Posted on March 26, 2017 by Scott

Plants vs Zombies Heroes Super Brainz Deck – Giftymas!

Since I’ve reached Ultimate League awhile ago, I want to share my Super Brainz deck that got me there – Giftymas.

The Deck

4x Headstone Carver
4x Fire Rooster
4x Lurch for Lunch
4x Regifting Zombie
4x Backyard Bounce
4x Brain Vendor
4x Electrician
4x Line Dancing Zombie
4x Pogo Bouncer
4x Mixed-Up Gravedigger

Before I get started, I want to give a big shout-out to TryHard who came up with the deck I based this one off of found here. I knew that Regifting Zombie had a lot of potential, but was struggling to put it work, and TryHard figured it out first. You should go read that guide, because it covers a lot of the basics in excellent ways and there’s no sense in re-inventing the wheel here. Instead, I’m going to talk about my changes, both in playstyle and in cards.

A flaw I found in the original deck is that it doesn’t commit well to a strategy, and instead straddles the line awkwardly between aggro and tempo. This deck runs out of gas too easily to be an effective tempo deck. Another issue I ran into is that while the max hand-size gimmick was great at lower levels, once I crossed 40ish it stopped working basically ever. It also got run over hard by mushroom decks and struggled with tempo decks (especially Grass Knuckles). At the time, however, TryHard was running 4x Headstone Carver, which they have since dropped for 4x Fire Rooster. I kept both cards.

I shifted the deck towards an aggro-mindset and found my win-rate and reliability raise dramatically. This came from both how I was playing the deck and card selection. Your ideal turn-order is going to go something like this:

Headstone Carver
Regifting Zombie (Fire Rooster if they play a 1-health plant on Turn 1)
Electrician (Preferable that you still have one of your 3 strength zombies alive for the bonus attack)
Pogo Zombie (Pogo zombie MUST live, and ideally you’ve kept 1 other zombie alive)
Brain Vendor -> Mixed-Up Gravedigger -> Backyard Bounce / Lurch for Lunch

You are playing an aggro deck, and should push to have a hand as close to the above as possible. If you’re playing against an opponent that runs mushrooms, cycle for a Fire Rooster (preferable) or a Line Dancing Zombie. When playing against Rose, replace the Headstone Carver (but play it if you get it), and focus instead on making sure that your T4 and T5 plays are as close to perfect as possible. If your hand is bad, keep Regifting Zombies in the hope that you draw better cards.

Your Personal Charge

Make sure your Pogo Bouncers survive. Getting a second use out of them from the Mixed-Up Gravedigger is a huge swing in the game. They are the best zombie to re-activate with the Gravedigger. Do it every time you can.

A lot of your games will end on turn 5 or 6, thanks to the above rush being incredibly difficult to answer. Bouncing a plant on turn 4 & 5 and spending 8 Brains on turn 5 is such a huge boost that most other decks won’t be able to recover, let alone stabilize. If your opponent is still somehow in the game, you have exceptional finishing power. Look to use some combination of Strikethrough (Line Dancing Zombie), bonus attacks (Lurch for Lunch and Electrician), and bounce (Pogo Zombie and Backyard Bounce).

Now with those basics in mind, let’s go over the card changes I’ve made. As a nice bonus, my changes remove 4 Super Rares and 2 Rares, replacing them with 6 Commons. This converts the deck into an excellent new player-friendly deck.

-4 Teleport

This is going to be the most controversial change, so I’ll address it first. Simply put, this card has no place in this deck. Which is strange, of course, as Teleport is one of the best cards in the game. More often than not, I would find myself cycling away the Teleports for the card draw and tried to figure out why that was.

For me, it often came down to one of two problems:
1) Teleport is not a card in your ideal hand, nor does it help you with any of your weaknesses. You want to be playing on-curve (in other words, using all your Brains) every turn, especially against your weaker match-ups, and Teleport slows that down.
2) Teleport does not play well with Mixed-Up Gravedigger. Teleport is used to get zombies on the board without the Plant player being able to respond, but the Gravedigger does that automatically anyways and doesn’t trigger anti-Trick effects.

