We’re back, and this week we’re Crossbowing another amazing Weapon off our list of spotlights!
Welcome back to another Spider Tanks Showcase! This week, we’re exploring a Weapon design plucked from Earth’s distant past to unleash a wave of destruction on the arena fitting of the new millenia!
This week is, in fact, all about the Crossbow. This medieval warfare tool was originally outfitted on an archaic weapon of war called a “batmobile” in the early 24th century. Clever Earth scientists though quickly developed this into an easy to carry hand weapon, and the Crossbow was born as the height of modern destruction. Today, the Weapon has been revamped and retrofitted for Tanks throughout the Planetary Union.
The Crossbow is an extremely long range Weapon. The longer it is charged, the further it goes and the more damage it potentially does. That’s not to say it can’t be deadly at close range, but short pull backs only result in half the damage of long shots. All shots from the Crossbow pierce opponents though, so you could always fire that long shot through the adversary in your face to your real target to take out two birds with one bolt. Look out though! Whenever you charge the Crossbow, your movement will be massively slowed!
Skewering the Competition
When you’re playing as a Crossbow, you want to prioritize your ability to maneuver and achieve good position in matches. This isn’t to say that you always need the fastest Tank, but any bulk you add into your build should serve your positioning. Obviously, a Titan with a Crossbow won’t need to scramble and run from opponents as often as a Flea, so that could mean you get more shots off with time to line them up.
A Crossbow on a heavier Tank can give you some versatility in both the range you use it and how you maneuver.
The learning curve on Crossbow can be pretty high for most Pilots, so don’t get discouraged if you have trouble with it early on. Its single projectile style and massive range require you to hone your ballistics instincts a bit. When both you and your target are zipping across the arena and you’re firing halfway across the battlefield there are a lot of variables to account for. Eventually with practice, however, you’ll be able to shoot from the hip and time your bolts well to lead targets.
Whether you choose a small or bulky Body, you’ll need to account for those drawbacks with Abilities. Crossbow isn’t totally helpless up close, but if you’re a medium to large Tank that’s unable to quickly put distance between yourself and your opponent you may need to consider a defensive Ability for those “Oh $#*&!” moments. Shield Drone, Reactive Plating or even a quick Relay Drone can be extremely valuable to buy you a moment to regroup.
Combatting Crossbow
When you’re up against a Crossbow in the arena, it can be easy to feel like nowhere is safe. The range on the Crossbow is very long, but you can minimize the danger they pose by understanding how they exploit the weaknesses of opposing teams.
Grouped up enemies are paydirt for a Crossbow. Every crossbow-wielding hunk of metal in the arena would love to make a Tank kabob out of all three members of a team while they’re grouping up for a Heal Zone or on the Command Point. When you are close to your opponents, shift your attention to the enemy Crossbow to make sure you aren’t giving them any easy opportunities. While your team is scattered, they can only concentrate on one of you. While grouped, they can ruin your match pretty quickly.
With the enemy team all spread out, this Crossbow doesn’t stand a chance.
The best way for a Crossbow to hit opponents unaware is to line up long shots laterally. Often in matches, a firing line develops where both teams are squaring off on either side of some imaginary barrier. While more straightforward Tanks are lobbing cannonballs and laser blasts at each other across the line, however, an enemy Crossbow will often sneak off to the side.
Attacking diagonally across the field like this allows the Crossbow to potentially hit more enemies and makes misses much more likely to find some chassis behind their intended target. Don’t ignore the Crossbow in these situations… it can turn the tide of battle very fast.
When you get close up on a Crossbow, don’t think they’ll be an easy kill. Short charges do indeed do considerably less damage on a Crossbow, but that doesn’t mean all short shots do. A fully charged bolt can still do full damage point blank, which could easily mean a one shot kill for a small Tank in a Crossbow’s face.
Crossbow Tactics
When you’re playing Crossbow on a team, you need to remember that you depend heavily on the other Pilots with you. You’re not carrying a 1v1 Weapon, even if you can pull it off sometimes.
