Table of Contents

• A.) Introduction
• B.) Understanding Gauntlet Mechanics
• C.) Understanding Bans and Ups
• D.) Drafting your Team
• E.) Choosing a Leader
• F.) Gearing up your Units
• G.) Choosing your Ship
• H.) Notable Free Units to Build
• I.) Tips for Climbing
• J.) Sample Weekly Team Building

A.) Introduction

• This wall of text will serve as just a pool of information that will help you in understanding each meta and help you navigate through it.
• I have no idea how to teach or explain playing styles and thus I will not be tackling this part at all. That's what makes the PVP in this game good anyway, you can't really predict how each opponent is going to play.
• I would categorize the players into four groups
  • Free to play
  • Pull for waifu (spend til you get it)
  • Pull for everyone (in order to take advantage of Unit UP weeks)
  • Buy everything whale
• With that being said, you don't have to spend in order to be competitive. Although this early into the game, the stat differences from limit broken units and decked out gear will be more noticeable. The longer the game goes, and the more resources everyone is able to farm, the gap will be closer.

B.) Understanding Gauntlet Mechanics

• Treat the game as a card game. Your units are a deck of 8 cards and every time you deploy a unit, it will be sent to the bottom of the deck.
• Your opening hand will always be your leader plus 3 out of 7 the cards in your deck. The rest of your deck will be arranged in random order.
• Your ship has its own stats like HP and Attack. They can also auto attack.
• The farthest you can drop units is based on your opponent's ship HP. Some units have a passive skill that allows them to be dropped anywhere. Some units travel forward or backward from the drop point.
• Some units have Entering The Battle effects or ETB. It may vary from dealing damage instantly to summoning another unit or buffing your team for a certain amount of time.
• You can redeploy units when they are already on the field to make use their ETB effects, reposition, or simply to cycle through your deck.
• Valid hits are the number of units a skill can hit for full damage. Any more than that will result in greatly diminished damage numbers. I'm pretty confident that this is not random as well, but whichever unit taking damage is closest to the point of impact but I cannot confirm this.
• Shields are represented by the grey section of the HP bar. It will absorb all the damage from an attack even though it is higher than the shield's HP, hence you cannot 1-shot a shielded unit.
• Some units have a valid hit value of 100% or 200%. This means they are worth 2 or 3 units in soaking up valid hits.
• Defenders protect units behind them from AoE damage if the point of impact of the damage dealt is from the front.
• Lesser forms of Crowd Control will not stick if it misses a target so Hit and Evasion are important stats as well.
• Some skills cannot target but are able to hit air units so try them out in practice mode first.
• The first time you deploy a unit, they will always be ready to use their Special Skill. You can treat this as a delayed ETB depending on how you deploy a unit.
• At a higher level, you need to learn how to count enemy deployment points during the first few moments of the match so you will not be surprised by any response drops or ETBs.
• Eventually you will need to be aware of minor details as well like how far or near your ship you place your units.
• Through experience you will be able to get a feel of the range of AoEs and other random interactions. This will help you in when and where to deploy units.
• There will sometimes be some very buggy interactions like A Hilde or Jane Doe ending up very far from their position.