Often times I would run into problems where I’d have every lane filled and wishing it was a Lurch or a Backyard Bounce to go for a kill. Another issue is that you just don’t really have anything scary to teleport in – almost all of your zombies are Gravestones. This gives your opponent an extra turn to block them, which is never good for aggro. Your toughest zombie, Gravedigger, you would rather play normally so your opponent can’t use tricks on your zombies.

-4 Swashbuckler Zombie

I’m sorry, but as much as I love pirate zombies, this guy just doesn’t cut it. He’s too slow to really be an effective aggro card, and is anti-synergistic with the Gravedigger. He trades exceptionally poorly, and is a dead-drop outside the early turns. Leaving him in over-burdens your 2-drops as well.

-2 Zombot Stomp

Almost every time I played this card, another Backyard Bounce would have been just as effective. Furthermore, a 7-cost card in an aggro deck should do a lot more than this.

+4 Headstone Carver

These are kept in to preserve a semblance of a Brains curve. If you’re reading this in the future, this is one of the first cards you should replace, but it should be replaced with another 1-drop. Frankly it only keeps its spot because there isn’t a better 1-drop available, and you have too many 2-drops already. For some reason he draws a lot of removal (more than he should, imo). This opens up the chances of your Electricians and Pogo Bouncers surviving, which is exactly what you want.

+2 Lurch for Lunch

I found this cards was winning me an absurd amount of games (or closing games out a turn or two early, potentially winning me many more). I asked myself why I didn’t play 4 of it instead, and when I couldn’t come up with an answer, fixed it. In an ideal hand, this allows you to make three attacks with the Mixed-Up Gravedigger on Turn 5 (Lurch, Electrician, normal), which is a nice 15 damage burst.

+4 Electrician

I was desperate at first to find another mid-range drop for this deck that worked well with Gravedigger, and added this one with a bit of reluctance (I actually tried Tomb Raiser and Mad Chemist first). Don’t make that same mistake. Electrician is absurdly excellent in this deck. Not only is it a solid drop by itself (4 damage for 3 brains trades with a lot of threats), but it synergizes excellently with the number of high-power zombies you have, and fires off again when buried by the Gravedigger.

Concluding Thoughts

TryHard mentioned that you should play Brain Vendor pretty much whenever you can. I strongly disagree – instead, pair the Vendor with the Gravedigger whenever you can, and never play the Vendor otherwise unless you’re nearing death.

Keep Pogo Bouncers alive. It’s worth mentioning twice.

Whenever you have all of your lanes filled with zombies, consider letting one of them die. Opening up a lane to drop a Mixed-Up Gravedigger on the next turn is almost always worth it.

Taking damage is great, because it gives you more cards to win with, and with your Fire Rooster & Line Dancing Zombie, it is rare that a plant hero can effectively rush you down.

This Lion thought he was too cool to die (he wasn’t)

And that wraps up my Super Brainz deck, Giftymas. What did you think? Are there cards are should run instead? Have you tried something similar?

Posted on March 10, 2017 by Scott

PvZ Heroes Impfinity Deck – “Attack of the Deadly Imp”

(This is Anna, my partner’s, first post. She’s brand new to CCG’s and excited to share what she’s learned!)

I’ve been powering through Diamond League with this killer Impfinity deck. I win 9 out of 10 matches and the only way a plant hero beats me is when I draw very bad and/or they draw incredibly lucky. And example of this would be the rare occasion I draw too many tricks and high cards, Solar Flare playing Kernel Corn at the exact right moment, or a hero like Captain Combustible or Green Shadow getting very lucky with Espresso Fiesta. Wall-Knight and Citron don’t have a prayer. All other plant heroes are going down most of the time.

The Deck

3 Bungee Plumber
4 Mini-Ninja
4 Hot Dog Imp
4 Toxic Waste Imp
2 Backyard Bounce
4 Imp Commander
2 Valkyrie
2 Cakesplosion
4 Pogo Bouncer
4 Stupid Cupid
2 The Chickening
2 Imp-Throwing Gargantuar
2 Zombot Sharktronic Sub
1 Zombot Plank Walker

The heart and soul of this deck is Toxic Waste Imp. Since nearly every zombie you will play will be an imp, this little guy makes every zombie on the board deadly. And he’s harder for some heroes to kill since he is amphibious. Always put him in the water lane. My favorite start to a game is using Impfinity’s Triple threat super power to create 2 imp clones. Then Toxic Waste Imp on turn 2. 3 deadly zombies on board is a nice start for the first 2 rounds of a game. There are many other nice scenarios, but this one is the best.

