Overview
Godtear is a game about interactions between your models and your opponent’s models. Knowing what matchups are likely to create favorable interactions is a key part of mastering the game. In this article,I will attempt to break down what I consider to be the favorable and unfavorable matchups for each Guardian champion.
Let me start with a bit of framing and hedging here. Matchups are the thing that I change my mind about the most. There are dizzying amounts of different matchups which can occur given the 20 different champions currently available. I have not played them all. I don’t have that kind of time unfortunately.
Some matchups I have played often enough to be fairly confident of how they will play out (Titus v. Rangosh, for example) whereas others I have not played at all. There is going to be some educated guessing in this article. Please let me know if you disagree with what I’ve got here; you may very well be right and pointing it out to me will improve my play.
I tried to find 4-5 matchups which I consider to be the most favorable and 4-5 which I consider to be the least favorable for each champion. This is arbitrary, so there are going to be some close calls. Note that this will not be consistent across champions. That is, me saying that Champion A has a favorable matchup into Champion B does not necessarily mean that I am also saying that Champion B has an unfavorable matchup into champion A. This is because B might have five matchups more unfavorable than A while A does not have five matchups more favorable than B. It’s all relative, I’m saying.
The Guardian Matchups
Ok, those provisos aside, let’s dive in. I made a small table for each Guardian champion. Green means that the matchup favors the champion whose name appears atop the table. Red means that the matchup is unfavorable.
We'll go in alphabetical order, so first up is...
Finvarr is great into Maelstroms which don't have great attack stats because his followers are few and hard to kill. He also punishes slower champions like Keera, Rodhri, and Shayle by keeping them away from his banners. Keera struggles to KO Finvarr because her only way to have a good chance of hitting him will probably only do chip damage which Finvarr can heal. Finvarr is good into Shayle because earthquake will have trouble hitting dodge 4.
Finvarr struggles into matchups where enemies can block his way with lots of chaff. Finvarr does not have much attack volume and can only reposition on model at a time, so Rattlebone, Grimgut, and Mourneblade have the potential to lock him down. Titus and Grimgut both have great attack stats which can score off of even the hardy Shadow Sentinels. Raith is arguably a bad matchup into anyone, but he is particularly rough into Finvarr. This is because the elf relies on protecting banners, but his banner protection tech can't deal with the wet dragon.
The big troll brings essentially three things: accurate attacks, the ability to shrug off chip damage, and the ability to block off objective hexes. The accurate attacks really help Halftusk fight against champions with high dodge, like Lorsann, Rangosh, and Sneaky Peet. Lorsann and Peet also tend to deal damage in smaller increments than other slayers, so Halftusk can regenerate after they smack him. Helena needs to be able to move onto empty objective hexes, but Froglodytes can make it so that objective hexes are no longer empty.
Not unlike Finvarr, Halftisk does not like it when he gets locked down by chaff, so he also struggles into Mourneblade, Ralttlebone, and Grimgut. You who doesn't care if the Froglodytes squat on objective hexes? The dwarf lady who can make more, that's who.
Helena likes for there to be lots of objective hexes, so playing into the champion who makes objective hexes seems good. Nia does not really have a way to push Helena off of hexes or a lot of followers to block Helena's path. Raith, Lorsann, and Jeen all love to squash banners, but the whole point of Helena is that you cannot squash her. None of the aforementioned champions will have much luck killing her either. Maxen is sad that there is nothing for him to Scavenge.
Helena will struggle into those who can either block her path or KO a bunch of peasants. Mourneblade and Grimgut can keep Helena from advancing to the hexes she needs. Titus and Luella do not care if the peasants are dodge 4. Shayle is Helena's special nightmare. In addition to earthquake and avalanche, Shayle can also keep Helena from getting back to the hexes by debuffing her speed. Once Shayle separates Helena from the peasants, both she and her followers are easy pickings.
Mourneblade likes to play against Helena and Jeen because both of them need to use advance actions and cannot kill Knightshades very well. Rodhri can escape Knightshades by Marching, but the slow dwarf will definitely not want to chase down the faraway banners that Mourneblade can leave lying around. Mourneblade is good into the big hitters like Keera and Rangosh because they will get shortchanged when doing their favorite things.
Mourneblade does not want to see Maxen. Maxen can auto-wound the fire skeleton to death and in doing so remove Mourneblade's banner regardless of where it is. This is a seven point swing which Maxen can reliably execute at long range. It's rough. Lorsann offers a less harsh version of this since she can also deliver ranged auto wounds and Scoot away from Knightshades. Peet has auto wounds also, but it's his total indifference to Death Grip and expertise in crushing far away banners which makes him a tough matchup for Mourneblade. Shayle doesn't have much trouble earthquaking the Kinghtshades around, and they will be too slow to recover.
Rodhri, as you may expect, is good into the Slayers that want to do big damage because Rodhri can get to armor 5 without much trouble. Blackjaw and Jeen cannot kill Household Guard. It's sad when they try. Maxen does not like Rodhri because his accuracy boons aren't much help, and his ranged push will often be negated by Rodhri's immovability when banner adjacent.
You know who does not care about Rodhri and the Guard's immovability? Raith. Rodhri players always get sad the first time they realize that Tsunami can dissolve their whole defensive structure because Raith decides the order in which enemy models move. First, Raith jumps on the banner, then he moves Rodhri, then he moves the Household Guard. Rattlebone can call a lot of totems to clog up Rodhri's path, and he can only shield bash them one at a time. She also has the ability to debuff Rodhri's speed and armor before comfortably firing off her low accuracy, high damage attack. Finvarr has the speed to get to Rodhri's banner and the tools to keep Rodhri off of his own banner. Mourneblade can hide banners where Rodhri will struggle to get to them.
Final Thoughts
Look, I know... these are not perfect. I made myself pick 4-5 good and 4-5 bad matchups just to give this a somewhat simple structure, but it's easy to see ways of complicating this to make it more accurate. I'm tempted to introduce different shades of red and green to show how bad the matchup is. Maybe every matchup needs a color coding to give you a more accurate sense of... whatever. No. This is how I do all 20 champions without going crazy.
I haven't considered scenario at all, I know.
Hopefully, this article got you thinking more about matchups even if you don't agree with these tables and can see ways of picking them apart. As long as reading this stimulated your strategic analysis capabilities, I'm a happy blogger. Thanks for reading.