Hello all you pilots out there, and welcome back to the Spider Tanks Showcase!
In this edition, we’re diving into a newer tank body in the arena, but one that offers some things no other body can. This mighty body forgoes the legs of most of its competition for a smooth ride over a more traditional tank drive system.
That’s right. This week, we’re talking about Tracks. Tracks is a retro special, sporting an antique track design that was popular on the Canadian subcontinent in the 15th century of Earth’s ancient past. This tank proves why such time-tested designs were popular, as it’s highly efficient and capable of amazing bursts of power when piloted by a skilled technician.
Tracks is big. Not Titan big, but pretty dang big. Usually, Energy is strictly a function of size – not in the case of Tracks. Tracks has the single highest Energy gain of any tank body out there, meaning you can use more abilities more often.
Like the Nomad, Santa’s Sleigh or Snoop’s Bumpin Lowrider, Tracks is a directional drive body. This means that it can move on impulse forward and backward but not side to side. You’ll have to adapt to this driving style if you’re not used to it, but the key is to stay in motion at all times if possible. It’ll take a while to accelerate from a stop, and you can’t turn while not moving. Keep agile and keep turning so that you can react quickly.
The Charger: Tracks/Carver
Remember how we said you get more energy than anyone else using Tracks? This combo takes full advantage of that. A Carver requires you to be up close… not a usual choice for a massive tank. With Tracks’ burst ability thanks to its energy though, you can cover a surprising amount of ground fast to chop down the competition.
Speed Boosters cost very little Energy, and with a high level Tracks you can theoretically use them pretty much whenever you need if you’re conservative with your Energy when you don’t need. Throw in a Repair Drone for another low-cost ability to keep you running smooth and you can use more abilities during the match than anyone else.
Opponents will think they’ve got your speed and reach down, then you kick on the afterburners. Make sure that you’re well repaired when you attack and choose your window well. Once you go sprinting after an enemy you’ll be a sitting duck if you turn around, so make sure they end as pieces and not you.
Mobile Triage: Tracks/Repair Artillery
While Tracks’ consistent Energy and toughness are huge assets, for many pilots the drive style of Tracks will often be a disadvantage. We can minimize that liability though by staying on the periphery of the fight when possible, and artillery makes that more possible.
With this, you’ll be playing support most often. You’ll still have the massive Energy gain to scramble and reposition if you need, but you can stay moving on the outside of the conflict, ensuring that your team stays healed and supported.
With Tracks large amount of Energy, Repair Zone could come into play as well here. Usually this ability is only useful in very few situations due to its high cost, but with Tracks you could lay down a repair zone every 20 seconds or so, allowing you to heal both team members at once.
The Burster: Tracks/Bouncer
This combo accepts that Tracks won’t be the fastest around, but it’s a much more traditional way to make a hard-hitting tank that has the chance to put out big bursts of damage when needed.
Bouncer can absolutely tear up an opposing team if you get them at the right time, and Tracks’ ability to utilize excessive amounts of Speed Boosters plays a key role here. With Tracks you can afford to be on full Energy most of the match, which means you can always be ready to make a sprint.
With this combo, you’ll want to get in and unleash your bouncies – then get out and bide your time until your next attack. Don’t boost as soon as you start your approach and give away your position. You want to save that booster until the last possible moment so that you can still use some of it to escape and prepare for your next pass. This opens up your allies to come in and clean up the mess or set you up for another run.
On Track to Victory
Tracks may be a blast from the past, but it has a lot of modern relevance in today’s arena. Don’t be turned off by the directional drive system without hopping in the pilot seat and giving this one a try… it can make big plays happen once you get used to its tendencies!
That’s all for us this week, but we’ll return next week for another Spider Tanks Showcase!
Have a body, weapon, abilities, map or game mode you’d like us to cover that we haven’t gotten to yet? Let us know on Discord and we’ll buckle up and get it ready!
But what about when you don’t have the cards you want to build a deck with? 🤔
As you start feeling comfortable at the tables, you’ll notice a lot of cards that your deck needs in it. Sure you can grab your daily packs and wait for the right card… or you can take matters into your own hands and craft excatly what you need!
Cardsmithing
In the world of Tolkheim, skilled artisans use powerful magics to create each card. You may not have the years of experience it takes to become a master cardsmith, but you can still leverage some of the leftover magic in your unused cards to craft a new card here and there!
In your card menu, you can see all the cards you own. If you remove the filter on unowned cards, you could see every available card and how your deck stacks up.
Now even the best player has a few cards sitting around that they don’t use, and we can dismantle those cards to harvest their residual magic!
Dismantling Cards
In your Deck Editor, you can click any card and then click “Deconstruct” to gain Parchment, Black Ink, Blue Ink, or Red Ink based on the card you’re destroying.
NOTE: This will permanently destroy the card you select! Use with caution!
Once you’ve accumulated enough of Ink and Parchment, you can take those resources to craft entirely new cards.
Crafting New Cards
There are a ton of options for cards to craft, so don’t hurry into any decision! Choose how to use your resources wisely. Over time, you’ll get more and more cards… you don’t have to have them all right away!
