A timeless guide to Minion Masters

There's a few 'guides' out there for Minion Masters, but they generally just cover the cards and their power levels. These are rapidly outdated due to balance changes, so I'm going to try and give you a general overview of things you should know.

Free stuff and earning rewards

I'm going to assume you've already started the game and fought at least a couple of matches. First off, let's collect all the free stuff we can to get you started.

First off, free promo codes. These give you various goodies when you redeem them in the shop screen. You can find a decent list here:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1976644824

Next, you'll want to join a guild as early as possible. This allows you to do 'Conquest' for rewards. This just means every few days, your matches add glory to your guild's progress for up to either 6 wins or 3 losses. As your guild gains glory from all its players, everyone gets some free stuff. This includes cards, icons and emotes.
Frankly, you shouldn't worry about this too much. Join any semi-active guild, then receive rewards on occasion. You can optimize your glory and join a better guild later. It's really not that important. There's a section on this if you want to know more.

You get a daily quest that rewards you with gold. You can have up to 3 active at a time. You can also re-roll 1 per day in your Profile.

There's challenges in your profile that give small rewards. Some just take a bit of time, others specific actions that tend to be pretty easy. If you need friends for the challenge, just post in steam Discussions. There's usually people willing to help.

The shop has a daily free item. This is basically just the daily login bonus. But the shop occasionally has other free goodies, often on holidays, as well as rarely allowing you to buy champions using coins rather than shards.

You can play the Challenges, which is just 12 fights against bots for minor rewards. This is pretty easy, as bots are terrible at the game.

There's usually a few free solo adventures you can play. These give pretty solid rewards on Normal. Hard gives a cosmetic, so that's not really worth the effort.

There's usually a Tri-Team Tourney going on. This just means that 3 groups of 3 champions can randomly have a match give a key when you win (this gets announced at the start of the match). Each key gives 100 gold, get all 15 and you can unlock a reward. This can be a cosmetic, an emote or even a legendary. Note that you can get all 45 keys, but only 1 out of 3 rewards. So if one of the 3 is a reward you really want, you can play a deck with one of the 3 champions a lot. This should really just be seen as the occasional bonus, since there's no reliable way to get keys besides playing a lot. Sometimes you might not have any of the champions, as there's 13 and only 9 get selected.

Ranking up gives some rewards. You can see what they give in your profile. You can get each reward 3 times, once for 1v1, once for 2v2, and once for 2v2 premade. The rewards aren't that big, but it's one of the rare ways to get rubies. Your rank drops every month, at which you can earn the rewards again. You don't drop all the way down, and you receive every reward up to your new rank at the start of the season.

Finally, the season pass. You get season pass xp for winning, unlocking more free stuff. I'll expand on that later.

Is this game Pay to Win?

While this is a subject of some debate, I can tell you pretty confidently that it's not. I haven't spent a dime on the game, and even without a ludicrous amount of hours I do just fine.

What money buys you in this game is variety and cosmetics.

What I mean by this is simple: There's always a few competitive decks (as in, you can reach top 20 rankings using them) that can be crafted using nothing but the shards you get within an hour of playing. That said, if you want to play all the other possible decks, you're either going to have to spend quite a bit of time grinding to collect the required cards or spend money.

If you think the enemy has OP cards that you don't have access to, that's usually a sign that you're still inexperienced at the game. Legendaries, the most expensive cards to craft, tend to not be all that great. They mostly all be the same thing: a big monster with big stats. That might seem good, but they've all got glaring weaknesses, whether that be slow attack speed, no defense against air or weakness to other big minions. You also start with one of these, the blue golem, which is above average at the role.

The cards that are actually OP, and tend to get nerfd on occasion, are usually very cheap cards. Games are usually won by good use of cheap cards, not the occasional giant minion.

As for the cosmetics: You can get some for free. There's a couple of board variants and champion skins you can get for free, as well as a ton of emotes and profile icons. Most require you to spend money, however.

There's some decent champion skins, but most are pretty mediocre. As for the emotes, the only one that I envy is one that says GG WP. Right now, I need to use an emote for GG, then another for WP. Truly, something heinous that ruins the game for me.

What to spend on

Despite all the free stuff I've outlined, you're still limited by how many resources you have. So let me tell you the best way to earn and spend them.

Coins are your least valuable resource, since most of the time all you can use them for is buying card tokens. You get it through daily quests, level ups and a little just from playing games. Unless you're desperate for shards, I recommend not buying tokens and instead saving it up. The shop often sells usefull stuff for coins. Whether that's discounted tokens, champions, season pass tiers or cards. Cards come in 2 varieties: random cards of a specific quality, or for a little more a specific card. This is the best way to get legendaries. The most you'll need to spend is 15.000, so if you're above that spend it on tokens.

