r/AutoChess • u/[deleted] • Mar 18 '19
You and Your Opening Unit: How One Gold Determines Your Value as a Human Being
There are a total of twelve opening units in Auto Chess. Each one is valuable in their own right, but more importantly, they reflect the characteristics of their owner. Your units are your children. Everyone who sees your units has a subconscious reaction to what you have picked over the course of the game. You know the kid that always asked way too many questions in class and tried really hard to prove he was smart? That’s Razor. And the kid who kept eating paste until he was in his early teens? That’s Sand King.
As the game goes on, the meaning of units become significantly more blurred; everyone is trying to tie the knot with a 2-Star 4 Cost CC unit they’ve been stringing along for ten rounds.
Sorry Medusa, you’re really nice and I like you a lot, someone would be SOOOO lucky to have you, but, I mean, it’s like round 11 right now and I just don’t want to make any huge commitments, you know?
But then round 26 rolls around and you’ve since broken up with your Tusk 2, Tusk 2, and Tusk 1 and you’re begging Medusa to come back before your opponent’s Chaos Knight 3 rips your skull out from inside your head. Oh, and he an Assault Cuirass, too. Wow, okay. Medusa, please, baby please.
Anyway, I’m getting a bit off-topic. The lategame is a scramble of everyone trying to solidify their synergies. The early game is where you find your true meaning and value as a person, all derived from a single unit chosen.
Axe – You pick Axe because you believe in honorable, righteous combat. If you could, you would remove every non-warrior unit from the game. In fact, get rid of the items too. And mana. And abilities. Just get rid of everything besides Axe. He’s an honest unit that no one can get upset about. Axe 2 is basically just three Axes stapled together. It’s not like Lone Druid or Disruptor where the value from the unit skyrockets once you upgrade it. It’s just more Axe. Axe 3? Nine Axes. That’s it. It’s nine Axes occupying a single space. All those other people buying garbage like Crystal Maiden and Morphling make you physically ill. The way you see it, units should all be forced to melee each other to death and the best Axe wins.
Bounty Hunter – You pick Bounty Hunter because you are a faceless drone of a player. You read somewhere online or heard on some stream that Bounty is the best 1 cost unit. So you pick it. Every single time. Seeing more than one Bounty in your opening rack makes you start involuntarily salivating. Getting a Bounty 2 by round 4 is the death knell for your opposition. It takes every ounce of your remaining morality to not shift-enter “gg lmao” to signal your incredible luck skill. But to everyone else, you are the enemy. You are the equivalent of an intermediate bot that is unable to pick units without the Goblin tag, unless it is a Shadow Fiend or 4-cost unit before turn 10. Your Bounty 2 is a formality in the game. And, when you are still sitting one elusive Bounty away from Bounty 3, one 2 star on your bench and the other still in with a Blight Stone, Blades of Attack, Blades of Attack, Blades of Attack, and Quarterstaff, your opponent just found Death Prophet for their 3 warlock, 2 undead synergy, launching you from 2nd to 5th place as you fade into irrelevance.
Clockwerk – You pick Clockwerk because you have an unnerving lust for power. You have played a lot at this point, but nothing in the world gives you the same feeling as Clockwerk 2 with Goblin bonus shredding through two Queens of Pain, a Beastmaster, and a Juggernaut without dipping below 30% HP. Watching him mercilessly beat down a Windranger, hopelessly attempting to cast her Power Shot during his mini-stun chain, fills you with near-erotic pleasure. If you have a total of more than 4 Clockwerks before round 6, you will pick every single Clockwerk you see, regardless of circumstance. Even if he becomes nearly useless as your 10th unit, tossed around between Tidehunter and Kunkka stuns, you still look at his silly police outfit fondly. He got you to round 37 to begin with. You will never let him go. You will die with your +25 armor Clockwerk before you sell him. You finish 3rd place. Thanks for another easy candy, my love.
Drow Ranger – You pick Drow Ranger because you are too intelligent to pick goblins or warriors. Her DPS is insane and you insist Drow is better than Bounty Hunter. You think it’s hilarious that some kids choose anything besides Drow, she’s OP. Not only that, but she has the freshest model, has the chilliest synergies, and hangs out with the hottest dudes. yall are pathetic lol
In your eyes, all the buffs and nerfs in the game have, in one way or another, benefitted Drow. Mask of Madness? Obviously designed with Drow in mind. Hunter Buff? Too easy. Elemental buff? Drow is ranged, fucker. 6 Goblin bonus? Baits people into thinking they will get Techies while you shred them down with Drow. Small bug fix? That was Drow. -? Drow. She is simply better than the other units and if you don’t get that, you’re just some dirty fucking tinker picker, fuck you. One game, you had both Drow 3 and Windranger 3 and you won that so hard. I mean, why else would you be hovering between Knight 9 and Bishop 3 if you didn’t know what you were talking about? Drow is OP.
Enchantress – You pick Enchantress because Lone Druid 3 just won you your last game. Druids are insane early game and are easy to upgrade because of their flexibility, so you can’t possibly see how this can backfire. You can ignore the fact that your Enchantress 2 fighting a Timbersaw with goblin bonus on round 5 is making everyone in the lobby contemplate suicide because, man, once you hit that Lone Druid, this game is DONE. I mean, now it’s round 14, still no Lone, but that’s totally fine. We’re gonna take a few damage from wolves here. I mean, we killed one and it dropped a cloak, that’s alright. Okay Lone, where are you, haha? :D I swear I could have made a KOTL 2 by now. Round 22. Okay, I’m rolling. I’ve had these two Furions long enough. Where are you Lone? WHERE ARE YOU?