C.) Understanding Bans and Ups

• Up units have 10% increased stats and an additional 10% skill haste along with a 1-cost reduction.
• Banned units will have its cost increased by 1 per ban tier.
• When should you be using an UP unit?
  • From what I've read, bans and ups are based on an algorithm that determines unit usage rate.
  • When a unit ends up as a 1-cost, it is almost always likely a must use as it will have superior stats for a 1-cost and is an easy way to cycle through your deck. You can set a 1-cost unit as a leader but it will not bring their cost down to zero.
  • UP 2-cost & above units should be used only if they fit with your team. But even then, most units will still be not that good even on their up week. Especially when the ship or units that synergize with them is banned.
• When should you be using a Banned unit?
  • When you're still new and have no other units to use.
  • I would argue that some units at Ban 1 are still usable like Gaeun especially if they fit your draft very well. Qualities that you have to look for are their ability to survive on their own, not easily countered, or their overall impact in dealing damage or inflicting crowd control.
• When should you be using a Banned ship?
  • Reduces HP and Skill Haste by 20% for every tier of the ban. I would argue that some ships are still really good at Ban 1 like Lake Superior and Enterprise. I would not recommend using any ship at Ban 2 and above.
  • If you are F2P, it is recommended to build ships that are not commonly banned if you want to PVP a lot like Gleipnir Pod or Armor type. It will however, limit the teams that you will be able to use when you are just starting out.
• On a surface level, these are what the game gives us in terms of what we are encouraged and discouraged to use.
• However, there is are other factors that we have to consider about bans and ups - these are strong units or ships that are not banned, and if a counter to a unit or team composition is banned.
• In a sense, units that counter up units or strong units that are not banned also increase in value.
• The following are a few examples.
  • If Enterprise is not banned and is seeing a lot of play, you should treat units who rely on Evasion to survive as ban 0.5 simply because of the current meta shift.
  • If Kang Soyoung or Elizabeth Pendragon is banned, squishier back line units should have an easier time at surviving.
  • If Awakened Yoo Mina is banned, maybe you should focus on units that can death ball harder and earlier towards the enemy ship.
• These are just the basics because we still have a small unit pool but I'm very excited how convoluted it will be when we get more units and bans.

D.) Drafting your Team

• It will depend heavily on your play style and personal preference. You can start with a favorite unit and build a team around them.
• You can also choose an UP unit or a strong unit that is not banned and work your way from there.
• A good way to check your bracket's meta is to look at what everyone else is running at your league.
• Always take into consideration that the meta molds itself more the further we are into the week. More people figure it out and in turn more people counter what they have been playing against.
• There will be weeks that will be stale because everyone else is playing the same team and you're not finding any success unless you copy what they're doing. You can start from there and adjust your team bit by bit.
• Start first by removing something that everyone else is trying to counter and try another unit that is strong by itself or helps augment the rest of your team composition.
• The thought process and logic will be different week per week and I'll have a sample weekly buildup at a later section of this guide.
• You can categorize your units into two different categories as well - reactive and proactive.
  • Proactive - More often than not your leader. It is a unit that you want out on the field for a long time for its skills to cool down or someone to soak the damage of your enemy units. Leaning towards too many proactive units may be detrimental when your opponent has answers or your deck's sequence is not ideal.
  • Reactive - Usually units with ETBs that deal with other enemy units or protect your own. They are usually a response to what your enemy deploys or what the current battle situation is. Playing too many reactive cards may be detrimental when you are getting rushed down or some of your cards cannot deal with the situation.
• It is important to balance your deck in order to be as consistent as possible to be able to deal with every situation.
• Average Cost is also an important factor in making a team.
• On one hand, having way too many high cost units will make you more susceptible to low cost rush teams.
• Having way too low of an average cost, on the other hand, forces you to make decisions faster and may force you to only play in a linear way. You may also get overpowered by higher cost units.
• Consistency is the key. You must have a strategy that you can comfortably execute with your leader unit plus opening hand of the three out of seven remaining cards.
• Drafting your team is a process that is done through fine tuning every little detail to get every possible advantage over whatever team you can possibly go against.
• Do not keep changing your team based on the last person you matched with, try to examine your last 15-20 matches and react accordingly.

E.) Choosing a Leader

• Assigning a unit as a leader will reduce its cost by one and they will always be in your opening hand. Banned units can be set as a leader but their cost will not be reduced. It is also the unit that shows up in the matching screen which may telegraph your team or strategy.
• When should you set your unit as a leader?
  • So it will always be in your opening hand.
  • When it is more likely to die or get targeted.
  • When you always want it to be in the field.
  • To make use of its ETB more often.
• Take into consideration that the higher a unit cost is, the less efficient its discount will be. A 2-cost unit set as a leader ends up with a 50% discount. A good example would be Eins & Zwei. They are a good opener, more likely to die and get targeted since they are in the front, and you always want to have them out on the field so their skills can cool down.
• One of the most common leaders are your front line Defenders. Especially if you only run one in your team. They will be most likely the first one to fall and you always need them on your opening hand in order to survive.
• Some teams may have identical lineup but their dynamic and play style may change differently because of the leader.