Once you’ve selected the card you want to craft, double check that you know what the Ink cost is. Different rarities of cards have different costs to craft, and you don’t want to run out before you’ve crafted everything you need.
Click the craft button, and you’re ready to go!
Don’t go overboard all at once. When you craft some cards, see how they work in your deck before you craft a bunch more. You never know when you’ll spot a strategy you didn’t see and your deck-crafting plans may change.
Build Out Your Deck!
Even just making a few cards strategically can open up your deck to using entirely new tactics. The right Action Card at the right time can turn the tides of battle, and crafting the right cards to complement your existing deck can enhance your other cards and open up new combos!
You’re bound to make a miscalculation here and there… don’t sweat it! You can always keep grabbing daily packs or packs from the market for fresh crafting fodder. The best decks weren’t made overnight, but crafted diligently and thoughtfully!
Good luck with your crafting – and good fortune at the tables!
A new battle begins… will this conflict lead you to glory or ruin?
Really that’s up to you. In this war, so much depends on how good of a start you get. While we’re all anxiously awaiting Elysium to open back up to Captains, let’s take a look at some of the best ways to get a great start when the servers open back up for Season 7!
The first week of a season is the absolute best time to get involved in Eternal Paradox and the fight for the ring. Eyeing that 900k+ pile of $ETIME that just got distributed to players at the end Season 6? The battle for the next set of rewards starts today!
Eternal Paradox is a team game. While you could play a whole season solo if you really wanted to, there are some things that you just can’t do on your own.
Conquest, Followers of Doom (pictured above), Guild Festival, Guild Arena… there are tons of activities in Eternal Paradox that are only for guilds… don’t be shy. Join a guild!
The sooner you get into a guild in a season the better. Every support that your guild provides decreases building or research time by 2% of the remaining total. That adds up! Even before 20+ guild member supports are possible with guild research, a -20% time to your buildings can make a HUGE difference when you’re starting out.
Guilds don’t just help you grow though. This is a war game, and there are Captains out there who want to take your stuff. Having a guild tag by your name will make them think twice about whether they want to start something that may be costly on both sides. Your guild mates can also stand by you and help defend when you need it.
While you’re clicking like mad in the first hours to get a solid foundation, don’t forget about rallies. Rallying with your guild to strike some early blows on the Black Sun Cult could give you a big advantage with extra experience and those huge “First Kill” bonuses. Get out there and get some loot from those cultists… the guild that fights together wins together.
Even at low levels a first kill can provide a high amount of resources.
First Order of Business
The tutorial prompts will walk you through the very first things you need to do to get started, but don’t stop there. You need to keep those timers ticking in the early days as much as possible. Don’t worry, once your timers on building, training and research get longer there will be time to slow down and take a breath.
Buildings
Keep that HQ going up in the first days. All your buildings are gated behind that, so make sure you leave yourself room to grow. Prioritize the Academy and one barracks early on… keep all your troops training, but push one barracks higher than the others to get you a concentrated power element to work with.
Note that the Harvester and resource gathering buildings give most of their increased resources at levels 6, 11, 16, 21 and 26. While it can be good to push up your Harvester early on for some extra resources, don’t get lost halfway between 6 and 11! The levels in between provide very little increased production, so consider them a stepping stone to level 6 or level 11.
Research
There are a lot of options to start with on research, but command and resources should be early focuses. Resource research makes all your fortress upgrades more affordable, therefore it’s less beneficial the later in the season you get it completed.
Command increases a wide array of factors, but most importantly it can help reduce your research and building time. Even a 3% decrease in building time can end up meaning hundreds of hours of construction saved over the course of a season… definitely worth prioritizing early on.
Try to save research into Mercenary and Soldier for day two and beyond. These are incredibly powerful boosts, but they won’t do much for you on the first day compared to getting command and resource head starts.
Soldiers
Like we said above, concentrate on one barracks first. That doesn’t mean you’ll neglect the others though… keep those timers running! Choose one to tier up faster than the others but keep every barracks training, even if it’s only training level 1s.
As your army gets to be more formidable and you start advancing a second group of soldiers, don’t be afraid to tier up rather than train. Tiering up a bunch of tier 2s to tier 3 soldiers saves you a massive amount of time in training. Don’t think of your low tier soldiers as waste or fodder… think of them as high tier soldiers who just haven’t finished their training yet!
Later on, you’ll inevitably be creating T1s to keep your high tier soldiers alive. This can wait for now. Don’t bother including T1s in your attacks to protect T3 or T4 soldiers. At this point in the season, your troop numbers are just too small to spare the power. Some of your highest tier soldiers will die along the way, but they’ll be replaced one hundred fold or more by the time first Conquest rolls around… there’s still time to build up your army!
Mercenaries
Choose a group of hunting mercenaries and work on them first. You want hunting synergy here with the barracks that you’ve decided to push upwards first. If that’s your fire barracks, choose four fire Mercenaries. If it’s tempest, choose storm Mercs… you get it.
These will likely be your primary hunting mercenaries for a few weeks if not the whole season, so choose wisely. If you can’t make a whole team with hunting synergy, consider getting creative. Zoe increases the synergy her troop can have in a battle, for instance. Bianca has a command skill that provides an extra flat bonus that can be used to make up for some missing synergy.
