Black Disciple

Black Disciple is an infantry upgrade available exclusively to the Black Hand subfaction of Nod.

Background
As the right hand of Marcion, the Black Hand are truly feared even within the ranks of Marcion’s forces. A single Black Hand squad member is often added to many infantry squads to keep order and retain the message of the Word. The Black Disciple adds additional melee presence with his powerful flamethrower and increases total hit points for infantry squads.

In-game
The Black Disciple upgrade can be purchased at the Black Hand's Secret Shrine for 1000 credits. This is a good investment of resources even in the early game as it significantly bolsters the durability, anti-infantry, and anti-structure capabilities of the Black Hand's most basic infantry squads, and also allows them the ability to clear out buildings by themselves. In addition, it offers some extra firepower against enemy vehicles, particularly if the more expensive Purifying Flame upgrade is in effect.

The Black Disciples upgrade effectively makes the Black Hand's infantry among the best in the entire war. The already effective Confessor Cabals are almost completely unmatched by the infantry of other factions, and the normally vulnerable Militant Rocket Squads are now capable of easily burning down and surviving encounters against enemy infantry—even specialized anti-infantry squads such as GDI grenadiers or Scrin buzzers are at grave risk. To add to this, both squads essentially gain twice as much resilience due to the massive health pool of the Black Disciple, allowing the squads to stand up against even anti-infantry turrets such as Watchtowers or Shredder Turrets.

They are affected by the purifying flame upgrade—bestowing even more raw power.

Usage
A strong Black Hand tactic is to rush at the beginning with Black Disciple-upgraded rocket squads and Confessor Cabals, gaining extra resources by selling all buildings except the Hands of Nod. The attack is almost impossible to deal with if not scouted since such a large force of formidable infantry will overwhelm everything in their path. One of the only possible ways of countering this, though it is still difficult to accomplish, is to get crush-capable vehicles out early and hope they will be able to run over enough infantry that they can keep them away with the support of your base defenses. However, every squad is a threat to a base defense building as every single one will have good anti-structure ability with their Black Hand squad member.

A Black Disciple trooper is identical in health and attack power to a regular Black Hand soldier—ironically rendering standard Black Hand squads little more than meatshields, since both Confessor Cabal Squads and Rocket Militias can accomplish everything a squad of Black Hand troopers can do whilst being cheaper and able to do more damage for their cost.

Changelog

 * Kane's Wrath patch 1.01: cost/research time increased by 33%/50%
 * Kane's Wrath patch 1.02: cost/research time reduced to $1000/30 sec