Board 8 > So Advance Wars: Dual Strike is really good

(+) Yeah! (+)

Been playing it for the past month or so in between FFIV sessions, gone through the campaign and halfway through the hard campaign now. It's just so addictive and fun. Pretty much the perfect level of challenge (except some of the War Games which are just way beyond my ability right now, and Combat which is just weird). Sad the series is long dead, I tried Wargroove ages ago but couldn't get into it, this just feels way smoother.

Anyway, thanks for those who suggested buying it in that other topic a bit ago! A purchase well worth it, there's so much content here.

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Dual Strike is ridiculously great. It's hard to call it a "perfect" game because some of the stuff you can pull off in it (certain tag combos especially) are flat out game breaking... but the core gameplay, the music, the character design etc are all so good.

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Did you try Days of Ruin? Very different tone and slight changes to the gameplay, but it is Advance Wars.

This is the only AW game I haven't played, ironically enough, but Eagle is always the right answer.

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Nope, Dual Strike is my first in the series! I will probably play Days of Ruin too but the Grim Gritty Real look it seems to go for does put me off a bit, especially as like Xiahou Shake says the aesthetic and overall vibe was perfectly nailed in this one. I will give it a shot though. And yeah I love Eagle and his super, I throw him in on any map with planes.

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Oh, well, I assumed you had played 1 and 2 before, you should definitely give those a shot as they are much more similar to Dual Strike.

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It's sami

I can't get the hang of Sami, the insta-capture sounds super good but her infantry still can't stand up to most vehicles so I'm not sure what to do with her.

Alternative q: Who has the best theme?

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I voted for sensei because hes the only S tier on the list

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Then I will have to throw it over to Days of Ruin

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3tqHWATJ1k8

Mr Bear is a close second.

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Kindle is best CO

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The best CO is your namesake
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colliding posted...

It's sami

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The major issue Dual Strike has is the level of brokenness of some combinations.

Eagle/Sami comes to mind immediately... 3 attack turns + 30% strength boost for turns 2 and 3 + Fast moving soldiers that can instantly capture anything.

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Crescent-Moon posted...

The major issue Dual Strike has is the level of brokenness of some combinations.

Eagle/Sami comes to mind immediately... 3 attack turns + 30% strength boost for turns 2 and 3 + Fast moving soldiers that can instantly capture anything.

Eagle/Sami is exactly the pair I was thinking of when I typed up my first post about game breaking silliness. Honestly though Sasha/Colin are way up there as well.

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The worst is probably actually Nell/Rachel

Eagle/sami is THE classic broken combo for sure.

My favorite tag though was andy/hawke, 7 HP heals and 2 HP damage to every enemy. Plus hawke having such a big meter made it perfect because you could just be him most of the time to rack it up and him filling faster made it sync really well with andy's average meter, timing wise, and he made up for andy's lack of a passive skill.
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Oooh, and I also still have nightmares of going up against my friend's Sensei/Hachi combo. No power boost at all but you can flood the map to a truly absurd degree with those guys.

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Oh Sensei/Hachi is fucking awful too

telling you though, like, Nell/Rachel completely snaps the game in half, Nell's day to day with Rachel backing her up is just unfair and their tag power is an abomination and it's cheap

I've clearly not been recognising Sami's potential, I'll try out Eagle/Sami on one of the maps. Sensei/Hachi sounds hilarious, just spawning dozens of units all over the place. I found Colin/Sasha to be a great combo handed to you super early in the campaign.

I've barely tried using Nell and Rachel, I took one look at the luck based stuff and decided I wouldn't be risking that, not my kind of play style. I guess the chance based stuff is actually good in this game? I still have much to learn clearly, but I'm having a great time with it anyway.

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Man the Crystal Calamity mission where you have to fire 9 missiles then destroy the obelisk is rough, I swear it's impossible to do it quickly while still getting a good rank. And half the time one of their infantry swans in and grabs a silo while I'm not paying attention.

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AWDS is a godlike game

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The hard campaign is turning out to be easier than the first time round, partially because I'm more used to it but it's very satisfying just plowing through the formerly difficult maps using the appropriate COs/skills. Then I've got the dozens of War Games and the survival modes to do, and whatever else I haven't unlocked yet. This game is packed to the brim!

(Sonja seems weirdly not super useful in Fog of War maps, replacing her with the +2 vision perk seems to do just as good a job).

