Immolite

Immolite

 **unit** (see more): gain , and 2 (Exhaust 2: disabled until 2 turns from now)

 Cost:

[data page]

**Immolite** is an offensive Red unit. It's a very cheap attacker and a weak blocker with 2 Exhaust.

## Strategy

While **Immolite** may appear weak at first compared to units such as Tarsier, attacking for only half as much while only being 1 Gold cheaper, its lower Build time means it forces your opponent to buy defense sooner instead of more attack, which will allow you to buy more attack yourself instead of more defense. This feedback loop makes Immolite approximately as efficient as Tarsier overall. There are some additional advantages:

* Immolite's lower Build time also means it gets better later in the game when the short term starts to be all you care about whereas Tarsier gets worse. (The flipside is that Tarsier is better early game, especially as a first attacker since its longer buildtime means it cannot be absorbed at first.)
* Immolite provides good offensive finesse since it can either attack this turn or wait until next turn to attack. This can allow you to exploit your opponent's defense and effectively obtain free points of damage.
* Immolite has a lower gold cost than Tarsier, which can help avoid wasting  when you are overteched. (The flipside of this is that if Tarsiers and Immolites are the most efficient thing you can buy, you want to spend as much of your gold as possible on these units so that you spend less of your gold on less efficient things like Drones. Tarsier helps you do this.)

Whether or not you should synchronize your Immolite's attacks is situational. It is fine to have them firing on different turns as they are usually not your main source of damage anyway (and often you will want to hold one back on the turn where they would all fire in order to exploit your opponent), but syncing their fire could let you increase your breach pressure slightly.

Using Immolites to block should be considered a last measure when no other choice is available as it means losing constant damage for only 1.

## Builds involving Immolite

There is an all-in available to Player 1 that can surprise your opponent and confuse them if they are not familiar with it:

1. Animus
2. Immolite + Immolite
3. Immolite + Immolite
4. ...

Likely one of the only "non-joke" openings involving not buying a single Drone, it lets you buy 1 constant damage per turn from turn 2, which can be hard to counter. There is a very simple solution however as Player 2:

1. DC
2. GE
3. GE
4. ...

This counter build involves getting a single Conduit and using it to buy as many Gauss Cannons as possible, using the leftover  Gold for Engineers. When you start losing Drones to breaches and can't afford Gauss Cannons anymore, build Forcefields instead. The superior 5 of the Cannons will lead to an eventual win against the more fragile Immolites. If Perforator is present though, the rusher can switch out of Red and play normally.

1. A
2. Immolite +Perforator
3. Perforator x2 (Defend)\*
4. Perforator +D (Soak)
5. BE
6. WE

* Turn 3 R/RE/TE is efficient.

Delayed it exploits having the starting Defense.

1. A
2. 2x Immolite
3. Immolite +Perforator (Damaged by 1)
4. 2x Perforator
5. TE (Block)

There's also Immolite plus Blood Pact

1. A
2. 2x Immolite
3. 2x Immolite
4. R (No soak left)
5. T +Blood Pact
6. Immolite +Blood Pact

Player 2's Gauss Cannon counter takes losses quickly or lacks the pressure, but gains a weakness from having frail Attackers as well.

Player 2 alternating Rush:

1. A
2. TT
3. 2x Immolite
4. TT
5. 2x Immolite
6. Immolite +R

This requires some red Absorber or Defense such as Ossified Drone to be reliable, otherwise, even turn Rhinos are the most efficient defense (No econ for granularity either)

Plain version Rush:

1. A
2. TT
3. Immolite +T
4. Immolite +T
5. Immolite +T

Can have RE, but this requires a cheap Red sink such as Nitrocybe to be reliable and switch out.

## Change log

* December 1st, 2014
	+ Added.