Other important cards:

Stupid Cupid

This card is double nasty when your best friend, Toxic Waste Imp is out. He gets one deadly fire at any plant on board, knocking it off by doing just one damage. Then he’s left standing there waiting to to 4 deadly damage in any lane. He’s also a hero if you’re off to a bad start. He gives one plant zero damange for a round if he’s not deadly. This was a recent weekly event card, and you can not run this deck without 4 copies of him.

Imp Commander

If you get off to a bad start, Imp Commander can come to the rescue. Try to get any imp on board to hit the plant hero and draw a full hand. Then you can fill the board during later rounds.

Pogo Bouncers

4 Pogo Bouncers are super important. If you happen to have something really nasty on the board like a Sharktronic Sub, they can move the plant out of the way allowing for massive damage.

Hot Dog Imp

Hot Dog Imp’s strike through is especially important against Shroom for two and team up lanes. He’s especially nasty when he’s deadly. Bye Bye Wall-Nuts and Water Chestnuts. I just killed you, and the plant behind you, and hit the plant hero with my deadly strike through.

Even if the plant hero keeps using tricks to kill your Toxic Waste Imp, You will still have one super hero power to turn all zombies deadly, Commander to keep you from running out of cards, and a few tricks up your sleeve when all else fails like Cakesplosion, Backyard Bounce, and the Chickening.

This is a rush Impfinity deck, but it still wins if you can’t pull out all of the early moves. You still have 2 Imp-Throwing Gargantuars (very nice when they toss deadly 1-1 imps out when your buddy, Toxic Waste is on the board), 2 Sharktronic Subs, and your 1 get out of jail free card, Zombot Plank Walker.

Posted on March 8, 2017 by Scott

Star Wars Galaxy of Heroes Galactic War Advanced Tips

Thanks to the improved rewards for Galactic War, I thought it’d be helpful to share my galactic war advanced tips!

Understand How Turn Meter Is Preserved

Turn meter (TM) is most crucial mechanic you must understand in order to succeed at Galactic War(GW). At the end of every encounter, each character’s TM is preserved. When you begin the next battle, each character will have some pre-loaded TM. Essentially, this gives each of your characters a “head start” and you absolutely should take advantage of this.

The best way to take advantage of this mechanic is to pre-load TM on 1-3 backup teams. Figure out your second- and third- best teams. Then, use them on nodes 1-2 or 4-5 to get them extra TM.

Keep Track of Skills

Along with TM and protection/health, the other state that persists between GW nodes is skill cooldowns. Pay attention when you are using powerful skills! Don’t waste them when there are only 1-2 opponents left. It would often be better to save these skills and have them available at the start of the next battle.

Suicide Squad (no, not the movie)

Certain teams (especially Zader/EP lead or Droid teams) have a huge initial burst, but poor basic attacks. By sending in a suicide squad of your weakest characters, you can eat up all these nasty specials. Mix and match your suicide squad with different junk characters to try to draw out as many of these abilities as you can. Don’t be afraid to force-close the app if you get an undesired result. You should be careful to avoid giving the enemy team too much TM though.

Abuse the Random Seed

With a given leader, you will always get the same results taking the same actions. That means you’re going to get the same crits, same dodges, etc. Get 0/5 stuns from your EP? That’s okay, just shift one of your basic attacks to another target. It can sometimes be helpful to shift minor actions to non-optimal choices just to change the RNG. If all else fails, swap your leader.

Have a Stall Squad

For a long time my “all else failed” GW team was Old Ben / Daka / RG / Lumi / Lando. Painfully slow battles, but this team could basically take on any team in the meta without losing a single character. This team took a lot of bogus actions (Old Ben basic, Lumi basic, etc). Thanks to that I could manipulate the random seed to get maximum stuns & dodges.

