Tactics Arena Online

You can start playing Tactics Arena Online, aka TAO, by heading over to Digis Online and starting up the Flash window that the game plays in.

Once the game has loaded, pick a user name and password, then click the New button to confirm your user name. If is is available, you will shortly arrive at...



The Lobby Screen

From here, you can do a few things: most commonly, you'll click on an empty arena, and then someone else will click on the same arena, initiating a duel. Just as important, however, is the Settings button (in the lower right), which takes you to the tautologically-named Settings screen (screenshot a little further down).

Also, in this screen (and the Settings screen) you have access to the lobby's Chat feature. Commands for the Chat feature appear every time you log in, and can be reaccessed at any time by typing /?.



The Settings Screen

This is probably the screen that most first-timers to TAO need to explore the most. Here, you can rearrange the units you have in your squad (just click and drag). There are rules, though: no more than 10 units on the field at a time. Any other units you have are 'in reserve' below the arena setup area. A brand-new account has 2 reserve units; a Lightning Ward and a Barrier Ward (more on individual units later).

Also on the settings screen, you can change your avvy (it has to be an in-game unit; just drag whichever unit you want to use onto the Avatar on the middle right). Be careful, though! If you drag a unit onto the garbage can, you'll lose it forever!

Once you have arranged your units like you want them, click on the Lobby button (lower right), and click on an arena. Shortly, your first game will begin!

Drops

About 5 times per day, at random (but within a guessable range), a message pops up in the chat windows. It says:

If you are currently in battle, the winner will recieve a (unit).

Where unit will most often be a Dark Magic Witch, an Assassin, a Pyromancer, a Cleric, an Enchantress, or a Mud Golem. Much less often, it might be a Furgon, a Frost Golem, a Barrier Ward, or a Beast Rider.

If you win the battle that you're in when a drop occurs, go to the Settings screen (see above)! You will find the unit mentioned waiting in your reserve, ready to be added to your side of the field.

The following units do not drop and can only be acquired by upgrading your account: Dragon Tyrant, Golem Ambusher, Berzerker, Stone Golem, DragonSpeaker Mage, and Poison Wisp. More about those units on the Gold Play page.

(BTW, that guessable range I mentioned -- if a drop happens, it'll happen again in either three hours or seven hours, plus or minus a half-hour each time. Check the Legends Forums' Training Room for when the last drop occurred -- just click the "last page" button of the The Last Drop thread.)

The basic goal of Tactics Arena Online is simple: kill or paralyze all of your opponent's mobile units before he kills or paralyzes all of yours. Accomplishing this is difficult at best, and requires a good grasp of both tactics and strategy. This tactical overview details the minutia that a good player has to understand before he can begin to build a sound strategy. This guide is broken up into several sections, each of which details a specific tactical element that must be taken into account by a player when considering which move to make next.

Unit Stats

The first thing you have to know is the stats of each unit, and how they work. It's pretty simple-seeming, but many complexities arise when simple systems overlap...

Survivability stats:

HP: This is the amount of damage the unit can take before it dies.

Armor: Incoming damage is reduced by this percentage. For example, if a Scout's arrow (18 damage) hits a Knight (25% armor), it deals 14 damage (25% of 18 is 4.5; 18-4.5=13.5, which rounds up to 14.)

Blocking: The percentage chance that a non-magical attack will fail against this unit. The chance of a block is halved from the side, and zero from the rear. For example, if that same Scout were attacking a Knight (80% blocking) from the side, the Knight would have a 40% chance of blocking the attack.

These three stats combine to inform you of how best to kill an enemy unit. If an enemy has high Blocking, you want to attack from the back or use an unblockable (aka magical) attack. If the enemy has a lot of HP, you know that it's going to take several turns of dedicated damage to take the target down.

Every unit sits on a 'kill point', where some combination of other attacks will serve to slay that unit most efficiently. For example, to kill an Assassin, it's most efficient to hit it with a Knight, and then with either a Scout or another Assassin. In each unit's individual page, I'll give you breakdowns of the easiest 1-2-and-sometimes-3 punches to take down each specific unit.

Offensive Stats:

Power: This stat indicates how much damage this unit will do to other unit that attack it. Exceptions are Focus units, such as the Enchantress and the Barrier Ward, who have individual special effects that last as long as the unit remains Focused (i.e. until it moves, attacks, is damaged, or becomes Paralyzed or Poisoned), and the Furgon, which is the only unit in the game capable of Summoning (and has no damaging or Focus attacks.)

