Plume Poofer

The Plume Poofer is the Profane province’s dedicated anti-air — a bulbous tower that coughs plumes of black smoke into the sky. It answers the Pious Plasma Pulse Projector, and the contrast is pure province character: the Plasma coil snipes single aircraft with hard, precise bolts; the Poofer fills a volume of sky with filth and lets the filth do the arguing.

Every plume is three problems at once for whatever flies into it:

• The burst — 22 damage to the struck target.
• The splash — the plume blooms over a square around the point of impact, so tight formations share every cough.
• The choke — a lingering poison that keeps scratching at the lungs (3 damage per second for 3 seconds) after the smoke thins.

Like all dedicated anti-air, it cannot aim at the ground — infantry stroll past it unbothered — and its slightly shorter reach than the Plasma coil is the price of the splash.

Strategy

The Poofer is the answer to air power that arrives in groups. A Pelican convoy, a wing of Planes, a Parrot flock — anything that flies in formation eats the burst, shares the splash, and carries the choke home, which makes massed air runs against a Poofer grid grimly expensive. Against a single huge flier it is merely adequate: one plume at a time, no bonus for the splash, and the target may simply out-health the smoke — back it with your Punishers’ missile racks when a lone monster owns the sky. Place Poofers where enemy air wants to be: over your worker lines, your Priory, your Palace approaches. And as with every anti-air tower, never let it stand alone on a ground route; to a Piercer it is just a large, expensive balloon.