Welcome back Pilots! We’re here with another Spider Tanks Showcase. This time, we’re getting sneaky. Stealth abilities are on display!
Too often stealth is an overlooked strategy in the arena. Let’s face it, the arena is a brute force kind of place… but
Stealth Abilities and Strategy Overview
As we discussed in our Movement Abilities showcase, positioning is one of the most important things in any Spider Tanks match. In that regard, stealth Abilities serve much the same purpose – Get better positioning without the opponent ruining your day.
Stealth Abilities, however, can serve a little more niche function than movement Abilities. At the end of the day, movement will just take you closer or further from your target. Stealth Abilities, however, throw in much more confusion. Stealth Abilities not only get you better positioning, but disrupt the opposing team’s coordination and their positioning.
Stealth is a little more nuanced than movement Abilities though. When you’re using a Relay Drone, you don’t really care what your opponents think or perceive… either way, you’re going to teleport. When you’re using stealth, however, you need to take into account what your actions look like from your opponents’ perspective. Deceit is part of the strategy, and if you pull it off it’ll have devastating effects on the opposing team.
A nice, slow moving body makes it incredibly hard to see your outline while cloaked. These two poor Tanks never saw it coming…
Silent Killer
Offensively, stealth Abilities can easily strike fear into opponents. The arena is already chaos, add in not knowing which direction death is coming from and it can be impossible for your opponents to feel safe.
Crucially, that’s part of the plan. In the early moments of a match, your enemies may not know that you’re packing Cloak Drone or a Smoke Canister. Once you’ve lost the element of surprise though, you still have the element of fear on your side. Your opponents will have to be wary of your stealth Abilities all the way through the match. Forcing them to think three dimensionally like this could force them to make a mistake at a critical moment.
This Shotgun gets to walk right up on these two wounded stragglers. It may not have fooled them for long, but I guess we’ll never know.
To capitalize both on surprise and fear, your first strike with deception needs to really count. Not only should you secure a kill or a serious positioning hiccup for the opposing team, you should make your target lose their confidence. If they spend one minute sweating being humiliated in front of their team, you may have already won. Get them out of their comfort zone and it’ll pay off for the rest of the match.
Fade Away
Stealth Abilities are a quick and effective offense if you know how to use them, but they can also be beneficial defensively. If you’re on the run a quick Decoy Drone may not fool the enemy for long, but it can easily make them lose a split second to decide which is which. If an enemy has you in their sights, a smoke canister is just as effective at helping you dodge bullets as it is at hiding you while shooting them.
This Carver doesn’t buy much time with their decoy, but it’s more than enough wasted flamer fuel for the Flea that it has no chance against the larger Tracks.
Even Disguise Drone or Cloak Drone can give you some time to get to safety. If you’re going through a large pack of enemies and you pop a Disguise Drone, you’ll be difficult to follow even for someone that was watching you disguise. A quick cloak when you have a minute where you know you won’t be shot may let you disappear in plain sight. True, they can still see a vague silhouette of your outline… but that’s much harder to follow than a big, showy, multiple ton hunk of metal!
It’s all about positioning and timing, and stealth Abilities let you use distraction and deception to get that few extra seconds here and there to unleash havoc. Defensively or offensively, they can be deadly in the hands of a master.
To dodge bullets, you need to be able to see where they’re coming from just as much as you need to see your quarry to shoot it. Your brain is capable of calculating those ballistics, but only with a point of origin… if the shot is coming from some ambiguous place inside the smoke, however, dancing around it is a lot harder.
Sneak and Destroy!
That’ll be all for today’s showcase, but there’s tons more to cover in the Spider Tanks arena!
Next time, we’ll be back with a Hero Tank showcase – The T-Rex! Have mad skills with this ancient predator? Let us know on Discord or social media for a chance to be featured in the next Spider Tanks Showcase!
Welcome back to the Spider Tank Showcase! This week we’ll be taking a pretty sharp turn away from the pew pew of Crosssbow from last edition. This week we’re blasting through one of the bigger hunks of metal in the arena – The Maul!
Maul is a heavy Body, though it’s lighter than the biggest boys out there like Titan, Plate or Tracks. This large bulk provides you with an incredibly healthy amount of durability and Energy, but doesn’t slow your movement to a crawl like the biggest Bodies out there do.
The Warrior
Alright, we wanted to start off with originality… but we just can’t pass up the chance to revisit The Warrior build. Maul was, after all, originally released with the Bouncer. It’s a very classic combo.
The Maul’s bulk allows you to line up your shots a little better to get the best bouncy goodness. Since each ricochet with a Bouncer deals more damage than the last, shots that chain are the paydirt on this one.
Bouncy, bouncy, bouncy.
Maul gives you the maneuverability to make sure you can exploit weaknesses you spot while holding a Bouncer. It’s bulk lets you focus solely on getting your shot off, as you can easily shrug off a hit or two.
The Sentinel
This one is similar in theory to The Warrior, but utilizes the Sniper Rifle to get the most out of Maul’s toughness. Sniper Rifle is deadly from a distance, but lining up the right shot can occasionally leave you exposed.
With a Sniper Rifle, a heavy Body like Maul can easily occupy a choke point in the battle. Control access to part of the map, and you open up your allies to do all sorts of fun shenanigans. The point isn’t so much to not get hit… more to make them pay for wanting to hit you.
Long-range support doesn’t mean out of the action.
In the above clip, the Sniper Rifle has occupied a crucial junction just in front of the teleport. From here, its teammates are able to exercise control over the repair kit above and freely move around the map and only leave one quad where the enemy is safe.
The range on a Sniper Rifle is long enough, that no one can threaten the Maul for long. Even if they can, they have to be in the open to do so… and it only takes two or three clean shots to bring them down.
The Berserker
This last combo isn’t for every Pilot. For The Berserker build, we’ll use Maul alongside Carver. The bulk of Maul allows for you to shrug off the first few hits before your blade finds home, and the high Energy lets you play flexibly with Abilities like Relay Drone and Speed Boost.
You’re going to blow up a few times on this build… more than a few, in fact, while you learn to use it. Patience is the key. When you see your opening, zig and zag as you’re able to. Remember though, the zig towards your enemy. If you get hit a few times, that’s ok. Just kill them before they kill you.
Slice and dice time!
Maul is just heavy enough to ignore full frontal damage for a second or two. That’s often what you need to pin in the enemy with your sword. Keep them running from you. You want to be patient and wait for the right opening, but if you play scared you will lose. You’re a gigantic tank with a sword on top of it… they should be scared of you!
That’s Maul, Folks!
That’ll do it for our 25th edition of The Spider Tanks Showcase! Did we miss your favorite build with Maul? Did we choose one that you think is amateur hour? Let us know on Discord!
Next week we’re giving the Tank combos a rest for a bit, as we’ll dive into Stealth Abilities in the arena. Are you super sneaky? Have some good clips of your deceptive dominance? Let us know on Discord or social media for a shot to be featured in the next Spider Tank Showcase!
Rev up your engines Pilots, because you’ve got a new way to grab upgrades in the arena!
$SILK: The Universal Arena Token
From now on, every item will be able to be purchased in $SILK! While items like Components and Drop Ships have always been available in $SILK, certain Weapons, Bodies and Hero Tanks have only been available in $GALA, ETH or USD up to this point.
Being able to use $SILK on any explosive, implosive or otherwise destructive toys in the arena means you can turn your rewards into a new kit much easier!
While new Tanks in the arena may eventually mean more Victory Points coming from matches, all the $SILK that players use on those tanks increases the available $SILK to be distributed to all VP holders at the end of the day!
