Dash

Overview
Dash stands apart with his extremely high Fighting Spirit gain and threshold. His deck features lots of counters and catch-up tactics, as well as straightforward stat boosting abilities and control strategies.

Backstory
The young boy was found unconscious on the beach, the sand surrounding him rendered to glass amidst a cloud of scalding hot vapor. When he awoke to see the face of a bedraggled fisherman looming over his, he panicked and sprinted back with a burst of incredible speed. Wiping away the sand that kicked into his face, the fisherman called the boy "Dash", and the name stuck. Beyond his quickness and amnesia, Dash was seemingly normal—playful, kind and incredibly curious about the world. The fisherman took him in, taught him about the his trade, and became his father.

While selling their haul at the market one early morning, explosions began reverberating in the distance, and soon were booming around them. Dash climbed to the roof and saw the frames of 2 giant robots in battle, their titanic fists colliding. The sky around their combat darkened, and a swarm of ships descended from the clouds. In a blinding burst of instant information, Dash somehow understood their mechanics, composition, and origin: They were the Zoider Armada. A hundred worlds had fallen before them, and they had arrived to harvest humanity.

The intricacies of the robot’s chassis unfurled in his mind. Enigmatic sources of energy became perfectly illustrated; the Giga-Shards, full of promise and terror, could be seen within reach. A searing hot pain spread across his body. There was a flash in the distance.

Dash awoke amidst the wreckage around a 6-meter tall, disembodied, robotic hand—it’s wrist gasping in bursts of jet-flame. Before he could scream for his father, he saw a crumpled form at his feet, arms outstretched. The fisherman had saved his life. After carrying his father to safety in turn, Dash looked to his arms and saw glowing blue veins of circuitry just beneath his skin. Witnessing the robot battle had awoken something deep inside his body and mind, and it couldn’t be ignored. Was he human? Alien? Something else? And why did the Giga-Shards call to him? He staggered forward and leaned on the robotic hand. In that moment, the only thing Dash knew for certain was that the Zoiders had to be stopped, and that battle would reveal his destiny.

He looked out to the Zoider fleet in the distance and clenched his fist—and, somehow, the 6-meter tall robotic hand beside him did the same.

Playstyle
With 2 Instant-counters, 2 ways to force re-rolls, the ability to swap an unresolved attack with another from your hand, natural Trauma Token removal (that pushes them to your opponent's Cooldown meter), and more, Dash is a great option if you love control strategies. This, matched with his Heart value of 10 (the highest in the game) and phenomenal card-based Fighting Spirit gain—including Spirit Spark, a 0 cost Instant that simply gives you 3 Fighting Spirit, with a Cooldown of 3—makes him an especially forgiving pilot and one who allows you have reliable turn-by-turn offense, exert pressure by hoarding up to Dash's Max Fighting Spirit of 45, and perform mix ups to confuse your opponent.

Dash's weak points are his Rage of 2 (the lowest in the game) and his power of 1. Dash players should be careful to not themselves be drained of Fighting Spirit on their Counterattacking turn, as they wont muster enough resources to consistently afford Attack cards, even after being on the receiving end of extended offenses.

Dash's Pilot Ability Righteous Spirit greatly helps to patch this, though allowing Dash to immediately increase his Rage stat by 4 until the end of turn when forced by an opponent to Collide with a Structure.

The threat of Collisions and Impact Card damage is huge in Giga-Robo, and this ability is perfect for causing your opponent to hesitate during those vulnerable moments when your robot's back is against Structure. Is the extra damage worth it to transform Dash into a 10-Heart, 6-Rage Pilot? And what happens if the Collision creates an Inferno, letting you start your next turn with 18 Fighting Spirit, or 16 Fighting Spirit and a Power Token?

Dash's other Pilot Abilities are Circuit Flow, which lets you aggressively mitigate Recovery Rolls (increasing results by 3) without having to spend Power Tokens, and Combat Logic, which gives the passive buff of discounting all of your cards by 1—an all-around useful ability, that allows Combo favoring builds to quickly overwhelm opponents.

Tips and Tricks
Have you flown as Dash? Noticed any nifty rules interactions? Post them here!

Rules Clarifications
Any clarifications for Dash's cards will be posted here.

Trivia

 * Where do Dash's powers come from?