Hey there, and welcome to Wargroove 101.

This guide is intended to introduce you to the basic concepts of strategy in Wargroove and other, similar turn-based games. None of the stuff included here will be particularly advanced, but it may prove useful to newer players who haven’t been introduced to these concepts before.

Do note that this guide is not intended to teach you things like “what’s a tower?”, “what are mages for?”, “what does weather do?”, or “how much defense does a mountain offer?”. It assumes that you’re already familiar with the basic mechanics of the game, as well as the basic functions of its various units.

As such, it may be useful to you to keep Sigrid's Guide to Soldiers open in another tab, or at least to familiarize yourself with its contents before reading on. It’s a great introduction to what the various units in the game are capable of.

That said, this guide also isn't intended for more experienced players. People who are already familiar with concepts like gold efficiency and army composition are probably not going to find anything new here. It's called "101" for a reason.

This guide can also be considered an expanded, Wargroove-applicable version of this article on basic strategy from the Advance Wars By Web wiki[awbw.fandom.com]. Major credit goes to the author. It’s not a bad idea to read it, too, as a sort of condensed version of this guide, though some of its information isn’t applicable to Wargroove.

Let’s get started.

This guide assumes that you’re playing Wargroove on a competitive map - that is, one that’s symmetrical, or at least very close to it, and that the map in question has done something to negate first-turn advantage (FTA).

As a general rule, the less symmetrical a map is, the less competitively balanced it is. It’s possible for asymmetrical maps to be competitively balanced, but it’s much rarer than symmetrical maps.

First-turn advantage is the idea that the player who moves first has an advantage, since they’ll generally be the first to reach important objectives and so on. It’s a real thing in turn-based games, and most competitive maps will take it into account. A common way of neutralizing FTA is for the map creator to give the second player a free Soldier, or something similar.

If you aren’t playing on a symmetrical map, or your map hasn’t taken first-turn advantage into account, things can get a little rough around the edges. It might be easier for one player or the other to accumulate advantages without much effort, and without their opponent having any way to answer. That’s okay if you’re just playing for fun, but you should keep it in mind all the same: if your map is unbalanced, the game will be unbalanced too.

The rest of this guide will assume that you’re playing on a symmetrical map that has taken FTA into account. A lot of its concepts will still apply to asymmetrical maps, but less consistently.

There is an element of randomness in Wargroove. Specifically, attacks have a chance to deal anywhere from up to 5% above the displayed damage value to 5% below it. This variance increases when critical hits are in play.

This is especially important to consider in two scenarios: Commanders attacking Soldiers on a Road and Cavalry critical hitting buildings.

A Commander attacking a Soldier on a Road tile has a displayed damage value of 100%. This looks like it means that the Soldier is going to die, but in fact there’s about a 45% chance that the Soldier will survive with a fraction of its health. This is important to consider when planning pushes using your Commander as an attacking unit, since having that Soldier survive might mean that your push fails.

Likewise, Cavalry have a displayed damage value of 105% when getting a critical strike on a building (not counting Strongholds). This would seem to guarantee that the building will die in one hit, because normally the damage can only go down to five percent below the displayed value - but because variance increases with critical hits, there’s still a small chance that your Cavalry will leave the building alive with a fraction of its health.

Obviously randomly dealing a little bit more or a little bit less damage with an especially important attack can be a deciding factor in some games of Wargroove. For now, until Chucklefish gives us the ability to toggle RNG on or off for our games, we just have to live with it, so keep it in mind.

This guide will be working entirely with the base damage values when discussing damage. It won’t be taking into account random damage variation, because… well, it’s random. Just keep it in mind whenever you’re reading about damage done here, and know that, in some edge cases, something might just survive when it would otherwise have died - or, conversely, might die when it would otherwise have lived.

Now, let’s get into the guide proper.

Wargroove, as with most strategy games, is a game about gaining small advantages and turning them into bigger ones. An extra Soldier becomes a won skirmish becomes a captured Village becomes an economic advantage, and so on.

