Introduction
Recently, I won the first ever AOC Tournament sponsored by Onix and Army of Crypto. You can verify this with the picture below and on their discord if you don't believe me. For getting first, I was able to win a legendary card, two essential packs and 1000 onix which is great since I did make an investment in buying packs so it's finally paying off. Anyways I want to share some tips and strategy to be a great AOC player.
Tip 1 - Find Solid Cards
What do I mean by solid cards. If there's no format requirement, you want to find the cards with the best stats in both attack and defense which are usually the "strong" cards. This may seem like a no brainer for the stats part but what's crucial is that these cards also need to have great arrow placements.
For soldiers, you definitely want strong soldiers with 3 arrows. For generals you want ones with 3-4 arrows. There's two types of 3 arrow strong soldiers that I look for. The first is the rook and the second is the staller. This also applies to the types of generals I look for as well but the main difference is the general may have 4 arrows and have better stats.
The Rook
You can see the card on the top right is an example of a rook card. These rooks are super strong at the moment because they have no weaknesses to attack them from. Since there's no magic cards yet, the opponent is forced to use their units to trade with these corner units to remove them. Especially if they have good stats, they may be able to trade for 2 soldiers which would give them a value of a 1 for 2. It's important to have card advantage in this game so you want to make trades and win.
How To Counter The Rook
Currently, the best way to fight this strategy is to have some strong soldiers with high attack to trade with these corner units to relieve the pressure they place by limiting your unit placements in the battle. You don't need much health on these soldiers as their main purpose would be to remove these cards from the corner.
The Staller
Stallers have a unique three arrow composition that lets them move to every single place on the board without getting stuck. Why is this good? Well you can freely move to safe spots and force your opponent to make a move in stalemate positions since you can only pass twice in a row max. As for a counter to this, there isn't one. You need a Staller to fight a Staller otherwise you are at a disadvantage.
Tip 2 - Be Reactive
This is probably the best tip I can give and I saw some players doing this as well in the tournament. I feel the AOC team may need to change, rework or nerf this rule as it may prolong a game and make them kind of boring to watch. There's a rule of where we can pass two times in a row consecutively without getting penalized. If we do it 3x in a row though, it will count as a forfeit so it's key to do one move after the two consecutive passes to reset the passes. This is why the staller card comes in handy. It can help you reset your passes.
Personally, I take full advantage of this rule. If you're starting out after the first phase of placing the three soldiers, you can basically skip your first two turns and use your staller to reset the passes. This way you're almost at 5 nodes to play a general.
Don't be afraid to pass your turn. My main strategy is to let the opponent play out their units so I can place mine in a position to counter. I feel this is the best strategy at the moment. It's best not to show your full hand. I feel like the opponent will feel anxious when you don't play anything and that puts you at an advantage because they may overthink what they need to do and make a bad play or mistake which you can later capitalize on. With that being said, I believe you should force your opponent to try to come attack you and you can create the counter play from there. Don't force yourself to have to attack your opponent unless needed to.
If you want to take this to the next level, you can also count how many units you have killed so you know how many cards your opponent has left. This is crucial to know because if you have any OP last minute carry generals, you know that they will be safe from your opponent.
Concluding Thoughts
I believe the tips I mentioned will greatly increase your skills in AOC. Things may change in the future as magic cards are added and rules are modified, added or removed. I hope my tips help those that are in AOC now. I will be looking forward to the future tournaments where I may battle you. All the best!
Thank You
Thank you for reading and supporting me. If you are interested and have any questions feel free to comment below. I have also left links to where you can find information about AOC and Onix Blockchain which should help if you're interested to learn more.
Army of Crypto Whitepaper: https://armyofcrypto.com/whitepaper.pdf
Army of Crypto Website: https://armyofcrypto.com/
Onixcoin Whitepaper: https://onixcoin.io/whitepaper-v3.pdf
Onixcoin Website: https://onixcoin.io/
Onix & AOC Discord: https://discord.gg/Nmmh4uzvBh