Melona Guide

Melona: The Protean Assassin

 * BP: 7
 * Height: 4
 * Attacks: 1

Melona is one of the more interesting and dynamic books from the first 'Queens Blade' series of books, giving her livid complexity and a steep learning curve to learn to get past. Yet with all of that in mind, she's one of the few 'Queens Blade' book in turn who is able to increase her heath far and beyond her starting pool, more less at a very rapid pace, making her a massive threat if not shut down in her early stages.

Strategy


Melona by default has an PAINFULLY small BP, to a degree where one of her score pages can directly KO her if landed on turn 1! Yet she has an interesting gimmick that she has no upper cap on how much she can heal for. As such it's very obvious that as a Melona player, your first tactic starting off should be trying to give yourself a far greater health pool then your opponent, before starting to apply pressure. Thankfully, her motions sync very well with this strategy, as both her long AND close range dodges will give her BP recovery ( +2, and +1 respectively ), along with ducking ( +2 ),  Jumping away ( +1 for both ranges ), and her special action 'Gather Up' ( an impressive +4! ).



Melona's able to heal, and heal a LOT in a very short amount of time, to a degree where we might have over double our starting BP in a short period of time! Yet this is where the complexity of Melona comes in, with many of her attacks using BP in turn. For the cost of 1 BP, her "Shield Block" option will start to increase the distance between you and your foe's damage output, reducing their weapon MOD's by 1. Then Melona's 'Squirt Slime' attack, while reducing you by 2 BP, ensures she's always dealing damage, even when blocked! These tools allow her to weaken far more hard hitting books with +3 and +4 MOD's to ensure she can't be OHKO'ed and lower the chance of taking a critical ( Claudette being the best example ), while also giving her tools vs. Books that have very low scoring pages ( Mirim...Just....Mirim... ).



Past her gimmick of BP gain and loss though, Melona's toolset is as robust as it gets. Having a full set of 'Swings', 'Thrusts' and 'Fakes' ( her Sword Swings ), she's able to play a very solid 'mix up' game, yet due towards how they disable the other, leaves an opening to let the opponent 'Jump Away' due to lack of Thrusts ( Thrust disables Swing, with Fakes and Swings disabling Thrusts. ). In cases like this though, her 'Cast Slime: Throw Object' lets her catch people off guard, in return of BP loss. Melona's 'Shield and Weapon' attacks give her more 'safe' options to get in vs highly aggressive attackers, while her Dragon Kick gives her one of the most strongest attacks in the game ( at an impressive +5 at that! ). She also is able to use her Hammer skill to break shields and weapons on those who have such, allowing her to fight almost anyone regardless of their own tools.

Vs. Melona


It would be right to fear a skilled Melona, given her ablity to just heal and heal, more less having options for almost everything in the game, but she's in no way directly overpowered in turn. Melona suffers from very high SCORE pages, leaving a single hit hurting for a WHILE, along with her own BP spending dropping her almost as fast as she recovers! Along with that, Melona struggles the worse vs Spellcasters who deal 'direct damage', as she has no options to mitigate nor reduce their attacks, only hoping to overheal and hope for the best. Due towards her gimmick, she's also left using more 'Jump' options then directly attacking, a good read on what she plans to do next will let you shut her down without much trouble. Lastly, as a small insult, dislodging her weapon will reduce her BP by 1, though will not disable her in any fashion.

Overall Judgement


Out of the Queens Blade books, Melona is quite outside of the normal meta. Having tools for anything she might fight ( Shields, parrying, and heavy hitters ), along with a gimmick with no upper limit, she's one of the strongest options to exist. She takes a skilled hand at playing though, given her starting BP leaves her wide open for 1 or 2 turn KO's, more less her own BP being used in many of her attacks. Those who become very skilled at the flow of Queens Blade battling will find her an utterly enjoyable experience able to adapt as necessary towards what she's fighting. Everyone else though might find her complexity too much to take in, and very unweildly in turn.
 * Skill Level: Advanced/Expert
 * Rank: A