As I’ve mentioned, Imitation Game day is where I will almost full boost. I didn’t bother with my Guardian Troop Health statues as I felt the defenses that can take me out will take me out (and they did) because of the Rain Maker’s low health as tanks. Nonetheless, with a full boost going, I made a nice little dent on my maps especially for my main account where there were some hideous bases that I wanted to take vengeance upon. I ended up losing 2 Rain Makers just when they wandered into some Boom Cannon’s range so for those out there reading this, make sure you’re aware of their positioning because they do often wander too close at times.

This Imitation Game stage 7 attempted to be tricky by using a Sky Shield to prevent you from obliterating the Shock Launcher and Shock Blaster underneath. The way I did this was using the first attack to remove all the threatening Boom Cannons, unshielded Shock Launcher and clearing the mines near the beach. Then for my second attack, I saved up my GBE for critters to pose as a distraction, especially for the shielded Boom Cannon. If you toss the Critters just out of range of the Sky Shield at the right moment, the Shock Launcher and Shock Blaster will target them instead so that your Rain Makers can clear the rest of the pesky defenses under the Sky Shield.

I was able to recover some of my resource bases for my main account. There were a few on both accounts that I think only Heavy Choppa or Scorcher with leech could defeat easily, unless I decided to go Warrior, which isn’t my forte. Or I could use Pvt Bullit with Energy Drink. But the point in these cases is that with beached defenses, Rain Makers are terrible due to their inability to destroy things at close range quick enough. With Mechs getting a 90% off sale, I could try them out but feel it isn’t worth the effort considering that there’s just better out there.

At any rate, I was happy that I made some small progress with my base. Now, I am half way done in upgrading Boom Cannons. So once these are finished, everything else ought to be pretty easy especially because the requirements for Stone and Iron aren’t as harsh.

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Did the Dr T Tropical Island. Only got to stage 6 where stage 7 started pushing through too many front loaded, heavy defenses. Decided not to press my luck and hope that the next two major events will be more forgiving on the beach defenses. No upgrades so far for buildings but I’m waiting for tomorrow and definitely Friday. I did manage to start upgrading my Kavan on my secondary account, which might be too little too late. Progress is progress though. I might do a major map clear on Friday as I will be doing a full boost then and have significantly more GBE.

Still working on trying to craft +20% Resource Reward statues. Along the way, I’m going to try crafting good Ice Statues as I anticipate replacing them for 2 additional Resource Reward statues in the short term. Anything over 30% will be considered a win in my book until I’m upgraded. Then my Ice statues that I craft will go into storage until I’m ready for HQ26.

I got to 3ER on Warships and actually am grinding through. The Pvt Bullit meta I think is good for those who are going for rankings and have Instant Training. For the rest of us, the meta is Capt Everspark with Heavy Zooka. I’m doing a 6/2 HZ loadout because I find that it feels reasonable, but I have read that most people are doing 4/4. That makes sense given that you probably can clear faster with 4/4 and lose less troops if you really know what you’re doing.

My current strategy is just to farm chest when they pop up. I unlocked Shock Bombs today and maxed out my Gunboat. So my next goal is to unlock Boom Cannons. That requires one more chest so I’ll probably do that next, try to get 3-4 Boom Cannons then work towards the building choice node and choose Cannons while I farm out more keys to get to Troop Damage. After that I might farm for a while in 3ER to build up keys and get some other nodes like Building Damage raised up higher before venturing into 4ER.

4ER looks brutal without Barrage. Since you’ll start encountering bases with Rocket Launchers while facing Rocket Choppers or Seekers. I haven’t tried either and feel it might get brutal around then without some form of healer. I don’t want to go back for Kavan. Not sure if I can make it to 5-6ER. In some way, I’d like to just because the idea of Heavy Choppas is a lot of fun. But the path there looks brutal.

Other than that, it’s just a slow painful grind as always.

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For a (near) max level player, the best setup I can think of for Rain Makers is 7 boats of them with one boat of Medics and Kavan as the hero. You want Medics because unlike other tank types, Rain Makers do not have a lot of health and can be taken down by clusters of Rocket Launchers. So you will want some form of healing to ensure that you do not lose these.