While a Crossbow leaves something to be desired solo, it does complement other long ranged Weapons very well. A Crossbow can lend much needed mid-range support to a Sniper Rifle or Railgun.
Snagging kills with Crossbow often depends on catching opponents when they are distracted. Look for opportunities where enemy Tanks are clearly paying attention to your allies. Catch opposing Tanks en route across the battlefield when possible. If they’re looking at that repair kit, they may not see your bolt zooming towards them as they come around the corner.
Never underestimate the power Crossbow can have for zone control to benefit your team. This may result in your kill count ending up lower than your allies, but that’s not always a bad thing. If your enemies know that you are covering a particular angle of approach with a deadly rain of bolts, you’ve successfully controlled their movement. If you can effectively limit opponents’ options for much of the match, that’s usually far better for your team than a kill or two along the way.
Pew Pew Power
Crossbows are a very unique Weapon in the arena. They can take practice to be truly deadly, but in the hands of a master they can unleash unparalleled destruction. In this age of high tech weaponry, never underestimate the little analogue arrows sniping from the corner of the arena.
The battle continues in Dragon Strike: Puzzle RPG. Have you tried your hand in the battle to regain your kingdom!?
If you haven’t tried Dragon Strike yet and you like RPG or Match-3 games, why not!? Dragon Strike is easy to hop in and get started with and there’s tons of ways to play!
Today, we’d like to go over some of the gameplay systems within Dragon Strike. As we ‘show you around’, so to speak, remember that Dragon Strike is readily available from both the Play Store and App Store. If you like what you see here, download it and give it a go!
Dragon Strike, in Brief
Dragon Strike: Puzzle RPG is a game that includes engaging and beloved mechanics from multiple game genres, so it can seem intimidating to people at first glance. Once players get inside, however, they’ll find a lot of the systems quite familiar and intuitive.
Combat within the game takes place primarily in a match-3 style, though your specific team’s skills and abilities play a major role in how that combat plays out. As you match colors, Heroes of the corresponding colors will gain energy to use their powerful abilities.
There’s no turn-based play… you’ll need to be clever and quick. If your opponent is getting the upper hand, you have your inventory at your disposal. Use it to delay or debuff the opponents, or to buff your troops or do massive amounts of damage.
Regular Events
While Dragon Strike primarily employs RPG and match-3 elements, the regular event cycle adds more of a strategy facet to the game as well. These events are constantly rotating, and will reward you for taking specific actions – such as summoning, recruiting, killing monsters, etc.
The rewards for these events aren’t quite as big as the weekly events, but they add up. The best players will plan their use of resources and time to fit this event cycle. That way, they’re always on top of the leaderboard and pulling in the best rewards.
Your Town
As you play through the game, you’ll be fortifying your base. Exiled from your castle, you’ll need to build up this backwater town into a new seat of power.
In your town you have multiple plots to build and new buildings will become available as you level. You’ll level up resource buildings and storage, but you’ll also slowly grow your barracks and Dragon Pit to recruit powerful allies to your cause.
Crucially, you can also access The Summoning Portal from your town. Here you’ll be able to summon new Heroes and Dragons without waiting for them to slowly recruit from the barracks. Combine your recruits and summons to make a powerful team.
Your Troops
The Heroes and Dragons you summon will fill up your army over time. These units will start out with limited power at low level, but you can level them up by combining them with other like units.
As you build up Heroes and Dragons that you are less likely to use, combine them with your main team to increase the level of your best Heroes. Beware though, any Heroes or Dragons you use to as fodder to level will be gone forever!
Once your troops hit max level, you can use promotion items to increase their rank. This increases their stats and starts them back at level 1, where you can grind up their level to even more power! As rank increases, the promotion items required become rarer. You can always find what you need though somewhere in the campaign, dungeons or event rewards!
Campaign
The campaign is the ongoing battle to regain your kingdom from the evil Malum. In this mode, you’ll progress through levels in many areas, gradually increasing in difficulty and rewards.
