Revision 1

The Asterion is the Arandi Empire heavy hitter at Tier 1, a vehicle produced from the flying Penumbra. Like every mercenary unit it is hired into a main faction army rather than played on its own, so it turns up beside Protectorate, Grell, Legion or Xol units rather than in a roster of its own. Its one trick is written into its weapon: the Phantom Sphere travels slowly and passes straight through enemies, damaging everything it touches on the way, which makes it a unit that wants a target it can shoot down the length of.

Figures below describe the September 2026 Early Access build, the one carrying the identifier ZS.c36778, and they move with the weekly patch cadence. Roughly half the versus roster had a stat touched in the fortnight before that build was captured, so treat every number here as dated rather than permanent.

Stat Block

Weapons

The projectile is slow and does not stop at the first thing it hits. Against a line of units walking toward you, one Phantom Sphere is 60 damage to each body it passes through, so the weapon scales with how badly the enemy is clumped rather than with the health of any one target.

Abilities

The build publishes no activated or passive ability for the Asterion beyond its attack. The pass through behaviour is a property of the Phantom Sphere projectile rather than a separate ability entry.

Upgrades

No upgrades are published for the Asterion in this build. The Arandi Empire talent line at faction levels 2, 4 and 6 affects the group as a whole rather than this unit specifically.

Conversion Costs

The Asterion is eligible for all three conversions, at 14.0625 power each. Infuse is the Grell mechanic and permanently raises health, damage and regeneration. Reanimate is the Legion mechanic and makes the unit faster while it lives, then stands it back up slower when it dies. Replicate is the Xol mechanic and copies the unit outright. All three are paid from the top bar power pool described on Resources and Economy.

At 14.0625 this is one of the more expensive mercenary conversions, which follows from the Asterion being a 300 health body with an armour value rather than a cheap squad unit.

Role

Three seconds between shots is a long cycle, and it is the number that decides how the Asterion is used. Twenty damage per second on its own is unremarkable for a four supply unit. The pass through makes the real number depend on positioning: two bodies in the line doubles it, three triples it. An Asterion parked behind a front line, firing into an advancing enemy at range 13, is doing far more than its printed damage per second suggests. The same Asterion chasing a single fast unit around open ground is doing very little.

Heavy armour with an armour value of 1 is a defensive profile aimed at chip damage. The armour value is small, but it applies to every hit, so a swarm of one and two damage attacks loses proportionally more to it than a single heavy strike does. Move speed 500 is slow, matching the Ethermancer and the Chronowarper, so an Asterion that walks forward alone does not walk back.

Counters

Strong Against

Weak To

Balance History

• August 19, 2026: included in the animation optimisation pass alongside more than twenty other units and structures. No stat effect.

• Between the late August and September 2026 builds the Asterion changed from a batch of two at 250 hexite and 250 flux to a single unit at 125 hexite and 125 flux. The per unit price is identical either way, so this is a change to how the unit is ordered rather than to what it costs.

Notes

• The roster record for this unit is COMPLETE. Every core field is published.

• The batch to single order change above does not appear in any studio patch note. It is visible in the build data only, which is why it is phrased here as a build observation rather than as an announced change.

• A studio post from March 2024, well before Early Access, described an Arandi Horned Mech whose auto attack was a slow projectile continuing in a line and damaging every unit it passed through. That is the Asterion behaviour exactly, and a July 2026 balance line setting Horned Mech move speed to 500 matches the Asterion current speed. No separate Horned Mech exists in the versus roster, so the two names appear to describe one unit at different points in development.

• Per unit numbers are drawn from a community maintained entity catalogue that the studio links from each of its own faction pages. It is the only place the full stat block is published, and it is not a studio document, so the figures are best read as careful community documentation of a build rather than as an official specification. Dated balance notes, by contrast, come straight from the studio patch posts.

• For the wider roster this unit joins, see Units. For the group it is hired from, see Arandi Empire.