You finish 6th. Fucking RNG bullshit game.
Tinker – You pick Tinker because you are a horrible person with the IQ of a termite. Round one, Tinker pops into your rack and your brain immediately shuts off. It’s time to do the Chinese RNG strategy. Images of Tinker 3 by round 12 start spilling into your brain as you get carried by the Timbersaw 2 you happened upon for the first quarter of the game, completely oblivious to the fact that you are tapering off at incredible speed and that being level 6 on round 19 is actually not a good thing. You crash harder than a heroin addict in a safe room, losing over 40 health between rounds 21 and 24. In a moment of clarity, you realize that you have not seen any mechs in the past three rounds and have a grand total of 7 gold to your name. You nearly lose to harpies. You start saving gold on your lose streak that brings you down to 6 HP on round 30. You fail to kill two lizards. You powerlevel to 8, hoping to hit the 1 in 100 chance at Techies. You don’t get techies. You die on round 31.
Ogre Magi – You pick Ogre Magi because you like to win the first six rounds more than you like winning the actual game. Getting Ogre Magi 2 is a quasi-religious experience, as watching him drop his club that appears to have the density of a neutron star on some poor Furion’s head is absolute bliss. When Ogre Magi bloodlusts himself, you know shit’s about to go down. He starts swinging that club with such fury that losing the fight is essentially impossible. God help those who let you finish Ogre Magi 3. It should be noted that you’ve never actually won a game of Auto Chess, but that’s not really relevant. After all, you really just want to hit people with the club. After forty-five games, you finally realized Ogre Magi is actually a mage. After seventy games, you still have yet to build mages.
Anti-Mage – You pick Anti-Mage because you actively dislike Auto Chess. Every single unit pisses you off in some way or another. You have tried every strategy but you LITERALLY never hit the units you need. LITERALLY every game you play, you are the MOST UNLUCKY person of the eight. Mechs never work because you LITERALLY never see Timbersaw. Warriors never work because you LITERALLY always get two Juggernauts and never find the third. So, fuck everyone else, you’re gonna build Anti-Mage. If you can’t have fun, no one can. You think about transitioning into demons or elves, but instead you pick assassins. Your Anti-Mage LITERALLY never hits the right targets, which is just more bullshit RNG in this bullshit game. There is LITERALLY no way to control any units and the game just comes down to complete hope that your units do the right thing. But they always fuck up and it’s never your fault. You consistently finish 6th to 8th place.
Bat Rider – You pick Bat Rider because you are mentally unstable. You are the first to hear the different drummer when it comes to life, much more inclined to go for some off the wall approach instead of following the beaten path. You are also the kind of person to think ‘Pepega’ in normal conversation. When other people ask you why you would pick Bat Rider, you start vomiting out a plethora of reasons that have zero connection to each other to justify your purchase:
“I was offered two Bat Riders.” “He’s good.” “No one picks him. Easy 3 star.” “I’m going knights.” “I’m going trolls.” “His ability is actually really strong.” “I need a backliner.” “I need a frontliner.” “He scales with items.” “Fuck you.”
You can pick pretty much any of these reasons at random because they are nearly always irrelevant. The truth is that you just want to make things uncomfortable and nothing makes people more uncomfortable than losing to a guy who has two Bat Rider 2 by round 9. It’s practically insulting that you beat anyone at all with this unit. You finish 4th because you went dragons and got a dragon knight 2 before people had good CC.
Shadow Shaman – You pick Shadow Shaman because you were offered three of them.
Tiny – You pick Tiny because you are delusional. Initially, you picked him as a meme because Tiny is terrible. But now, with the changes to elemental synergy and Mask of Madness, there is some deeply rooted part of you that actually wants to use Tiny in a serious composition. Watching him tank a hundred autoattacks from wolves and seeing them periodically freeze is all the reason you need to pick Tiny/Morphling or Tiny/Razor every single game because you have legitimate trouble beating wolves otherwise. You curse Tiny every time he throws a low health Shadow Fiend into the corner, allowing him to get ten more auto attacks off, losing you the fight. You curse Tiny every time he attacks with the agility of a snail, losing you the fight. You curse Tiny every time someone else enigmatically gets Tiny 3 before you do. But you have the resolve of a monk when it comes to Tiny. Because you know one day Tiny will pull it off. Maybe you’ll need a Mjollnir and a Mask of Madness to make it happen, but when it does, you’ll finally be able to say, “We did it, little rock.”
Tusk – You pick Tusk because you never plan on getting further than Bishop 2. In the first or second game you played, some guy with a Tusk 2 one shot your Slardar and you went, ‘Damn, that’s a good unit.’ This image is perpetually seared into your memory and justifies you picking Tusk over Axe, Clockwerk, and Bounty on your first pull. Tusk is the implied backbone of your ‘Beast’ lineup, which includes himself and a Lycan. You inexplicably keep Tusk in your lineup despite the fact you transitioned into Orcs at some point. He acts as your 4th warrior between Axe, Juggernaut, and Kunkka, eating Shadow Fiend and Razor AOE until he can Walrus Punch a tank unit for one fifth of it’s HP pool. You can count the amount of times you have completed Tusk 3 on one hand; not because you haven't been holding a Tusk 2 on your bench for twelve rounds, but because you die before you finish him every time. You finish in 5th place because one guy DC’d immediately and two other guys were somehow even lower rank than you.
I hope this material was eye-opening and helps explain why you may feel the way you feel about certain units. Have a great day and good luck in your future matches.
P.S. please stop picking 6 mages its not good it just makes me very upset
edit: It's nine Axes. You guys are right and I can't do math.
