A proud veteran of New Folsom Prison, Sam found himself incarcerated two more times before earning the distinction of becoming a reaper. After mastering the suit, he quickly defected and became one of the most notorious fringe world mercs. He was a close friend of Tychus Findlay.
Crooked Sam appears as the reaper outlaw Tychus can hire from Joeyray's Bar. He excels against high health targets, and can place demolition charges on enemies that do massive damage after a short time. Unlike other reapers Sam can attack both ground and air units.
Sam fills the niche of heavy single target damage. In most regular compositions, this role can be taken by Tychus with his Kel-Morian Ripper Rounds, which can usually lock down lesser hybrid. But Sam comes into his own against larger hybrid and large HP objectives such as those on Oblivion Express or Void Launch, and for miniboss bonus objectives. The downside however is he is fragile without his Procyon Shade Suit, so without proper micromanagement he may be focused down. With his Enhanced Hostilities Kit, Sam can toss out multiple charges in quick succession, which is very strong against multi-segmented trains or maps with a number of heroic units.
Sam also fills his niche in another way: his Demolition Charge may be best used for its stun effect after the Restraint Matrix has been unlocked, useful against ultra-high-value targets (for example, enemy Heroic units, either in Mutations or the Leviathans on Void Launch). The burst damage itself is outstripped by Tychus, but a welcome addition to larger value targets in addition to the stun. That said, this burst of damage is still overwhelming and can effortlessly one-shot almost any target while stunning even Heroic units.
Abilities[]
Demolition Charge
Marks a target unit, dealing 500 damage after 5 seconds. Can store up to 3 charges.
Technical Recruiter: Reduces the Demolition Charge cooldown by 35%.
Prevents Crooked Sam from taking any damage and increases his movement speed by 80% for 5 seconds after being attacked. Cannot occur more than once every 15 seconds.
Technical Recruiter: Reduces the Procyon Shade Suit cooldown by 35%.
Lone Wolf: Increases the Procyon Shade Suit cost by 25%.
Crooked Sam was added as an Outlaw for Tychus to compensate for an issue in early testing, where it was discovered that Tychus struggled against single high health units due to the lack of scaling in his army. Crooked Sam and his high damage demolition charge ability was added in order to fill that weakness.[2]
Trivia[]
The skin and portrait for Crooked Sam resembles the Umojan reaper.