F.) Gearing up your Units

• I will not go too much into details about gearing up each individual unit as there are a lot of guides out there that tackle this specific topic.
• Counters usually favor Cooldown Reduction since all of them have a Special and an Ultimate Skill.
• Soldiers and Mechs favor attack speed since most of them do not have any skills at all.
• Defenders and some Strikers prefer HP or Evasion depending on their stats.
• Anti-Ranger and Anti-Sniper are niche for units with damage based ETBs depending on the meta.
• Anti-Striker can be niche, but should overall be less useful than the former choices.
• Hit improves consistency in exchange for more damage. You can use it for damage ETB units or units with crowd control in order for their effect to stick. It is viable, but not ideal.
• Crit Damage% is good for units that automatically on their basic attacks or skills. It should also be viable for units with more than 1k crit but not ideal compared to other offensive item sets.
• You can throw away any Anti-Defender, Anti-Supporter, Anti-Siege, and Anti-Tower gear as these units are the least common in the game.
• Some units may have different builds depending on your team composition or the meta that week.
  • Nanahara Chifuyu for example can spec ASPD for more damage and crowd control or HP to help her survive.
  • Joo Shiyoung can spec HP instead of EVA for a different survivability stat.
  • Awakened Hilde can spec Cooldown instead of DEF or HP to deal more damage and have more crowd control but still get offer survivability from getting more shields.
• There will be situations that it is better to use gears with better substats instead of the set bonuses like Maze Gear from the Gauntlet exchange.

G.) Choosing your Ship

• There are a lot of guides about what available ships we have currently and future ships so be sure to check them out.
• Make sure your ship's passive works on your units but you can probably get away with using 1 or 2 units that do not fall into the category if they are UP or they are simply really good with the comp.
• Secondary would reason should be the ship's Special Skill. Do you need the debuff to counter specific stats like evasion or do you need its vacuum to set up skills or ETB, or shields to protect your units.

H.) Notable Free Units to Build

• Joo Shiyoon - Best free unit out there hands down. Counters most skills without taking damage and has a 5 second stun on his ultimate that can hit the back line. You can also drop him anywhere regardless of opponent's ship HP.
• Kang Soyoung - One of the best ETBs of the game for a 2 cost. Keeps snipers and squishier rangers in check.
• Eddie Fischer - Gives damage and damage reduction to counters and soldiers. Decent filler unit if you are F2P.
• John Mason - Quite expensive for his immediate impact upon drop but he eventually becomes 3 units after his summons a C.O.
• Jane Doe - Squishy unit that deals a lot of damage and inflicts a lot of crowd control that can hit the back line.
• Stronghold - Decent defender that makes your team tankier when one of it dies.
• Maria Antonov - Provides a map wide crowd control and summons units with her ultimate. She also buffs the team's damage with her passive.

I.) Tips for Climbing

• Identify your bracket's meta and try to make minor adjustments.
• Don't play anything you're not comfortable with.
• Trust your draft, don't change your team too much.
• Review your replays on close wins and on losses that you don't understand why you lost.
• Switch up your initial strategy depending on your opening hand. Learn to adapt to any situation.
• Try to remember what other people play, because you might match against them again.
• Don't get tilted if you cannot win against an outlier team. If you have a very good win rate against the rest, you will still be net positive.
• Check your opponent's team, they might be running a better set of gear and you might learn a thing or two.
• On weeks where you can't build a decent team, be content with playing just for gauntlet points to cut your losses.
• There is no best team, only the best team that works for you.

J.) Sample Weekly Team Building

• July 12-18, 2021

https://preview.redd.it/3ni9ohzkukb71.png?width=1726&format=png&auto=webp&s=45fe3daabd39ae118125c12ccfafb45e85e16854

https://preview.redd.it/q1oxp4imukb71.png?width=1739&format=png&auto=webp&s=d80e4de110e1dcfe2b406e8cc32fa16a0c3acf75

https://preview.redd.it/xkmlo3mrukb71.png?width=1736&format=png&auto=webp&s=21e17c33be78bdfe14d1e8a25e6dfa50318cb96e

