Welcome back to MSF Mondays! Each week we break down one more aspect of the hottest mobile game, Marvel Strike Force!
We’ve previously written about WAR in Marvel Strike Force, giving you some tips on how to be your team’s MVP and general strategy tips. But something that we haven’t talked about yet, is room placement and the mind games that you can force your opponents to think through.
How do you set a good WAR Defense? Where should you place those rooms? We answer all of that, and more!
Marvel Strike Force WAR Rooms
If you’re an officer in your Alliance, you have the ability to Move Rooms and Players around as you set your WAR defense. You can only do this when there isn’t an active WAR, so you have small windows of opportunity to get things set before your Alliance is thrust right back into the fray.
Each Room has its own special properties that can impact the game, having tags like Adjacent, Global, and Room. It’s important to know what to look out for, as certain rooms should take priority over other ones. Likewise, it’s important for Alliances to protect those rooms with their strongest teams.
- Flight Deck 1, 2, & 3 – These always start in the top row and can’t be moved. They don’t offer any bonuses except 50 points for clearing both sides.
Global Room Bonuses
Some rooms have Global Effects, meaning that they impact all other rooms or your attacking teams. These should be your top priority to remove from your opponent, because getting a full clear eliminates the bonus.
- Hangar – Apply Deflect to all Attacking Allies. This is a nice room to have intact because it helps your attacking teams survive the initial onslaught of Defending abilities.
- Armory – + 20% to Max Health, Damage, Armor, Resistance, and Focus to all Attacking Allies. Extra 10% bonus to Military allies. This room should be your #1 focus to remove as quickly as possible. The later you remove it, the less benefit you get. You want to impact as many of your opponents’ attacks as you can, so find this room and destroy it FIRST.
- Medbay – +40% Max Health to all Defending Allies. This is another great room to target, as clearing it means that your attacking teams don’t have to work as hard.
- Barracks – +20% Max Health, Damage, Armor, Resistance, and Focus to all Defending Allies. Extra 10% bonus to Military allies. I’d prioritize this as high or a little bit higher than Medbay. Buffing all of these areas makes attacking much more difficult, so you generally want to clear this sooner rather than later. Again, the longer you wait, the less benefit you get.
Adjacent Room Bonuses
Rooms with Adjacent Effects give the indicated bonus to all orthogonally-adjacent rooms (left, right, up, and down), as well as the current room. People usually forget that the room itself gets a bonus, so don’t sleep on that. Placing Adjacent Effect rooms in the middle column gives you the most benefit. Alternatively, you can also place them on the sides to give double-bonuses to high-priority rooms like the Bridge or Armory.
Tip: when you’re attacking a room, you can see the Active Bonuses in the upper right. Drill into that, and you can find the location of rooms that haven’t been revealed yet! If you see Adjacent bonuses, you can sometimes figure out which rooms surround the current room.
- Security – Apply Defense Down to Attacking Enemies. Starting an attack when your team is weakened can be really tough. This is annoying, but I prioritize Engineering over it.
- Engineering – Apply Defense Up to Defending Allies. Starting an attack when the opposing team is harder to damage can also be really tough. Clearing this isn’t as important as the Global effects, but it can impact five total rooms, which is nothing to shake a stick at. Take care of this if it’s in the middle row.
Room Bonuses
Certain rooms have bonuses that only apply to themselves. Generally, they just make it harder to defeat those rooms and get a full clear. However, Bridge gives you a 200 point bonus on a full-clear, and Reactor gives you a 100 point bonus if you take out both sides. For that reason, the effort is well worth the attack strength it requires.
- Cargo Bay – Apply 10 Positive Effects randomly to Defending Allies. Overall, this is the weakest room of the bunch. Don’t prioritize a clear of Cargo Bay over another room.
- Bridge – Apply Counter to Defending Allies. The Bridge gets high priority because of the massive 200 point bonus. Globals are still more important though. Clearing Globals can make all other attacks easier.
- Reactor – Apply Disrupt to Attacking Enemies. For 100 points, this is a decent room to clear. However, I’d still place Globals and Bridge above this in the priority queue.
Marvel Strike Force WAR Room Placement
Here are a couple general rules of thumb when placing your WAR Rooms:
- Adjacent Rooms function best in the middle where they can affect the most rooms.
- Full-clearing a room opens up all Adjacent Rooms, so place the rooms that you think opponents will target on the edges to give them less incentive to clear. On attack, prioritize attacking the middle column.
- Protect your Global Rooms! the longer your Global rooms last, the better chance you have of getting the victory.
- Attacking teams generally put too high emphasis on Bridge because of the massive bonus. Use this to your advantage.
- You can protect Global Rooms by placing them towards the bottom. The further down a room is, the more resources your opponent has to burn to get through to it.
Let’s take a look at our Alliance’s current Room Setup:
First thing you’ll notice are that both Adjacent Bonus Rooms are in the middle, maximizing the effects. Engineering is also buffing our Bridge and Reactor, since their defenses aren’t as strong as the row under the Flight Decks.
We put our heaviest defenses in the second row, with the Flight Decks also bolstering larger defenses. Why give the opponent easy points right away. Hitting them with thick defenses from the beginning can be a huge win from a mental standpoint. If those teams are on the first row, what are we going to encounter beneath?!
Top-loading our defenses also means that there isn’t a clear path for opponents to travel. Some Alliances will bait teams to attack a certain column by limiting the strength of a specific Flight Deck. Then, you break through only to find a massive defense waiting for you. Now you’ve wasted attacks and teams, and need to go back up to the other Flight Decks to reassess.
Our Bridge is protected well by the Hangar. Since Hangar is a Global Room, attackers are going to want to clear that. Unfortunately, we have some beefy defenses in there, and if they break through they might be short on resources to fully clear the Bridge.
All of our Global Rooms are also in the bottom, except for Hangar, which gives us the most mileage from them. Hangar also happens to be protected by Security, so that gives it a little bit more staying power.
One downside of this configuration is that Armor and Barracks are never getting Adjacency Bonuses, and if a team attacks down the middle then Medbay isn’t getting a bonus either. However, we hope that teams have a hard time breaking through that second row which is protecting our larger point rooms.
Well I hope this helps you take your Squad from a D+ to a B- Commander!
Game Radar
Blitz: MSF is celebrating Pride month, which means we’re getting Shatterstar for Monday’s Blitz. Thursday brings the mysterious Mystique to help bolster your Brotherhood ranks.
Upcoming Legendary: Jubilee is on the way, which requires 5-star Pym Tech characters. Not long after, expect the first Mythic Legendary Event for Adam Warlock. He will be tough to get, as he requires 5-star X-Factor plus Jubilee.
Previous Installments
You can check out all of our other Marvel Strike Force articles right here! We try to put out a new article every Monday, so stay tuned for even more content.
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Tabletop Takeaways: Tips for Dungeon Masters with a Narrative Spin