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Arandi Phoenix Guard
September 11, 2026 at 10:25 PM
Initial version (2026-09-11)
The Phoenix Guard is the cheapest thing the Arandi Empire fields, a Tier 1 infantry unit that arrives two at a time for two supply each. Mercenary units are hired into a main faction army rather than played on their own, and the Phoenix Guard is the one Arandi unit that behaves like ordinary line infantry: fast, disposable, and able to shoot both ground and air. Its attacks slow what they hit, which is what separates it from a generic cheap shooter.
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 | Value |
|---|---|
Cost | 225 hexite and 50 flux for a batch of two, which is 112.5 hexite and 25 flux each |
Health | 160 |
Shields | 0 |
Armor | 0 |
Armor type | Medium |
Status resist | None published |
Move speed | 600 |
Vision | 18 |
Supply | 2 per unit |
Build time | None. Mercenary units are hired, not built. |
Tier | 1 |
Domain | Ground unit |
Infuse cost | 7.1875 |
Reanimate cost | 7.1875 |
Replicate cost | 7.1875 |
Built by | Not published for this unit. See the notes below. |
Weapon | Damage | DPS | Range | Cooldown | Targets | Bonuses |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Void Blaster | 7 | 18 | 10 | 0.4s | Ground and air | None published. The weapon deals a flat 7 against every armour type. |
No activated ability is published. The slow that the Phoenix Guard applies is a property of the Void Blaster rather than a separate ability entry, and the build does not publish a magnitude or duration for it.
No upgrades are published for the Phoenix Guard in this build.
The Phoenix Guard is eligible for Infuse, Reanimate and Replicate at 7.1875 power each, which is cheap by mercenary standards and reflects the low per unit price. All three are paid from the top bar power pool covered on Resources and Economy. Infusing a Phoenix Guard takes it from 160 health to roughly 232, which is the difference between folding instantly to focused fire and surviving long enough to matter.
Eighteen damage per second per unit, two units per order, four supply for the pair. That is competitive output for the price, and the 0.4 second cycle means the damage arrives continuously rather than in lumps. Against a target with a real armour value the flat subtraction bites hard: seven damage a hit against three armour becomes four, a forty three percent loss, which is the standard weakness of every fast weak weapon in the game.
The slow is the part that earns the supply. A cheap unit that makes enemies move and shoot more slowly is doing work for the rest of the army, which fits how the Arandi Empire is built: their units shape a fight rather than win it outright. Move speed 600 and vision 18 are both above average, so Phoenix Guards also make serviceable scouts and can disengage from most ground units.
Medium armour is the awkward part of the profile. Since the balance pass of August 11, 2026, Medium is the armour type that most anti harvester bonuses were retuned onto, so a Phoenix Guard walks into a lot of weapons that happen to carry a bonus against it.
Target | Why |
|---|---|
Air units | Void Blaster hits both domains, which is unusual on a Tier 1 unit this cheap. |
Unarmoured light bodies | Flat seven damage every 0.4 seconds loses nothing to a zero armour value. |
Anything you want slowed | The attack slow applies for free on every shot, which is worth more than the damage in a large engagement. |
Threat | Why |
|---|---|
High armour values | Seven damage a hit is exactly the profile that a flat armour subtraction hurts most. |
Splash damage | 160 health, no shields and an order that arrives in pairs makes Phoenix Guards easy to clear in groups. |
Weapons with a Medium armour bonus | Medium is a heavily targeted armour type since the August 11, 2026 rework. |
September 1, 2026: batch cost reduced from 250 hexite and 50 flux to 225 hexite and 50 flux. The conversion costs fell from 7.8125 to 7.1875 as a consequence.
Between late August and September 2026 the published unit description was rewritten from a line about hallucinations spawning on a killed target to the current line about a mobile ranged unit whose attacks slow. The hallucination behaviour belongs to the Ethermancer in this build.
The roster record for this unit is PARTIAL. The missing field is the production source: unlike the Asterion, Ethermancer and Chronowarper, the Phoenix Guard is not listed as created by the Penumbra, and no other production structure is published for it. Status resist is also absent, which is normal for a unit without the status resist tag.
A studio post from March 2024, during the alpha period, described the Phoenix Guard as elite Arandi infantry that could fly. In the current build its domain is a ground unit. Treat the flying description as an alpha era statement that the shipped unit does not match.
The hallucination behaviour that older descriptions attached to this unit belongs to the Ethermancer in this build, where friendly units dying nearby leave hallucinations behind.
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.