And that about wraps it up for my galactic war advanced tips! Did I miss any that you’ve found? Which ones helped you the most?

Posted on February 28, 2017 by Scott

Dawn of Titans Quickstart Guide

Are you looking at Dawn of Titans? It’s a fantastic new strategy mobile game from Natural Motion Games. Want to get a head start on your enemies? Well here is my Dawn of Titans quickstart guide.

Titan Selection

As part of the tutorial process, you will get a random Titan. You are looking for a Titan here that is of Guardian class. If you are looking to get off to as competitive of a start as possible, I would highly suggest you create new accounts until you get a Titan of the Guardian class, as this process should only take you a few minutes and a Guardian Titan is crucial in your resource preservation.

Why does a Guardian Titan matter? The most efficient way to progress is to use your Titan to take all of the damage in combat. After combat, you will lose any units with less than 90% health remaining, but your Titan will be instantly restored to full health, even if it dies. Since troops cost you Food to replace, you should try to use your Titan to take all of the damage it can and use Archers to support it.

Power Quest

Once you’ve gotten your titan, you should buckle in for a few hours of play. Dawn of Titans uses power stones for currency to begin battles, and these power stones recharge over time. To start, you are going to be given far more power stones than your capacity, so you won’t recharge any power stones. In order to start taking advantage of your power stones, you should quest as much as possible (preferably down to 0 power stones).

Rush Castle Level 4

Once you hit level 4, you will be able to start attacking other players and join an Alliance. This is actually crucial for your resource generation, and you should begin doing so as soon as possible. Other players’ lands and garrisons will often given you more resources per portal stone you expend. On top of this, you will gain prestige, which will help your alliance in the rankings. The better your alliance ranks, the more bonus items and gems you get per season, so try to make sure you join an active alliance!

There are no special requirements to unlock upgrading your Castle to level 4, only gold.

Your New Best Friend

Rush Unlocking Grenadiers

The Grenadiers will, hands down, change your game. They do an explosive amount of damage and absolutely slaughter the basic units (Militia/Archers/Spearmen). However, they extremely vulnerable to melee attacks. They are significantly worse than Archers (yes, I didn’t realize that was possible either).

You unlock them by upgrading your Castle to level 6. You must also have a level 4 Garrison, level 3 Army Camp, level 2 Food Reserve, and level 2 Gold Reserve. The first two are buildings that you’re going to want to upgrade anyways – the Garrison makes you harder to attack, and the Army Camp increases the number of battle slots you have for troops as well as how many troops you can have in total. In my opinion the Reserve buildings aren’t useful but unfortunately they’re required.

And that wraps up the Dawn of Titans quickstart guide. Let me know how it works for you in the comments below!

Posted on February 18, 2017 by Scott

SWGOH F2P Arena: Where to go now?

IOIn the last few months there have been drastic changes to the meta, with over a dozen impactful characters being released as well as zeta upgrades and more. This means that the swgoh F2P arena is changing, and drastically.

As a F2P (or a dolphin, even), it isn’t feasible to chase every one of these characters, let alone continue to build up the slew of older yet still useful characters. Further, I think this is perhaps the most tumultuous time for the arena meta and the most amount of viable teams.

For the sake of this discussion, we’re going to leave out characters (as options, but not threats) that aren’t practical to collect as a SWGOH F2P arena player:

Baze / Chirrut / Cassian / K-2SO / Jyn (probably reasonable to add in ~3 months)
Nihilus / Sith Trooper / Sith Assassin (probably reasonable to add in ~5 months)
Krennic / Death Trooper (probably reasonable to add in ~5 months)

The important exception is characters that everyone could acquire, like Death Trooper, may be worth considering if they’re still viable at the * rating they could be acquired via F2P. Sith Trooper is in a similar boat: worth considering if you got it from the events, but I’ll try to make sure to include alternatives in case you missed Sith Trooper.

I think at this point, SWGOH F2P arena players would be wise to focus on what I’m going to call “Plug And Play” (PnP) characters. Characters that can fit on many teams are going to be some of the most valuable for F2P, allowing them to switch gears with less growing pains. Characters that have many viable arena teams AND strong roles in HAAT are especially valuable. Minor notable benefits include characters with ships, strong in Rancor raid, and/or particularly strong in GW.

