Twelve Warstorm Tips

This article is a collection of tips for the Facebook game Warstorm. I've played card games since I was just a kid, and was always trying to be an amateur professional in Magic: The Gathering when I was a teenager. Warstorm makes me reminisce to those card games such as Magic, Yugioh and Duel Monsters. I'm going to share the insights that I've thought about in playing Warstorm .

In no particular order of significance:

1. Warstorm is flying vs. non-flying. Either you are playing a deck with a decent bit of fliers, a deck with lots of anti-flying whether direct (archers, remove flying) or indirect (bolts, zap, retaliate, flaming, fire breathing, slayer), or you're playing a full ground army and getting curb stomped by flying decks and winning some of those battles against fully ground based anti-flying Warstorm decks.

2. The methods of dealing with flying include direct ones such as archery or remove flying. These are abilities in Warstorm that tend to be the best at it and they specifically target fliers Indirect methods include bolts, zap, retaliate, flaming, fire breathing and slayer; usually indirect methods are slower at dealing with flying and/or more random and thus may not deal with a flying threat all that easily. Of the direct methods, I feel that remove flying is the best option for a few reasons: the card with remove flying doesn't need to be across from the flier, the card with remove flying doesn't need to stay on the board longer than its first turn, and it allows your other cards that may have flying dominate your opponents fliers but doesn't remove their weakness to archery. I would say that of the indirect methods dragon slayer is the most reliable because usually bolts and zap are too random and you need to often play cards with these abilities in decent numbers in order to bring down fliers Additionally, more fliers are dragons than any other type and dragons are already very popular, and yes slayer lets a non-flier kill a flier

3. Cards in Warstorm that take an even number of turns come down on your turn while cards that take an odd number of turns come down on your opponents turn. Keep this in mind as it's very important to consider the implications. It is very likely for odd turn cards to come down on your opponents turn and die before they are able to take a single action and end up just being a weak blocker (assuming it wasn't removed by a bolt or zap). Remember this also for animate since most of your cards will die on your opponents turn when a odd turn card with animate dies on your opponents turn and animates it will come down on your turn and get to act. Even turn cards that die on your opponents turn will animate and come down again on your opponents turn.

4. Immunity is the best ability that extends your units longevity in Warstorm. assassinate, poison, bolts, zap, flaming, retaliate, explode are all negated. This makes your cards considerably tougher to kill in any deck where those abilities are heavy. The only things that get through immunity are archery, trample, pikeman, and slayer.

5. Cataclysm: normally, in a card game where you make the choices about cards, destroying all creatures is amazing. In Warstorm , since you do not get to choose when it is played it has just as much chance of wrecking your board as your opponents. Even if your deck is built around it such as with animate, your only marginally better off. Even worse is enemy cards with immune will not be killed by assassinate all but your own cards with immunity will.

6. Slower cards tend to have an advantage on faster ones in Warstorm (barring higher tier versions, although higher tiered units can in theory die to their lower tier counterparts by this rule.) not only because slower cards tend to have better statistics but because they tend to come down after your faster cards are played and get in an attack on them which will usually give them the advantage in kill the opposing card off. So, generally, I would say in Warstorm that slower cards are better but remember you still need to be able to survive long enough to play that -captured hill giant-

7. When playing really fast cards, you may think that its great to play those cards before your opponent plays his but consider a few things: If you don't kill your opponent before his slower cards come down,
he's probably going to have a board thats better quality than yours and you will end up losing. In other words, the deck needs to be fast enough to kill him before he establishes himself, if you only go half-way you're just going to play a bunch of weak cards that can't go toe to toe with his and you will lose to him after he's held you off for ten turns on three life. A fast deck strategy is also better with lower squad types in play because the more squads you're running, the more health your opponent has. I will not say that a fast deck is necessarily the best in single squad or that it can't win in four squad. Remember also that because you can only draw one new card each turn, if your deck is too fast you can end up playing out everything and losing because your opponent is putting down 2-3 cards every turn to the single card you're putting down.

8. Infantry is a weak card type in Warstorm. Not that you shouldn't play it, but be aware that they take double damage from archery and some cards that would otherwise be amazing like Dirty Rotten Zombie. Don't work out as well in practice because archers can four damage them in a single shot. Card types like apparition, summoner, beast, imp and etc. are some of the less vulnerable types as nothing really specifically targets them, nothing that comes from your opponent anyway.

9. Always keep in mind that you have no control over what happens in Warstorm once you hit start battle and plan accordingly. That particular combo your thinking of for instance is great when its all on the field but playing one piece of it at a time and having them die off separately of each other doesn't help it come together. This also goes back to cataclysm and assassinate all, while taking five of your opponents creatures down with it when there's nothing on your side of the board is great, you can't really make it do that, all you can do is hope that it happens. Always remember this and build your deck towards a general strategy rather than a specific one. An effective deck that performs well in every battle is not a deck that relies on a highly focused strategy based on a few cards with synergy except in possibly single squad, the less squads in play the more likely the pieces will fall into place quickly enough to work, but absolutely stay away from highly focused strategies based on key cards in three or four squad battles.

10. There does not seem to be anyway to draw extra cards, because of this, animate is an ability that has an amazing unique role of being able to effectively "draw" you more cards. It is especially good when playing with rush as it lets you keep up pressure on your opponent. Keep in mind though, that animate creatures tend to be weaker than non-animate creatures.

11. This is something that was learned by players in M:tG in respect to card games, your life, health or whatever doesn't matter until you're about to die. Your life thus becomes more valuable to you as it drops; this is important because it means if you can sacrifice your own health for some advantage then you really should. Cards that are really good but cause you to lose a little morale are mainly what I'm referring to here. Playing these cards is ok; so long as your not about to die because of it. In Warstorm, this has another implication: cards that cost you morale are better when playing with more squads because you have more morale.

12. A great deck is one that doesn't just win some of the time, or win most of its battles against a specific deck type by silver bulleting, but is a deck that wins a good percentage of most match-ups. Start with a general idea of how you want your deck to perform, play with it often, and tune it regularly. Do not build a deck, lose two or three games then give up, tear it apart, and build another. Especially in a game like Warstorm where even the best decks are at the mercy of luck.