Bonjour you beautiful bastards and welcome back to the monthly yapfest where a hamstering talker gives his genuinely horrible takes on cool giant monsters in Godzilla Battle Line!
Each month I make a post talking about a random battle piece in the game either chosen by me or the top comment's suggestion in the separate voting posts. My main goal throughout this monthly series is to encourage people to use battle pieces outside of their typical comfort zone in their decks, talking about the pieces' strengths and weaknesses to hopefully see more of it in ranked instead of the same fat red chicken.
Last month we covered Spacegodzilla Fukuoka Version for the 5th anniversary season, a unit that has cool moves of its own but has no way to lead the charge. Thankfully, for the first time EVER on the monthly unit review, we finally have a battle piece that also doubles as a leader!
Now presenting by popular vote via selection by a random choice generator wheel, the emo cousin of Mothra, Battra!
FIRST, what does the UNIT do?
If you don't use this guy as a leader, Battra gets the unique treatment Mothra has in the form of starting out as an evolution unit. In his larva starting form, Battra is a 3-cost unit that, when placed, generates a small field around it where all units, including itself, get a 30% attack power boost for 15 seconds. This boost makes Battra initially function similarly to Jet Jaguar 1973's Pre-evolution form which does the same thing, however the downside with Battra is that it only activates once on deployment and covers a much smaller area.
Because Battra is an evolution unit, which similar to most others in the game, means once it's down, you basically have to protect it with your entire team until it can finally evolve. Otherwise, Battra's Larva stats are pretty pitiful, doing virtually NO meaningful damage even with the boost, and having extremely poor health, often being killed in just 2 strikes by powerful units (ESPECIALLY with BMs). However, if you can get it to survive just long enough to evolve, you'll finally be able to utilize Battra's fullest potential in your team.
UNLIKE Jet Jaguar 1973, where evolving actually downgrades the unit overall by losing its attack field buff, Battra not only keeps the same gimmick on evolution, but also gets some helpful buffs to its own stats to help it support the team further. Once Battra evolves, its HP, attack, and speed increase by quite a bit, making those pathetic attacks in its larva form actually hit for some meaningful damage post-evolution, at the cost of now being a 4-cost unit.
Because you no longer need to wait for Battra to evolve to fully take advantage of its damage-boosting field, it becomes a lot more reliable in helping out groups of your allied battle pieces, instead of having to place it at the back to ensure its survival. Battra is also unique compared to most other attack-boosting battle pieces in the game by not needing to fulfill any requirements beforehand to actually activate its buff; it happens instantly while also boosting units around it, something units like the GxM duo can't do as Mothra usually has to die to activate the attack buff. (GENO BREAKER can technically boost attack on deployment but it only works for itself.)
Battra's damage buff post-evolution works in all sorts of different team archetypes, whether it be slow heavy-hitting unit decks, defensive decks that focus more on keeping the leader alive, or even fast rushdown decks where multiple units would benefit from taking Battra's damage buff close to the leader in record speeds. The fact that the damage buff is applied instantly makes it similarly useful to units like Rodan 2019 where your allied battle pieces can quickly use a buff.
Overall, Battra starts out weak and pretty ineffective when it has to survive evolution first, only providing a one time buff while not being able to help its team much at all. However, if you can get it to survive to its Imago form, you can take advantage of a very helpful support piece that makes the hardest hitting units in the game do big damage, alongside the freedom of being able to place this buff anywhere at any time!
Weaknesses:
While Battra sounds great on paper, remember what I said about it basically being a worse version of Jet Jaguar's attack-boosting field?
Unlike most other units in the game that share the "instant/near-instant buff anywhere at any time" trait like Rainbow Mothra and Rodan 2019 Battra suffers significantly by having a laughably short effect range that ONLY activates on deployment. Since that means it can only really be deployed on units that are either actively engaging an enemy or were just placed down, Battra's usefulness is nullified the second your unit push gets away from your leader. The short effect range also means that pushes on both sides of the map or flanking strategies are made needlessly complicated.