Having a strong roster of PnP characters means that SWGOH F2P arena players can adopt faction-based teams with only the 2-3 strongest members. This allows the F2P to insulate themselves against reworks and meta changes, as they have less invested in these specific teams. It also means they can get a taste of how these teams function much quicker.

I’m also going to avoid talking about mods to keep the scope of this guide reasonable, but realize mods are important.

With all that out of the way, let’s look at the options.

Empire

Zader / EP / Boba / TFP / ShoreTrooper

Pretty much the team that everyone expects, I think. Notable substitutions are B2, Zidious, Death Trooper, and GK, among others. If you are currently not level 85 or have only recently gotten there, Shoretrooper is likely not going to be a viable option for you as he is only farmable through an exceptionally challenging node, 9-B Hard. From here down, expect to aim for a different tank, like B2, if you can’t get Shoretrooper.

This team, besides being obviously strong in arena, has the extra advantages of being powerful in HAAT, Rancor, and GW. As an added bonus, it includes several PnP characters, including arguably the best one, Boba Fett. Its only weakness that I can call out is that it has only two useful, available ships between all of its potential members (TFP & Slave I).

It can also swap into EP / TFP / Shore / Boba / GK (or something similar). This is a strong alternative for those that don’t have Zetas or want to Zeta Boba first. This team requires exceptional speed on Boba to be a top competitor, however, and TFP should be quite fast as well.

First Order (don’t laugh)

Zasma / Zylo Ren / FO Zormtrooper / FOO / ZFOTP

If you think I’m kidding here, just watch this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wKNBSiB-k3I&t=601s

Convinced? Good. It’s obviously not a team without flaws. This team rolls over a lot of other strong teams, thanks to the added crit immunity team-wide.

I think Kylo Ren is the gem here. While maybe not the top character in the meta, Kylo Ren works excellently on a FO team, Sith team, and others. Furthermore, Kylo Ren is quite strong in HAAT. Finally, he nets minor advantages with his strength in GW and his ship.

Phasma’s next best, but it’s a pretty distant second. She’s pretty much only usable in a FO arena team. She’s similarly a strong raid character, but is weaker in GW than Kylo Ren.

The rest of the toons, however, I think are what sinks this team for a F2P player. None of them are particularly useful in raids, don’t play well with other teams, only one of them even has a ship. FOTP and FOST are both notably awful farms as well. FOO earns his spot on the team only if you have a surplus of resources. A better F2P team to look something like: Phasma / Kylo / FOST (viable at lower stars) / Rex / B2

Jedi

ZQGJ / JKA / X / X / X

Fill in the X’s with Barriss, Yoda, Aayla, Ahsoka to taste. GK is an auto-include if available. I’ll be frank. As someone that has run this team for about six weeks, right now, this team is missing too much to be top tier. B2 causes it fits, forcing a counter-pick (like EP) to be subbed in. Fast Bobas and other skill block/stun mean that a fast Yoda is needed. And so on and so on. In other words, this team needs 6-7 toons all at once. At 5, it can cover most of its bases, but suffers damage-wise. Without GK it gets plowed by the Wiggs combo that everyone has, thanks to neither Yoda nor QGJ being particularly durable.

Further, the team isn’t strong in raids, and only Ahsoka has a ship right now (though it is a damn good one).

Rebels

Wedge / Biggs / JKA / ShoreTrooper / Boba Fett

This team is really a hybrid team, and sorely wants to include Chaze. It’s also suffering thanks to its reliance on a speedy crit-burst, which will only continue to become less reliable as more autotaunters become available and if FO teams make a splash. The Wiggs aspect of this team has been fading in popularity as well, thanks to it having issues with the advent of autotaunters and anti-crit abilities, and those troubles are only going to get worse as those characters become more avaiable. It also can run Boba Fett lead, and often times should.

Of course, Wiggs are still useful in a lot of areas, plug-and-play reasonably well in other teams as damage output, and both have useful ships.

