Colony, a new Hunter-based leader which is the commander of your entire army in Halo Wars 2, will be available as DLC this month.
From the Mgalekgolo race, better known as Hunters, Colony provides this race with a leading figure in the Halo saga. Typically being known for their tumultuous relationship with the Covenant, who sought to take advantage of their strength and bully them around using their superior technology, Hunters rarely played the role as the ultimate villain in Halo.
With units and abilities that improve on teamwork, rather than an individual character who steals the show, Hunters now have a more menacing presence in Halo Wars 2.
Leader Powers
Several abilities of the new leader were explained in the announcement video for Colony’s leader powers. Living Barrier enables players to place armored barriers in certain sections of the map, allowing them to dictate the direction of their opponent’s movements in battle.
Hunters Brand to activates a deadly beam from the sky to wreck havoc amongst their opponents also sparked some interest. The beam cools down quickly, giving the impression that this power won’t be as damaging as other beams in the game—but due to its swift cool down, players would be able to use it more often.
Finally, Vehicle Symbiance enhance the efficiency of targeted vehicles by improving every attribute of the targeted vehicle such as damage and health. This could have a severe impact on your army by significantly upgrading select vehicles. This is very similar to what Spartans can to do United Nations Space Command, “UNSC” vehicles when given the ability to pilot them.
Units
The Hunter Captain, the heavily armored hero character for Colony, features a unique ability to taunt its opponents, forcing them to attack the Hunter Captain instead of your other units. This makes the Hunter Captain a great distracting unit.
Scitterers, a small unit for Colony that carries a turret, may not appear as much of a threat at first glance, but these creatures can attach on other units. Having a maximum capacity of three Scitterers per unit, with the maximum capacity decreasing as the unit increases, they can assist anyone in killing the opponent. That makes them a very useful sidekick to any of the more significant units.
Golias is a heavily enlarged and armored Hunter Unit that acts as a tank unit in the game. They are designed to wreck havoc upon the enemy, inflicting a significant amount of damage no matter how many of them you have in battle.
How Colony does compared to other Leaders in Halo Wars 2 remains to be seen. Forcing players to use a more supportive style when commanding as Colony, this leader may formulate a unique style that could possibly be more appealing to players.
