Guard

Guard

Regular

Marines

Strong, fast, and efficient. But great strength comes at a great cost.

Main Stats

Type

Damager

Rarity

Common

Health

700

Melee Damage

270

Crit. Chance

30%

Crit. Damage

10%

Speed

14

Prepare Time

15

Courage Cost

30

Behavior Stats

Agility

60

Aggression

90

Detection Range

80

Agility Penalty

50%

Aggression Penalty

50%

Morale Stats

Charisma

350

Valor

400

Charisma Radius

80

Abilities

Perks

Knockback Strength

15

Special Ability

Deal 20% more damage on first strike to each enemy

Resistances

Bullet

90%

Knockback

60%

Unlock Requirements

Price

7,000

Player Level

9

GuardScout

Guard is a prison guard specializing in close-range prolonged combat. He is armed with a tactical short ax and dressed in a khaki long sleeve prison guard uniform with a black tie, black armored vest with shoulder pads, black pants, and a black prison guard's helmet.

Scout is Guard's first exclusive skin. He is armed with a Tomahawk and wears a black combat helmet, a face shield, an urban camo long-sleeve shirt with blue insignias, bulky black armored vest with shoulder pads, a black backpack, a belt with multiple utility packs, and urban camo pants.

He can be unlocked for 7,000 coins after reaching bus level 9.

Overview

Guard is a Damager. His stats are above average for his class, and he does slow swings, together with moderately swifter critical kicks.

Guard has bullet resistance, along with slight resistance to knockback, which he can cause himself on critical hits. Some time after dying, he turns into an Undead.

Guard has two animations for regular swings – an upper and a side swing – and he alternates between them randomly. There's no difference in attack speed between those animations.

Special Ability

Guard's special ability makes him deal x1.2 more damage on his first strike against each individual enemy.

A very straightforward ablity, it provides an obvious boon by making Guard perform slightly better on the offense. However, it doesn't address any of his actual downsides, making it a good investment only if you regularly use Guard in any of his teams.

Gameplay

Main Campaign

Stat-wise, Guard can be considered to be one of the strongest melee units in the game as he has very good damage, decent health, bullet resistance, and fast movement speed. Additionally, he knocks enemies back on critical hits, which comes out slightly quicker than his normal attacks. In practice though, he suffers from slow attack speed which hinders his potential, and bullet resistance is not very useful for most missions, especially considering that Guard is bound to be unlocked at a point where marauders are no longer a big threat, especially with Grenadier being available. It may be a better idea to keep using Builder instead of Guard in missions where they are both relevant, as the former costs less courage and has faster crits. In late game, Guard doesn’t seems to be any better than other damagers while facing high damage, high health and insta-kill enemies, despite his faster than average speed and full aggro with special ability unlocked. His high damage is even less useful considering Rogue is an option, a unit which has much less cost and a substantially higher damage more resistances and a stun, making Guard effectively outclassed, although Rogue is unlocked much later during the endgame.

Skirmish

In League, Guard is an alright pick thanks to his high health, bullet resistance, high damage, and fast movement speed. While his movement speed allows him to reach enemy units faster, it could also lead him to a quick death, such as dying from Mechanic's special blow, Carol's lightning-fast attack or Rogue’s stun attack. Against quicker enemy melee units, his slow attack speed usually means he will take the first hit, putting him in a less favorable position as he loses a lot of health that could have gone to absorbing enemy fire instead. It doesn't help that his special ability doesn't help to solve this issue entirely, only helping marginally if a fight lasts a bit longer than normal. Not to mention that with the abundance of Tactical sets, Guard’s health pool and speed evaporates just as fast as other damagers such as Turbo, who used to be compared with him most of the time. When compared to Rogue with his special ability unlocked, Guard is essentially less preferable in almost every aspect against him in both main game and Skirmish due to having higher cost, lower damage, impractical and inefficient team synergy (see below), and a negligible difference in health. Should the player have access to Rogue, it is heavily advised to replace Guard with him.

Item Sets

Among all damagers, Guard is one of the few that's able to get a great use out of both Gentleman and Surgery. Interestingly enough, it's valid for him to use a +% crit. chance book with both of these sets, since he has relatively high health. However, if you want to properly capitalize on his knockback then the best option becomes Gambling, since it allows him to land kicks non-stop, which are also faster than his regular attacks.

Like most damagers, Guard gets most use out of prep. time watches, with agility bonuses acquired as secondary buffs. He can receive a significant boost from percentage bonuses, but only when he's close to being maxed out. At low-to-mid levels, flat buffs are more preferable. Cost reduction is important to make Guard easier to use, with very high decreases being invaluable if you are planning to run him in any of his teams.

Skins and Synergies

Guard, along with his respective skins, is a part of several teams: Jailers and Marines.

Name	Guard	Scout
Skin
Unlock Req.	–	300 / 5000
Team	Jailers	Marines

Right now, Guard stands at a weird spot in the Jailers synergy. On one hand, he isn't the best option for activating the 2/2 power, since it's oriented towards slower missions during which damagers aren't very helpful. On another, he is one of the few units that actually gets something out of the 3/3 synergy. When trying to turn Guard into a bulkier Jailer, it's recommended to bring his 15-courage colleague anyway, with either Gunslinger or Sniper Polina tagging along.

Guard's situation is less positive in Marines. In general, his inadequacies end up hurting the formations he is put in, as he doesn't offer anything truly useful for the team, at least nothing that can't be covered by Rodriguez, or compensated for through Nancy's support. Not helping the matters, he is only affected by the 5/5 synergy, which maxes out his aggression—a stat that isn't exactly low on Guard in the first place.

Trivia

• Before update 3.3.2, Guard's special ability used to grant him 45 shield points. Interestingly, the advertised amount was 15. Which of these values was an erroneous one is unknown.
• before update 4.1.0, Guard's special ability set his aggression to 100, this acted identical to the Fitness item set.
• Guard's Scout skin is inspired by u/Nervous_Active_7430's post.
• Guard and Builder have alternating melee animations on their unit pages.

Gallery

• 

  Artwork of Scout about to be attacked by 2 Escapees and an infected Maria.