Auto-Battle-Matica

Just starting a new thread here around Autobattlers, since it has been somewhat of my obsession the past year.

Here is a rundown on what I have been playing:

Once Upon a Galaxy - my favorite at the moment and I just hit Legendary for the 3rd season in a row this morning.

Hearthstone Battlegrounds - I play every season, I buy the battle pass every season. This is the game that addicted me to Autobattlers in the first place. I just finished the battle pass for the season, so won’t play much until the next season, but with Anomalies and Buddies in right now, it’s a lot of fun at the moment.

Mechabellum - This is the Autobattler for those of you who think Autobattlers are not strategy games. This is probably the most sophisticated, strategic of them all and it is really well done. I actually decided against trying to learn the complexity of this game, and only play in an FFA mode that is more for fun. But I have a couple friends who are playing this seriously and competitively.

The Bazar - This is probably the most sophisticated of the “Deck Building” Autobattlers. I am really torn on this one as it is really well done. But I have two major and one side problem with it. The first is the game does not respect your time. The game speed is the game speed and I I think the game could be sped up some. The Second issue is that there are a lot of dead cards, that really have no build. While there are multiple build strategies for each hero, there is a lot of extra fluff that just kind of needs a purpose. And the minor issue is around the pricing. They clearly have a strategy to put out new $20 heroes on a regular cadence - I just don’t think that value is there, and have a problem with that price point - but that is nitpicking for someone like me who spends $20 on a lot of stuff on Amazon that I don’t need.

Team Fight Tactics - I like the game, but the equipment stuff means that there is a lot of depth that I have trouble keeping up with. I think this is a game you really need to know the meta to be good, and I don’t have time to get to know the meta when I just want to play it casually occasionally. But I do think there is a lot of depth here.

Backpack Battle - I have been playing this since early-access on Steam and it is a lot of fun, there is a lot of variety in the heroes and builds and they keep adding more interesting things to it.

Backpack Brawl - started as somewhat of a clone of Backpack Battle - they have actually taken that model and done some very interesting things with builds and very unique heros, it’s a mobile game though and I find the monetization a little questionable with multiple battlepasses and paid unlock trees and stuff that as they kept adding in more monetization schemes I started to lose interest. But it is a solid game and the FTP aspect is good enough to get a feel for the game.

Super Auto Pets - I bounce off this one every time I try it. I do like the charming art style, and I so want to like this game, but I find the FTP mode to lack depth, and so much so, that it has never inspired me to invest in learning more about the game.

Tales and Tactics - is a roguelite Autobattler with a lot of things to unlock and a lot of depth in builds and factions. The base game is more like a TFT mashup with a roguelike adventure and I have really enjoyed exploring the builds. There is an arena async/ghost mode for it too.

I might be missing a few, but these are the ones that I have been playing or trying lately.

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Even though, as I’ve mentioned elsewhere, auto battlers have never really gotten their hooks in me, I feel like I should like them, at least on paper.

I keep bouncing around with Once Upon a Galaxy, sometimes liking it, sometimes gettin frustrated when an opponent is exponentially stronger than me.

One question I have for the genre in general and for Galaxy in particular is if there are any that provide any kind of meaningful reason to have friends. If I add friend in Galaxy, for example, can I play against them? Share stats? Anything?

Yeah, I have not tried the play with friends mode, we would need 6 people, but essentially someone can host a game, and then provide a lobby code and I believe we can play asynchronously - if we have 6 people playing, we could try it.

Really enjoying the style and imagination of Once upon a galaxy. The skies the limit there with that theme

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Finally broke 2k MMR

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Got my first win of the new Once Upon a Galaxy season. The current leader already has 46. Where the heck do people find the time?!?

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I have 3 now. I can often play the game kind of half-assed while on work calls and stuff. It is not hard to play quickly for a lot of it while sitting in long meetings.

I still prefer Hydra to Hercules most of the time, but Hercules with Jay Sparrow as captain is just unfair.

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Yes, if you can get Hercules rolling he is great, but hydra is just easier to scale since it is on farewell and also hydra has the ability to double into a support. That is a nice Herc you have there though!

I have been playing a lot of this game still, Once Upon a Galaxy. Right now I am sitting at 2263 MMR and not in the top 2000, although a few days ago I peaked at rank 1852 when I hit 2200 MMR. So the top 2000 is moving rapidly.

I have changed how I build decks pretty drastically and thought I would share. I think there are 4 viable deck strategies at the moment. Hoard/Tinkerer, Pirates, PeachyQueen/Wink Fairies and Candy (I prefer Dipity Doo/Licorice/CandyCane Crook).

I believe there are some other candy builds and there is supposed to be a Butcher/Rolo build that I have not quite figured out yet.

Animals are ok, but primarily work best with Animal focused captains and here is the thing, you are always at a slight disadvantage with any Captain that forces you into a specific direction. So Evil/Good/Animal/Toys, etc, they greatly limit your ability to pivot.

That said, I tend to build my decks to be mostly captain agnostic. That was one of the biggest shifts in my thinking, The best captain abilities are bonus and not core to your strategy.

The other two big changes I have made to deck building is that I no longer have common cards in my deck, at least this season anything you need in common is in the shared pool. Also, the majority of my deck is in the Uncommon and Rare and most of these are about accelerating my deck with bonus shops or bonus cards, produce some sort of good treasure or are recruit abilities that can be discarded without playing for good effect.

Generally I only have 2 legendary and 2 epic cards max in my decks.

anyway, just wanted to share

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Did anyone get into “the bazaar”?

I played it a lot on launch and bought the initial extra characters. I have 70 hours in the game, and here was my review at 20 hours and I did not change my review.

"I cannot recommend this game, even though the concept is good.

First, despite there being a lot of items, there appears to be very little build diversity. For a new player, there does not appear to be any type of MMR, and everyone seems to know the optimal builds - but I don’t even see the cards available that they are beating me with. And it is mostly the same builds over and over that beat you.

Lastly, this is a new game and I thought I was buying a complete new game, but there is DLC on day one. Anyone who runs DLC on day one is just bad. I suspect the game is going to go the way of FTP mobile junk and just start trying to charge you $20 a pop for every new hero they drop.

Much better choices out there for autobattlers that won’t try to rip you off. Backpack Battles, Mechabellum, even Hearthstone Battlegrounds."

I will probably not pick it back up until the newest hero goes on sale, but I will likely give it another chance when that happens.

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