Hello, Guys, It’s Librarian Husky. So, I’ve been playing a lot of games of Ultron‘s Battle Matrix Protocol. And when I say a lot, I mean a lot.

Ultron’s Battle Matrix Protocol Overview

This game is an auto chess mode, which means you draft a board of characters, and then they automatically battle against opponents using their skills and abilities, whichever way they’re programmed to do. It includes every character in the game, and they have their full kits from the actual game itself. So, it’s a little bit more unique than some of the other ones, which usually had a more limited style of play.

Between rounds, you get a choice of upgrades for your team. And these upgrades will apply to your entire team based off of whatever the upgrade is supposed to give. And occasionally, there’s going to be special rounds which then give you a powered up ability for one of your characters. This game’s quite a bit of fun, but has some glaring issues that we’re going to go over later.

Game Strategy and Team Composition

To start it off, you’re going to be given a choice of characters. You’re going to get a limited subset of availability, and you’re going to have to build a team off of this. It’s pretty safe when you’re Starting out to go for something like a 222, grabbing two tanks, two duelists, and two strategists. But your strategies and how you’re going to play the game are going to change as you get more familiar with the characters and what they do.

There are definitely some characters that are better and characters that are worse, and you’re going to have to get a little bit more familiar with it, and things are probably going to change over time. I see the devs doing a lot of updates to this throughout it.

After you place your characters, you’re going to have a first buy round. These cards are going to pop up, and they’re going to be able to give your team different benefits. They’re going to have a cost in their corner, and you’re going to have made up money throughout the game. You can click the reroll button to change which characters are available for you to buy, but you’re not going to want to do that on the first one.

Starting out, check out what cards are available here and see if they apply to your team. On your first playthrough, I’m going to highly recommend you buy purple cards because you’re running a 22. The purple cards are going to be the most powerful and all the other card styles are going to be a little bit weaker. If there aren’t any purple cards, you don’t have to buy any this round and you can save up.

Now, once you have your team selected, you’re going to want to set up your board. You’ve got a four deep, six wide section of the board, which is your side, and you’re going to have to place your units across here, so they’re going to be able to engage and deal with the enemy team who’s coming from the opposite side.

You’re going to want to put your tanks up front, making sure that they get the first start of threat. And then you’re going to want to position your duelists and healers in the backline, spreading them out or clumping them up depending on which ones you’ve got. Loki, for instance, is going to want people to be clumped up around him as he does those green rings.

Advanced Gameplay Strategies

It can heal up all targets nearby. Where someone like Iron Man or Hela might want to be further away from the team. You’re going to want to be careful with characters like Magic or Black Panther who dive into the enemy ranks. You want to make sure that somebody else has gained threat before they engage. So, you put them slightly back so that tanks first get the threat from the enemy team and then these guys can dive in and do their job without getting immediately focused down.

You’re going to have a basic battle against Galact. This will be really easy. You’ll clear them up and then you’re going to get a special power for one of your characters. Three are going to show up and you can reroll once to get a different three. There is definitely a hierarchy of which ones of these are good and which one of these are bad and you’re going to have to get a little bit more familiar with that. And again, things are probably going to change.

Right now, things like boosts to attack rate are massive, as well as the boost that gives Venom increased bonus health whenever he ultimates, giving Penny and Rocket more spidermines or respawn beacons, as well as giving Loki more clones. These ones are really powerful buffs.

There’s quite weaker ones like Punisher getting extra smoke screen or the Fang getting a better knockout punch. Both these are not nearly as strong and you’re going to want to try to gravitate towards some of the stronger ones once you get more familiar with which ones are.

After this first round, you’re going to get another buy phase with a couple more cards. Again, look for some purple ones and pick them up if they’re there, or hold off if they’re not. If there’s a card in the shop that you really want, but you can’t afford it, or you don’t want to go down below the current amount of gold that you have, you can hit the lock button.

This will add locks to all the current cards and it means after the next round, these will be the cards to select again during that next round. This can ensure that you can get cards that you want that you are missing out on. Why you’re holding off is because of the interest system when you’re buying cards. In the top right, there’s a little exclamation mark and you can check out your total income.