Shards is the resource you'll use most. It unlocks cards and champions, as well as 'upgrading' cards. You get them from levels, season pass, challenges and the daily shop rewards, but mostly you get them from card tokens. Depending on the rarity of the card pulled, you get shards. On average, this is probably around 30 per token.

Rubies are the premium currency. You get some for free when starting the game, get a little more through leveling and challenges, and a small amount from reaching Diamond rank in 1v1 and 2v2. Realistically, the only real way to get it is by using real money. Thankfully, while you can use it for just about anything, the only things you can't get without rubies are cosmetics, new adventures and mroe rewards from the season pass. Frankly, you can just ignore this currency unless you want to skip some grind or support the game. The best value is unlocking the season pass with rubies, which gives better value than using the rubies to buy stuff directly.

Card Tokens are theoretically how you unlock cards. This is not really the case, due to the random nature. They're nice for building out your collection early on, and the occasional new card, but you mostly get cards through crafting them using shards. What tokens are for is getting those shards, since you get a small amount of shards each time you use a token. You get these from leveling, the season pass, adventures, challenges and buying them in the shop. Packs cost 1000 gold.

How to win

Before giving a simple overview, let me just link a more comprehensive guide: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1542372794

You're probably familiar with the basics: destroy the enemy base to win. Capturing and holding bridges gives you additional xp, which levels you up and unlock up to 3 abilities. Max out the xp bar, and any excess xp turns into extra mana.

Now that's all well and good, but how are most matches won?

Well, there's three ways, really. First off, one side gets killed before mana frenzy. This is actually quite rare, as it usually requires you to dominate your enemy severely, but there's decks built around this. Instead of trying to control the bridges in order to level up, they play cards that hit their enemy directly. This mostly means the Rammer, a demon with a battering ram that runs to the nearest building and hits it, ignoring regular enemies. If you see this card played, get ready to counter it and try to stay healthy.

The second is that one side hits mana frenzy well before the other, which is pretty much always game over. This is how most games tend to end, especially in 2v2. Mana frenzy means that even without the bridges, they'll have a mana advantage from passive xp gain. That means they'll soon control the bridges, at which point they'll be swimming in mana to kill you with.

The last is when both sides hit mana frenzy simultaneously or close to eachother. At this point, unless one side is already nearly dead, there'll be a continuous battle for the bridges, as controlling them means getting a mana advantage. This is often quite odd, as having an abundance of mana tends to mean expensive cards are a lot better than they are throughout the rest of the game.

The second type shows up the most, so you want to hit mana frenzy earlier. So how do you do this?

By aggressively controlling the bridges. Bridges tend to be more important than hp, as long as you're above you're fine, so be willing to take the occasional hit in exchange for bridge control.

An important concept is mana efficiency: How much mana are you spending to achieve your goal?

If the enemy plays a 4 mana card, and you use a 5 mana fireball to kill it, you're going to be at a disadvantage. The enemy essentially forced you to 'waste' a mana while they still ahve theirs to spend. On the other hand, if you used a 3 mana minion to deal with it, you've got a mana advantage instead. So use as little mana to achieve your goals as possible.

That said, don't be too afraid to spend mana, spending a bit more mana for longer bridge control can be worth it.

In practice, this will be something you learn by playing. Just keep it in the back of your head: is it worth spending the extra mana to deal with the problem, or do I have a different solution I could use if I have a bit of patience?

Often, you won't have a perfect answer. That's normal. While you're trying to use as little mana as possible, your opponent is doing the same.

Building a deck

A deck consists of 2 parts: your champion and your cards. Ideally, these should synergize.

For now, all you've got is Stormbringer. Don't worry about this, he's a top tier champion. But eventually you'll pick up some others.

Then there's your cards. I'm not going to tell you what deck to build, as what's good changes over time due to balance changes. Instead, I'm going to offer some basic advice.

First off, you can see the top of the leaderboard via a button on the bottom left of the main screen. You can always just copy a deck in use here, preferably one with cheap cards. You can substitute cards you're missing, and you'll probably end up customizing it eventually anyway.

If you want to build your own deck, here's some things you're going to need:

A way to deal with swarms. Almost every deck has one or more cards that summon a whole bunch of small minions. Even if they die in one hit, your minions are limited by their attack speed. Swarms tend to be one of the best ways to deal with big things because of this.
The way you deal with swarms is by using a minion is made to deal with multiple enemies. This comes in various forms. Whirling Scrat is a melee minion that hits everything around it, dealing with swarms easily while being tanky enough to deal with medium sized minions as well. Annihilator is a ranged minion that deals splash decent damage. Blastmancer causes an explosion when it kills anything, meaning it's great against swarms and terrible against anything big. There's several other options, but these are incredibly common.

