Banshee
Banshee is ready to lend her skills to both the Shades and Dominion, as both a Spirit and Faerie.
“Cover your ears my Queen, but feel free to watch.”
‘Exsanguinating Claws’
Within these troupes, she offers different playstyles and options: bringing support options to the Faeries and a glass cannon-style damage dealer to the Spirits. In terms of Stats for her, she'll have very familiar Stats for Faerie players: 6 Wds, 5 energy, -2 Evade, and a good Melee and Arcane of 4. Similarly, she also has 'Weakling' but unlike a lot of her kin, she has 'Exsanguinating Claws', granting her a damage bonus which essentially offsets 'Weakling' when involved in a melee. This can be improved even further by her signature, ‘Lacerate’, which essentially deals 1 more Wd too... just a little bit delayed. This is due to her signature’s curse effect: Bleed!
Bleeding from ‘Lacerate’
Similar to other Shade Spirits, like Marley's 'Horror' and Snag's 'Deadwood Curse', Banshee enjoys putting conditions on her enemies and just waiting a little time for the Wds to occur. Of all of them, Bleed might be the most direct and to the point so far. At the end of the turn, suffer 1 Wd, then lose Bleed. Not too bad, unless Banshee were to say... get a Critical on her signature and pile on multiple stacks of bleeding in just one attack. Then she could make another attack and do the same again, and again, and again! Unlike a lot of 'Curse' effects this also doesn't end when the caster is slain, so once a character starts bleeding, they'll remain bleeding until the end of the turn.
‘Leech’
This last part is particularly important to how she plays alongside the Shades with her ability 'Leech'. During the discard step, when characters are suffering Wds from the various 'Curse' effects, she heals based on how many wounds are suffered. If, for example, she is left with only a single wound remaining at the end of the turn and a nearby enemy Gotchgut is slain by multiple 'Curses' and loses his last 5 Wds, then Banshee restores 5 Wds and is back to full health!
“Back you come! We need you a bit longer…”
More deviously perhaps is how this interacts with a favourite ability of the Shades, 'Reanimate'. When Banshee returns from the Deadlands she can jog towards an enemy she previously stacked a couple of Bleeds on, or another similarly 'Cursed' enemy. Then the turn ends, someone nearby suffers Wds in the discard step, and now she's potentially healed to full again and ready to go. Within Shades this means she can be a nice glass cannon type character. Run in, cause a bunch of damage, die, get reanimated near a 'Cursed' character that will heal her to full, rinse and repeat!
‘Ghastly Scream’ and ‘Ear Splitting Screech’
But what if you're using Banshee in a troupe which is more Faerie than Shade-y, and what are those two arcane abilities? Well firstly, you're less likely to want to rush her into a position where she'll be easily slain as you can't reanimate her as easily in Dominion. Therefore her two arcane abilities will be much more useful. 'Ghastly Scream' is a very powerful, but very expensive ability. For 4 energy, Banshee can make someone drop their stone, then shunt them back X", making it awkward for them to collect said stone again. This is excellent near the end of the game, but Banshee will need to be kept healthy as suffering only 2 Wds knocks her down to generating 3 energy a turn.
Alternatively, she can scream in an ear-splitting fashion, causing a few Wds and giving the target 'Bleed'. For Faeries, this is a lot safer than simply rushing her in and causing ‘Bleed’ via the signature. Here she can be a little safer, letting a friendly Faerie chuck her some bonus energy, scream to inflict 'Bleed', then rely on your signature damage reduction to keep Banshee healthy.
‘Weeping Miasma’
“Oooh, this is going to be fuuuuun!”
But there is another use for 'Bleed' in Faeries. Whilst in Shades it's used for healing, in Faeries it's used for aggression. With 'Weeping Miasma' Faeries treat enemies with 'Bleed' as having +1 higher Evade Stat. Within Banshee's box, a Faerie who will adore this is Dentia, now dealing +1 damage and reducing damage suffered by -1 due to the increasing Evade Stat.
More conventionally though, Faeries will just use this increased Evade Stat to blast them better with arcane attacks! So Dentia, Foxglove, Herbert and many more will love targeting characters with 'Bleed'. Banshee therefore has the opportunity in Faeries to play more of a support role, applying 'Bleed' to enemies to let Faeries better attack them. The Wds and damage will build up over time leaving an enemy troupe wounded and struggling by the end of the game where she can now swoop in and 'Ghastly Scream' to force them to drop Moonstones at the final second too!
