We all do understand that we have only 3 minutes to decide the formation on a battle. For some starter its will not be an easy task, but for some pro, a minute is more than enough. The battel deployment itself is divided into two main parts, the intro and the card deployment. The intro is the first part where a small screen will display the general battle information accompanied with a battle cue regarding the formation used by your opponent for the past 5 battles. This information does not predict the exact strategy used by your opponent, but if carefully interpreted, it could turn into a vital information. And mastering the analysis surely could save much times out of the 3 minutes. So here's a few tips and sequential steps to interpret this battle cue.
1. Study The Ruleset.
Get real with the current situation. The ruleset and the active Splinter applies to both sides, so first of all is to focus on understanding them. You might not have a complete collection of cards, neither the optimal level of cards across all Splinter. So keep a scanty memory of the best Splinter best available cards with all this limitation.
On the example above, True Aim would render useless any evasion abilities and high speed. In addition, Earth Splinter is unavailable. So my first thought was either to use either Fire Splinter with majority melee or Life Splinter with majority ranged, since I own Level 4 summoner for both.
2. Study Your Opponent Used Splinter and Summoner Level.
The first part of the step is to mark the past formation used by your opponent, among the 5 past battle, where the Splinter is active for this battle. And the second part is to measure the Summoner Level of those marked formation. Which Summoner and from which Splinter have the better level compared to others? Here we could expect that the opponent would tend to deploy those Summoner with better level value.
Now take the above example. My opponent have a Level 2 Tarsa for its Fire Splinter, which is the best compared to the Water Splinter and Life Splinter. Since Fire Splinter is available for this battle, I expect my opponent tend to pick Fire Splinter than other for this battle.
3. Study The Cards Level
Now we come into the more detailed part. Next to the summoner, we could see the image of the cards used and also their level. In this step we will mark any particular cards which have better or optimal level than the rest. If opponent will use this Summoner, we could expect that these cards will be the primary choice of your opponent.
But here's the more advanced parts. Remember that there are Mana Cap which should come into factor on which cards will be deployed. Even if a card have higher or optimal level, it should not be selected if its out of the mana cap range. A low cost cards would create surplus for higher mana cap, and high cost would create a deficit for lower mana cap. So the basic rules is to calculate using this formula Ideal Card Cost = (Mana Cap - 4 ) / 6. This will measure the ideal mana cost for each card assuming the whole position is filled. And the difficult part here is, you will need to have fast knowledge and record of the vast collectible cards and their mana cost.
So in this example, my calculation will be ( 37 - 4 ) / 6 = 5.5; which means its a go for a card with 5 to 6 mana cost. And from the Fire Splinter, I could see Tenyii Striker as a preferred choice since it cost 5 mana and at Level 2.
4. The Front and Rear Squad
The last will be the most advanced parts which require a really good knowledge and experience. With all those better and optimal level, the formation would not perform without synergy between the cards. To simplify this matter, we could split the formation into the 3 cards in the front and the 3 rear in the rear. The front squad will consist mainly Tanker cards, cannon fodder, and any Striker cards which able to double as Tanker. And the rear squad is where the damage dealer and Support lies in. So the basic understanding is:
- If your opponent dedicated more mana for front squad, you better strike their back-row;
- Vice versa, if the back squad are more bulkier and possessed various
Supportabilities; it might be better to charge directly into the front squad first.
FINAL TACTICS
The final tactic is no other than understanding your own collection's strength. All this reading will be useless, if we couldn't deploy our optimal formation itself. If you know your opponent deploy Water Splinter with Keyla Frendul, it might be tempting to use Earth Splinter and Obsidian to bypass their armor buff. But if you have an overall higher level card for Fire Splinter, it might be better to use it. Not only the cards with better parameter could offset the handicap, but also your opponent might go with any formation out of our prediction.