Sith

Maul / Sidious / EP / Vader / X

Where X is one of ShoreTrooper or B2, among a few other options. Kylo Ren may also have a place on this team. I don’t really think any of the other reworked Sith are strong enough to take a place on this team. However, with the minor nerfs to Zader (in the form of bug fixes, admittedly), as well as the newly released Sith, I think this team is looking like one of the strongest out here. As the new Sith become more available, and more F2P have the resources to invest in Maul, I expect Zaul to replace Zader as the prime choice.

Sith Trooper deserves a special mention here. He requires you to have a Sith that outspeeds your opponent to get the “autotaunt” mimicry, if you do, he is better than Shoretrooper.

Bounty Hunters

Boba Fett / Zam / IG – 88 / Greedo / X

Where X is one of GK or B2, among a few other options. This team is extremely rare, as it requires Zam to operate. Now that Zam is available F2P, this is a viable option if you want a strong team that is rarely seen.

Clones

Zody / Fives / Rex / Sergeant / Echo

Admittedly this is the team I know the least about, thanks to its recent paywall. From my limited experience, this seems like a strong team that just quite isn’t there. It needs a minor rework, an extra zeta, or a better clone reach the top tier.

Clones have the added benefit of being excellent in HAAT and having several strong ships. Rex is also one of the best PnP characters in the game, now a staple F2P PnP cleanser. This team does suffer as its difficult to farm.

Resistance

ZFinn / Poe / RT / X / X

Where X includes a choice between Rey, RP, Asajj, and Zidious. This is an excellent new team that I think has surprised a lot of people in its efficacy. It performs excellently in arena and HAAT, though it is unfortunately poor on arena defense.

However, the team has some serious disadvantages. Only Poe has a useful available ship, and the characters are all limited to use on a Resistance squad. They also struggle without including Asajj for the fast dispel of auto-taunt, and need to either have Poe & Zidious or have an exceptionally fast Poe. A quick ability block on Poe (or no exposes) is devastating for the team.

It is worth pointing out that the new movie will likely mean new Resistance characters. How well the old ones work at that point is anyone’s guess.

Droids

HK47 / IG-88 / IG-86 / JE / B2

Let’s be honest, this team is on its way out, if it hasn’t left already. Further, it’s going to have increasing difficulty with the anti-crit squads & characters that are becoming more prevalent (see First Order). With the lack of ships for every member of the squad and their P2 HAAT duty being eclipsed by clones, I think we’re finally seeing an age where droids aren’t a top recommendation to F2P. A saving grace for droids teams, however, may be the demise of Wiggs teams aside the rise of Empire. Droid teams have an exceptionally easy time with Empire teams. It remains to be seen how the meta shakes out if the anti-crit teams are more prevalent (and thus give droids teams serious issues) or not.

B2 however, deserves a special mention. B2 is still the best F2P AoE dispel (the other option being Asajj) and can PnP in just about any team on this list.

Conclusions

While that was a lot of setup, I think now we can get to the point. I think Zader looks like the strongest F2P squad choice for now. Where Zader stands out isn’t its arena-capability, but rather that it is exceptionally capable in HAAT & Rancor, includes several useful pilots, and includes several PnP characters (Boba, EP, ShT, etc). Further, if Nihilius ends up being the new meta, Zader teams are best suited to that transition.

On that note, I think SWGOH F2P arena players should really be focusing on PnP characters that have multiple roles. CG seems to be trending towards a faster pace, which means that we should expect meta shifts.

Right now, I see the best SWGOH F2P arena PnP toons as Boba Fett, Shore Trooper, Emperor Palpatine, Rex, and B2. JKA makes for an honorable mention, but I think his day is fading. Sun Fac is in a similar position to JKA. Both are still viable choices, but I don’t expect them to still be in the coming months. Either would need to get unexpected synergies with new characters or are reworked. Kylo Ren I expect to be good enough to make the list as well, especially with his Zeta upgrade. I’d like to see a little more of him until I commit to that label.

What are your thoughts? Are there any teams I’ve missed? Other PnP characters worth mentioning? Also, a big shout out to everyone on reddit that helped with this post.