Unless your opponent makes a massive mistake, such as leaving their Commander way out in the open with nowhere to run to while your Cavalry bears down on them, you aren’t going to win a game of Wargroove all at once. Instead, it’s a matter of accumulating advantages and turning them into progressively bigger and bigger ones. Once you have enough of an advantage, you attack, and punish your opponent for not having the same advantages you do. This can either lead to gaining more advantages (say, capturing your opponent’s Village or wiping out a lot of their units) or just outright winning the game.

Let’s take a look at the various things that you can leverage to give you an advantage.

Money is the lifeblood of your army. Money allows you to purchase units. If you have more money than your opponent, you have more and/or better units than they do.

This makes Villages very valuable. Even a difference of 100g per turn between yourself and your opponent is a big deal. That’s an extra unit every turn that you can build over your opponent, or an extra bit of cash you can put towards that Trebuchet. Every bit counts.

But all that income does you no good unless you spend it. As a general rule, the player with more money on the field has an advantage over their opponent. Do note that this isn’t always the case; I’ll talk about instances where it isn’t true in a minute. But most of the time, if you have more cash on the board than your opponent does, you’re in a pretty healthy position.

An example of money advantage:



Here, Mercia has 300g worth of units on the field versus Valder’s 100g. She has an extreme advantage if the two of them fight.



Here, though, Valder has 1200g worth of army on the board versus Mercia’s 300g. Now he’s at the advantage if the two of them start to fight.

There’s much more to money than just wanting to have more of it on the board than your opponent, though. Let’s take a deeper look.

Let’s take a look at another example scenario.



In this case, both Mercia and Valder have spent 1200g on their armies. Mercia has twelve Soldiers, while Valder has one Giant. Who has the advantage?

The Giant is the most powerful single ground unit in the game. Some newer players might, as a result, look at this scenario and say that Valder definitely has the advantage. But, believe it or not, it’s the other way around - Mercia has the advantage here!

Firstly, Mercia has a large advantage in unit count. This is a very important thing to realize, because units in Wargroove are all equal in several respects: they all occupy the same amount of space on the board, they all block enemy movement, and they all take at least one attack to kill, no matter how low their health is.

This means that having lots of cheap units allows you to control a lot of space on the board, which is another type of advantage that I’ll talk about more below. But that isn’t Mercia’s only advantage.

Believe it or not, in a straight-up fight between twelve Soldiers and one Giant, the twelve Soldiers win! In fact, it only takes ten attacks from Soldiers to kill a Giant (not including defensive bonuses from terrain).

This is because Soldiers are extremely gold-efficient. This means that they do much more damage than you would expect, considering how cheap they are. Soldiers will often pay back their cost. Even if they don’t kill a more expensive unit, the damage they deal is often worth more than you paid to get it.

To illustrate with a bit of math, Giants cost 1200g. That means that, for every 10% of their health bar that they lose, your opponent has basically lost 120g. Soldiers do a base damage of 10% versus Giants, so in one attack against a Giant, your Soldier has earned back its cost plus twenty gold!

Giants, in contrast, are very gold-inefficient. It’s very rare that a Giant will do enough damage to earn back its cost. Because all units in the game, Giants included, can only attack once per turn and can’t move through enemy units, it’s very easy for them to get bogged down in cheaper, more efficient units and die before they ever get to punch anything expensive.

Gold efficiency is, obviously, a very good thing to have in your units. In general, whenever you buy a unit, you should look at it as an investment. The more damage that unit does to your opponent, the more you’ve earned back from your investment. If you consistently take gold-efficient battles and earn back more than you spend, you have a serious economic advantage over your opponent.

So why would you ever bother building Giants, if they aren’t gold-efficient?

Well, let’s look at another example. This one is admittedly extreme, but it illustrates the concept very well.

Mercia and Valder each have access to one Barracks and unlimited gold. They have three turns to build an army. This is what they choose.



Who’s going to win?

Well, Valder, obviously. Mercia has chosen an extremely gold-efficient army, but that doesn’t mean that she has enough manpower on the field to outmuscle three Giants.

