Greetings Captains! Today we’re here to dive deeper into Arena strategy and discuss some of the winning combos that players frequently use to rise up the ranks.
There are many ways to win in the Arena, but as with any competitive game, some meta trends develop. These will fluctuate depending on updates and season features over time.
Below, we’ll walk you through some of the strategies that can lead to Arena success, but you’ll need to experiment to find out what works best for you.
Val Speed
This is by far the most popular Arena strategy at the time of writing this article. Valentine is a Mercenary that can only be achieved in-game through the end of season rewards based on HQ Level. She’s fast, hits hard and has two area of effect skills that blast the entire opposing team with tons of damage.
Valentine has one weakness though… she’s often so fragile she crumbles as soon as she’s hit! If you have a fast, high enough attack Valentine though, she won’t need to do anything beyond that first devastating hit to win.
That brings us to one other key component of this strategy… Akari! Akari’s Leader Skill is Blade Unleash: “In Arena combat, increase ally ATK by 20% and ATK SPD by 10%.” Regardless of Akari’s level, everyone on the team will receive these bonuses. This is great for Valentine, which is why you’ll often see a very low level Akari at the head of an opposing team. She doesn’t need to do anything but lead at the start to be a game changer.
Big Boys
This strategy has been growing more popular in response to the previously mentioned technique. In this strategy, you prioritize bulk on your team so you can survive Valentine’s match-starting nuke. You don’t care as much about going first. Your game is to survive the first wave and knock them down one by one.
Perhaps the most fun part of the big boy strategy is that occasionally you run into another team of big boys. Epic battle ensues.
A usual staple of this team will be William and/or Lucas. Their ability to create shields and defense boost while also soaking up a ton of damage can’t be overlooked. Most of these Mercenaries will feel like Val’s first hit is a scratch at best.
You still need to do some damage though, which is where Mercenaries like Torsten, Alex or Zahra could come into play. Torsten’s Berserker Rage deals more damage the more damage he’s taken… so if Valentine hits him early, she could be signing her own death warrant! Alex’s AOE bombs finish the battle for you if you can just stay alive long enough. Zahra will take extra damage from Valentine due to type advantage, but she’s bulky enough to survive and she claps back with some powerful hits.
Torsten big. Torsten hit HARD.
Perhaps the most crucial lynchpin of this strategy is Jin Ryu. In the leader spot, he’ll slap a stun on the entire enemy team when they first hit you. This may miss a few, but often you’ll absorb that first hit then find the entire opposing team sitting ducks. It also doesn’t hurt that Jin Ryu can deal MASSIVE damage with his Dragon’s Might Skill – this will hit three times, remove all the enemy’s buffs AND call a joint attack with two allies. Between this and Torsten’s Berserker’s Rage, you usually have two one-shots to toss around.
Debuff to Death
This strategy isn’t quite as popular as the two above, but it has some definite merit if you can build your team right. It won’t KO people as fast as the above options, however, which means you’ll have to work harder to hold that top spot in the last moments of an Arena Season.
To make this work, you’ll need to employ Mercenaries that specialize in debuffs. Think Laction, Emma, Zarkhan, Wang, etc. You’ll use them to paralyze the enemy and easily walk to victory.
Zarkhan is big here. His ability to slap sleep, heal blocks and damage over time on all enemies simultaneously makes him a great choice for an opening salvo.
Behold, the king of debuff stacking!
Emma can also play a critical role. Her attacks deal more damage per debuff on the enemy, making her absolutely deadly single target damage once you’ve stacked a healthy amount of status effects on the opposing team. Perhaps most enticing, her Taboo Wave can spread debuffs from the target to everyone else. When pointed at sleeping or stunned enemies, this can be game-changing.
Some less often thought of debuffers that can round out your team are out there too. Camilla’s Boulons Multiple AOE can silence everyone. Alex’s bombs can tick away while the enemy is sleeping before explosively finishing them off. Feeling too squishy? Wang’s Judgement Day is one of the most powerful stunning attacks in the game, and also has the potential to revive an ally.