Your own swarm. You need them to deal with certain big things, and they're great for capturing bridges. Generally, this means skeleton horde or scrat swarm.

A way to deal with flying enemies. Melee ground units can't hit flying enemies, so you need melee flying or something ranged.

A way to deal with big enemies. Often this is your own big card, but this can also be flying units (as most big units can't hit air).

2 spells at most. Spells usually can't capture bridges, so having too many of them can be risky. This isn't a solid rule, some spells summon minions and cheap spells are less of an issue, but in general just don't try to stuff your deck with spells. Chain Lightning or Fireball are often used. Spells have all kinds of effects, but their most important use is affecting the enemy side of the board. You can only play minions on your side, while most spells can be played anywhere. This allows you to deal with pesky minions hiding behind tanks, for example.

A lot of the above can be combined, so you don't need a separate card for each of them. But they are vital to any deck, as otherwise you'll have glaring weaknesses.


Most importantly: don't put too many expensive cards in your deck. 8 mana minions are powerful, but fill your deck with them and the enemy will run rings around you with cheaper cards. An average mana cost of 4 is generally seen as the cutoff point, above which your deck is too mana intensive to use.

The Champions

Each champion has 3 powers that activate once they level up. I won't go too into detail, but here's a basic overview. Also, they don't cost the same amount to unlock, so keep that in mind if you want to guy another one.

Stormbringer: Fires arrows across the map and improves ranged units. He puts constant pressure on the enemy, since if they've got no minions he attacks them directly. Any equalt fight is likely to be won, as the occasional arrow can tip the balance. Unfortunately, he fires very slowly until level 3, so his defense is probably the worst out of all champions. He won't be killing anything attacking hil any time soon, so if he's not fighting on the enemy side of the board, he's a bit screwed.

Ratbo: Summons extra scrats, and benefits from havign a lot of minions. Great at taking bridges for cheap, and his swarms are extra swarmy. If you've got plenty of anti-swarm, he's in trouble. Pretty strong champion attack. Usually plays scrat decks.

R3KT: Summons himself onto the map. Not that strong until level 3, but he makes clones that die in 1 hit but explode on death. Strong against swarms, weak against ranged. While a minion, the champion has no defense on their side of the board.

King Puff: Switches the units on the bridges. On level 3, also summons extra minions on the bridge on swapping. Very tricky to play as, Can be confusing to face at first.

Ravager: Summons a free big minion on level 1 and 3. He uses this for a big push, and often plays direct damage decks. Protect your HP. You can see the enemy xp, so you know when the minions are going to spawn. If you survive the push, he's often in trouble.

Morellia: Does a lot of things. On level 3, can play a big minion/lane clear. Summons skeletons/drains hp most of the time. Only champion that can heal themselves. Strong in 2v2, terrible in 1v1. If she doesn't play anything for a while after hitting 3, expect the lane clear and dragon. The dragon's weakness is it's slow speed and long attack windup. Surround it and it'll do barely anything. Big minions also work.

Valorian: occasionally heals alies and damages enemies in an area. Synergizes a bit with medium sized minions. Not much counterplay, but before level 3 his heals and damage are very low.

Volco: Buffs minions and occasionally sets a bridge on fire. If it's been a while sicne the last bridge burning, don't clump up too much on a single lane.

Apep: Gets a random free 2 and 4 mana card on levels 1 and 3. Can shield his hp. Due to the randomness, he's hard to predict. His shield means direct damage is less viable. Likes to play the World Bomb, which deals massive damage to all minions and champions while he shields himself. It takes a couple of seconds to spawn from its egg, so either kill it before it hatches or don't play small minions until it explodes.

Milloween: Summons a minion that grows when she plays spells. Gets a free low-damage spell. Not much counterplay, just remember that the longer the minion sticks around, the more likely it is to grow. Only champion that can afford to play more than 2-3 spells, and still only barely.

DIona: Plays either a crossbow trap or taunt trap. Can be powerful, usually isn't. Also spawns bear traps on occasion, which can help defend against rammers or single big minions. Remember that you can see stealth cards spawning/vanishing. Takes skill to use effectively.

Mordar: Places tombstones that resurrects minions once charged. Expect more large minions than usual. If you're unlucky, you're going to face constantly respawning giants minions. Remember that it's the first minion that dies once the tombstone's half charged, so if you use a spell to kill a small minion the resurrect is wasted. His champion attack damages all minions on his side slightly, and speeds up over tie as long as he has something to attack. Very strong defensively against swarms.

