Nell is an Orange Star CO, whose lucky nature allows her to occasionally do significantly more damage on any given attack than expected.
Strategy[]
Nell's day-to-day makes all units stronger, and corresponds roughly to a 20% firepower boost in most even unit matchups, such as Tank mirrors. In uneven unit matchups, however, the effect is amplified dramatically - it is especially noteworthy in match-ups in which a unit would normally deal little damage, as luck damage is simply added to the damage output independent of base damage. This is in contrast to attack boosts, such as those from Comm Towers, which scale with base damage. This effect is magnified again with Nell's CO Power or Super CO Power, allowing even her Infantry to severely damage any unit it can attack. For example, while a 10 HP Infantry would normally deal 1% damage to an opposing Mega Tank with no defense/terrain boosts (and up to 10% total with standard Luck), Nell's Infantry will deal a random amount of damage between 1% and 100% when using her Super Power. In contrast, 10 Comm. Towers, providing a 100% attack boost, would double the base damage, resulting in a 2% damage output (and up to 11% total with standard luck).
With this in mind, Nell benefits the most when she can field large numbers of disposable units, such as Infantry, to inflict highly cost-efficient damage to strong targets that would otherwise require heavier counters. Even in fair matchups, however, her day-to-day is still very strong and allows her to fight effectively in contested areas against most COs, while also letting her reliably finish off weakened units to gain a positional advantage. Relying too much on luck does come at the cost of unit count overall as her weaker units are still liable to taking heavy damage on counterattacks - luck rolls should be taken opportunistically rather than routinely.
Playing Against[]
While her powers are based around random effects, the usual counterplay to RNG in many competitive games can be used to fight against Nell and mitigate the impact of her high luck, either by reducing the number of rolls she can take or the quality of the rolls she does get. In addition, due to the way damage is calculated, Luck will decrease proportionally with the HP of the unit, as well as with increasing enemy unit defense. Therefore, Nell's powers can be mitigated with heavy terrain and her units will lose value quickly as they become damaged.
Unit count is even more important against her than against most COs to reduce the number of potential luck highrolls - COs that are good at producing large numbers of them or keeping units alive, such as Sensei, Hachi and Andy can fare well against her as a result. Conversely, reducing Nell's unit count becomes less important than ensuring her existing units are wounded, as this greatly restricts the potential luck highroll they can obtain.
Nell also benefits strongly from lopsided unit matchups, such as Infantry vs Md. Tanks - consequently, it is inadvisable for any CO to stack too many expensive units in an army against her, as they become extremely cost inefficient against even her cheapest units with a good luck roll. Plane-type aerial units are an exception and are generally preferable to expensive ground units overall, as there are no cheap air units capable of attacking planes for Nell to take advantage of.
| COs of Advance Wars By Web | ||||
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 Orange Star
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 Blue Moon
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 Green Earth
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 Yellow Comet
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 Black Hole
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