As you go through the campaign, you’ll notice that each area has three likely drops listed. These are items that are more likely to drop from these areas, though they aren’t the only items that may drop as loot. You can use these favored drops to target farm what you need to grow your army.
Once you finish the campaign against Malum, an entirely new campaign will open with even more challenges. Be aware though – this is the endgame. The difficulty (and rewards) grow quickly here.
Dragon Strike
Dragon Strikes don’t carry the name of the game for nothing. These are serious battles against a series of insanely powerful Dragon bosses with potentially huge rewards.
This is a guild only event. Guilds work together to take down each and every Dragon placed before them. This takes both coordination and strategy. Using up your best items and all your energy early could leave you lacking on the tougher dragons.
Each guild only has a few days to rack up the kills here and rise on the leaderboards!
Tournament
The other side of the coin from Dragon Strike is the Tournament. This battle will present players with a wide array of battles for different level of Heroes. This battle goes on opposite weeks from Dragon Strikes, and is more of an individual battle than a guild contest.
Players will wade through each wave of the tournament and be ranked according to the points they achieve. Points come from both clear speed and the size of the largest combo achieved during battle. Climb the leaderboard to get BIG rewards.
Dragonspire Tower
Dragonspire Tower happens between Dragon Strike and Tournament events, and is similar to the tournament, but requires a little more nuanced strategy.
In Dragonspire Tower, you’ll climb through a neverending progression of increasingly difficult battles. Each gives rewards for completing… but there’s a catch. You can’t use the same Hero or Dragon twice.
Guilds offer a MAJOR advantage though, as in Dragonspire Tower you can borrow Heroes and Dragons from other players in your guild to use in a battle. You can only borrow from each member of your guild one time though, so you’ll still have to make some strategic decisions and not use up all your power early!
Dungeons
Dungeons occur on a rotating schedule and have unique waves of enemies with fixed rewards. There’s a large variety of difficulties of dungeons – the occasional “Impossible” dungeons can be punishing until you figure out their strategy, but the rewards are usually worth it.
Each dungeon has rewards for a fixed amount of waves, but you can also continue diving deeper into the dungeon for increasing rewards once you’re done. Each dungeon carries its own leaderboard so you can push yourself to get deeper than anyone else.
Arena
The arena is where PvP comes into play in Dragon Strike: Puzzle RPG. Each player sets a defense team in the arena, then any attacking player can be matched against your defense team which will be played by the computer.
This asynchronous PvP system means that while you get to battle against the teams of your friends and rivals, there’s no long-winded wait for matchmaking. As soon as you enter the Arena, you’re right in the action.
Your rank in the arena depends on both your attacking and defending victories, so it may prove that different teams are better in each role. Experiment with your teams and see what you can make work.
The Gala Games Leaderboard
The Gala Games Leaderboard is a ranking system that occurs weekly and pulls performance in multiple events into one list of rewards. This is where players can accumulate $GALA for their efforts in the game.
These events rotate weekly, depending on whether Dragon Strike or the Tournament is happening that week. The Gala Games Leaderboard will reward players with points based on the number of NFT Heroes that they use during the relevant events that week. Players will receive more points multiplicatively for each NFT Hero they use, up to a maximum of 5x for a full party of NFT Heroes.
Players will accumulate points for their performance in The Arena, as well as Dragon Strike or the Tournament – whichever happens that week. At the end of the Leaderboard each week, players will receive $GALA based on their rank.
Prepare for Battle
Jump in and get battling today! If you haven’t started building up your army and preparing for the war, what are you waiting for!?
NFT-Ready Heroes can be summoned in game, and there’s plenty of NFTs available on OpenSea or NFT Harbor… but you don’t need to buy anything to hop in and start building your forces! You can download and start playing right away!
Dragon Strike is totally free to play and you can download it from the Play Store or the App Store today.
The tavern is packed, the table is set. The cards are shuffled and two legends of the tables stare each other down… the action is about to begin!
The tables of Tolkheim are open… will you take your seat and achieve greatness?
