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The Basics

• Use Your Captain's Powers: As part of the game, each player's captain gets a special power. This can heal units, damage others, or cast other status effects. These powers refresh after a certain amount of turns. Players that use and time their powers according to a timeframe that aids their overall strategy will go far.

• Use All The Lanes: When starting out, you may be tempted to plop units into a lane and then forget about them. However, changing lanes is key to Heavenstrike Rivals's strategy. As long as your units are taunted or blocked by another unit, feel free to switch around units willy nilly to keep opponents guessing. Also, when playing on maps with power up tiles, units can lane change onto the tile to receive the power up, and then can be moved back to their original spot. How cool is that?

• Keep Your Units Alive: Even the strongest units in the game can't do much to help you if they don't stay on the battlefield long enough to fulfill their intended purpose. Additionally, some units and unit types get stronger the longer they are in play, so it's worth putting in the effort.

Squad Building

• Don't Underestimate Basic Units: When players start out in the game, they may want to start getting as many high powered units as possible in their squads, but this would be a mistake. The beginner units in Heavenstrike Rivals have low mana costs so they can get on the battlefield quickly. Considering the ultimate goal of the game demands players get within striking distance of their opponent, speed can be useful.

• Build Squads With Balance and Purpose: As much as it might seem like a good idea to build a squad full of brawlers, defenders, or other units to max out bonuses afforded by special units, doing this is a lot like putting all of your eggs in one basket. For any one viable strategy in Heavenstrike Rivals, there is a super-effective counter strategy. Players that do not take this into account may stomp all over some opponents that are equally unbalanced, but struggle against thoughtful foes.

• Build a Deck that Feels Comfortable: I know, this sounds almost overly basic, but it's important. As much as Heavenstrike Rivals doesn't look like a card game, it still operates like one. Putting in crazy new units that you aren't familiar with can cause a lack of synergy or introduce elements of randomness into your strategy, both of which are things you want to avoid.

Field Tactics

• Mana Is A Limited Resource. Use It Wisely: All units cost a certain amount of mana, but all players can only have ten mana's worth of units out on the field at any given time. With this being the case, players should be careful about what they summon early on and what foes they decide to defeat. After all, there's no reason to kill a unit if it's handily tied up and you have the upper hand.

• Time Summons Carefully: At first blush, it may look like a good idea to send out all of your units at once. However, if you are too careless and lose a lot of quickly summoned units early though, you may find themselves with a hand so empty they can't properly defend themselves.

• Shut Down Gimmicks Early: As game that encourages players to incorporate unit synergy, players should be on the lookout for the key units their opponents are using in an attempt to tie their strategy together. For example, there are some units in the game that grant bonuses to every unit in play of a certain type, so taking out that unit as quickly as possible will minimize the impact of your opponent's strategy.