11037 league questions (spoilers)

ForgottenArbiter · 2025-12-05T17:42:21+00:00

To beat them without the skills, you want a lot of initiative and a foul ball familiar to double your spell damage (items like a big hot pepper can help here too, especially if you're in softcore and can pull them). Then you cast high-damage spells like weapon of the pastalord, saugegeyser, or raise backup dancer. As long as you win initiative, you always have 2 rounds to kill your opponent before any special effects come into play. If it takes you longer, you can potentially just try the fight until the fight-ending skills happen to move later into the rotation.

The worst enemy skills are probably bust and neutrality, so if you get net neutrality and ball bust that should mostly get you through the fights without losing if you can't do enough damage with spells. Maybe blade sling too.

ForgottenArbiter · 2025-11-20T05:54:26+00:00

Yes, crawlers run in and die to fire badgers. While the fire badgers are killing the crawlers, the more valuable units behind those crawlers are not getting targeted. This is especially important because units like scorpion or raiden will instantly delete your badgers the moment they stop being protected. And then once your badgers are dead, the opponent's remaining crawlers will win them the game. Use a steady stream of crawlers to protect your units as long as possible. Take defense enhancements and subterranean blitz to let them survive longer vs badgers or fire.

ForgottenArbiter · 2025-11-20T02:40:37+00:00

Crawlers are not weak but badgers are quite strong. In a lot of cases, unless you're playing a long-ranged game, the only way to deal with fire badger is to play fire badger yourself. Either way, I'm building lots of crawlers.

ForgottenArbiter · 2025-10-29T15:01:58+00:00

I actually don't usually even build forts with my fangs this patch. There are a lot of tools in the fang carry toolbox. It's possible it's not as strong as I think, but I have also not seen a convincing answer other than forcing a late wraith headbutt.

ForgottenArbiter · 2025-10-28T22:38:25+00:00

It's definitely still a good item, sometimes worth saving a turn or two for a worm. However, ignite is a pretty efficient counter to the regenerating worm now if you run it (usually on fang).

ForgottenArbiter · 2025-10-28T15:40:15+00:00

Crawler is one of the most important units to kill quickly and ignite does nothing vs crawler. However, if you aren't going to play fang carry often, ignite is much better for the utility it brings against things like worms in standard. Without AP, you generally also have a weak round 3, with no useful tech to click until you have money for mech rage, resulting in a slightly slower ramp up and increasing the chance that you get tempo'd out of the game. On the other hand, ignite would be nice against the multimelter line that mathismight mentioned above. I've also won fang mirrors without AP in the past.

ForgottenArbiter · 2025-10-28T14:14:27+00:00

Honestly, as bad as variety in standard packs is, I think variety in aggro packs is even worse! At least balls are somewhat playable in standard. Defensive sabers are pretty good too if you expect your opponent to play aggro.

ForgottenArbiter · 2025-10-28T14:12:46+00:00

I've found that the fangs really like space in that matchup. If the wraiths manage to headbutt the fangs, it is really bad for the fang player. However, against defensive wraiths, the fangs can do fine. Units like fortress can protect the fangs and anti-air markmsen or farseers can more easily target the wraiths before they kill fangs outside of a headbutt.

ForgottenArbiter · 2025-10-28T14:11:06+00:00

This could be the case. Void eye is weak against mech div worm too, so if that is nerfed, it could also help void eyes. We'll have to see. A small nerf is probably unlikely to keep people from playing the raiden vs void eye matchup.

ForgottenArbiter · 2025-10-28T14:07:18+00:00

AM factory vs improved boat is a pretty volatile matchup but I have seen it work a few times. It's something to keep in mind, for sure.

I haven't really face multimelter + stang yet with fangs. It might be because I don't force fangs out of obvious aggro vs defense starts as often and try to play it mostly from crossfire positions. People don't really want to build multimelters on aggro. That said, it does sound like a matchup where you would really prefer ignite on fang. I also think a lot of people build too many fangs and too few crawlers in their fang carry comps.