Giants, you see, aren’t very gold-efficient, but they are very build-efficient.

Build efficiency is tied to the idea that all units in Wargroove have one additional cost to build: one barracks-turn. That is to say, a Barracks (or any other unit-producing building) can only produce one unit per turn, so you’re spending that Barracks’ turn to produce any given unit.

A build-efficient unit, then, is one that gets a lot of gold’s worth of power onto the field all in one go. It might not all be efficient gold, but it’s still a lot of gold. Your one barracks-turn just paid out with a lot more manpower than it would have if you bought a less build-efficient unit.

Sometimes this is what you want. This is generally during the mid- to late-game, when your economy is very strong and you want a unit that will clear a lot of smaller enemy units just to make space for you to attack. Generally, though, you’ll only be able to sustain this if you already have an advantage, so you’ll rarely purchase ultra-expensive units like Giants and Dragons unless you’re confident that you can use them to end the game.

As a general rule, the more gold-efficient a given unit is, the less build-efficient it is, and vice-versa. As another general rule, cheap units tend to be very gold-efficient, while expensive units are more build-efficient.

Low-cost units like Soldiers and Spearmen are very gold-efficient, but extremely build-inefficient; you have to use lots of them to get anything done, which means that you aren’t building anything more powerful. High-cost units like Giants and Dragons, on the other hand, aren’t very gold-efficient, but are extremely build-efficient; you get a whole lot of power at once, but you’re going to have difficulty earning it back.

In a scenario with unlimited funds, there would be no reason to buy anything but the extremely build-efficient units. But that isn’t how Wargroove works.

Maps don’t have unlimited sources of income. This means that most matches will consist of players purchasing a lot of gold-efficient, cheap units (i.e., Soldiers and Spearmen) and attempting to take cost-efficient battles. Gold-efficiency is extremely important to keeping your economy going.

So when do you want to buy more expensive units?

Let’s take a look.

Units in Wargroove are more than just a label saying “gold-efficient” or “not gold-efficient”. Gold-efficiency is very important, but it isn’t the be-all, end-all ruler of the game. It is, however, important to understand it so that you can understand why you might choose to build a unit that isn’t particularly gold-efficient.

You do this because that unit does something that your more gold-efficient units don’t do.

Here’s an example.


In this scenario, Mercia has three Spearmen as her army. Spearmen are extremely gold-efficient against most targets, particularly in groups, as their critical hit is very powerful. Valder’s Aeronaut, on the other hand, isn’t as efficient as a Spearman against most targets - but it does things that Spearmen can’t.

In this case, Valder will win the battle, despite spending gold on a less efficient unit, because Spearmen can’t attack air units at all. Valder’s Aeronaut is unstoppable. He has paid a little bit of extra gold in exchange for a unit that can attack his opponent without being counterattacked (and, in this scenario, that makes the Aeronaut quite efficient against these targets, but that's getting a bit further into things than we really need to go right now).


Oops!

Now Mercia has invested in a Ballista. It’s worth the investment, because that Ballista will keep Mercia’s Spearmen safe from Valder’s Aeronaut. She’s paid her little bit of extra gold to get a unit that can keep Valder’s Aeronaut from even coming anywhere close.

This is the basic idea. Whenever you buy a unit that isn’t gold-efficient, you’re doing it because you’re willing to pay extra for something special that unit does. You are paying for an advantage in unit composition.

Unit composition is one of the most important things in Wargroove. Your army’s unit composition - that is, all the units that make it up - is basically a list of all the things you can and can’t do.

Soldiers and Spearmen are extremely gold-efficient, but have limited other things that they can do (we call these other things “utility”). They aren’t good for much more than capturing Villages and forming a front line during ground battles.

Other units are generally less gold-efficient, but make up for it in the utility that they bring to your army. Aeronauts, as illustrated above, can attack Soldiers and Spearmen with impunity. Archers, Trebuchets, and Ballistae can attack at range. Cavalry are extremely mobile, Dragons can snipe important units, and Mages can keep you safe from air attacks. All of these things are very nice to have, but you have to pay for them.

