And all of that is pre figured in some alliances. The current bracket system makes that pretty convenient
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Without being an expert on the subject, I can certainly say that both 3/2 and mono strategies leave no room for rainbow raiding in my book. Anyway, I started using mono reletively not long ago, about three month I think, and switched to mono for wars about two month ago and I definitely do a better job since. Iād say I do an average of 5 one-shots per war, all being higher TP than my strike teams.
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I recently did a little experiment with my raids. For the past 6-8 months or more, I had been using exclusively mono in raids and wars. A week ago, I decided to go back to rainbow raids for a while, to see what the difference was. I didnāt do anything else differently. Hereās the constants:
I raid in diamond arena
I donāt deliberately drop cups
I donāt reroll. I take on whatever target is presented.
I donāt usually revenge, unless the attacker is a name I recognize.
I generally fill 2 raid chests every day.
My defense team usually keeps me around 2500-2600 cups overnight.
I spent the past week raiding with a rainbow team, selected to fit the current opponent in terms of specials. I always had at least 1 healer (Mother North) and occasionally a second. The rest of the team varied, but attacking team power was generally 4000-4100. My opponents ranged from around 3900-4600, with most in the 4200-4400 range.
Hereās what I found.
With mono, my win rate had been around 85-90%, and my cups generally climbed to 2750+ while I was raiding, then dropped back when I logged off. I would typically see dozens of attacks in my watchtower every morning, a lot of successful revenges, and a net loss of cups, hams, and iron.
With rainbow, my win rate dropped to about 70-75%, my cups generally only climbed to about 2700, but I saw fewer revenge attacks and more wins in my watchtower, so I didnāt drop as many cups OR lose as much ham and iron overnight. I actually gained a handful of cups overnight twice, like 5 or 6 cups. It took a little longer to fill each raid chest, generally 1 or 2 extra flags, but I was still easily able to fill 2 per day.I came out ahead overall on hams and iron, since I wasnāt losing it overnight, and my trophy count stayed more consistent. The other thing I noticed was that my individual raids took significantly longer. With mono, it was rare for a raid to last longer than a mi ite. Win or lose, it was usually over quickly. With rainbow, they lasted an average of 4 or 5 minutes.
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Really interesting.
Iām shocked you found this - I have found the opposite (rainbow 90%+, mono somewhere south of 70%). Possible reasons:
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Iām good at playing rainbow and bad at playing mono (or youāre good at playing mono and bad at playing rainbow). This might be about team construction, opponent selection or board play, and may also just be about practice for either of us. Itās hard to assess the chance of this.
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I have great heroes for rainbow play but am missing key heroes for mono play (or you have the mono heroes but lack the rainbow heroes). Iām tempted to think this is quite likely, because I know that I lack most of the specialist mono synergy heroes but am lucky enough to have a couple of key rainbow attackers - Abby and Hel - who are excellent at defeating anyone,
I donāt pay much attention to food, iron or revenge attacks, so Iām afraid I canāt add anything here.
Rainbow raids definitely take longer. I donāt think mine average 4-5 minutes - that seems a little on the high side - but they run for much longer than a typical mono raid, in my experience (which tends to finish quickly one way or another) and can turn into real battles of attrition,
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I think the change in win rate is probably related to experience. Iād like to think I am really good at running mono. I havenāt run rainbow in over a year. That means I donāt have the experience with synergizing a rainbow team with the newer heroes in my roster. I figure if I keep running mono for another few weeks, that win percentage will probably climb.
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I donāt generally care about them, but for purposes of the experiment, I included them in the observations. I wanted to see what changed.
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And by contrast, while I have certainly played with mono at times, I have always returned to rainbow. Itās probably fair to think that my mono skills are a bit lacking.
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Iāve had great success with a mono boardā¦but on the other hand Iāve had my keester handed to me just as oftenā¦ usually go 3-2 now but again depends on the opponentā¦try to tie in my heroās skills as much as their color
Cups are the less important thing in game.
But haam and iron are not.
@NPNKY
TIP:
Avoid loosing any iron or food while offline.
Empty your watchtower right before you go offline.
Empty the watchtower as soon as you log in.
This way you wonāt loose any iron/food from your watchtower.
Take this pick for exampleā¦ I was raided while offline and no ham/iron was taken because I do as I said above!
Cheers.
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Why collect right when you login?
I typically collect right before i logout so that it builds up more before i collect it
Unless itās full at login of course but that never happens honestly
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Sinds a victory depends on the board we have, I choose from the beginning to play mono as soon as I could build 5 teams for it.