Play Legends Reborn Today
Legends Reborn: Age of Chance is free to play through the Gala platform right now! If you haven’t hopped on and slung some cards yet, what are you waiting for?
Legends Reborn is in early access. It’s a web3 collectible card game that anyone can jump in and play! Don’t have a deck!? No problem! A rotating supply of free cards are available so that you can learn the ropes and refine strategies before you start your collection.
Speaking of starting your collection, Legends Reborn offers numerous ways to pick up new cards for your decks. You can unlock cards by grinding your way up through the Battle Pass, craft your own cards, grab new random packs using Dragon Stones, or purchase cards off secondary markets like OpenSea or NFT Harbor.
You can even pick up free cards every day in the game!
Crafting allows you to dismantle your unused cards to create new ones for your decks!
PvE and PvP Matches
While you’ll need to show your stuff in PvP to rack up $TOLK rewards from the leaderboard, you can hop in and start testing your skills at the table right away!
The word is still just starting to get out on Legends Reborn’s early access period. That means less competition to climb the ladder, but it doesn’t mean that you’ll have to wait forever just to learn the game. Multiple difficulties of AI opponents are available in practice mode to let you perfect your deck.
Don’t underestimate those hard mode bots… 🤦
Try out new decks. Experiment with different strategies and find out what works best for you.
Become a Legend
Legends Reborn is easy to jump into. The basic mechanics are easy to pick up, even for people without a ton of collectible card game experience under their belts.
Tooltips and some helpful tips you can access guide you through the first part, but you’ll start picking up on the deeper strategies by the end of your first match. Before too long, you’ll be tinkering with your deck to get combos that are perfect for your playstyle.
And there’s a lot of room to find your own play style. With such a new game and so many diverse strategic options, who knows who could discover something amazing and become the next Legend of Tolkheim!
The magnificent fantasy world of Gala Games’ legendary fantasy MMO is coming to life before our eyes, moving faster than ever. Games of this magnitude are often years in the making, and some of our most dedicated community members have been patiently waiting for Mirandus since the dawn of Gala Games.
Mirandus is one of our most community hyped gaming projects, set to redefine an entire genre of gaming with a fantasy simulation as aesthetically beautiful as it is strategically challenging– A land where magic reigns, Materium flows and “dying hurts.” Players are itching to get into Mirandus more than ever… and we can’t wait for them to experience it!
Dig into the latest blog for an up-to-date roadmap with what you can expect in the coming weeks and months.
If you’re not able to catch this Town Hall live, then don’t forget to watch the replay. You don’t want to miss this one.
Join us at 12pm PT today, June 26th. Set a notification at the link below!
Ready to up your poker game? Sweep It Poker, Gala Games’ free-to-play casual poker game, is here to help you hone your skills while giving you a chance to win $GALA in our weekly Sweepstakes!
In this series of blog articles, we’ll dive into the basics of poker to get you playing like a pro in no time. In this series, we’ll stick to the games currently included with Sweep It Poker, Texas Hold’em and Omaha Hold’em.
Let’s start with the fundamentals
Understanding the Basics: Poker Hand Rankings
Mastering poker begins with knowing the hand rankings. Here’s a quick rundown from the highest to lowest:
Royal Flush: A, K, Q, J, 10, all of the same suit.
Straight Flush: Five consecutive cards of the same suit.
Four of a Kind: Four cards of the same rank.
Full House: Three cards of one rank and two cards of another.
Flush: Any five cards of the same suit, not in sequence.
Straight: Five consecutive cards of different suits.
Three of a Kind: Three cards of the same rank.
Two Pair: Two different pairs.
One Pair: Two cards of the same rank.
High Card: When no other hand applies, the highest card wins.
Betting is a crucial aspect of poker that can make or break your game. Here’s a breakdown of common betting actions:
Check: If no one has bet, you can choose to check, passing the action to the next player. This action is signified by the player saying “check” or knocking on the table felt.
Bet: Wager chips into the pot. Once a bet is made, players must call, raise, or fold. Betting can be verbally announced or visually as the player slides or tosses chips into the pot area.
