Dodo: Beginner’s Guide

How to play, best pilots and cards, and strategies for the Dodo mech

The Dodo Mech

The Dodo is a fast paced mech with an unique playstyle. Its main form of defence is to over-heat enemy mechs by using its multiple Flamers. The Dodo deck has a lot of card draw and extra action points. This allows the Dodo to cycle very quickly through its deck to regain its flamer cards back, providing endless heat. Its cards are very heat efficient allowing massive bursts of cards to be played at once.





Weight class: Light

Difficulty: Hard

Playstyle:

• Cycling cards
  
• Cheesing with heat
  
• Burst damage

Best Pilots

Vasquez

While other mechs can work with a variety of pilots, the best pilot hands down for the Dodo is Vasquez. The Dodo does not need a lot of cooling and the mech deck already comes with 2 quirk cards that give it massive card draw and extra action points. Vasquez brings a few defence cards but the main reason to get Vasquez is his Proficiency: Heat. Once upgraded, Proficiency: Heat provides tonnes of extra damage to the Dodo’s Flamers. This pilot card is unique to Vasquez only.

Important Cards

Flamer

The Flamer cards are the bread and butter to the Dodo deck. It’s extremely heat efficient, damages the enemy mech, and also gives one extra heat to the enemy. It does all this for the low, low cost of 1 heat. While not a priority to upgrade in the first 2 waves, you should aim to upgrade all 3 Flamers to level 1. *Do not upgrade Flamers to level 2.* Level 2 Flamers do 1 extra laser damage. However, it no longer gives 2 heat to the enemy. I would not recommend upgrading the Flamers to the final level unless you already have strong defence cards or really need the extra damage to land kills.

Machine Gun

While seemingly weak, the most important feature of Machine Guns is that they cost no heat. An upgraded Machine Gun is almost always an instant grab. Once upgraded, the Machine Gun now has a Proficiency token for Ballistics, doubling the next matching coloured token the next turn. This means you can chain fire multiple Machine Guns and double their damage tokens. This tactic is perfect for the Dodo as its deck provides so many extra action points, allowing many Machine Gun cards to be played at once.

Proficiency: Heat

Because you have so many Flamers and will be using them often, Proficiency: Heat is a great card to grab if you see it. The Proficiency token will sit on the board until you are ready to use them, meaning you can build up a large stack for a large burst of damage. You only need to be careful not to duplicate the red block token on your Light Mech: Evade if you’re wanting to attack!

Important Note! Because the Dodo relies on cycling through its decks, it is always better to upgrade the cards you already have than to get new cards from the rewards and water down your deck.

Strong Against

Medusa
The Medusa is a heavy hitter and you will get hurt in the first few rounds. Try to block as many damage tokens as you can in the beginning. The Medusa is extremely reliant on cooling cards and runs very hot. Use the flamers to increase its heat and cancel any cooling it adds. It is not very difficult to lock the Medusa up with heat. The Medusa is a glass cannon type mech in that it does not have a lot of defences. Once it has overheated, the Dodo can easily rip the Medusa apart. The only trick is to survive until then!

Behemoth
Similar to the Medusa, the Behemoth has serious heat issues. It has a lot of high damage cards but they cost a lot of heat. Light Mech: Evade is especially good against the Behemoth’s weapons. Once the Behemoth is overheating, it will have difficulty playing its high cost cards. Whittle down the Behemoth with heat and damage.

Avoid

Armadillo
The Dodo can run circles around all the bigger mechs without problems but the small Armadillo can easily keep up with the Dodo. The Armadillo is annoyingly tanky and runs very cold. This makes it very difficult for the Flamers to cause heat problems for the Armadillo. The Armadillo also can chain the Machine Guns, which can be an issue for the fragile Dodo who does not have many defence cards. Avoid at all costs in the later waves.

Strategy

The Dodo can be built to have a more traditional playstyle, but the best (and imo most fun) way to build it is using the Flamer cards. The idea is quite simple, the execution though, is much harder. Using defensive cards like Light Mech: Evade, the Dodo needs to survive heavy attacks until the enemy mech starts to be high in heat. Once the mech reaches high heat, the Dodo can lock it down and prevent it from playing high damage cards that require heat. It is important to learn how much damage the Dodo can take and be careful of mechs capable of large burst damage. Because the Dodo has many low heat cards, you can take a few hot weapons for higher damage. It is important that the Dodo never overheats itself! A hot Dodo is a dead Dodo.

[ResidentCrow]

The coolest looking mech in the game too. I usually upgrade the flamers to 3rd level just to try and get damage through, but I'll have to try capping myself at 2nd level for them...