Awwww, Akari didn’t get any bombs 😢. We can fix that.
Tons of Ways to Win
The arena is a bit more nuanced than it seems at first glance. Just because everyone is using one set of tactics doesn’t mean you have to. What’s your winning formula in the arena?
You never need to lock into one style. You can always switch your team up in the arena… and indeed you should based on who your opponents are in that match!
We’ll be back next time to focus on the Guild Arena. Until then, get out there and fight for that rank! That God of the Arena title isn’t going to win itself!
Tokens are fundamental components of the web3 ecosystem, revolutionizing how we interact with digital assets and decentralized applications (dApps). In simple terms, a token can be thought of as a digital representation of ownership or access rights to a certain asset or service, often facilitated by blockchain technology.
To better grasp the concept and importance of tokens in the web3 world, we’ll explore the different types of tokens and how they function within the GalaChain ecosystem.
What is a Token?
Imagine tokens as digital coupons or tickets. Just like a ticket grants you access to a concert or a coupon provides a discount at a store, tokens provide specific rights or access within the digital realm. They can represent various assets, from currencies to ownership rights, and can be transferred or exchanged on blockchain networks.
Origins and Etymology
The word “token” has a rich history and etymology, deeply rooted in the concept of representation. Its origins can be traced back to Old English and Germanic languages, where it was used to describe a sign or symbol that stands for something else.
Old English and Germanic Roots
The term “token” originates from the Old English word “tacen,” which means a sign, mark or evidence. This word itself is derived from the Proto-Germanic “taiknam,” which also denotes a sign or symbol.
Medieval Usage
In medieval times, a token often referred to physical objects like coins, vouchers or talismans, which were used to represent value or signify a promise or proof of authenticity. For example, merchants used tokens as a form of currency in trade, and tokens were also used in religious contexts as symbols of faith.
Modern Contexts
Over time, the use of tokens evolved but remained true to the idea of representation. In modern contexts before the advent of digital technology, tokens were still widely used in various forms such as subway tokens, arcade game tokens, membership tokens or game pieces, all serving as physical representations of access rights or value.
It’s interesting to consider the important role tokens have always played in gaming (player pieces, poker chips, Monopoly money, etc), especially when you consider that a large portion of today’s web3 world stemmed from the idea of gamification. This is why so many early web3 innovators like Gala used gaming as a way to express the meaning of web3 ideas like player ownership and reward economies.
The Concept of Representation
At its core, the concept of a token has always been about representation—one object standing in for another, often something more abstract like a promise, value or right. This foundational idea has seamlessly transitioned into the digital age, particularly within web3.
Check out our DevSpeak article breaking down Token and Coin roles in the web3 world for an even deeper dive!
Contemporary Web3 Definitions
Today, tokens continue to embody the essence of representation:
Digital Representation of Assets
Utility tokens, security tokens and non-fungible tokens (NFTs) serve as digital representations of various assets, rights or ownership on the blockchain. For instance, an NFT represents ownership of a unique digital item, such as a piece of art or a game character.
Access and Governance
Crypto tokens can also provide access to services, enable transactions or even represent governance rights of decentralized platforms. For example, the popular Ethereum-based decentralized exchange protocol, Uniswap, allows holders of its UNI token to vote on ecosystem decisions such as proposed changes, funding allocations and more.
The core Gala ecosystem does not tie governance to ownership of the $GALA token, but to operation of Founder’s Nodes. As the community that powers the ecosystem, owners of Founder’s Node licenses are periodically given a chance to vote on important ecosystem decisions. As the Gala ecosystem continues to expand outward from its core entertainment brands of Games, Music and Film to greater decentralization, new opportunities to introduce governance will be explored.
Community governance is an important aspect of decentralization, one which many would argue is imperative to prevent centralized control. Even large centralized corporations have traditionally checked control of leaders via powers of a governing body such as a Board of Directors. For an ecosystem, platform or protocol to be truly decentralized, the people must call its shots to some degree.