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Against human players, eagle/sami is probably a tad less impressive, but regardless, 3 turns with no penalty is just insane. Against AI players though, who aren't likely to sit a unit on their HQ, you can just load up a T copter, soar across the map, drop off the infantry and one turn capture their HQ.
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Emeraldegg posted...

Against human players, eagle/sami is probably a tad less impressive, but regardless, 3 turns with no penalty is just insane. Against AI players though, who aren't likely to sit a unit on their HQ, you can just load up a T copter, soar across the map, drop off the infantry and one turn capture their HQ.

Just tried this exact strat out on a War Room map I was having trouble with, and it worked like a charm! I can see how this would utterly break the game lol

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(Sonja seems weirdly not super useful in Fog of War maps, replacing her with the +2 vision perk seems to do just as good a job).

Sonja's bizarre AWDS quirk is that all of her enemies are at a permanent penalty of -1 terrain star. (For example, cities normally give 3 stars which is base ~30% damage reduction, but if you have Sonja active then cities only give your enemies 2 stars.) To be clear, that penalty doesn't just apply to units currently in combat with Sonja, but rather to all units not allied with (or belonging to) Sonja. Find space for her as an active CO and she'll passively debuff the entire enemy army.

I'm not saying she's good but that's her AW:DS gimmick.

You also can't see the HP of units controlled by an enemy Sonja (that was her original gimmick) but the AI has never cared.
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I like Sonja in FoW when I'm not playing with perks, I feel like the perks are kinda broken tbh

andylt posted...

I've barely tried using Nell and Rachel, I took one look at the luck based stuff and decided I wouldn't be risking that, not my kind of play style. I guess the chance based stuff is actually good in this game? I still have much to learn clearly, but I'm having a great time with it anyway.

Luck means you may randomly do more damage sometimes, but will never cause you to do less than the expected amount. Technically all characters have a small amount of luck to be able to do 1HP extra of damage, Nells natural luck is just better and she and Rachel get even more during CO Power. The only characters that have a chance of having bad luck are Sonja, Flak, and Jugger.

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Also, by "randomly do more damage", it actually means like, at a flat rate. So Nell's infantry can attack a megatank and just do damage anyway, sometimes, because that's how she rolls. She just automatically knocks off an extra HP or two. And since Rachel is a 3 star with her, that adds like another +15% to her luck, I think? And then her tag power makes it so that infantry can just KILL tanks sometimes, and then Rachel's fucking throws down three missiles to completely nerf the core of the opponent's units, and like, yeah, they're just horrifying imo

i never looked up how luck actually worked as a kid and never trusted it but man it was always funny to see nell infantry murder stuff

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Thanks for the info folks, I hadn't realised that Sonja debuffed the whole army like that. That could be pretty useful in multi team maps.

And yeah I didn't know that's how luck worked in this either, that sounds a lot better than how I figured it'd be. Don't think I've even tried Nell, I'll def try one shotting a megatank with infantry now though.

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Caveat: I don't actually remember 100% for sure if Lady Luck is powerful enough to cause that in AW:DS, I know it was in AW2 though. I don't think it got nerfed but idk for sure

I will let you know if and when I find out!

Hard campaign beat with S rank! Why on earth is the top screen not controllable in the final mission, the AI is so bad there. Onto the survival modes next probably, and I'm only at 102/300 medals!

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If my understanding of the damage formula is correct, the Infantry would have to be at full health for it to work, but it should be possible to destroy a Megatank in one shot during Lady Luck. You would have to be pretty lucky though.

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P Sure the base mechanics of luck are that any unit can deal randomly 0-10% more damage than what it lists when you go to make the attack. So if something lists 50%, you can do anywhere between 50-60%. However, also IIRC Sonja is one of the only COs to experience NEGATIVE luck (as a passive, that is. Flak and Jugger can experience it during their powers/supers). I don't recall to what degree and I could even be mistaken completely, but if true it also means sonja is one of the only COs who it's possible to not kill an enemy if you're slated to do enough damage to kill something. (IE if something has exactly 50% HP, and you are slated to deal 50%, it's possible you won't kill it)

Idgaf about nell and rachel's stuff though, nell is basically just "randomly ohko things" as far as I'm concerned.