Don’t worry about your light and dark Mercenaries yet. It’ll be a while before you unlock barracks for those soldiers, so their war synergy does nothing for you at the start.
Other Tips and Best Practices
Use Up Your Stamina!
During the early days of a season you won’t have a very high maximum stamina. Don’t forget to use it frequently to hunt and do challenge stages. Running yourself dry on stamina is fine… missing out on a few hundred stamina because you were capped out could make you lose ground relative to other Captains.
You have to work your way up to higher level monsters, so make sure you keep pushing yourself and challenging the next tier.
Don’t push too hard though and lose all your soldiers early!
Don’t Forget About Shakram!
Shakram Legions are easy to overlook early on. You’re not getting a ton of use from T1 and T2 captives, and you don’t get experience from them.
They can, however, be your best source of resources in the beginning. Especially with the ‘First Kill’ bonuses, you can get set up with the supplies you need to never stop building if you keep putting pressure on the legion. You don’t need to push up too high, even low level Shakram legions provide a big boost to resources.
Explore!
Exploration points can be commonly neglected early on. You don’t need a bunch of Awakening Stones in the early game, but there’s more than just those in there! Jackpot chests can contain big bonuses like stamina, itemized resources or speedups. Even without jackpot chests, you’ll find speedups and XP potions in the ruins… no reason to waste those points by letting them cap out!
Don’t Be Shy… Get Out There and FIGHT!
Again, Eternal Paradox is a war game. Other Captains have stuff you want – maybe you just go take it?
PK points are probably the easiest thing to just ignore in the early game, but Captains who take a little while to scout out some opponents and launch an attack or two will be set up for success. More resources for you, less resources for the opponent… what’s not to love?
Good Fortune in the Battle!
Season 7 will launch at 5pm PT today, September 24th.
Are you ready for the coming battle? Get out there and fight for the future of Elysium!
The game has begun, legends! Have you taken your seat at the table?
Legends Reborn is not a complicated game to jump into… you can grab one of the pre-made decks and be having a blast at the tables right away after starting up the game for the first time.
That having been said, there’s a lot of nuance to deck building for those who like to dig in deeper and grow their strategic chops. No one controls the hand you’re dealt… but you can control what goes into your deck.
Calling All First-Time Deck Crafters!
We recognize this may be a review for some of the legends out there. Don’t worry, higher level classes are on the way!
This will not do! We want to take a quick opportunity to walk folks through the basics before we dive deeper into strategy.
If you haven’t played Legends Reborn much yet, but are ready to dive into deck building tactics, read on to learn how to craft your first decks!
Choosing Your Deck
From the main menu, you can select “Deck Editor” to hop right into refining your deck. You’ll notice that there are some preset selections in place. These are great starting points, and you should totally play around with these to get a feel for the style you like to play.
Once you’re ready to start your own destiny… choose to create a new deck and start lining up your strategy!
If you don’t have any cards, no need to worry! There are always time-limited cards available, and you can grab a free daily pack every day to pad your reserves!
Grab these free packs each day from the “Shop” on the main menu.
Deck Building Basics
Every deck starts with a Hero. This is you… the player of the card game. Not only are you choosing whose skin you’re playing behind, but you’re choosing an overarching theme for your deck.
Each Hero Card comes with five cards. These are special Hero-specific actions that you can take at critical moments throughout the match. They’ll often be game-changing if played right, so choose a Hero based on what you think will combo well with the deck you’re hoping to build.
After you select a Hero, it’s on to Creatures. In every deck you get six Creatures. Their stats will determine how your deck plays, so pay attention to which roles work out better for you so you can adapt in the future.
After Creatures, you’ll choose six Action Cards for each Creature in your deck. These Action Cards will be selected from a pool based on that creature’s combat role. These Action Cards are what you will draw from each time your Creatures attack.
You want to choose Action Cards that synergize with each other, but also ones that complement several of your Creatures if possible. Remember, you never know what order you’ll draw cards in. You want as many opportunities to win as possible!
Refining and Improving
Once you’ve selected all your cards, name your brand new deck and you can get to playing! You can click “Summary” from the deck builder menu to get an overview of your deck that you just made.
This summary will show you all your Creatures and you Hero, but crucially will let you quickly reference your Mana Curve. Take note of this. If you ever find yourself with too many high mana cards to play, you may need to switch out for some lower cost cards. Likewise, if you find yourself with just too much mana and no cards, then you probably need to get some higher cost Actions in there.
Don’t be worried if you don’t have too many choices the first time. Time limited free cards swap out frequently, so you can experiment with a lot of different cards over time. As you play, you’ll unlock more cards and also be able to pick up that free pack every day. Before you know it, you’ll not only have a lot of cards to choose from, but know how to use them all!
As we said above, we’ll be back later with some more advanced strategy – but get in and give building a deck a try today!
If you’ve had experience with TCG deck building before, you know how engaging and fun the strategic customization can be. If you haven’t… well, you’re missing out! Luckily for you, Legends Reborn is free to hop into right now!