Look for another article in the near future about the importance of governance in web3.
Staying True to the Original Meaning
The contemporary use of tokens in the Web3 ecosystem has remarkably stayed true to the original definitions. Just as tokens in ancient times represented physical or abstract concepts like value, promises or rights, modern digital tokens represent ownership, access and utility within a decentralized digital framework.
By maintaining this fundamental principle of representation, tokens in the web3 world not only preserve their historical essence but also extend their utility into the digital realm, enhancing the way we interact with technology and digital assets. This continuity underscores the timeless nature of tokens as symbols of representation, evolving yet fundamentally unchanged in their core purpose.
Types of Tokens
Tokens in the Web3 ecosystem are diverse and can be categorized into several types:
Utility Tokens
Security Tokens
Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs)
Governance Tokens
Utility Tokens
Utility tokens are designed to provide access to a specific service or product within a blockchain-based platform. They are often used to pay for transactions, access features, or reward participants within the ecosystem.
Examples: $GALA, $MUSIC, $FILM
Within the Gala ecosystem, the $GALA token serves as a utility token. It is the core utility and gas token used for transactions, purchasing NFTs and rewarding Founder’s Node operators. For instance, gamers can use $GALA to buy in-game items, create tokens on GalaSwap and more.
Security tokens represent ownership in a real-world asset, such as shares in a company or real estate. They are subject to regulatory compliance and are designed to be investments. There are no security tokens in the Gala ecosystem.
The concept of security tokens can be applied in scenarios where investments in real-world assets are tokenized, providing holders with ownership stakes and potential dividends.
Examples: Blockchain Capital Fund (BCAP), INX Limited (INX)
Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs)
NFTs are unique digital assets that represent ownership of a specific item or piece of content, such as art, music, or in-game assets. Unlike utility and security tokens, NFTs are not interchangeable due to their unique properties.
Gala Music and Gala Games leverage NFTs to provide unique digital assets. For instance, musicians can release exclusive tracks as NFTs, granting ownership to their fans. Similarly, in Gala Games, players can own unique in-game items or characters, enhancing their gaming experience.
Governance tokens grant holders voting rights in the decision-making processes of a decentralized platform. They enable the community to participate in governance, proposing and voting on changes or upgrades.
Examples: Maker DAO (MKR), Compound decentralized lending protocol (COMP)
$GALA is primarily a utility token, but governance will play an increasingly important role in the Gala ecosystem as it moves toward greater decentralization over time. Currently, Founder’s Node operators are able to vote on certain important ecosystem decisions. Gala Music account holders can cast votes on new artists and tracks to be added next to the platform. While these democratization methods are not directly tied to the ownership of a token, they are important aspects of a decentralized community.
Tokens are crucial in the Web3 ecosystem for several reasons:
Decentralization: Tokens facilitate decentralized governance and operations, reducing reliance on central authorities and minimizing the need for trust between parties.
Incentivization: They incentivize participation and contribution within the ecosystem, rewarding users, developers and node operators.
Interoperability: Tokens enable seamless interaction between different blockchain-based platforms and applications.
Ownership: NFTs and other tokens provide verifiable ownership of digital assets, enhancing the value and utility of these assets.
Tokens in the Gala Ecosystem
GalaChain already contains numerous tokens, especially since the GalaSwap Project Token Creation Tool has recently empowered anyone in the community with the ability to easily make a token for their own project.
Game Tokens
The Gala ecosystem features specific gaming reward tokens like Legends Reborn’s $TOLK, Mirandus’ $MTRM and Spider Tanks’ $SILK. These tokens serve as in-game currencies, rewarding players for their achievements and participation. They can be used to buy items, access special features, or trade within the games’ marketplaces.
$GALA as the Core Utility Token
The $GALA token is integral to the Gala ecosystem, acting as the primary medium of exchange and rewarding participants. It is used to power transactions on GalaChain, purchase NFTs and reward node operators who maintain the network’s infrastructure.
Here’s to a More Tokenized Future!
