Insidia – Team Composition Guide

Which team compositions work and why.

Gunthor

Please note: all credit goes to Krypta!

If team compositions were sandwiches, then Gunthor is the bread: there are a lot of options for what goes in the sandwich, but one option for what holds the sandwich together. Part of why this is the case is because Gunthor is the only tank in the game (the Devs have promised a new tank in the next patch, so this advice may soon be outdated). Gunthor has 14 hit points. The next tankiest character, Angor, has only 7! If you put Gunthor on the Spot (my name for the five-tile cross in the very center of the map that triggers the cannons), your opponent will have to figure out a way to dislodge him with a push, pull, or character swap ability. Any other character can simply be killed before the cannons fire. In addition to being the tankiest, Gunthor’s passive ability, in combination with setting up the passive using his active ability, has unrivaled synergy with the active abilities of Trauma, Angor, Shiryo and Jaril. Furthermore, Gunthor benefits the most from heals given by Archaios or Baz III. His active is also the most reliable way to move an enemy character into Naima, Infestus, and Coma’s passive abilities. For those keeping count, this means that Gunthor’s active/passive ability combo has very good synergy with every single other character.

  • Summary: All teams will have Gunthor

The Passive Artillery

Only two characters in the game can consistently do 3 damage per turn with their passive to any character that doesn’t move out of the way: Naima and Infestus. Doing damage without having to be activated is very valuable.

  • Summary: Almost all teams will have Infestus or Naima

Killing the Passive Artillery

The Passive Artillery also happen to be glass cannons (they each have only 4 hit points), so every team needs to prioritize killing the enemy’s Passive Artillery. Most teams will do this with at least one of the melee fighters: Angor, Trauma, or Shiryo. Each of these characters can be relied upon to do 3 damage with their active ability and 1 extra damage from Gunthor’s passive (see Gunthor section above). Teams without one of these three must have some other way to reliably deal four damage outright (or 3 damage + Gunthor passive) or they will lose. Archaios is one such character. If he has already used his active on an ally, then, (once) on any subsequent turn he can deal 2-4 damage. Archaios does 3 damage when 4-7 tiles away from the ally that his ability is on. With Gunthor’s passive, that is enough damage to kill Infestus or Naima. Alternatively, you can bait Naima into using her active on Gunthor and then do 4 damage outright with Archaios (so long as Archaios is within 3 tiles of Gunthor). Note that Archaios’s Overload ability only has a range of 5, but Naima’s active has a range of 6 :-(. Still, the Gunthor pull on one turn into Archaios 3-damage Overload on the next turn is respectable and fairly reliable. Another way to do 4 damage outright is Trauma or Coma’s Ultimates. Trauma’s ultimate uses 20 energy – usually it is better to pull with Gunthor and then use Trauma’s active (to save energy). Coma’s ultimate, on the other hand, uses only 10 energy. But Coma’s ultimate is not reliable – she often does not have 4 loaded bullets and, with only 4 health, can easily be killed before she makes it across the battlefield to reach Naima or Infestus. Shiryo can do 4 damage outright if he has charged up his passive for two turns, but a good player will place his low-health characters with their back to a wall or pit, thereby denying you the chance to use Shiryo’s ultimate. You can still do the damage with Shiryo’s active but getting to the enemy character without getting hit along the way is not reliable. Better to rely on Gunthor pull + 3 damage Shiryo active (or ultimate). Special notes for Infestus: Infestus is very hard to get too since he can sit anywhere on the map while his turrets do damage (in contrast, Naima’s passive AOE is tethered to her). I have found that Trauma is a must against Infestus since she can kill him on her own (with ult), her passive destroys a poorly placed turret all by itself, and her active can also kill a turret. Angor is ok against Infestus since he can kill turrets with his active. Shiryo uses up his passive in order to attack turrets which is not good.

  • Summary: Almost all teams will have at least one of Angor, Trauma, Shiryo, or Archaios in order to kill Naima. If you know you are against Infestus, you should have Trauma on your team.

Specific Team Comps

Aggressive Point Capture

Includes characters that can displace enemies off the point and/or characters that can stay on the point without dying too quickly.

Gunthor, Passive Cannon, Trauma, Angor: This team uses Gunthor and Trauma to sit on the point and Gunthor and Angor to displace enemy characters off of the point. Note: if Passive Cannon is Naima, then this happens to be the starting characters team.

