play up to three cards every turn, if you can take the damage and keep your stuff. Pushing the Limits and Research Grant, along with the occasional help from Nimble Strike, Fleet of Foot, and Quick Insight, help give her the cards she needs to keep playing. It's always good to have a Lightning Reflexes handy - you can use it as a boost midgame if you don't have your Goggles and you need to get stuff done, or you can use it as part of an explosive finale to get or use multiple Lightspeed Barrages.

Research Grant really gives you the fuel to get through your deck.  When given the chance, I'll almost always discard a burst.  I'll never discard Fleet of Foot, and only rarely Blinding Speed, Synaptic Interruption, or Quick Insight, but the rest are fair game.  When you run out of bursts, extra copies of your Research Grant and Hud Goggles are prime for disposal.  I'm usually fine losing Sonic Vortex, to be honest, though it's much better than I give it credit for.

Pushing the Limits

Always play Pushing the Limits.  The thing to remember is that, if nothing else, it says "You may play a card.  At the end of your turn, you may draw a card." It costs you nothing to play, since it replaces the card and action. The hard part is knowing when to give it up. Usually, I keep it if I can use the extra play, and the feedback doesn't hurt too much. You also get the option of just sacrificing it to some stuff-stealing effect for the good of the team, and playing your next one. If Tachyon's damage is boosted, it's really fun to redirect the Pushing the Limits damage to another target via Synaptic Interruption.

Team Leader Tachyon

Team Leader Tachyon is patently insane. She has one more hit point than standard Tachyon, and has Team Leader, which allows everybody to draw a card as a power. This combos extremely well with heroes that love cards, and makes heroes much more willing to discard cards for the good of the team. More than that, though, it gives everybody options. I can't count how many times Fleet of Foot has delivered a timely card to a character. Team Leader Tachyon gets to do that all the time.

With that power, why would I play regular Tachyon ever again? Good question. Simply, Team Leader Tachyon is not as good at Tachyon's goal of putting bursts in her trash. Since her power does not put cards in the trash, if she only uses her base power all game, the power level of the other heroes plateaus at some point, and she is much weaker. Once everybody is set for cards, Team Leader Tachyon should switch to Research Grant and get to piling up the bursts - at which point, she'll be behind regular Tachyon. If Bunker and Nightmist are over there looking sad... well, part of being a leader is knowing when to do your own thing.

Weaknesses

Though Tachyon is hard to disrupt, her unique deck makeup brings several problems. If she can’t draw cards, (Traffic Pileup!) she’s in big trouble. She has very few defenses and no healing, so she can’t stand up to sustained attack. She has no consistent damage source. The attacks she does get are plagued by fairly low damage, so you can encounter problems when facing opponents with armor, especially with Hypersonic Assault. Lightspeed Barrage is melee damage, which means it can’t be used against things like Voss’s flagships. Finally, it’s a major bummer if she somehow loses her trash pile, since she’ll have to start the Lightspeed Barrages again from scratch. (I'm looking at you, Maintenance Level.)

To counter these weaknesses, she might want to keep a Blinding Speed handy, and ally with heroes that can increase her damage output or take hits for her. In order to keep up a steady flow of cards, don’t forget the option to draw two cards if you don’t play anything or use any powers. If she doesn’t have anything relevant now, hopefully she can stock up for next turn.

Teamups

Far and away, Tachyon’s best friend is The Visionary, who can use Enlighten to help keep Tachyon in cards and fill up her trash with bursts. Other than that, Tachyon really appreciates anything that lets her get more cards or shields her from damage. Of particular note is Tempest’s Reclaim from the Deep, which ideally allows her to snag another Lightspeed Barrage. If Tachyon then has Fleet of Foot handy, then everybody can use their reclaimed cards right away!

Team Leader Tachyon runs away with the favor of Bunker, Nightmist, Haka, Expatriette, and anybody else looking for a ton of cards in hand. The combo with Reclaim from the Deep or Argent Adept's Vernal Sonata is much more likely to occur, as well.

If she has a boost to her damage, then her numerous insignificant-looking attacks can become killing blows in their own right. This is most important when it comes to pushing through armor with Hypersonic Assault, but it's most impressive with Supersonic Response.