Tokens are the lifeblood of the web3 ecosystem, enabling decentralized applications, digital asset ownership, and community-driven governance. In the Gala ecosystem, tokens like $GALA, $TOLK, and $MTRM illustrate the diverse applications of tokens, from utility and rewards to unique digital assets. Understanding the different types of tokens and their roles helps us appreciate their significance in shaping the future of digital interactions.
It’s a new week, Farmers, so get ready for a new exciting Common Ground World 3-day competition event packed with new challenges and strategies to explore and new ways to win!
If you haven’t caught the latest CGW Town Hall from Friday, July 5th, check it out at the link below for the latest on community questions, new NFTs and more!
Join us this Friday, July 19th for the next bi-weekly Town Hall, just before the Harvest Pie Hoedown competition ends. We’ll be streaming live at 8am PT– If you have questions, you can submit them now at THIS FORM.
Harvest Pie Hoedown!
Start: 10am PT on Tuesday, July 16th
End: 10am PT on Friday, July 19th
This week’s meta is all about the scrumptious Fruit Pie, packed with Blueberries, Apples, Strawberries, Sugar and Dough. With all the farmers pitching in, it’s a berry good time for a bountiful harvest!
Goal: Sell Fruit Pies
Trade Time: 60s & 1 Gasoline
Biome: Plains S
Edges: River N, River E, Plans S, and Ocean W
Rewards
In addition to the standard $GALA leaderboard rewards, it’s a Blueprint Week, your chance to pick up the new Crafty Candy Shop Blueprint!
Blueprint: Crafty Candy Shop
Owning the Crafty Candy Shop Blueprint will reduce craft times for all crafts in the Candy Shop, as well as Lolli and Pop Shop NFTs. Boosts vary based on Blueprint rarity:
Luxury – 20% craft time boost
Platinum – 18% craft time boost
Legendary – 16% craft time boost
Epic – 14% craft time boost
Rare – 12% craft time boost
Uncommon – 10% craft time boost
New Crops & Crafts
This week we’re introducing a new crop and two new crafts to make way for those delicious Harvest Pies!
Blueberry Field
Build Cost: $ 900 Affected by: Dirty and Salty
Blueberries
Cash: $300 Stars: 1 Ingredients: 3 Water Made in: Blueberry Field Stored in: Silo Craft Time: 60, 120, 240, 480s Affected by: Dirty & Salty
Fruit Pie
Cash: $43,850 Stars: 520 (meta value this week is 50,000) Ingredients: 1 Dough, 2 Apple, 3 Strawberry, 4 Blueberry, 1 Sugar Made in: Cakery Stored in: Storehouse Craft time: 40s Affected by: Nothing
💰 Cash Boosts
Flour: $2000 👉 $ 6000
⭐ Star Boosts
Fruit Pie: 520 👉 50k
New NFT –Blueberry Stand
Dropped on Friday, July 12th, this market stand gives passive Blueberry to surrounding buildings in a large area (3-2-1 passive Blueberries).
When using offline mode you must log back in before the event ends to make fast forward happen. It is run by your computer currently, and if you do not load the game back up, fast forward will not take place.
If you use Fast Forward, check in often. The longer you stay offline, the longer it takes to bring your town up to date.
Always make sure the game is the ONLY TAB in the browser on which it’s running.
Don’t fully cover the browser window with another window or program if you are actively playing. If you do, make sure to relaunch the game before trying to play again.
Litepaper Feedback
The team is still taking feedback on the litepaper released a few weeks ago.
Everyone is welcome to submit feedback through this form.
Don’t forget to join the Discord community for all the latest discussion and Common Ground World updates!
Good luck with your towns this week. May your Fruit Pies be the sweetest in the land!
Alright, you’re all shuffled up and the cards have been dealt. You’re a master of reading other people, so you know you’ve got this. Suddenly, you realize that your powers of observational deduction don’t work quite right in online poker… whatever shall you do!?
I’ll tell you what you’re going to do. You’re going to math harder than you’ve ever mathed before!