Posted on February 2, 2017 by Scott

Dream Patch Notes for Galaxy of Heroes

I’ve been playing Star Wars Galaxy of Heroes since May of last year, which is the longest I’ve stuck with any single title in a long while. However, having played the game for that long, well… it’s given me a long list for my dream patch notes. If I had a magic wand (or Force powers…) here are the dream patch notes I’d implement:

Reduce the initial burst of Wiggs, but improve them in other ways. Their overall power level is fine, but their initial burst is so absurd it is defining the meta by itself – basically every team in the meta is either entirely comprised of extremely durable characters or they use an autotaunter (none of which are available to F2P) or both. The meta is in better health than it was in the Rey days, but we can still do better.
Reduce the gear crunch by… doing something. Figure it out, please.
Stop releasing all new meta-defining characters solely through tournaments and/or chromiums (I can dream, right?). I don’t mind that whales get shinies, I mind that my options can’t compete.
Change GW to have a new random seed every time you restart it. It’s exhausting to play “What combination of dumb moves do I have to make to get my Royal Guard actually proc his stun?”. This is not fun and rewards players intentionally making *bad* decisions.
Stop releasing so many powerful abilities with 70-90% proc rate. Just make the abilities weaker and make them 100% proc. This is billed as a tactical game, stop making it so damn RNG-dependent.
Reduce base dodge change to 0%. It’s dumb that an entire Rancor run or AAT run can be altered by a dodge. If a character invests in it, I’m okay with the mechanic.
Reduce minimum resist chance to 0%, but buff raid bosses to keep their current tenacity. This makes potency & tenacity matter in arena. Right now, most characters can’t get enough tenacity to increase their resist chance a reasonable amount, which means that both potency & tenacity are essentially dead stats in arena.
Change turn order at 100% turn meter to be “first character that reaches 100% turn meter goes first, then the next, etc” instead of “pick a random character at 100% turn meter”. Either that or make it the last character – I don’t care which, but it’s just making the game more random instead of more tactical to have random turn order.
Add a feature to “add droids to level character up to level X”.
Add some way to buy lots of bronziums at once.
Change tournaments to have rolling durations: i.e. you can’t use the trick to join in the last 15 minutes and only have to play 15 minutes of battles.
Change raid rewards. Seriously. I haven’t gotten a raid reward I could actually use this calendar year, yet I need a dozen items (and that’s ignoring the fact that even if I got salvage for those items, I still wouldn’t be able to get a gear upgrade!)
When we’re trying to max a mod, just max the damn mod instead of trying to get us to waste credits. You know what we want, this just feels like you’re trying to play dumb.
Let us concede/retreat while it’s not our turn. It’s obnoxious that we have to sit there and watch the AI finish out what could be dozens of turns or force close the app.
When showing that a character needs a specific gear piece, have a distinguishing method between “this will allow the character to equip a new piece of gear” and “you still couldn’t craft the new piece of gear even with this item”.
Make all ships targetable. It really shouldn’t be impossible to target certain ships in because of the camera angle.
Fix Bigg’s ship not receiving Taunt/Protection when an enemy is Target Locked.
Fix Resistance Pilot’s ship to always proc Expose on TL’d enemies when using the appropriate skill. While you’re at it, make sure her special always procs TL too.
Fix Poe’s ship’s special to actually not be able to be evaded.
Prevent assists attempting to use Stunned/Dazed characters/ships (or explain that this is now WAI, even though it wasn’t before)

Well, that ended up being longer than I expected for a list of dream patch notes. I suppose it makes the game seems worse than it is, but I don’t want you to get the wrong impression. I love the game, but it just means between that passion for the game and the length of time I’ve been playing it for combines to give me a lot of ideas for its improvement (and a lot of visibility into its bugs). That’s about it for my dream patch notes. What would you add?

Posted on December 27, 2016 by Scott

Dawn of Titans Advanced Tips

Welcome to Gaming By The Number’s Dawn of Titans Advanced Tips! At this point, I’m assuming that you’ve either read the basics elsewhere, or have played enough of Dawn of Titans (or similar games) to follow along. If you don’t understand the core mechanics of the game, I encourage you to either go play the game for a bit and get your feet wet, or watch videos/read basic guides until you’ve got a good grasp of the game.