Call: Match the current bet by announcing “call” and contributing chips to the pot.
Raise: Increase the current bet by announcing a raise or adding at least 2X the chips that have already been bet. If you don’t have twice as many chips in your stack, you must raise all in or fold.
Fold: Discard your hand and forfeit the current round, indicated by tossing cards face down onto the table.
Your position at the poker table affects your strategy. Position in this case refers to your location on the table relative to the “Dealer” button, which moves clockwise around the table hand by hand.
Early Position: The first few seats to act. Play conservatively here because you have less information about other players’ hands. If you’re first to act in a new round of betting with several players, you’ll probably want to let another player open the betting for that round.
Middle Position: The seats in the middle of the table. You can start to play a bit more aggressively in the middle position, but you should still be cautious. A raise here could risk a reraise from a late-position player with awesome cards.
Late Position: The last few seats to act, including the dealer. You have more information on how opponents are playing, allowing you to be more aggressive. The player with the Dealer button has the last choice, allowing them to “position bet” if every other player has checked in that round.
Play Tight-Aggressive: Focus on playing strong hands aggressively. This makes you less predictable and maximizes your winning potential. Play into your patience and fight the urge to play every hand no matter your cards.
Bluff Wisely: Bluffing can be powerful but should be used sparingly. Always consider your position and your opponents’ tendencies. More chips are won by betting appropriately on mathematically winning hands than bluffing with rags (bad cards).
Observe Opponents: Pay attention to how your opponents play. Look for patterns and tendencies that you can exploit. This doesn’t necessarily mean only physical and vocal mannerisms– More often, it’s patterns in their betting and raising habits. Any time the cards are shown at the end of a hand, there is a lot to learn from your opponents.
Bankroll Management: Set a budget for your poker play and stick to it. Whether you’re playing in a real money game or a casual free game like Sweep It Poker, never chase losses.
Sweep It Poker offers a fantastic platform to practice these basics without the risk of losing real money. The more you play, the more entries you can stack for the weekly Sweepstakes, enhancing your skills in a fun and engaging environment surrounded by members of the Gala community.
Stay tuned for our next blog post where we’ll dive deeper into advanced strategies and tips to help you dominate the poker table. Thanks for being a part of our vibrant community and may your hands always be winning!
Greetings, Common Grounders! This week, we are excited to introduce a new delicious twist to your town in Common Ground World. Starting tomorrow, you can sell tangy, mouthwatering Kimchi crafted from fresh Lettuce and a Shrimp-based Fish Sauce at the new Korean Restaurant. Spice up your town and ferment your way to the top with this new exciting addition!
As always, landing on the leaderboard in the Kimchi Craze will get you standard $GALA rewards at the end of the competition, depending on your final rank.
As you collect more Stars for producing and selling goods, you’ll rise on the leaderboard.
The higher you finish on the leaderboard, the greater your $GALA rewards!
New Crafts
Kimchi
Cash: $22,460
Stars: 518 (increased to 50K for this week’s event!)
To ensure you get the best results from playing Common Ground World, here are some crucial reminders:
When using offline mode, make sure to log back in before the event ends to trigger fast forward.
Regularly check in if you use Fast Forward to keep your town up to date.
Ensure the game runs as the only tab in your browser for optimal performance.
Relaunch the game if another window covers the browser fully while playing.
Join a Guild
Guilds are live, and a great chance to enhance the Common Ground World experience with cooperative strategy while unlocking new levels of competition!
Every Common Ground World Node represents a Guild, as described in this blog. If you don’t own a Common Ground World Node, ask an operator friend to invite you to their Guild. You’re likely to find Guild leaders recruiting in the Common Ground World Guilds Discord channel. Go make some friends!
Community Feedback
We are actively seeking feedback on the lite paper released a few weeks ago. Your insights are invaluable to us. Please share your thoughts using the links below:
Don’t forget to catch up on the latest updates and discussions from our recent biweekly Town Hall. Watch the YouTube replay to stay informed about all the exciting developments in the Gala ecosystem.