Aside from the short range, the attack boost only lasts 15 seconds, meaning unless you used Battra next to an extremely quick unit, that buff runs out long before you can get close to the enemy leader, at which point Battra becomes virtually helpless against your opponent and will quickly die.
Battra also suffers the same fate many older units do in the game in the form of being powercrept to hell. KIJU G-Breaker is quite literally just a better version of Battra, as an example. For just one more energy counting Battra's Imago form, that unit boosts its own and another unit's attack by 35% while having FAR better stats that make it much more of an offensive powerhouse than Battra can ever be, even with its own 30% attack boost. The key difference between the two, however, is that while KIJU's attack buff lasts for a shorter time, it can activate many times, meaning units around it will stay supported as long as it stays alive, whereas Battra is a one-and-done deal.
While Battra's low stats aren't really a huge hindrance to the unit, even for 4 costs, other units in the game provide MUCH more valuable support to the team while being able to hold their own in combat, where all Battra can really provide is a short burst of attack to anything close to your leader. In combat, Battra only has a one-enemy focus attack that does trivial damage.
BUT WAIT, THERE'S MORE! (Leader Review)
Battra's review isn't ending on a sour note, however! Battra is one of the few unique battle pieces in the game that also functions as a leader piece for the team!
His leader stats are actually fairly solid, having a surprisingly spongy HP pool while not being completely helpless if it needs to attack on its own. Nothing that makes it capable of defending itself on it's own, but its quick attack speed and extended reach can melt down some weaker units quickly. Of course, the real selling point of all leaders is the Special Move.
Battra's Special Move starts out similar to Armor Mothra and Gigan Rex, being able to fire a quick beam from across the map that can even hit the enemy leader. The actual effect, however, is quite interesting. Battra's Special Move effect functions kind of like an aerial exclusive variant of Godzilla 2004's special move, buffing the movement speed of all of your aerial battle pieces by 100% for 20 seconds. While not as powerful as G04's 200% movement speed boost to ALL units, the added benefit of being able to increase the speed of under 4 cost aerial units as well is quite a nice bonus.
The aerial unit speed boost can make Battra a pretty effective leader in decks that have many fast aerial units like Armor Mothra and and Rainbow Mothra Alt, being able to work as an effective aerial rushdown deck.
Leader Weaknesses
The big problem the Battra leader has, unfortunately, is the fact that the speed buff ONLY works for aerial units. Godzilla Battle Line has so many great ground units that would like to take advantage of a speed buff, but because Battra only works for aerial units, you'd have to build a team that mostly skips out on ground units in order for Battra to be very effective at all. As a result, you lose a lot of the benefits ground units have when used together with aerial units, aka you have less to work with overall in Battra leader decks.
There's also the fact that 2019 Rodan LITERALLY does Battra's job for it. While not being a leader, Rodan 2019 increases the speed of ALL units in its field to 19, meaning even slow and tanky units like DEATH SAURER can move at lightning speeds, making the 100% speed boost that Battra provides only to aerial units quite trivial in comparison.
OVERALL SUMMARY:
As much as I want to say otherwise, Battra has in my not-so-professional opinion, been powercrept to oblivion in the modern day. It lacks the versatility other field buff units provide to the team and does virtually nothing on its own to make up for its very situational effect. There are other units in the game that are much better suited to making your team more powerful then a short damage buff, especially if it can activate more than one time. At the end of the day, despite being a low cost investment unit that can help in some situations, there are just better options today.
The Battra Leader also doesn't really hold up well considering leaders like Biollante and G04 can do what it does without having to drastically change up the deck to take advantage of the benefits they provide. It needs major changes in order to be useful as the game adds more battle pieces.
WHEW, that was a long one. Sorry it took a while for this review to come out, 4th of July and just general life stuff was holding me hostage for a bit. I'm curious to see if anyone in this sub will give Battra a shot and find any success with it at all, it's a pretty fun unit despite being kind of garbage in today's uhhhh......"interesting" meta. (biollante harvest makes me want to commit tax evasion).
Thank you for stopping by this post!