What about sledges?

[PrinzMegahertz]

Hi all,

just having my first few games after the patch and I'm a bit unsure how sledges actually fit into the new game.

Before the patch, Sledges were a good combination of tankiness and chaff clear, a jack of all trades. Now I feel the new unit is better at clearing chaff and also solos sledges easily. I would even go as far to say that sledges are now are very bad initial pick.

Even before the patch, sledges had a somewhat peculiar spot by the fact that badgers basically did the same in better, but at least they were a random drop and not available on the inital turn.

What are your thoughts? How do sledges fit into the new meta?

[Nit Draws]

Maybe if they increase the sledges speed it will balance out, but as of now, I'm avoiding sledges. It just feels very weak. I can't think of one situation where I would take sledges over tarantula. I was thinking perhaps against steel balls, but it's probably still better than sledges there. I don't know what the sledge does anymore.

[Kopernik]

you must be joking ... if you make them jack of all trades they will be master of none you can make them either very agrresive with techs or really tanky then it depends on card:

i give them: range, mech rage, emp, and now armor piercing (it just got really good)
if i get card that gives range to sledges they murder everything

i alsa played with really tanky sledges give them armor repair rage and emp this way they will tank a lot of dmg and unless mass scorp or hakers op will have a lot of trobules those tanky guys make storms useless since they out heal XD

dont make them jack of all trades specialase them

[Gaze73]

That's because tarantula is imba.

[Kugelfisch]

Originally posted by Kopernik:

i alsa played with really tanky sledges give them armor repair rage and emp this way they will tank a lot of dmg and unless mass scorp or hakers op will have a lot of trobules those tanky guys make storms useless since they out heal XD

emp storm, or ranged scropians. end of the story.

[Polar Test 53]

they are just tanky chaff to make your opponent not be able to focus and light chaff clear only. so important like any other chaff but not gonna have any carry potential like they used to.
they just have too many counters to reliably make a build around them.

like fangs i would just get the hp upgrades for them make them a pain to get thru.
self heal armour and chain link and range

also if using chain link its very important you dont link all of your sledges together.
range can help with that.

[Kopernik]

Originally posted by Stanislaw Petrow:

Originally posted by Kopernik:

i alsa played with really tanky sledges give them armor repair rage and emp this way they will tank a lot of dmg and unless mass scorp or hakers op will have a lot of trobules those tanky guys make storms useless since they out heal XD

emp storm, or ranged scropians. end of the story.

there is answer to all units and tech so there is to sledges and:

vs scorp - chaff they shoot to slow to deal with it even mustangs works as chaff vs them also you can emp them too and since there is 1 scorp vs 5 tanks its much easier to emp him (sledges have emp btw)

vs emp storms - antimissile tech or cravlers that keeps them shooting ground also if i have offencive long range sledges (range tech + range card) you can't shoot them before destroying rest of the army since they outrange marks XD and i can alway use fire to make ground burn it all - sledges with armor and repair will not notice the fire and your storms ?

as i said dont make them jack of all trades spec them and they will deliver of course you need other units to make them exel and prot from their counter but this games is all about that so are sledges so are scorps so are storms

[Lufflah]

I just won a match by taking the reduced cost upgrade for the Sledgehammer and spamming the Tanks as a second defense/chaff line, against 8 of the new spider bots with mines rushing at me. Worked pretty well in combination with Stormcallers and four long range Melting Points. The Sledges saved the game for me.

[Dominic]

the new unit is easy to kill with iron balls, meltingpoints, and phoenixes or anything else that does high singletarget damage, sledges take longer for those to kill by virtue of having more units (unless you get the linked tech for some reason). i still use sledgehammers far more then i use tarantula for tanky chaff clear

edit: forgot to mention tula is also pretty hard countered by storm. its a big unit (so most rockets will land) while also not having a ton of hp and tends to just die to them

[PrinzMegahertz]

Originally posted by PrinzMegahertz:

ugh, sledgehammers bad

Coming back to my original post - I have played extensively with sledges in the last matches and must say that I was to quick to judge, since I hadn't adapted to the new meta. To be fair, I won a suprising number of matches using mass sledgehammers with range + emp.

I'm currently around 1800 mmr (so no top player), my current setup involves sledges in a vertical position so that they are better against chaff and less vulnerability against scorpion splash and a marksman directly behind the line. That way, you have a formation that is tanky, anti chaff and anti single target for 300 credits.
If I start with sledges, I usually place them on the outside of the towers, leaving for spaces so that I can add giants later.
You can scale that up to having a front line of 7 of these formations and add one or two mustangs to prevent that one "enemy spams wasps so my marksmen don't work" round.

Upgrade order for me is range -> emp -> rage.

This works very well, even against Tarantula starts.