Handling a Round 1 Sandworm.

[TheUnshaven]

I ran into something yesterday that completely flummoxed me: this is NOT a "sandworms op, plz nerf," this is a "I'm a low MMR player who normally is fine with losing games because they're still entertaining, but this one was an annoying, frustrating slog."

Giant Specialist draws starting Sabretooths.

I set up normally, and then find they've sold one of the sabertooths and brought out a sandworm in round 1. I get wrecked.

I try the things that seem like sandworm counters, but they upgrade to antiair almost immediately: since the worm pops up close to targets, things like phoenixes get destroyed very quickly. This, helpfully, levels the worm.

I do okay with steel balls for a bit, but then the duplication upgrade comes in that spawns more worms whenever the thing surfaces, plus more worms get added. That distraction rapidly makes the steel balls useless, as it's supposed to! Everything worked like it should.

(I am also outPLAYED here, too: the placement of worms and flanking was cleverly done, it was just not fun to play against in comparison to most of the other one sided games I've had, and I've had a lot.)

No matter what I try, mass air-attacking worms producing an army of miniature worms does exactly what it's supposed to and I get rolled.

What would you do?

[Cryptic]

Sometimes that's just how it is. Now you know that's not only possible but powerful. I see air specialist and giant specialist do that sort of thing a lot. It's like a free easy win round for them. Almost nothing you can do against it in some cases. Just gotta recover next round.

Lots of broken and overpowered things like that in the game. Balance is not where this game thrives and even "pro" (lmfao) players will tell you that.

[You'reJustBad]

Originally posted by TheUnshaven:

I ran into something yesterday that completely flummoxed me: this is NOT a "sandworms op, plz nerf," this is a "I'm a low MMR player who normally is fine with losing games because they're still entertaining, but this one was an annoying, frustrating slog."

Giant Specialist draws starting Sabretooths.

I set up normally, and then find they've sold one of the sabertooths and brought out a sandworm in round 1. I get wrecked.

I try the things that seem like sandworm counters, but they upgrade to antiair almost immediately: since the worm pops up close to targets, things like phoenixes get destroyed very quickly. This, helpfully, levels the worm.

I do okay with steel balls for a bit, but then the duplication upgrade comes in that spawns more worms whenever the thing surfaces, plus more worms get added. That distraction rapidly makes the steel balls useless, as it's supposed to! Everything worked like it should.

(I am also outPLAYED here, too: the placement of worms and flanking was cleverly done, it was just not fun to play against in comparison to most of the other one sided games I've had, and I've had a lot.)

No matter what I try, mass air-attacking worms producing an army of miniature worms does exactly what it's supposed to and I get rolled.

What would you do?

only way ive found to deal with worms is Mass Wasp with Electro to immediately shut down their anti air tech

[Nizaha]

Buy a couple of fangs, put them in vertical orientation, and put them in front of the worm's path. It'll have to chew through the fangs slowly to actually get to anything important, and you can shoot it with other units in the meantime since it won't be submerged while it attacks the chaff.

[Eugen]

¤ In general its very useful to save the Replay to stresstest opponents formations
¤ Crawlers, Fangs in front of such beast very much slow down in his movement speed
¤ Fortress, Rhino, Scorpion, Acid Crawlers, Overlord, Steel Balls, War Factory are Hard Counters (Melting Point is kind of risky) (Phoenix is to slow in my experience)
¤ Your Opponent probably played aggro, placing Units close to one of your towers. Placing some crawlers in his flanks to distract some of his units is very useful to buy some time, making his rush less intense (Especially Beacon those Crawlers to a useless spot is very helpfull).

¤ Take allways in consideration to sell units that basically dealing to little damage (you can see that by looking on the numbers directly below selected units Tech's) or cant be used as a meatshield instead:
Like Stormcallers are usually useless due to low firerate in aggro gameplay. Or Sell your Wasps, Phoenixes if he choosed to go for Anti Air (Or Funnily, you can upgrade Phoenix or Wasp with EMS shots, so the worms instantly cant kill air units anymore).
¤ Using, Knowing about the Sell Button is very cruicial for such Aggro Battles that requires way more flexibility than Ranged battles.

[Vespertellino]

shield fangs stop wurms for quite a while
ignite fangs melt them

[MadB@t]

Ignite fangs is the best and cheapest counter to worm play. If he sold a tank to get a worm round 1, he also had to borrow. Meaning round 2 he can't put anything besides a single tank or 2 chaff. It should thus become very easy to simply ignite your fangs and add 2 fangs in the worms' path. And then it's easy win. The economic disadvantage of borrowing round 1 is far to big to overcome and you'd still need 5 rounds to win the game.

[MadB@t]

Originally posted by Vespertellino:

shield fangs stop wurms for quite a while
ignite fangs melt them

Shield fangs is not viable at all in this scenario. OP stated the strat discussed is a round 1 worm. So unless you start with balls, ignite fangs is the best counter and will result in an immediate win. (worm round 1 means he only has 4 units + worm, either no chaff clear or no chaff).

[Eugen]

MadB@t what does mean "OP" if written out? I understand what it means but have no clue what the actual word is behind.

[MadB@t]

opening post. Meaning you're referring to the initial poster's topic/situation

[Dominic]

i dont see it mentioned here yet, sabers (esp when upgraded to doubleshot) are very effective at bursting down a sandworm quickly so long as the sandworm is hitting something else (like fangs)

so on round 2 you could have plopped down 2 sabers (if you skipped the cards and it wasnt a unit drop turn), you could even borrow if you really desperate to plop down some fangs infront

[Kermode Bear]

I am having issues of a different sort: Players who slam all their units onto one side of the battlefield. It forces you into a losing, reactive style of play and I can never quite seem to recover from this strategy. Advice appreciated.

[Eugen]

Originally posted by MadB@t:

opening post. Meaning you're referring to the initial poster's topic/situation

Thank you :-)

[Eugen]

Originally posted by Kermode Bear:

I am having issues of a different sort: Players who slam all their units onto one side of the battlefield. It forces you into a losing, reactive style of play and I can never quite seem to recover from this strategy. Advice appreciated.

Having a talk with someone from Mechabellum Discord community is probably the easiest way to help out with this. Watching especially YouTube guides is another way.

[Gzar]

Impossible on round 1. You buy sell ability for 100 and sell 200 cost unit so you're +100 for a total of 300 credits with your starting 200. Even with free unlock worm is 400 not 300 so impossible to do first round. He must have loaned money instead.

[Sonnenbank]

Its only possible with Loan so he screwed his economy for the next rounds >-<
if you just play normal you will win...
f.e round 2 buy 2 phoenix