The other aspect of unit composition is that of the check and counter. One unit type “checks” another if it is a substantial threat to its target, while a unit “counters” another if there’s no realistic way that the countered unit can beat its opponent.

Again, Sigrid's Guide to Soldiers is a fantastic guide here. It lists all of the various units, along with what they check and counter (and yes, it’s possible for units to check one another - this is referred to as “mutual check”). You should read it and get a feel for what checks and counters what.

Having a unit composition that checks or counters your opponent’s is one of the biggest ways to get an advantage in Wargroove. For example:


If you remember what I said earlier about the army with more money on the field having the advantage, you might assume that Valder’s army is going to win this fight. After all, Aeronauts cost 600g versus the Mages’ 400g. Valder’s army is worth half again more than Mercia’s!

But Valder actually has no hope of winning this battle. Mages counter Aeronauts. Valder’s units are going to get completely demolished by an army worth substantially less than they are.

This is just one example of how unit composition can prove a more decisive advantage than simply having more money than your opponent.

There are lots of ways for a composition advantage to come about; perhaps your opponent is spamming Cavalry, but you have plenty of Spearmen in place to prevent them from earning back their cost. Or maybe they have several Warships, but you have a couple Turtles on standby. Again, see Sigrid’s Guide to Soldiers for more information.

Positioning is the most complex of the various ways that you can attempt to gain an advantage over your opponent, and is heavily dependent upon the map that you’re playing on. As such, it’s not really possible to go into too deeply here; you could make dozens upon dozens of guides on how to position well.

The basic idea, though, is to use the terrain on the map to force your opponent to take fights that aren’t to their advantage, or to delay them from reaching crucial spots on the grid.

Here’s a very basic example.


Mercia’s Trebuchet is in an extremely advantageous position. It’s difficult for Valder’s Soldier to reach it because of the intervening Mountain and Forests. If the Soldier attempts to advance, it’s just going to get shot and destroyed.


On the other hand, without those Forests on the northern side, Mercia’s Trebuchet is very vulnerable.

This is where the earlier point about unit count comes in again. The more units you have on the field, the easier it is to occupy space and position yourself in such a manner that your expensive units (like Mercia’s Trebuchet) are protected. Even having just one extra unit can make all the difference, like so:


Mercia’s Trebuchet is now defended. Once again, Valder cannot safely reach it with his Soldier.

Now, let’s look at a very similar position to illustrate something else of vital importance:


Mercia’s Soldier is on its last legs, but Valder still can’t reach the Trebuchet!

This is one of the most important things about positioning. Units at low health occupy space just as well as units at high health. Never discount low-health units as irrelevant. They can still act as vitally important meatshields, both for you and for your opponent, if positioned correctly.

There are points like this on every map, where valuable units (not just Trebuchets!) can be easily defended thanks to terrain formations. It’s important to analyze your battlefield at the start of every game and see if you can pinpoint any of these important areas, so that you can take control of them as quickly as possible.

This is all about positioning on a very small scale, though. Positioning on a larger scale, across the entirety of a map, is just as important. Fighting for central locations, choosing which areas to reinforce, attack from, or retreat from, and finding the crucial spaces to put your most expensive and valuable units are all vital skills, and form the core of Wargroove’s gameplay.

Unfortunately, as I said, you could write dozens upon dozens of guides on this subject, and it’s kind of beyond the scope of this one to go into too much detail. The good news, though, is that the more you play, the more you’ll learn. Eventually, you’ll be able to look at a map for a few seconds and already have a pretty good idea of how the battle is likely to play out.

All units in Wargroove are equivalent with all others from opposing factions. Cherrystone’s Knights are exactly the same as the Felheim Legion’s Dreadknights.

There is only one exception to this, and it is your Commander’s Groove. As such, choosing your Commander and making use of their Groove is your one truly asymmetrical edge that you can leverage over your opponent.
Every Commander’s Groove is different, and using them appropriately could be the subject of an entire guide on its own. As a general rule, though, the idea is very similar to using your units: you want to get the largest value out of every use as possible.