Odds and Playing the Math in Hold ‘Em
So we all know the poker player who plays with their feelings – “I’ve got a good feeling about that turn,” or “I can feel that he doesn’t have it.” That’s fun for tossing plastic chips around in your cousin’s basement over some beers, but I wouldn’t exactly call that a solid strategy when there’s real stakes.
Like most games, poker is based around complex systems of relatively simple math. What distinguishes poker from other games is the incomplete information factor. This is the main mechanic of the game. You know what you have, but everything else is a variable.
Think you can “feel” what other people’s cards are? Let’s review some facts from our last edition to dispel that illusion:
There are 1326 different possible combinations of hole cards you can be dealt in Hold ‘Em
There are 2,598,960 possible combinations the five cards on the table can be in as they are revealed
There are 9,122,409,676,719,740,029,270,368,190,464,000,000 (9.122 undecillion!) possible combinations for how the entire 23-card board could play out for a game with 9 players.
Still think you can play with your feelings? You’re playing the math whether you like it or not… embrace it!
Poker doesn’t have to be undecillion-level complicated though. With just a little learning and practice, you’ll be automatically weighing the chances of any hand you have with a surprising level of human-quality accuracy. The key is to always remember that there are waaaaay more ways that your hand can go wrong than it can go right.
Miss our last Thinking Poker? Check it out to have your mind blown by the not-quite-so-simple, traditional deck of cards.
Base Hand Odds
So you’re at a table with five other players in the hand. Your decision to fold, call or raise to see a flop. You’ve got A/K of hearts. Pretty confident about that? Let’s see where you’re at from an odds standpoint preflop:
Your A/K suited has the following chances of making a hand by the end of the river, not accounting for any other players:
High Card : 17.8%
One Pair : 44.1%
Two Pair : 22.3%
Three of a Kind : 4.2%
Straight : 2.9%
Flush : 6.2%
Full House : 2.3%
Four of a Kind : 0.1%
Straight Flush : 0.0%
With this hand matched against five totally unknown opponents, your hand has a 31% chance to come out on top. That is better than the 16.66% that would be an even distribution for you and 5 opponents..
A few things to note… That straight flush is at 0 from rounding. Keep in mind that a royal flush is just the highest straight flush. Yes, you have a gutshot royal flush draw – only if the 10 of hearts, the jack of hearts and the queen of hearts all hit the table. That’s a less than 1/1000 chance. The suited feels like it helps your odds a lot, but in the end having those matched suits is less than a 7% bump to your odds to make a decent hand.
In the above hand, you’ll be getting one pair or less in the likeliest circumstance. Think hard about how much that’s worth paying to see a flop.
Let’s look at the above hand again, this time in heads up play. There’s only you and one other player in the game and it’s your call whether to pay to see the flop.
Against a totally random hand in this circumstance, your A/K of hearts has a 66.1% chance to win. That is better than half, but it’s not quite the +11% over even odds that you had against 5 opponents.
You’re also not playing against a “random” hand. A player has filtered their cards to a degree. They’ve bet and called, so they are at least signaling they don’t have junk.
Pot Odds
Above, we were talking about straight odds to win. There is, however, another limited information mechanic in poker – the price. Throughout the game, you are put to a decision to add to the pot to stay in the hand repeatedly. This can be looked at as a price to stay in the game. Pot odds are what we call it when we weight this price versus hand equity or expected value.
Say you have a pair of 7s before the flop. There’s two other players in and there’s 800 chips in the pot. The decision is on you, and you can call for 200 chips to see the river. That means you’d be putting 20% of the value into the pot that you could prospectively win. There’s a table pair, and no possible draws on the board. There are two larger cards than your pair on the table.
Against two random hands, you have a 39.1% chance of taking down this pot after the river. You cannot, however, win if you don’t make it to the river or make everyone else fold.
You know from your cards and odds against a random hand that you are likely to have the best chances of anyone else, unless someone hit that low set on the flop. You’re paying 20% of the potential hand winnings to get into the river, and you’re roughly sitting at a player equity of 6:4, or 40%.