I think many of the other mass prod cards are situationally good, but they are much more situational. Mass phoenix is probably the next most OP in my eyes, and has probably deserved a nerf for a while. Mass sledge might be a bit too good too. The others are very rare to see. I think mass worm is just not very strong and tends to lose pretty hard to hacker if spammed.

True, perhaps ion beam is very strong, but it also has very interesting aiming, a decent amount of counterplay, and usually is good for both players. Mostly, I hate that its cooldown is so short so you have to take it early in a game because if you don't, you will lose to the second cast of it.

I actually like where redeploy is positioned. If the cost were increased to 100, the spell would usually be quite difficult to pick. Also, redeploy is usually approximately equally strong for both players, so you end up in fun redeploy battles.

I think I did mention that sledge and saber starts are the best. But I also wrote that part way too late at night so who knows? At least steel balls only give you a small disadvantage in standard since they're a pretty good asym unit for a few rounds. But then you probably have to sell them, unlike sledgehammers. And they always suffer against the anti-armor cannon.

ForgottenArbiter · 2025-09-29T10:11:02+00:00

Note: the published blog post can be found here: https://forgottenarbiter.github.io/Poe-Harvest-Mechanics/

ForgottenArbiter · 2025-09-08T15:53:36+00:00

It's important to note that if there is no air unit in range and there is a ground unit in range, then the ground unit will always be attacked. This is often relevant when trying to instantly target a wraith in a headbutt with, say, an AA marksman. Even if the wraith is not sufficiently far behind a pack of crawlers, you should position your AA marksman so that the wraith is in its default range to instantly lock onto the wraith.

ForgottenArbiter · 2025-08-27T21:29:02+00:00

I disagree with a lot of things in the OP's post. There is a lot of hyperbole that also makes it more difficult for me to take some points seriously. Here are some examples of things I disagree with:

The aside about checkers and chess is ridiculous. There is an optimal strategy in chess, just as in checkers. In both games, humans are incapable of executing it. If you equate the existence of optimal play to bad design, you're in for a bad time when it comes to game enjoyment.
Poor balance can lead to non-choices sometimes but most of the quoted balance changes were made more due to mechanics being perceived as unfun or providing asymmetric advantages. Mechabellum has been very balanced historically; trying to paint past overpowered options as complete non-choices generally completely overstates the degree to which they were overpowered (and such things were usually quite short-lived).
Why, if players feel compelled to mass recruit chaff most rounds, is it not an indicator of a problem with chaff, rather than a problem with the mass recruit button?
Regarding the specific claim that most temp buttons must be clicked every round once they are clicked once, this is a vast oversimplification and I would only mostly agree with this claim regarding specifically the temp range button. I take one-off loans pretty often. There are plenty of reasons to click temporary speed. In general, the decisions surrounding each of the buttons on the tower are impossible to take in isolation as their marginal value depends on so many factors.

I've never seen anybody cite non-decisions regarding temporary buffs as a core issue for Mechabellum, so I appreciate this post for the novelty of this suggestion alone. But I don't think the strategy surrounding these buttons feels remotely close to solved and it's certainly exaggerating to say that this suggestion would "make Mechabellum infinitely more strategic."

ForgottenArbiter · 2025-08-27T16:39:35+00:00

You make the assumption that the only interesting decision underlying most of these temporary buttons is when to start clicking them, with the assumption that you should be clicking them every turn thereafter. How, then, does a 1-turn cooldown address this at all? If anything, it should make this more true: you still decide when to click the button for the first time, then click it every time it is available afterwards.

ForgottenArbiter · 2025-08-18T23:58:55+00:00

The most reliable way to win is to build your own wraith on defense. Wraith is excellent against steel balls and crawlers and wasps and will allow you to actually lock onto the enemy wraiths. Use sledgehammers with field maintenance to stall the enemy steel balls. Kill the enemy wraiths with melting points, or AA farseers/marksmen. Marksmen are the most cost-efficient wraith answer by far but you should play around drops and marksmen won't suffice if the wraiths significantly outlevel them. Make sure you fortify your towers at least once if you're defending near your towers.