• I started out the week at 3.2k MMR with the following team. (Cost [X], Ship [S])
  • [5] Awakened Hilde - I set her as my leader for consistency as she is the only tank that I have on my team. I equipped her with 2 sets of DEF gears.
  • [2] Eins and Zwei - Very strong unit for its cost that can soak damage and inflict a ton of crowd control very often. Deals decent damage as well. I equipped them with a Cooldown set.
  • [4] Rosaria la Friede - Overall very strong air unit that deals a lot of damage. Very squishy but sticks for a very long time just because she is an air unit. I equipped her with a Cooldown set.
  • [3] Claudia Nelson - Very strong ETB and sustained heal from her special and ultimate skills. I equipped her with a Cooldown set.
  • [6] Awakened Yoo Mina - Strong ETB and special skill that can single-handedly wipe the whole back line.
  • [3] Nanahara Chifuyu - Cuts down A Hilde's defense and seals hers and the Twins' skills to delay their crowd control. Her ultimate skill also hits Rosaria. I equipped her with an ASPD set.
  • [1] Rivet - 1 Cost UP unit that can hold her own weight. Worst case scenario she absorbs valid hits for the other higher cost back line units. I equipped her with a Cooldown Set.
  • [3] Sylvia Lena Cooper - Strong damage burst and can target and deal with Rosaria. I equipped her with Anti-Ranger and Atk set.
  • [S] Enterprise - Strongest ship that is not banned. Its special skill has good synergy with the rest of my team's skills and overall strategy.
• Here are the units that I considered using.
  • Joo Shiyoung - I do not have her. Theoretically she can cool down her skills behind A Hilde and jump to the back line.
  • Elizabeth Pendragon - She can deal with Rosaria but depends heavily on the battle situation. She may come in too late or too early in your hand as well.
  • Kang Soyoung - She deals with Sylvia but not against Rosaria.
  • Roy Burnett - I do not have him built up. He should help kill A Hilde faster but did not offer that much front line staying power and crowd control to warrant a spot in my draft.
• Here are the units that I eventually removed
  • Awakened Yoo Mina - the first unit that I removed since she did not really fit my draft of wanting to be aggressive and push early and not giving the enemy any space to place units. She is also very high cost and would be a dead card on my opening hand. I replaced her with Chinatsu.
  • Rosaria la Friede - I was running into too many people trying to counter her with Elizabeth. I felt like she was also expensive as a 4-cost for my draft. I still think that she is a very good unit this week but she simply did not fit my play style. I replaced her with Joo Shiyoon.
• Here are the other units that added into my team.
  • Nanahara Chinatsu - Has a good ETB and with decent damage and healing that also buffs the team's attack which can help break a stalemate. I eventually replaced her in favor of Arius
  • Arius Esquede - Weaker ETB compared to Chinatsu but has overall offers better protection over time to the team through better healing and shields.
  • Joo Shiyoon - Is cheaper and survives better compared to Rosaria and offers almost the same amount of damage and arguably better crowd control. He also protects Sylvia from Kang.
• My team ended up looking something like this
  • [1] Eins and Zwei - Leader
  • [6] Awakened Hilde
  • [3] Joo Shiyoon
  • [3] Sylvia Lena Cooper
  • [3] Arius Esquede
  • [3] Nanahara Chifuyu
  • [3] Claudia Nelson
  • [1] Rivet
  • [S] Enterprise
• I ended up setting Twins as my leader because I wanted them to be my first drop all the time.
• My deck was also consistent enough to dig for A Hilde even if she is the last card on the opening sequence of the deck.
• Dropping Rosaria shifted my focus on keeping the rest of the team alive to deal damage and relying more on crowd control.
• I've won and lost against similar teams throughout the week with different leaders (Joo or Lena), or that are playing Rosaria instead of Chifuyu.
• I'm not really articulate at explaining how I play, but if you are interested to see it, here is a short 5-win streak at 5k mmr against formidable opponents. https://youtu.be/cph-RTxBJdo

Final Notes

• If you've reached this far, thank you very much for reading!
• Any sort of feedback is greatly appreciated!
• I don't expect to hold this MMR consistently week after week. I'm pretty sure that there will be teams that I will not be comfortable playing with or against.
• I'm also planning to do some sort of a weekly meta snapshot like how I did with section J.) but I will probably skip a week if I don't think I have anything to contribute.
• Some short thoughts about the game's PVP - I like it so far because whales and more skilled players are beatable through strategy and preparation. I like how the game rewards split-second decisions and better reflexes as well. Looking forward to a tournament mode in the future!
• If you have any questions you can reach me in Discord - Formana#6140.