Marvel Strike Force: WAR, what is it good for?

Welcome to our 10th installment of Marvel Strike Force (MSF) Mondays. Previous tips:

This week we will focus on the game mode WAR. WAR happens 3 times a week and truly takes a full effort from your Alliance.

So how does your Alliance qualify for WAR? Well, it needs to be level 20 to participate in WAR and every Alliance starts in the bronze tier and works their way up the ranks to gain better rewards. If you are a newer player and are in a generic beginner Alliance who is not even close to WAR yet, you absolutely need to find an alliance! A good way to do that is by joining one of many good discord servers or the MSF group on Facebook!

Your Alliance levels up based on the daily donations, and as I have stated in previous posts, the minimum donation is all your Alliance should be asking of you (10,000 gold). If you are in an Alliance that requires second level or higher donations you are likely being played by your Alliance mates.

Marvel Strike Force: WAR, what is it good for?

As an Alliance member you need to be active in WAR for 2 reasons:

WAR is not like Raids, in that you must participate in at least 1 attack to reap the rewards of your Alliance, and the rewards from WAR are too good to overlook!
And, as previously stated, you need a whole Alliance working together. So this is again, about being a good Alliance member.

What WAR Means For You: Defense

Each Alliance member needs to claim a room for defense and ideally you will have 8 viable teams for defense.

What is a viable team? Well, that’s a great question, because the game will provide a team of 5 SHIELD minions to guard each section of your room. That total team power is 17,189, meaning your team should be stronger than that.

You will also want to use the minimum 8 free attacks you will get over the course of a WAR. You also can buy extra attack energy using Blitz currency for up to 12 attacks total. So all in all, you eventually want 20 viable WAR teams.

But that seems crazy right now, because you just started. I get that. One tip is that you do not need to use a full group of 5 toons to defend or attack. On defense you can us low level toons provide by the game mode to round out your defensive squads. So for the longest time I would take 2-3 toons who work well together and throw them in with 2-3 stock minion toons and call it good for defense.

Then, as you unlock characters and start to have complete teams, you should go back in and replace the SHIELD minions with better characters.

What WAR Means For You: Offense

On offense you can engage an attack with just 1 toon. So if you have a super powerful toon you can roll the dice against the defense depending on their collective power.

I used 3 character teams for the longest time to maximize the number of attacks. This works especially well if a defending Alliance has a lot of 17,189 stock teams or you just match total power.

These tricks will carry you a long way in making more attacks and have a little better defense as you unlock and level up more toons, and eventually you will have a full room of defenses and plenty of full high powered teams for attacks.

Working with your Alliance

Some Alliances are S-E-R-I-O-U-S about WAR. And they will require Discord usage and a specific call time for WAR so that they can coordinate the attacks down to who attacks which section of the room. That’s not really the kind of atmosphere I am looking for in a mobile game, but if you are down with that than rock on my friend!

Not all alliances have to be like this to be at least reasonably successful. While a chill Alliance may not make it to Diamond level for WAR, you can settle into Gold 2 and gain good rewards and be competitive, without having to go all Rainbow Six in WAR. If you have a few members who can take initiative, they can help mark rooms to attack so that the rest of the Alliance can go in and clear the areas as they can. Find a competitive level that works for you.

Sometimes you will run into situations where a defending Alliance has a really strong set up and you essentially have zero chance of taking out a section. If you can log back in later, then you should save your attacks to clear sections of rooms that you can handle, because you do have a limited number of attacks and they matter.

However, the free WAR attack energy does not roll over to the next WAR, so if you are limited on time at least try to chip away at the defense before you log off.

So then, how do we figure out what teams belong where? Well, my boy Tauna has an infographic for that!

Some teams are better spent on defense, others are better for offense, and some of course are useful in either. Here is also a graphic of how to set up your room defensively, to mess with the opposing attackers. I personally like the back loaded strong defense set up. I think it baits teams well, but that’s just me.

Lastly, there is WAR MVP. The only thing that MVP gains you is notoriety. On your player profile it will say how many MVPs you have, but it does not net you better rewards.

Sometimes players will deviate from the path marked out because the teams are weak and they want higher attack value to be in the running for MVP, but if your Alliance can clear whole rooms then you gain bonus points and those are valuable for winning the WAR. So when it comes down to it, you need to think Alliance first when it comes to WAR.

If you want even more in depth understanding of WAR, here is Tauna’s video which I was working off of:

Well, I hope this helps you take your Squad from a D+ to a B-, Commander!

Be ready for what is coming down the pipe this week!

Game Radar

Blitzes: Monday blitz starts a 3 day rotation of gear and gold! Thursday blitz features the Inhuman blaster, Crystal!

Events: BLACK BOLT!! You need 5 star Asgardians!

Emma Frost‘s confirmed release mode is Milestone objectives, just like Captain Marvel and Symbiote Spider-Man, so it might be a good idea to hold on to your gold and use it for the High Roller during Emma’s release campaign. This begins August 19th.

Legendaries:

Black Bolt: April 27th, August 17th, December 7th (Requires Asgardians 5-star)
Shuri: May 11th, August 31st (Requires Spider-verse 5-star)
Ebony Maw: May 25th, September 14th (Requires Inhumans 5-star with Black Bolt)
Phoenix: June 8th, September 28th (Requires Mystic Villain Controller 6-star)
Star-Lord: June 22nd, October 12th (Requires Guardians or Ravagers 5-star)
Invisible Woman: July 6th, October 26th (Requires Sinister Six 5-star)
Nick Fury: July 20th, November 9th (Requires Kree Minions 5-star)
Magneto: August 3rd, November 23rd (Requires X-Men and/or Brotherhood 5-star)