Range: Not a numerical stat, this is represented in each unit's individual page with a graphic describing which squares the unit is capable of targeting, and how many squares the unit will hit when it attacks.

Special Attack: As of this writing, only three units have a special attack: the Assassin, the Mud Golem, and the Furgon. Each of these is detailed in the unit's individual page.

These stats together describe how best to arrange your units, whether you arrange them to maximize your units' offensive potential (by maximizing the number of enemy units your units can hit right away), or minimize your opponent's (by minimizing the number of your units that he can hit with his first moves).

When combined, a thorough understanding of the defensive and offensive stats will give you enough understanding to start developing tactics, and once you have an understanding of tactics, you can begin to develop strategy.

Tactics, the core of a game called Tactics Arena Online, can be thought of as 'maneuvers' or 'formations' that assist you in achieving a victory. Tactics come in a huge variety of forms; we don't have time to get very deep on this page. This is a tactical primer for people who are learning the game.

Tactically, it is important in TAO to be constantly looking at least three turns into the future. Three turns is the time it takes for your Cleric to recover (assuming you didn't move it), which means it's the amount of time an opponent has to kill a target with maximum efficiency. So keep in mind what it makes the most sense for your opponent to do for the next three turns, and strive to either make it unlikely that he'll achieve his goal, or that you will inflict greater losses on him in those three turns.

As discussed above, each unit's HP is carefully calculated to be at a 'kill point'. Knowing how to effectively kill a unit before the other player can heal (or which units have a kill point low enough that you can easily kill them even after a heal) is important. Study the kill points on each unit's individual page.

Clerical Tactical Awareness
Keep in mind that Clerics heal all units at once, so try not to let any one unit of yours get terribly injured. Similarly, don't spread a lot of damage around the enemy formation unless you've already killed his Cleric - he'll just heal significant chunks of it at a go.

Keeping your Cleric safe is paramount. To that end, most people put their Cleric on the back row (farthest away from the enemy's forces), and in one of the backrow corners (fewer angles to attack the Cleric from). It's becoming more common, however, to put your Cleric in the back row in the very middle - because if your opponent is stronger on one half of the arena than the other, you can move the cleric to his weak side on turn 1.

Maneuvers

Tactically, here are the basic "maneuvers" you will be using to accomplish your goal of killing units without dying:

Attack and retreat
This skill is the basis of almost all victories at the basic level of play. Knowing how far your unit can move, and planning a 'safe' place within that range, you can move that unit out, attack an enemy, clear your Wait (move other units until the attacking unit is eligible for a move again), attack again, and move into your safe place, where hopefully you can survive until you heal up.

This tactic is most viable with high-HP, quick-recovery units (Knights), and medium-HP, high-range units (Scouts), who can attack from far enough away that it takes the opponents a turn or two to get there, giving the unit time to clear Wait and still escape. Assassins are capable of performing this kind of maneuver assuming that you can arrange them in a way that their strong Blocking will take effect to save them from a 2-hit death before they can retreat.

This tactic is most often countered by using high-range units to attack the just-retreated units (Scouts, Pyromancers) and by using unblockable units to pierce the blocking that a just-retreated unit is relying on to save it's life (Witches, Pyromancers, Lightning Wards).

Cluster up and counter
This is the tactic most used if your opponent is sending a unit deep into your territory, trying to kill your low-HP units before you can kill his usually-high-HP attacker. Clustering involves setting your defensive units in a line between your soft underbelly of casters and Cleric and the enemy's invader. Once clustered, you can generally issue counterattacks with range or in melee and just pray to get through his Blocking, and still heal up often enough to persuade your opponent to retreat before he loses his attacker fruitlessly.

This tactic is most often used by high-blocking units (Knights, Assassins, sometimes Scouts). Pyromancers can occasionally take part in a Cluster, but don't count on them making it out alive.

This tactic is best countered by casters (Pyromancers, Witches) who can take advantage of the cluster of targets to spread quite a bit of damage around, or by using the fact that you can't spare any attackers to come after them to deal some easy unblockable damage from a moderate range.

Flanking
Many people set up their form with a "wall" of high-Blocking units toward the front, with one end of the "wall" against the arena edge, to discourage frontal attacks. In response, this tactic is to send units down the middle of the arena to get behind the "wall" and bust up the enemy's easier-to-kill units. Keep in mind, however, that getting stuck back there usually isn't worth it unless you can kill at least two enemy units with your one flanker. (Or the Cleric. Killing the Cleric is always worth losing a flanker.)