This means that you’re paying less than the perceived value of your hand to see the river. With your mathematical likelihood to win, you could conceivably call bets worth around 500 chips and still be on the right side of the numbers. Keep in mind, the pot gets bigger as you add more, thus diluting the pot odds argument and “pricing you in”, so to speak.
This is a good time to mention that “pricing you in” is an illusion. Remember the pot odds. Let’s say you’ve already paid 1000 chips to stay in a hand and there’s 5000 chips in the pot. The river has come, and you know that you have less than a 5% chance to win against random hands. Someone makes a small value bet of 400 chips (to puff up their pot probably!). If you have a 5% chance to win, paying 400 chips to see it through is a bad choice with only 5000 chips in the pot. You’d need ~8% chance to win to square those pot odds.
Already putting money into the pot does not mean you are priced in. Beware sunk cost… it’s the biggest weapon that the person with the winning hand has at their disposal to make you keep pushing over your chips!
Implied Odds
Let’s take this a step further. We know that pot odds are when you take the size of the pot into account versus the price of continuing in the game. Let’s move into something more abstract – implied odds.
Implied odds don’t only look at the pot and your chances versus a random hand. They are looking at the potential throughout the rest of the hand. Let’s look at another example.
You’ve got 10/J suited versus 5 opponents before the flop. You’re at about 24% chance to win… better than even 20% (1 of 5) odds! But wait! Someone’s going hard pre-flop… made hand? They throw down 900 chips into 100 chips of blinds. 3 callers, your decision. You’re now being asked to pay 900 into a 3700 chip pot to see the flop. This is less relative price than your chance to win to see three more cards, so you jump in and call. But… the player on the button raises to triple! Only one caller. It now comes back to you at with another 1800 into a 9100 chip pot. You’ve got the odds on your side in isolation… but this is starting to feel like sunk cost.
…or is it?
Let’s freeze in that moment. Someone made a ridiculously high bet off of just blinds… usually meaning that they have (or are representing they have) a medium pocket pair. They know they likely have the best hand preflop, but after more cards come out they probably won’t. That first player was probably trying to just buy the blinds, plus maybe some sucker that jumped in with trash.
The second player, however, made a value bet. While their raise was high compared to previous bets, they knew that at least one or two players would feel obligated to call after already putting so much money in. This player is intentionally growing the pot bigger instead of trying to elicit folding. This usually means they think they have the winning hand, or it is very likely that they will be the time the river is flipped.
They are trying to price other players in with pot odds… make it so they simply can’t fold over such a small amount of chips relative to the size of the pot. If you call, you’ve paid 2700 chips to access around a ~10k chip pot. While it’s likely that this is worth it to see a flop with your upside chance of almost quadrupling your chips in the middle of the table, tread lightly. If your opponent understands pot odds, they may be keeping you on the hook and just building up their pot without scaring you away.
It’s important to keep in mind here that there are three cards on the flop. With a hand like 10/J suited, you’re likely to know whether you have a real hand or not after the flop. With the turn and river only being one card, be very cautious about following value bets to those cards. If you haven’t gotten a hand worth playing in the first five cards, it’s unlikely you’re going to make one with those last two. A good player who knows they have you beat will just bleed you the rest of the hand to grow their pot.
Simple Gameplay. Complex Nuance
Poker overall is a very simple game in concept, but the combination of playing card randomness and incomplete information makes it so a lifetime of playing poker would still not be enough for anyone to totally understand the nuance and intricacies of the game.
In this article we’ve only scratched the surface of quick odds calculation in poker. Even knowing these few things though, you can estimate what’s worth it to you much better than just playing blind. Poker is about incomplete information… the more information you know about the game and theory, the less disadvantage you take from not knowing what’s in other players’ heads.
That’s all for us in this week’s Thinking Poker. We’ll be back in a few weeks to talk more about the fundamentals of all things poker!
Practice makes perfect… hit the tables today! Play Now