Edit: I missed someone pointing out the negative luck thing, so I guess I was correct. At least for sonja though, you're still guaranteed solid damage even if it's less. Flak and jugger can just randomly decide they won't do a damn thing at all.
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Flak and Jugger also experience it passively, worse than Sonja does. But they have a higher positive variance too



The damage reduction caused by not having full health happens after this calculation, so that's why it probably has to be a full-health Infantry for it to work on a Megatank, and even then it would only be a very small chance. Meanwhile Colin can just do it via Power of Money

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WazzupGenius00 posted...

Flak and Jugger also experience it passively, worse than Sonja does. But they have a higher positive variance too

Ah, my bad. I must have forgotten about their passives (how I don't know, that's like their entire schtick.) Thanks!
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Emeraldegg posted...

(as a passive, that is. Flak and Jugger can experience it during their powers/supers)

all 3 i listed experience possible negative luck natively, it just gets super amplified during jugger's and flak's CO

flak is -10 to +25, jugger is -15 to +30 (sonja is -5 to +10)

jugger actually almost goes up to nell's possible luck during his SCO, but also can go really negative, so his average damage isn't particularly spectacular

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See I assumed Nell/Rachel's luck would be the same hit/miss thing that Flak and Jugger have, and I didn't know Sonja had negative luck at all. Looking at those stats why would anyone pick Flak or Jugger when Nell has almost the same positive chance but without any of the risk?

And I forgot about Colin's super, using that during the Money Survival mode is absolutely wild.

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Flak and Jugger are really just meant to be enemy COs, not intended as a serious pick for players. But the option is there for people who want to give them a try!

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andylt posted...

Looking at those stats why would anyone pick Flak or Jugger when Nell has almost the same positive chance but without any of the risk?

i think nell was relatively hard to unlock, right? or was that just the old games where her and hachi were the last you got

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You get Nell from beating the regular campaign then unlocking her in the shop, same as most of the other non-campaign unlocks. She was actually cheaper than Jugger iirc! Von Bolt is the last one I unlocked after beating the hard campaign.

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Grit

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Beaten the survival modes (seriously, Colin's super during money survival is so fun). There's so many War Rooms I don't know if I'll go through them all. It sucks that this series died before it did online play =(

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I am fairly certain days of ruin had online play. But being that ruin didn't sell well I'm pretty sure it was the last we'd see of it.

Also yeah, pretty sure colin is THE co to do money survival with. I don't remember what my records on the survival maps are, I'll have to bust it out and check sometime. Here's a tip for one of the survivals, I think it might be money actually. On the map where there's a ton of tanks and a bunch of missile silos (and a long pipeline I think? Details are fuzzy), if you wait to build stuff for a while the tanks will all go somewhere far away from the map and you can just build a single mech unit (or even infantry probably) and kill them all with that one unit once you missile them to pieces
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You know... I don't think I ever did the survival or war room things.

Are they worth doing?

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Survival is pretty fun, three 11 map runs with limitations on time/turns/money depending on which you choose. The maps are generally pretty gimmicky and you've got to find the trick/solution to them, though sometimes you can brute force it anyway (Like Emeraldegg's tip, I didn't do it that way but still won the map. Cool to know other methods!). Reasonable challenge but not too difficult or anything, I enjoyed them. The time challenge is naturally the most stressful as the other two are more puzzle-based.

War room is basically just more content- 1v1 maps, 1v1v1, Battle Royale and Dual Screen maps and you can turn on and off tag team and skills as you want. I've only done a few of them but they're already getting harder than most of the campaign. I might get burnt out on them as there's an awful lot but yeah if you're itching to play more Advance Wars they're still good.

And I didn't know Days of Ruin had online! Shame it'll be long closed now. Maybe I should try Wargroove again...

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I played quite a few war rooms just because, like andy said, I wanted more advance wars, but in general I don't really enjoy some of them too much, namely the ones where the opponent starts with a clear advantage. I'm very much a "both/all sides start exactly the same" type of person.
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War Room is kind of great because it's more Advanced Wars than anyone is realistically going to want to play. The series is probably dead for good, but at least everyone should be able to get their fill thanks to that mode.

Makes me think of Hyrule Warriors' Adventure mode in a way - it's crazy that we're getting a sequel because only the maddest of lads would have even come close to finishing all the maps in the original game.

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That's a really good way to put it, I have to get past the completionist side of my brain and just have as much fun as I want and come back to it whenever I get an urge. I really burned myself out on Hyrule Warriors and I didn't even finish all the Adventure Mode maps.

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