Against bases with a lot of front loaded defense like Boom Cannons and Doom Cannons, you probably will want to change up your strategy as these long range types will be able to pick off your guys on the shore. For this situation, you should change your hero to Pvt Bullit so that he can soak up the front defenses with Taunt or use Energy Drink while your Rain Makers attempt to pulverize as much as possible while using Shock Bombs to knock out as much as possible.

While Rain Makers can out range Boom Cannons in general, they do suffer from the issue that they will wander off and sometimes get in range of a Boom Cannon while attempting to destroy another building. So you should try to keep them clustered up once they approach Boom Cannons until they can get them down. They also are vulnerable to Shock Launchers and cannot out distance these defenses. A well placed Shock Bomb is really all you need but I tend to save them once I feel that my guys have cleared enough of the more threatening defenses.

Rocket Launchers are another thing that can wreck havoc upon Rain Makers. Individually, they do not do much damage against Rain Makers but in greater numbers, their range capability makes them a huge threat and can take out a Rain Maker or two. Keeping Shock Bombs around to silence Rocket Launcher clusters is the key here.

At 6 GBE per Rain Maker, you should make sure you have enough to launch them at around 84 GBE total. You really don’t need them all at once but I imagine 4 boats should be a good minimum to start wrecking havoc. You might want to save some GBE to take care of any major defenses like Doom Cannons, Grapplers and Shock Launchers. Grapplers would be at the top of my priority because of their range and how little health a Rain Maker has.

For defense, front loading your base with long range defenses like Boom Cannons and Doom Cannons are pretty much your only saving grace for a week like this. You can treat Rain Makers similar to longer range Grenadiers on Hammerman Strikes Back. The main difference is that you want to avoid clustering your defenses and buildings since these prototype troops have splash damage.

Another way to handle Rain Makers is to move your HQ all the way back and place huge clusters of mines since Rain Makers will have a difficult time dealing with them without Critters or Everspark or wasting other forms of GBE. However, this strategy won’t be as effective compared to front loading a base’s defense because Rain Makers will still out range most of the defense once they manage to survive a mine field. This technique might work if you have a well place Grappler and you can lead a bunch of Rain Makers into its path because they can start firing upon it.

Outside of Rain Makers, I wanted to talk briefly on Hammerman Strikes Back today. Pretty much with the HQ25 update, these attacks have become far more difficult. There were only two stages that I did not use a front loaded base while the last two stages were quite brutal. I think if my bases were anything less than HQ25 with maxed out defenses from HQ24 and the 4th Rocket Launcher, I would have been toast.

That makes me consider about my upgrading strategy. Since I have two max level Landing Craft on both accounts, I’m thinking I won’t need anymore anytime soon since the next level of Landing Craft ought to only provide +1 to Medics. In my case, I only take 2 boats of Medics so the additional levels to Landing Craft at this point feel like a waste compared to defense.

At the same time, these Hammerman attacks have been getting worse. But the only way I can get through them might be to upgrade defenses. However, the cost is just awful without a Mega Crab or tons of resources saved up on my boat. So the solution might be to ditch my two Ice statues and use two Resource Reward statues. Then Fridays should provide a lot more and possibly only require the weekend to get my upgrade for the week.

The resource that has become extremely scarce though is Stone. I’ve seen someone else mention this issue and there really isn’t much one can do about it outside of waiting for Mega Crabs and getting lucky with Dives and Trader Tickets. But again this is where I think three RR statues will benefit me.

The last topic of the day is Warships. I decided to stop playing Warships on my secondary account and just collecting chests whenever they’re up on my main account. There’s no reason to wait for all four to show up unless you have Instant Training as most of the meta seems to be settling in.

On my main account, I went 3ER and already see far superior defenses. From what I read, people are using Everspark as their Hero just to handle the mines along with Heavy Zooka. I have yet to give this a try but am anticipating Boom Cannons wrecking me. So instead of being able to rank up, my best bet is to grind through and try getting to the point where I can get Cannons, Shock Bombs and Boom Cannons. If it becomes too painful and I cannot progress any longer, I’ll just give up because I’m not spending $10 for a shit subscription feature.

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