Chill III: Defending Against Chill: The Easy Bits

This is part 3 of a series on Chill. Parts 1, 2, 4, 5, 6.

In part 1, we talked about the four uses of Chill, and in part 2, we talked about different types of Chill and how the activation cost (AC) of a Chill unit is very important in how it plays. Now we’ll talk briefly about defending against the first three uses of Chill covered in part 1 – absorb denial, exploits, and freezing doomed units. Defending against use four, threat, is most important, so we’ll talk about it in more depth in parts 4 and 5.

1. Defending Against Absorb Denial

You can’t stop your opponent from freezing your biggest absorber. What you can do, though, is have a backup absorber.

Here, even if they freeze your Centurion, you can absorb on your Energy Matrix. This means they’re only denying one absorb, which isn’t too bad. And of course, if your biggest absorber has multiple supplies – like Energy Matrix itself – then you can just have two Energy Matrices, meaning that they can’t get any damage at all off of freezing an absorber.

2. Defending Against Exploits

Freezing for exploits usually works by freezing Engineers (or other 1-health blockers, like Husks) to make your defense un-granular. So, to counter this, make more Engineers.

This is tougher than it looks, because you have to balance having enough Engineers with the fact that you want a backup absorber – this can be difficult, especially when damage numbers are still fairly low, so you might end up having to allow your opponent to get some exploits.

3. Defending Against Freezing Doomed Units

The number one way to avoid this is to not make Doomed units in a set with Chill in it. Assuming you have made Doomed units, though, the best tactic against most Chill is to hold your Doomed units back a turn early.

You can also make a lot of doomed units to overwork the opponent’s Chill – your opponent can run through their 10 supply of Cryo Rays pretty quickly if you’re making a lot of doomed units and holding them all on 2 lifespan instead of on 1. Once they’re out of Cryo Rays, or have stopped freezing your Doomed units that are being held on 2 lifespan, you’re getting pretty good value.

On the other hand, if your opponent is using Shiver Yetis, Iceblade Golems, or Tatsu Nullifiers, which can freeze an unlimited number of times, these tricks won’t work, so just keep attacking with the doomed unit, even on lifespan 1, until it dies.

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Alright, that’s all you need to know about defending against those tactics for now. Those tactics are all annoying, but threat is still the part of Chill that is the most trouble. We’ll cover that in parts 4 and 5. On to part 4.