If you’re Mercia, you want to be healing a lot of units at once, and the more expensive they are, the better. This generates an economic advantage by giving “free” health to your units.

If you’re Valder, you want to be generating as many Dreadblades as possible as often as possible in order to overwhelm your opponent. This generates an economic advantage by giving you “free” units.

Tenri generates value by kidnapping valuable enemy units for assassination or placing powerful friendly units in places that the opponent doesn’t want them to be. Sedge generates value by assassinating units without ending his turn. And so on.

An important thing to consider with your Groove is how quickly it charges compared to your opponent’s. If your Groove charges faster, you’ll have an advantage in the time between it charging and your opponent’s being ready, and you should leverage that. By the same token, if your Groove charges more slowly than your opponent’s, you need to be looking to make high-value plays with it in order to keep up with the advantage your opponent will garner by using theirs earlier.

This is especially notable in matchups like Valder (the fastest-charging Groove in the game) versus Sedge (the slowest). Sedge needs to both charge his Groove as quickly as possible and make extremely high-value plays with it when it is charged to not be placed at a disadvantage when compared to Valder.

You can build a Groove advantage over your opponent by using your Commander to kill their units (or destroy their buildings). This is much faster than your passive charge rate. Don’t be afraid to prioritize killing low-health units with your Commander. Just keep an eye out for any traps the opponent may be setting.

Now that we’ve taken a look at the various types of advantage that you can build up, let’s look at the various ways that you can apply them.

This includes both gold income and barracks-turns. Remember, barracks-turns are a resource as well, and they are non-renewable. If you don’t use a Barracks one turn, you can’t get that turn back later. In the same vein, gold sitting in your bank doesn't do you any good; it has to be turned into units to have any effect on the battlefield.

Remember also that unit count is an advantage unto itself. What this translates to, in conjunction with the above, is that, at least through the early- and mid-game, you should try to build from every Barracks every turn.

A lot of newer players will make the mistake of not building for several turns in a row, in order to save up for a Dragon or Giant that they think their opponent won’t be able to counter. This is an extremely bad idea. It leaves you very low on unit count when compared to your opponent, and an intelligent enemy will notice your plan ahead of time and have Mages or Sky-Riders ready to counter it.

If you’re going to skip building for a turn to save for a more expensive unit, make sure that you need to do so in order to counter whatever your opponent’s strategy is. And if you do have to save for a turn, make sure that it’s only one turn. There is almost no position that you can be in that would make skipping recruitment for two turns in a row worth it. If you’re in a position where you think you have to, you’re either overlooking something or are already so far behind that it doesn’t matter what you build.

What this means is that, during the early game and stages of the mid-game, you’re going to be building a lot of Soldiers and Spearmen, sometimes backed up by a Wagon or an individual Archer or Cavalry unit. This is normal, and to be expected. As the game goes on, your economy will grow and you’ll be able to produce more expensive units.

The rule of producing from every Barracks every turn also grows less rigid as you build up a solid base to your army. The main goal is not to fall behind in unit count, but as you gather enough resources to purchase more expensive units, you may find a situation where a single expensive unit is more desirable than two cheap ones. Just make sure that your core army remains strong enough to shield your more expensive units.

It’s important to watch your opponent’s production and react accordingly as well. The example of seeing your opponent not buy anything for a few turns is an extreme example, but a relevant one; if you suspect that a Dragon is on the way, having a Sky-Rider or Ballista or Mage ready is of the utmost importance. Resist the urge to save your money for a Dragon of your own. It’s always preferable to have a composition that counters your opponent’s units, as opposed to just trying to match what they produce unit for unit.

Also note that “build from every Barracks every turn” doesn’t always apply to Towers and Ports. Air and sea units are generally more expensive than their groundbound counterparts, and don’t form the core of your army. It’s perfectly fine to not build from a Tower for several turns, and whether or not you need to consistently produce Amphibians from your Port is map-dependent. There are some maps where Amphibians should be treated as being part of your core army, and others where they can be neglected. It’s up to you to judge the situation for yourself.