Mono isnāt just a story of āstackingā colors. You realy have to chose who you gonna put in your team, same as for rainbow. You canāt go at war, at raid nor at titan with 5 Rigards ā¦ (itās obvious but eh ^^)
You have to know your heros before putting them together, just like a rainbow team.
So in my opinion, people who use rainbow have more time to loose on this game hehehe. (jokeee)
And you can easilly use your 4* heroes with mono teams, you have a bigger variety of combos possible,
So for me itās a better use of my deck. Itās a better use of all summons I did, of all mats I spend for maxing them.
But whatāS cool with mono, is that your 4* heroes are realy stronger. And can benefit from elemental links.
Yes for sure you could stil do it with a 3-2, 2-1-1 or 4-1 team, but you still loose the full benefit from elemental links and the full benefit from troops stacking. Cause yes stacking for me is when I talk about troops and not about heroes.
For raids, no reroll most of the time, I change the color of my team and make some adjustments with the heroes, even if itās a 4-70 5* or a full 4* without emblems. DoesnāT matter, I look just their skills togheter. I donāt look my trophies because it depends on my defense, and itās not a mono nor a rainbow 
For war, mono again and not realy looking whatās the color of the tank. Success rate is about 70% and Iām happy with it. The difference between mono and rainbow or 3-2 in war I see it in the final scores. And there I have frequently better results. Like finishing in the third first place of my alliance verry more often than finishing around the tenth place. So I assume I have better luck then them with my boards ^^
Titan is the exception, only yellow is mono, the other 4 colors are 4-1, because I use wu, tornados and stoptime.
When farming, Iām trying different unleveled heroes to know if they are worth it or not to be leveled.
For campaign and hard mode farming during atlantis, mono.
Mono donāt s u cks
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I only run mono on events.
For titans itās not worth the risk, the chances of you getting a less than ideal board are too high. Iāll usually do 3-2 or 4-1.
For raids I do 3-2 or 4-1. Again, to me itās not worth working with a crap board and trying to turn it in my favor while the enemies pelt me to death.
Quests/farming is whatever, I do whatever I feel like
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Mono is the best/most powerful set up - but the mono team has to have the right composition of specials (healing, defence down; elemental down) and be fast.
Too many people see Mono as a brute force effect of tiles only and try to run mono without the right heroes. If you donāt have Falcon, Jackal, Eve, Panther or Frida, youāre doing it wrong. If youāre 4stars arenāt +20 Def path, youāll struggle. If youāre running a slow hero, youāll struggle. If your avg speed heroes donāt have high mana troops (and or the mana node) youāll struggle.
Too many people try mono for a week or two or sporadically and give up from frustration before they learn how to manipulate the board well.
But once you get the right heroes and learn the new way to work a boardā¦ then mono becomes the most powerful option and only truly horrendous boards stop you. And I donāt mean starting boards - I mean boards that start terrible and donāt give you any good tiles for 4-5 turns. Thatās rare, but happens. But bad boards happen to every set up. People think they happen more for mono, but thatās not true.
With a mono set up Iāve been 5/6 one-shotting in war for over a year, leading my team by a large margin and hitting opponents in the 4100-4600 range (increasing avg Over the last 16 or so months). Iāve been the top point getter on either team in about 60-70 percent of all wars for a year. In a year Iāve had 2 wars where I went 3-3. Iāve had 4 where I was 4-2. The remainder have been 5-1 or 6-0.
Iām not a great player and I donāt have all the best heroes. (No Gravy, no Ursena, no Zeline, no Alasie, no Kunchen, no Guin)ā¦ I use several 4star heroes in war and run 3/70 heroes on my B and C teams often.
The record Iāve built is because mono is really really good when done right.
Mono wins most matches with 9 tile matches. Three tiles become as or more powerful than specials.
Tanks melt and most matches are 5vs4 after 2-3 turns.
From Sun Tzu to A.T. Mahan, military strategists for millennia have taught that In any fight the best strategy is to secure an unfair advantage and to apply maximum power in the most concentrated manner. Thatās what mono does.
In addition to building the right team composition, I found it took me 3 months to reframe my approach to anti-cascade playing. It took 8-10 more months to get really good playing the odds.
3:2 is a compromise for safety. But that compromise means you sacrifice a lot of power. What you gain in better tile distribution you lose in striking and because in this game a hero with 1hp hits just as hard as a full hero; the meta requires full kills of enemies - and mono does it better and faster.