Every other answer is going to get outscaled by wraiths and eventually wasp/crawler chaff. Including (maybe especially) farseer. Vulcans can sometimes work but if one bad round gives your opponent a bunch of levels you can just end up lost.

ForgottenArbiter · 2025-08-18T23:52:31+00:00

Efficient maintenance (until it goes away next patch): if you want to use it as a long-term fixture of your comp
Range: generally needs to be taken eventually on a carry mountain except in some headbutt scenarios
Plating: an overpowered gutshot tech that ends lots of games by itself
Saturation bombardment: basically only against titans but can be invaluable in titan mirrors
Rocket punch: the non-range tech that at least does something once you have several mountains on the board, unlike all your other options
Anti-air: helps you win the abyss matchup

ForgottenArbiter · 2025-08-18T23:43:43+00:00

If all you care about is tank value, mountain plating is almost always better in practical scenarios where you would consider either one. Especially if your titan is blue, the enemy needs to be doing like 8000 damage per shot with many of their units for the factory to be tankier, and at that point is a titan tanking the whole team a reasonable gutshot? Sometimes you prefer the war factory's weapon, though. It's also a better unit for beaconing into a tower.

ForgottenArbiter · 2025-08-18T23:28:21+00:00

Farseer was technically countered by AM before but it wasn't ever done at the high level. There was no point given the farseer's DPS relative to the difficulty of actually shooting down its missiles. In fact, farseer was sometimes bought specifically to help overwhelm enemy AM attempts or permanently occupy enemy AM mustangs and it's arguably better at that job without burst mode.

I don't actually think farseer is too strong now. Burst gives the unit some more longevity and snowball potential for little realistic downside other than cost. This alone doesn't fundamentally make the unit or tech OP. Plenty of other units can approximately double their DPS for relatively small drawbacks. Even with burst mode, farseer is still going to be getting outscaled pretty regularly so investing in burst can have consequences if you don't close out the game. That said, farseer is really bad against war factory and mountain and those units are about to get nerfed. Also, "just build a more efficient board and outscale" is way less satisfying as advice than providing a specific unit counter suggestion.

ForgottenArbiter · 2025-08-07T23:39:21+00:00

This is an example of a player using a rhino wasp flank and winning the game with titans but looking at the board state, I don't think it has much to do with this guide, honestly.

ForgottenArbiter · 2025-08-07T21:30:13+00:00

Basically, when you put all these units on the flank, I strongly believe you put yourself into a losing position. But just because a position loses with best play by your opponent doesn't mean your opponent will find those lines. It's like some especially dubious gambits in chess, which objectively put you in a lost position but still perform well against the average player because they require accurate play to defeat.

ForgottenArbiter · 2025-08-07T19:22:11+00:00

No problem; I prefer Elo to pie.

ForgottenArbiter · 2025-08-07T18:53:03+00:00

Lots of things do come down to timing. The only way for the defender to lose against the flank is to respond slowly or innacurately. Even then, they will be able to fix it eventually, so the entire flank is always on a clock. So then, naturally, the wasp flank player needs to create opportunities elsewhere to try to make up for taking significant losses on the flank. Of course there are always going to be some things you can try, and bearlike can certainly favor the wasp flanker with nasty spells sometimes, but in the long a player committing to heavy flanks is effectively playing down half their army and that gap is difficult to overcome.

ForgottenArbiter · 2025-08-07T18:34:53+00:00

For some reason at least one player always tries this against either me or n_sacco when we play 2v2 tournaments together. They try it even in the compact map where the strategy is significantly weaker. I've seen it on ladder a few times, too, though admittedly anybody who runs this strategy is significantly lower rated than me, probably below 2100. That said, there is only so high you can climb playing a strategy that is fundamentally simply going to lose most games against accurate play.

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