Don’t Let Troops Drop Below 90% Health

This tip is the most crucial here and will net you the biggest improvement in your gameplay. Now it may seem pretty obvious, but it’s easy for many players to make mistakes here. When starting out, all troops that end a battle with less than 90% health are destroyed and must be rebuilt. This makes Archers, and later, Grenadiers, much more valuable than any of the melee troops. Saving hundreds (and later, thousands) of food per battle will add up quickly and let you progress much faster. In addition, you won’t have to wait around for troops to train if none are dying.

Your New Best Friend

Pick Your Battles Carefully

This tip takes a bit of practice to understand fully, but it can be summarized as follows: make sure that you are picking the battles that give you the most resources total, including resources lost from having to rebuild your troops after the battle.

Most obviously, you should start by picking battles that drop the most resources, but it’s more complicated than just that. Currently Dawn of Titans has a bravery mechanic, where you get extra rewards (such as scrolls and other relics) for attacking players that are a higher level than you. Because of this bonus you should prioritize attacking higher level players.

Another crucial piece of picking your battles is to make sure to take into account your losses. If you’re going to lose 2-3 units on a tougher battle, the small increase of resources you may gather may not be worth it.

Finally, look at the units you are going to be fighting. Depending on the deployment, it may be very challenging to not take losses against an all-melee opponent. Similarly, until you get Grenadiers, it can be difficult to not take losses against an Archer-heavy opponent. Until you get Grenadiers, you should try to target opponents that have a mix of troops. Once you get Grenadiers, you can safely target opponents that are heavy on Archers, thanks to the extra range the Grenadiers have on Archers.

One of these fights is much easier than the other…

Level Up Your Key Buildings As Fast As Possible

You have several buildings that are crucial to your fighting prowess, and several that don’t matter. Focus on upgrading your Castle, Army Camp, Garrison, and Armory. Upgrade the rest of your buildings when the important buildings are finished.

Keep Your Level As Low As Possible

Remember above how we talked about attacking higher level players for bonus rewards? Basically, avoid gaining experience as much as you can. Unlike most other games, your level doesn’t actually help you in combat, so by keeping your level lower, you’ll have easier options to attack for bonus rewards.

Level Up Your Extra Titans

Once you’ve played for a few days, you will start to collect extra Titans. Don’t let them just sit there! Put them into battle, and get at least 1 per land you have plus one extra (we’ll get into why later). When you get higher level, you will rely heavily on your Titan to carry its weight in battle, and trying to level up a level 1 Titan when you get higher level can be obnoxious.

Defend Your Lands

The game doesn’t give you a tutorial explaining this, but crucially, you can set defenses for your territory. This includes both Titans and troops for not only your captured lands, but your garrison as well. You should make sure that you have a Titan for each land you’ve captured, and that you put the strongest troops you can afford to defend the lands. You will never lose these troops, even if the land is raided, so don’t skimp on them! If necessary, you can always pull the defending troops back into your reserves and use them for battle.

Furthermore, by assigning a Titan, you will get bonus resources from the land you are defending, and this bonus is increased based on the level of the Titan. So make sure you have a leveled Titan for each land!

Now some players will point out that a dedicated attacker will be able to defeat your defenses and take resources and that you’re just wasting your time. They’re right, you absolutely will lose resources to a skilled player. But the point isn’t to stop them – it’s to discourage them. There are many, many players that either put only a weak defense or no defense at all. By putting forth a strong defense, you encourage many players to find easier targets.

Look at that level 5 titan!

Fuse Titans Of The Same Class

With your Titans, make sure that you only fuse Titans that are of the same Class. The game rewards you with extra experience, skill slots, and relic slots for fusing Titans of the same class. Currently this is the only way to get these extra slots. If you lack a 3* or 4* Titan of a specific class, I would recommend holding on to the extra Titans of that class. This will allow you to quickly level a 3*/4* Titan you get later, rather than have you stuck with a lot of resources invested in a Titan you will only use in the short term.

And those are some of the advanced tips that I’ve found so far for Dawn Of Titans. What have you found to be important? Are you playing Dawn of Titans?

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