This tactic is most often used by fast-moving, fast-recovery units (Assassins, Knights), with backup from high-range units (Scouts) to keep the flankers from getting nailed by an Enchantress.

This tactic is best countered by ignoring the flankers for a turn or two to really pressure and/or kill the enemy Scout, and then using an Enchantress to scoop up the flankers. Also, it can be countered by dropping a couple of high-Blocking units back and sealing up easy targets with a Barrier Ward.

The Fast Blast
This tactic is all about threatening an enemy unit in the first couple of turns of the game. It requires a Lightning Ward, a Barrier Ward, and a Dark Magic Witch. The idea is that, in three turns, you use the Lightning Ward on one of your enemy's frontline units, then the Barrier Ward on one of your own units in the same column, and then fire the Witch's blast through the Barrier'd unit to hit that same frontline unit of the opponents. You can get a respectable amount of damage on a Knight in a few turns without hurting yourself with this tactic, and from that point, harassing Scout fire or Pyromancer blasts from within your form can keep your opponent on his toes.

Best case scenario, you kill the Knight. Worse case scenario, the Knight will retreat a few steps and give you a way into your enemy's form.

Formations

Tactically, here are the basic "formations" you will be using to accomplish your goal of not dying while you're killing your opponent's units:

The Wall
The wall is a five-unit formation that belongs on the front two lines of a form with a cornered Cleric. It is generally composed of a frontline that has one empty space, then a Knight, a Lightning Ward, and another Knight, with a second line that has a Scout or Assassin against the arena's edge, then 3 empty spaces, and then the third Knight.

This formation has huge defensive advantages: all of the units are high-Blocking (-ish, on the Scout). An enemy Pyromancer or Witch has to get within range of the Lightning Ward in order to hit more than two units at once (and the Ward will kill it in one hit if it does). If any unit comes to attack your Scout/Assassin in melee, it can get zapped by the Lightning Ward. All of your durable attackers are in front and ready to move out if you need to attack something.

The Wall is countered best by Flanking or the Fast Blast (see above).

Endgame Trap
Endgame Trap is not a specific unit setup, but a set of units that work very well together in the end of the game, after your opponent's casters and Scout are dead. They are: a Barrier Ward, an Enchantress, a Cleric, and a single damage-dealing unit. The idea behind Endgame Trap is to not bother trying to kill your opponent's Knights, as it takes too much effort. Instead, kill his spellcasters and Scout, and retreat. Once his Knights/Assassin have to come to you in order to win, you can swing out your Enchantress, snag one of his Knights, and Barrier Ward her. Then, the enemy has to bring another Knight in to hit the Barrier Ward in order to get back to the Enchantress, who by then will have recovered, and you can attack with her again in order to snag the new attacker, heal her with the Cleric, and Barrier up again. Even if she takes a hit, she will be at 25 HP and Barriered, ready to snag the third Knight when he shows up - and that's game! Just send your damage-dealer after their Cleric once everything is tied up.

The Endgame Trap is best countered by keeping your Scout alive! But Pyromancers can be useful too, and Assassins with their fast movement are occasionally a good anti-chanty measure.

Endgame Strong
Again, Endgame Strong isn't a specific placement of units, but is another set of units you'll want to use to clean up in the endgame if you don't feel the Enchantress groove. For Endgame Strong you're going to want a pair of Pyromancers, and a Witch. The idea here is that you use the Pyros and the Witch as a strong counter-offensive during the middle of the game, once some of the enemy units are working their way over to your side. Use the unblockable attacks to soften the enemy up so you can dart in with a Knight or shoot with a Scout to finish the enemy off and retreat quickly. Don't be afraid to trade a caster for a Knight; that's the goal! The idea is to get to the endgame with two Knights, your Cleric, and a Scout remaining, and have your opponent have an equal number of units, but fewer Knights. With those units, your enemy's Enchantress will be basically useless, and you can always retreat and heal up knowing that your Knights gain more advantage per heal than any other unit in the game.

The Endgame Strong is best countered by going straight for the enemy's Scout and killing it, even if you lose a Knight or Witch to do it.

The Sin Bomb
If you can manage to get your Assassin below (not at) 5 HP -- best done with a pair of Scout shots or one Knight and one Pyromancer hit -- and then Barrier it, you can create a strong deterrent.