Today, we’re breaking down an ancient terror from our ancestral past – The T-Rex!
This terrifying, fire-breathing beast was first uncovered by Earthiologists decades ago. Research has since revealed much more about this ancient terror.
The T-Rex was an unstoppable menace to early humans, and its ferocity can be seen in the arena. The limited archaeological context that’s been gleaned from the ancient discs indicates that T-Rex were originally bred as pets for human entertainment before breaking loose and nearly destroying the species.
At the height of their saurian civilization, it’s thought that the biggest among them must’ve dined on as many as 400 or more humans a day to maintain their size and energy and ruled over half the planet. The rex was not as massive as the chicken, the long-reigning alpha predator of Earth. It did, however, still tower over all of human creation other than the largest of golf stadiumariums.
In the arena, Rex boasts the most powerful offensive weapon seen by these monstrous human creations throughout the distant history – anti-matter breath.
The King: Rex/T-Ray
The T-Rex Hero Tank is made up of the Rex Body, the T-Ray Weapon and the Prehistoric Skin.
The Rex Body is quick and agile, representing the killer instincts of a true predator. Fabricated to scale, it actually runs quite light for its overall size. This Body won’t give you much in the way of Energy gain or durability, but it’ll zoom in for the kill when needed.
The T-Ray Weapon is entirely unique in the arena, as matter cannot stop its projection forward. It emanates from the Weapon in a very narrow cone. When you fire, your movement and turning motion will be slowed down until your ray powers down. This leaves you entirely vulnerable while your Weapon is firing, but anyone in range is also entirely vulnerable to your Weapon.
A Rex is excellent at sweeping up wounded Tanks after a fight.
The T-Rex struggles without a party to back it up, but with the right tactics it can absolutely destroy any opposing team.
Nowhere to Hide
The only way for enemies to avoid your T-Ray’s beam is by moving too quickly for it to hit them, or just running away. No amount of walls or barriers will save them.
Walls and barriers are, however, still how they dodge the rest of your team. Often enemies will find themselves unable to concentrate on avoiding you and your allies at the same time, since how you attack is so wildly different.
If you find good cover and get protection from your allies, the enemy can be entirely stopped by the perimeter your ray creates. This is especially potent on location-based matches, like King of the Hill, Poultry Pusher… or really any Map with a bridge or choke point.
With the right positioning, they won’t be able to avoid your beam.
Your Rex is squishy, but it’s also super zoomy. Your T-Ray takes a split second to power down when you stop firing. With a little timing, you can learn to predict that delay and easily Speed Booster up and flee when you’re in danger. Put a wall between you and your enemy again using your speed, then crank up the antimatter!
Mix It Up
The Body and Weapon of T-Rex are awesome to use for different combos. The Rex body represents a solid light body with equal stats to the Chicken Body. Not quite as squishy as something like a Flea, but still with significant moving power when it needs it.
The T-Ray can be great across a number of different Bodies because of how totally unique of a Weapon it is. Those who find their Rex a little too squishy may do better with a medium sized, high energy Body like Jet or Hurricane. The extra Energy will leave you more room to apply your strategy flexibly, and the extra bulk will help you not explode.
Big Rex kind of creates cover where there is none.
A very heavy Body with a T-Ray provides a different experience altogether. With this style, you’ll function more like a stationary heavy turret on your team.
Rather than having to hide away behind a wall like you do with Rex, using a heavy Body you could choose to be the wall yourself. How many good shots are they really going to get off on you when you’re spraying antimatter at them?
If you choose to play T-Rex with a heavy Body, make sure that you have a plan in place for melee Weapons. T-Ray doesn’t really have a defense against a Carver or a Flamethrower. Think about packing a grenade, Relay Drone or Reactive Plating.
Happy Hunting
That’ll do it for us at The Spider Tanks Showcase this week. Have fun out there with those T-Rays, and remember to exercise antimatter safety at all times in the arena.
We’ll be back soon with another Spider Tanks Showcase… Next time we’re heading deep into the caves of Cacus to spotlight Dragon Cave. Have tactics you rely on in Dragon Cave? Let us know on Discord for a chance to be featured in next week’s showcase!
Get ready for a great Town Hall live stream with members of the team from The Walking Dead: Empires, the survival MMO set in the treacherous world of AMC’s The Walking Dead.
The action starts in just 3 hours, at 11am PT. Set a notification and give an early shout in the comments at the link below and we’ll look forward to seeing you there!
Early Access Public Dev Build
Have you started playing TWDE yet through Gala Games? The game is still in development, but the team has opened it up to anyone with a Gala Games account, absolutely free.
Fight off walkers and do your best to scrape survival out of the hellish ruined world of AMC Networks’ hit TV series. You can even play as some of your favorite characters from the show!
Download The Walking Dead: Empires and start playing now on PC or Mac 👇
A series of recent NFT sales in the Gala Games store has made it possible to play as some of the most iconic and beloved characters from AMC’s The Walking Dead. Each Hero Card is available in the standard 6 different rarities (Common, Uncommon, Rare, Epic, Legendary and Ancient), only while supplies last.
All Heroes are sold in increasing price tiers– When each batch sells out, that item will only return at a higher price.
You’ll find more details about the sale and price structure in THIS RECENT BLOG.
NFT collector-players, take your pick from any of the following awesome Heroes:
Glenn
Abraham
Jesus (Paul Rovia)
Prepare for Survival
This game is your chance to collect, craft and survive your way to high status in the chaotic world of The Walking Dead. Play now and you’ll be ready when the real chaos begins!
We’ve got the perfect way to wrap up a hot summer hump day, enjoying some explosive extraction PvPvE action with Last Expedition, the future of FPS powered by GalaChain.
These live “Play with the Devs” events in Discord are always a community hit, and not only because the game is so awesome. These folks are some of the most experienced FPS game developers in the world, having contributed to renowned franchises such as Halo and Call of Duty. Basically, they live and breathe gaming. Think you have what it takes to literally beat them at their own game?
It’s all happening at 5pm PT in the LE-Lobby channel of the Gala Games Discord community.
If you’re prepared to take on the nightmare predators of Aura, suit up and get ready for action. If you haven’t played before, make sure you get the game downloaded and installed, then get some practice runs under your belt.
All you need to get in the game is a free Gala account and a free Epic Games account. Get started at LastExpedition.game. Discord voice chat will be used for in-game communication during the event, so be prepared to voice collaborate with your team.
Spectator Mode
Even if you don’t feel like playing, Last Expedition has a killer spectator mode that allows you to control camera angles and toggle between remaining players to get you as up close and personal with the FPS action as possible.
Get Unique Insights
While the team is playing, there’s a good chance they’ll let some awesome info nuggets slip about the future of Last Expedition. Remember, this game is still in Early Access and there is a ton of excitement still to unfold. Spend some time with the ones who know and you’ll probably learn something valuable.
Offer Feedback
These developers are great down-to-earth people who love connecting with the community over games. They’re happy to hear your feedback and they’ll always take it to heart, working out ways to deliver the most cutting edge empowering gaming experience you’ve seen.
So come join us in Discord for “Play with the Devs,’ tomorrow (Wednesday, July 17th) at 5pm PT and let them know that you can’t wait to make this a weekly tradition. Invite your friends and let’s make this event one to remember!
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!
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