Commanders are some of the most important units in Wargroove, and not just because you lose if yours dies. During the early to mid game, they’re likely to be the strongest single units on the board, and their Grooves can be game-deciding.

As such, it’s important that you not just hide your Commander away in a corner somewhere. They need to be out there scrapping, charging up Groove as quickly as possible. Ideally, you want them facing Soldiers and other weak units, preying on injured enemies, and smashing up vulnerable Villages for maximum Groove charge rate.

Don’t be afraid to use your Groove aggressively, particularly if it charges faster than your opponent’s. The longer you sit on it without using it, the longer it’s going to take before you can use it again.

Some players are convinced that building a Wagon is essential on every map. This is not the case, despite what the memes will tell you.

Wagons cost you 300g for a unit that contributes nothing (directly) to combat. At most, it’s a 300g meatshield. If you purchase a Wagon and your opponent answers with three Soldiers, they have a substantial manpower advantage over you for the next few turns at the very least.

If a Wagon is going to earn back its value, it needs to accelerate your income to the point that you get 300g you would not otherwise have gotten. This will generally only be the case on larger maps, and even then it’s situational.

Yes, Wagons can also act as a means of shuttling extra Spearmen to the front, and yes, this can be a very powerful thing. But again, this comes at the cost of 300g worth of actual fighting units. Unless there is a situation in which you absolutely, positively need an extra Spearman at the front right now and you have a Wagon already available, odds are that it’s not going to be the deciding factor.

The larger the map is and the further away the fronts are from your Barracks, the more valuable a Wagon becomes. But on most small- to medium-sized maps, it’s simply not worth the expense. Use your best judgment in deciding when a Wagon is or is not an appropriate investment, because it is an investment.

This, like positioning, is one of the most in-depth topics related to Wargroove strategy, and a full breakdown is simply beyond the scope of this guide. It could easily be a series on its own. Still, it’s best to look at the basic principles before sending you out there.

Being able to identify when an attack is “free” is one of the most important skills that you can develop during your early days with Wargroove. An attack is free if you can do more damage with it than your opponent can do with a counterattack, such as catching an Aeronaut out in the open with one of your Mages.

As you and your opponents get better at the game, units being left out hanging for free attacks will start to get more and more uncommon. More frequently, you’ll have to take the opponent’s counterattack into account - and, just as importantly, your own counter-counterattack. Make use of every advantage you can think of, particularly when it comes to terrain and shielding your valuable units with cheaper ones.

Remember all the things I said earlier about money, unit count, and composition. If you sense that you have an advantage due to any of the above, don’t be afraid to press the attack. You’ll be rough and have difficulty predicting accurate outcomes when starting, but the more you play, the more of an intuitive sense you’ll gather for how fights are going to turn out.

This is often the deciding factor in Wargroove. The player who controls the center of the map generally has the most freedom of movement, which means that they can send units to any other fronts much more easily than their opponents can. What starts as seizing the center can easily snowball into taking first one Village, then another, then another and another, and finally crushing all the life out of your opponent.

Air units in particular love it when you control the center of the map, since their flight allows them to take maximum advantage of your superior positioning. They can easily respond to fights on the sides when positioned centrally.

Despite how long it’s run, this is honestly a pretty bare-bones introduction to Wargroove strategy. Things like army composition, proper positioning, how to mount a successful attack, and so on can (and have, in other turn-based strategy communities) take up entire series of guides all by themselves.

Hopefully, though, this is enough to get you started. The ideas presented here are simple, but they form the basis for pretty much all of Wargroove strategy. So long as you keep them in mind and build on them, you've got a pretty solid foundation to become better at the game.

Good luck, Commanders, and welcome to Wargroove.

it's too late you've already taken my advice

But yeah, I'm better known as Skeleton Mafia over on the Wargroove Discord chat[discord.gg]. Feel free to stop by and say hi some time, it's a pretty cool place.