You’re going to give income from a passive 15 per round. Then you’re going to get income based off of your interest. That’s going to be 10% of how much money you currently have. So, if you can save up to 50, you’re going to gain five extra money every round. That’s a free card. You have to hold on to 50 sitting there that you can’t spend, but then every round from then on, you’re going to get that free bonus card.

Next up, you make money based off your current win and loss streak. If you’re on a multiple losses or multiple wins, you’re going to gain increased money.

Game Strategy and Abilities

Now, if you don’t like losing early on or if there’s always good cards popping up, you can definitely use a spend strategy and just pick up cards that are relevant. But don’t do too many rerolls unless you’re over that 50. Next up, you’re going to be paced against one of the other players, and you’re going to have your characters battle theirs. You’re going to see what kind of strategies build up in your lobby and what kind of characters the different people in your game are playing. This is going to get you an idea of what you should keep, what you should change, and how you’re going to go forward in the match.

After you finish this round, you’re going to have another buy round and it’s going to basically be a repeat of this. A couple of rounds against players and then a round against Galactabots and the ability to choose new buffs for one of your characters. Whenever you lose, you’re going to lose a little bit of health. You start at 50 and you lose a small amount at the early stages and as the game progresses, you lose more and more HP after each loss. Once you run out of HP, you’re eliminated from the game.

In the match, outside of placing your characters, there’s only two ways that you can impact the game. You have both an E ability and a shift ability. Your E is going to do a one-time burst of healing to your allies. You’re going to want to be paying attention to when your characters get low HP and try and pop this to save their lives.

The shift ability is the opposite. This is a one-time blast of damage onto the enemy team. And again, you’re going to be wanting to use this to execute enemies. If you just use it early on, all the healing that occurs in the game is going to happen way too fast, and it’s just going to heal off the damage. You’re going to have to wait until one target on the enemy team is really low health and then blast out that shift to try and eliminate them.

Taking out one character is huge and it’s going to really shift the state of the battle. Getting more and more comfortable and familiar with this is going to be how you’re going to win more games. Taking out a critical character or saving one of yours at the right moment is really what makes experienced players quite a bit better at this game than the new players.

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Now, let’s talk about the cards a little bit. Cards are going to be set up into one of four categories. Blue cards buff your vanguards, red your duelists, green your strategists, and purple will get you a buff based off how many different types you have in your team. Because of the nature of this, it really encourages you to build teams that are all one composition.

And you’re going to see that quite a lot right now in the early release. I don’t know if they’re going to change this, and I definitely think that they should, but right now doing things like all tanks or all duelists is really the meta because every card you’re buying is applying to your entire team, and it just makes such a difference.

So, that’s kind of why I recommend the purple cards in your first play because you’re doing a team of three different roles and then making sure you constantly pick up cards that apply to your entire team is really beneficial. They’re going to have a star progression on them based off how many times you’ve picked them up.

Card Quality Levels in the Game

They’re also going to have a quality level from Basic to rare to legendary. Basic cards you can pick up six times. They’re going to give a very small buff going to be something like reduce enemy healing, reduce enemy damage, increase your damage, or the two really powerful ones increase your rate of attack speed as well as increase your ultimate efficiency. Your characters each have a yellow bar beneath them, and this is their ultimate bar.

When this gets to the full, they’ll perform their ultimate ability. Increasing ultimate efficiency increases how fast this bar fills up and is one of the most important stats because ultimates are really going to be what wins you the game in the end. Each of the characters ultimates are super powerful in this, just like they are in the regular game. You’re going to want to get off as many alts as you can to secure that win.

While some of these buffs might not seem very strong as you accumulate lots of them, it does make a big difference. and the massive amount of healing in this game, reducing healing received is huge. Purple cards come a little bit later in the game, are quite a bit more rare, and you can only pick up three of them repeating.

