Lancer Strategy

General Principles for Lancer play

Lancer's starting Railgun is often used as a primary damage tool.
- The Railgun in general loves + flat damage effects, as this increases the likelihood the Railgun will be able to break equipment with 2 card plays.
- Most of the hull damage load will be carried by Drill Shot. Drill Shot offers excellent hull damage when the conditional effect resolves, and due to the effect being a 2nd instance of damage, double dips on damage bonuses. This often makes Drill Shot the best target for Battery Surges produced by Lancer's passive (temporary +2 to next railgun shot)
- Pinpoint is a somewhat weak card to start, with the only real saving grace being the lower R cost. The card becomes significantly better once +damage has been found, as the relative gap between it and Kinetic Shot shrinks.
- Kinetic Shot is a fine card to take early, as it offers decent damage at a good rate. However unlike Drill Shot or Pinpoint, it does not have automatically scale up into the late game.
- Many Railgun cards by default have 4 turn cooldown, which means they will not be ready by default when the enemy's equipment finishes repairing in 3 rounds. Lancer is more likely to duplicate copies of attack cards to help combat the higher cooldown.
Ion weapons are probably the best secondary weapon for Lancer.
- As Ion weapons offer defensive utility, they help make up for the Lancer's lack of shields
- Railgun weapons also tend to do poorly against shields, Ion covers this weakness very well
- Ionize synergizes very well with many disabling hacks
  - Pacify disables all enemy weapons for 1 turn. Disabling an already disabled weapon has no effect, so any further disables in the players hand have to be held until next turn.
  - Ion weapons by contrast can be played immediately to drain pips from disabled enemy equipment, which effectively extends the disable effect beyond just one turn, giving the player more room to maneuver, and avoids the problem of utility cards clogging the player's hand
Lancer is generally pretty interested in picking up a PDC in the Aux Slot
- As stated earlier, the +1 damage from Target Lock helps Railgun cards stay relevant in Sector 2 when combined with other damage boosts.
- The basic PDC anti-missile attack offers an efficient trade against enemy missile equipment.
Lancer's crew has good morale abilities
- Crew ability that immediately retrieves an attack card on cooldown to hand is a powerful tool for mitigating bad RNG and avoiding hull damage. Allows the player to potentially break an enemy equipment turn 1 even when only one attack card is drawn.
- The crew ability that grants +1 Security is quite good.
  - Unlike the firewall card, it's always available on demand, does not impact future draws, and with the default equipment typically represents delaying an enemy attack for an additional turn. This is often enough to avoid damage.
  - Can also be used as a guaranteed way to avoid devastating hacks, like Malware which discards cards.
- With the most recent patch lowering morale costs, +50% damage becomes a much more attractive option. Useful to stretch Drill Round's damage to break equipment and trigger the conditional effect, 12 HP enemy equipment is in range of Kinetic Shot + boosted Drill shot.