Settsu: The champion drops onto the board, dealing a little damage and sticking around as a minion. Her level 2 and 3 upgrade the champion/minion. Likes to drop next to the enemy champion and deal direct damage. If you take too long to kill the minion, it'll just drop again instantly. While a minion, the champion has no defense on their side of the board. As such, it's a very offensive oriented card, and Settsu's in trouble if forced on the defensive.

The Season (Battle) Pass

Each month, a new season pass starts. You only get the 'free pass', but basically nobody buys the full season pass unless they've got rubies to spare somehow. It goes up forever, but going above rank 49 is pointless.

The pass tends to be what gives the most resources from playing the game. You can get pretty much anything, including a legendary at rank 49. The paid pass gives you the legendary at rank 1, as well as more random stuff. You can always see what you'll get each rank.

So how do you rank up? Get enough 'glory', increasing each rank, and you rank up. There's a few ways to do this.
Each win gives you some 'glory' based on the 'upgrade' level of your cards (that's the only thing upgrading cards does). The 2 lowest value cards in your deck get bumped up to max value. This means that playing a deck with more upgraded cards gives more glory, but you really don't need to worry about this. The difference is going to be small, so just play what you feel like.
Every few days you get a Battle Chest, which just gives more glory after 3 wins.
You get a monthly quest, as well as a new quest each week, that give 2 ranks. Remember that you don't need to instantly turn these in; since glory needed increases each rank, the later you turn them in the better. If you don't turn the quest in on time, you do lose the reward.
Finally, you can occasionally buy a rank in the shop. This costs 3150. I wouldn't recommend this, since the reward is always going to be less than the price you pay, but if you need it to reach rank 49 and have the gold to spare it's an option.

Past rank 49, the free pass only gives something every few ranks, so basically never.

Adventures

The adventures are a series of solo fights using a special champion and deck, while facing enemies with unique powers. They're honestly not all that fun, but the rewards are well worth it. These often includes a (random) legendary, some tokens and other goodies.

There's usually at least some of these that are free, if not most of them. Note that the 'Free' tag does not mean it's the only free adventure, be sure to try them all. They can be often unlocked with gold, which gives pretty good value.

You can also play them on the hard difficulty for unique profile pictures or emotes. I never bothered.

Each chapter of an adventure is different, featuring different champions to play, modifiers and enemies. As such, I won't be going into specifics of each adventure.

Some general guidelines:

The enemy gets more mana than you in the later fights. As such, don't expect to reach level 3 before them. They also often have unfair powers, especially at level 3, so try to end the match before then.

Discounts are great. Anything that decreases card cost is valuable.

Cheap cards are better than mid-cost ones. A lot of relics (special bonuses you pick when winning) synergize with unit amounts, so swarms are often good. High cost minions tend to be unplayable, unless your powers specifically synergize with them or you can discount them. There's also a couple of enemies that punish big minions to the point they're unplayable.

Not all champions are made equal. Some are hard to win with, if not near impossible, while others are a cakewalk. If you're not having any success, try switching to another champion.

Pay careful attention to enemy powers. A lot of them are just passive boosts, but some can really change the way you should approach the fight.

Getting Glory

Glory is a score each of your cards has, depending on their upgrade level, and is used to get season pass ranks and for your guild's conquest rating.

Each card can be upgraded either by getting copies of it or by spending shards. This makes them give more glory, up to 400. Your 2 lowest value cards get bumped up to 400 glory automatically. The rarity rating influences how many shards it costs to upgrade a card, although you also get more glory per upgrade as well. Still, less rare cards are a lot cheaper and easier to max out, so if you really want more glory and have shards to spare upgrade them first, and expensive cards last.

Guild conquest also has a random selection of cards that give an additional 400 glory if they're used. This only applies to conquest, and doesn't affect the season pass. These cards can be seen in the guild screen, and also have a shield icon on them. The amount of these special cards is increased every 5 conquest ranks. You can add these to your deck for maximum glory, but remember that conquest ends after 3 losses. A deck full of these cards gives huge glory when you win, but is unlikely to win against a regular deck. Basically, if you have multiple decks and one of them has some of these cards, use that deck for conquest.

Honestly, glory is something you just shouldn't worry about until you've got all the cards and champions you want, since it's impact is pretty minor.

Bots and you

If you've just started, you'll notice that you've got an insanely high winrate. The reason for this is that at low rankings, there's just no players. Ranking up happens quickly, and you keep most of your rank each season. This means that you'll be mostly facing bots.

This is useful for a number of reasons. You get quick wins, which is good for getting rewards. But more importantly, it allows you to learn the cards without getting crushed. Bots are terrible at the game, but they use most of the cards in the game.

They still appear sometimes at higher rankings when there's not enough players to match you against, especially during off hours.

You'll start facing real players around gold, especially early in the month. Later in the month most players have risen to at least platinum, so it'll take longer to face them.