Gunthor, Passive Cannon, Baz III, Angor: Gunthor, Baz III, and Angor all have enemy displacement abilities. Baz III has the highest initiative in the game – that alone makes him amazing at defending the point since you can move from one part of the point to another, blocking enemies from entering the point. Baz III and Angor are the only characters that can reach the point on the same turn they deploy, which makes rushing the point on turn one a viable strategy. Moving Baz III onto the point on turn one and Angor either on the point or aimed at the point (to move onto the point automatically with his passive) is a viable strategy, though the third move from there depends on the enemy’s actions. Note, this strategy really only works out if the enemy starts with Gunthor (but that’s still pretty good, since 90% of players do that).

Gunthor, Passive Cannon, Baz III, Trauma: This team is slower to get to the point but Trauma can stick to the point much better than Angor can, not only because she lack’s Angor’s passive but also because she can more easily block enemy characters with her higher initiative.

Gunthor, Passive Cannon, Archaios, [One of: Angor, Trauma]: this team uses Archaios to make Gunthor nearly impossible to kill and also deadly against an enemy Naima (using Archaios overload). Archaios’s ultimate is bugged: despite what the tooltip says, it only ever does 2 damage. Despite that drawback, putting Gunthor on the point with Archaios ultimate activated is very hard to deal with.

Slow and Steady

Focuses on killing all of the enemy characters using Jaril or both of Infestus and Naima.

Gunthor, Infestus, Naima, X: I haven’t actually tried Infestus + Naima (nor have I seen anyone else do it) so I’m not sure who the fourth person should be. Probably Trauma. Baz III might make for a funny team composition, since you can use his ultimate to put someone in the cross hairs of both Infestus and Naima passives. If you can get this team comp to work, please let me know!

Gunthor, Passive Cannon, Jaril, [One of Angor, Trauma, Shiryo, Archaios]: Ideally you are leveling Jaril up in the early game (though, if you can kill a character outright, this is typically better than doing non-fatal damage for the sake of leveling Jaril) since leveled up Jaril really good. At level 2, if Jaril attacks an enemy next to Gunthor, that enemy takes 4 damage overall. Which one of Angor, Trauma, or Shiryo is best depends a lot on enemy team/enemy playstyle. Note: #1-rated player at the moment (Anoc) typically runs Gunthor, Infestus, Jaril, Shiryo. I have found that Gunthor, Naima, Trauma, Angor works best against this team since this team has trouble defending all three of the point, Jaril, and Infestus simultaneously (in part because it has very little crowd control).

Gunthor, Jaril, Coma, [Passive Cannon or Angor]: Coma is the only one who can trigger two Jaril mushrooms in a single turn. And she can do this with either her passive or her ultimate! Gunthor can use his active to pull enemies through Coma’s passive AOE. Accomplishing that with Gunthor and Coma after Jaril has used his active on an enemy practically never happens, unfortunately. Using her ultimate on someone with mushrooms is much more feasible. At level one, Jaril’s active does one damage +1 for two mushrooms. Assuming Coma has three bullets, she can follow up on Jaril’s 1 point of damage for an additional 3 + 2 = 6 total. That’s a decent amount of damage (especially vs. Trauma!) and a very realistic scenario. Unfortunately, it uses 10 energy. If Gunthor is next to the enemy on Coma’s attack, that’s 7 damage (Angor’s starting HP). In the mid game, Jaril’s mushrooms do 2 damage each, so this combo becomes 1 damage on turn X with Jaril then 3 + 4 on turn Y for a total of 8 damage. Only Gunthor has more than 7 hp, though, so this is of limited use. Angor’s ult can also be used to trigger coma passive, and Angor is best at threatening to sabotage, which can give you breathing space to set up Jaril + Coma combo. For a higher-damage team take a passive cannon as your fourth team member. Even though these team comps are the best shot you have at doing something with Coma, Coma is underpowered and any team that uses her will be slightly worse than the other teams I have listed.

Volodymyr Azimoff
About Volodymyr Azimoff 15051 Articles
I love games and I live games. Video games are my passion, my hobby and my job. My experience with games started back in 1994 with the Metal Mutant game on ZX Spectrum computer. And since then, I’ve been playing on anything from consoles, to mobile devices.

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