Mono isnāt for everyone. But for those who make it work, itās deadly effective.
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Could you please explain this in more detail? But in easy terms that I can understand?
This game is built around getting cascades - you get bonus power for each additional match in a turn. But in mono, cascades usually hurt you bc they just power up the enemy.
You need to be delicate and surgical about throwing tiles at the enemy. Diamonds of non mono colours arenāt always a good thing.
I watch Anchorās streams and heās dazzling and finding and crafting diamond for tile turnover. But he loses a lot of mono raids that he might otherwise win because his diamonds are powering up his enemies faster than my hunt/peck approach.
Knowing the odds of a tile being your colour are 20% for each tile, you then learn to arrange the board and move tiles so that when clearing three, ANY of the three replacements will give you a match - thatās 20%x3 - or better than 50/50. You learn to use dragons to make 2tile hits.
I canāt explain it well without video examples - but once you get your head around it, itās a different approach.
I play 2 other match3 games - and in one I run Rainbow and in the other I run 3:2. Rainbow is tedious and the least effective but the safest when your team isnāt well synergies.
3:2 is really, really good as well. I see the arguments for it being strong and I agree with all of them. But for me, in my experience, mono is that 2-5 percent stronger still.
Will that change with the stacks and season 3 tanks that take 4-5 tiles to kill? Maybe. Will Gravy+Clarissa flanks destroy every strategy? Probably.
But as of March 2020, mono still is the best for me. But Iām not dogmatic about it at allā¦ if 4:1 or rainbow or 3:2 becomes better Iāll switch tomorrow.
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I use 3 average + 2 slow red heroes and I could also add: avoid teams with blinding heroes and mana controllers like the plague and target passive tanks instead.
I wish I had Zimkitha to deal with them
I fairly recently started playing with stacking and donāt yet have a deep enough bench to run full mono for serious matches. Iām also a bit uneven with the colour choices I have but Iām currently in āexperimental modeā, quite regularly having a second or third go at a raid team, simply to mix and match those heroes I have got to find out what works.
Because of this, Iām usually running 4:1, 3:2, 3:1:1 for the serious battles, although I do regularly practice full mono (with mixed 5/4/3* teams) on various farming levels just to get a feel for it.
I have to say that Iām really enjoying the learning curve at the moment.
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This is a v ery succinct explanation. With the exception of an experiment I ran over the past week, Iāve run almost exclusively mono for the past 8-9 months, with around a 90% win rate, without rerolling for different opponents. Some of my titan teams are 4-1 because I donāt have Miki, so either Wu or Tarlak are on all of my titan teams.
Another advantage of mono teams is that you can usually have 2 or more specials charged at the same time, which allows you to unleash devastating combinations of specials in 1 turn. For example, say Iām facing a defense of Mother North, Athena, Ursena, Poseidon, Mitsuko. Thatās a pretty typical defense for me to face, generally with 15-20 levels of emblems. I donāt want to run yellow against Ursena or blue against Mitsi, and I consider Athena a bigger nuisance than Poseidon, so Iāll run mono green. My green team is Mother North, Evelyn, Gregorion, Kingston, Lianna. Mom gets my second best mana troop (currently level 7) Greg gets the best mana troop (level 19) and Evie, King and Lianna get level 7, 7, and 16 crit troop respectively. With this setup, Evie, Greg, Kingston and Lianna are all charged at the same time. I can usually take out the two or 3 biggest threats in 1 round of specials even if I havenāt been able to concentrate tile damage on any one hero. Lianna under the effects of Gregās buff attacking a hero under the effects of Evieās debuff is a beautiful thing.
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Careful with the word ābestā. Theres no ābestā strategy in this game.
I consider myself to be a pretty good board manipulator and team composer, dare I say amongst the top of the game and I still donāt like it. For me itās too āall or nothingā, I have rarely seen people turn a board around in their favor with mono.
That being said, youāre absolutely right on everything else. Mono is a viable strategy and with all these high emblemed defenses, itās probably the most effective right now. Iām definitely not as against it as I used to be.
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This is why I switched to mono recently for war. Using my preferred 3-2 raid style I was down to only 4* (and occasionally 3*) for my 5th and 6th flags. With mono I can field five strong teams and a sixth that is getting stronger all the time ā and make consistently more one-shot hits.
We are a mid-level alliance and constantly face mono blue tanks, which negates a lot of effectiveness with red in 3-2. A mono red can still do a lot of damage to a blue tank opponent (especially if flanked by two greens as Iāve seen).
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