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Jess is a Green Earth CO with slight boosts to land vehicles, but penalties for every other unit type.

Strategy[]

An unconditional attack boost is generally a very strong bonus in Advance Wars; for the purposes of land vehicles its effect is most strongly felt with Tanks, and indeed Jess does enjoy being able to hit crucial 2HKO thresholds in Tank mirrors on properties.

Unfortunately, this reasonable upside is counteracted by her downsides to all other unit types, and Jess is significantly hindered by her -10% attack penalty to Infantry. This penalty is so impactful in part because it affects her ability to efficiently defeat Infantry walls and remove blocking footsoldiers from key defensive tiles, as this reduced firepower results in missing 2HKOs in Infantry mirrors even with a Comm Tower boost. This often forces Jess to either commit her vehicles to clearing out footsoldiers or 3 or more units to kill 1 enemy unit, both of which are wasteful and limits her opportunities to use her otherwise strong vehicles and CO powers.

Jess is therefore most suitable for tank rushes and all-out attacks with direct units. In this respect, she is similar in a few ways to Max, who also strongly prefers open maps with heavy emphasis on tank warfare. Unlike Max, however, Jess' Artillery and Rockets do not suffer any penalty to their range and thus are actually usable, giving her a small edge during indirect standoffs. Although her Infantry units have reduced offense, their defense is normal, meaning they are still viable as meatshields for indirects and other units.

Air units can be deceptively useful on Jess, even with 10% reduced attack; B-Copters are still able to 2HKO other B. Copters due to the higher base damages involved in this matchup and can still contribute solid damage to most vehicles, and will usually force opponents to build Anti-Airs, rendering their land force more vulnerable to Tanks. Nevertheless, their inability to take advantage of her CO powers means they should not be relied upon to assist with major pushes.

Jess' CO powers are likely the strongest part of her kit, and careful use of them will be the backbone of winning many matchups with her. The scaling on her abilities means she can use both her CO power and Super CO power equally viably depending on her needs; even without using them, the threat of their use can force opponents into unfavourable positions in an attempt to play around a major push with them. The resupply portion of her powers also applies to all units, not just her vehicles - although this is of minor benefit most of the time, it can make Jess uniquely suited to utilizing stealthy units like Subs and Stealths effectively (despite the attack reduction) due to the refuelling effect of her powers giving them surprisingly good longevity out in the field.


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