ArmageddonArmageddon

What it is: A giant monster the whole kingdom attacks together, with one rule that changes everything.

Armageddon works like Doomsday and the other big monster events: it sits on the kingdom map, everybody attacks it, and you're paid for how many of its troops you kill rather than for finishing it off. Nobody finishes it off. Kill nothing and you earn nothing, and that's the only way to walk away with empty hands.

How it scores

Valor and experience, both paid at a better rate than usual, and clan medals on top. That last part is why a clan turns out for this even when nobody expects to win anything.

You're paid per enemy killed, not per point of damage. A weak enemy and a tough one are worth the same when they fall over. That sounds like a small distinction. It decides your whole army.

The Overseers are where your points come from

Four monsters, and they are not built alike at all.

The Overseers are 185 million of them, three quarters of everything out there, and they fall over at a fifteenth of a Fire Hydra's health. Since you're paid per kill and not per point of damage, that is where nearly all of your score is going to come from, whatever you turn up with.

Which is the useful part: you do not need any help killing something that soft. So the question is not what kills Overseers fastest. It is what survives longest while doing it, because troops that are still alive are still killing.

Look at the last column and every one of your four troop types is somebody's dinner. Your archers get hit the least, at 55%. Your cavalry get hit the hardest, at 75%, and the Fire Hydra that does it is also the toughest thing out there.

How to play it

• Send Svyatogor as your hero. His bonus only works when you go out with no captains, which normally means giving something up to use him. Not here. Captains are banned anyway, so you get half again as much strength and health for nothing.
• Fill every gear slot. Your hero wears six pieces where a captain wears three. On a day when the hero goes alone, that is the whole of your advantage, so leave nothing empty.
• Wear the Warrior of Ragnarök set if you have it. It adds strength against giant monsters and can double your damage. If you don't have it, Emperor's Wrath is the next best, and it helps whatever your army is made of.
• Pick the Medallion of Unity over the Valkyrie Diadem. The Medallion lifts your whole army by the same amount. The Diadem only lifts fliers, which sounds generous until it shoves them out of the order you carefully put them in.
• Weight toward archers, and go easy on cavalry. Your archers take the lightest beating of anything you can bring, and they are the ones that answer the Fire Hydra. Cavalry is the opposite: the Hydra hits them at 75%, the worst number out there. Bring some of everything, but do not build the march around cavalry.
• Bring Guardsmen, not Specialists. Guardsmen are the troops built for fighting monsters. Specialists are built for fighting other players, and they will do nothing for you today.
• Only bring your two best troop levels. Everything below them dies first and eats the space you wanted for the good stuff.
• Send every Superior Epic Monster Hunter you own. They are mercenaries with no troop type at all, which means nothing out there gets a bonus against them. They also cost almost nothing to bring, so there is no reason to leave one behind.
• Empty the barn. Every mercenary and every monster you own, cavalry first: Devastator, then Ancient Terror, then Troll Rider. Mercenaries expire in about a week whatever you do, so hoarding them just wastes them.

What to bring

The fight happens in rounds of four. The Armageddon squad is four groups, so it only hits back four times a round. Once those four trades are done, every other batch of troops you brought swings for free, with nothing coming back. Then it starts over: four more trades, then all your free hits again.

So a march of nothing but your best tier is the worst thing you can send. That is one type, one batch, one of the four trades, and not a single free hit.

Build it the other way round. Your army has two jobs here.

• Four batches to take the four blows. A medium-sized group of each, big enough to survive a hit, rather than your whole army poured into four.
• Everything else, spread as wide as it goes. Split the rest of what you can carry across as many different types as you can field: every tier of Guardsman, every kind of mercenary, every monster you own. Each different type is its own batch, and every batch past the first four swings for free.

The more distinct types you bring, the more free hits you land before the squad gets to answer again. That is the whole trick: turn your capacity into as many separate batches as you can.

Leave these at home