And finally, legendary cards come much later in the game. You can only pick up each one once, and they’re really powerful buffs. As you pick up more of the same card, there’s some buffs that you can get. If you check out on the left side of the screen, it’s going to list out each of the different card types, and they have a number out of another number.

This is going to give you a buff depending on how many of the same card you’ve managed to get.

As you get more Vanguard cards, you’re going to give your team boosts of bonus health. 10 Vanguard cards gives each of your characters 120 bonus HP. 20 cards gives them another 120. And then 40 cards gives you 240. For Duelist, 10 cards increases your damage by 12%. 20 cards, another 12, and then 40 cards does 24%. Strategists is 12% healing at 10 and 20, and then 24% healing at 40. Then purple cards. For each unique role on your team, you’re going to get 20 bonus health and 2% damage and healing at ranks 10 and 20. And then a boost of 40 bonus health and 4% increased damage and healing at 40 cards.

On the right side, you can see the current state of the game, what where players are at in the ranks, how much health they have, their current win streaks, and how much money they’re hanging on to. You can hit the two key to switch over to see the stats of the current round. This is how much damage, healing, and block each of your characters have done. This will allow you to keep track of what your characters are up to and which characters are working.

Understanding Card Buffs and Team Enhancements

The game offers different levels of card quality, ranging from Basic to rare to Legendary. Basic cards provide minor buffs such as reducing enemy healing and damage or boosting your own damage and attack speed. Notably, increasing ultimate efficiency is crucial as it accelerates the filling of the yellow ultimate bar, which is essential for unleashing powerful ultimate abilities.

Purple cards, appearing later in the game and limited to three per pick, offer more substantial buffs compared to basic cards. Legendary cards, obtained later and restricted to one of each, provide exceptionally potent enhancements. Accumulating multiple copies of the same card unlocks additional buffs, as indicated by the numbers displayed on the left side of the screen.

Specific card types like Vanguard, Duelist, Strategists, and purple cards grant various bonuses based on the number of cards collected. For instance, Vanguard cards boost team health, while Duelist cards increase damage, and Strategists enhance healing. The game interface also displays vital information on player ranks, health, win streaks, and currency holdings, aiding strategic decision-making during gameplay. Pressing the two key reveals detailed statistics for individual characters, enabling players to monitor their performance effectively.

Optimizing Your Character Selection

At the end of the round, you can check out this sheet to see which characters are effective. My squirrel girl and Namore did some great amounts of damage, and both my tanks were blocking the right amount. Everything here seems to be generally working, so I’m pretty happy with it.

Now, if you don’t like some of the characters you got or you want a different hero, you have an option to be able to swap them out. If you’ve bought cards that you end up not liking, you can sell those cards. In the card shop at the top, you have select and then you have activated. Going over to activated is going to list all the cards you’ve currently bought. And if you click one of these here, you’re going to sell that card and get a portion back for what you purchased it for.

If you end up picking up a card and then ending up not liking it or accidentally clicking a card, you can always just sell it in this page. Then, if you want to change up a hero, you can go to change heroes. This will allow you to spend five credits to get to your choice of a vanguard duel list or strategist. Similar to the starting page, you don’t get access to all of them. It is going to be a subset. And if you don’t want to choose any of these, you can hit cancel, but it still spends your five credits.

If you want to fish for a specific character, you’re going to have to keep going into the purchase tab and trying to get that character to show up, canceling out, and then going back in. As there are much stronger characters than others, this is recommended to do. And as your composition changes throughout the game, you’re going to want to be going and fishing for characters that are going to fit your composition better.

For instance, I start most games off right now with one tank, one healer, and four DPS. Later in the game, I want the tank to swap out to something like Magic, who can do the tank role as a duelist. And then around the end of the game, I swap out Loki for another duelist. That’s just because of how strong the duelist stack is right now and how much quicker the games go playing as all duelists. I like it to go a little bit faster and I win quite often with this comp.

The reason I don’t go six stack right off the bat is because it’s actually pretty weak and quite often going to lose you games. You need a lot of the cards and several of the specific character buffs to start being effective with this composition. So, I like to make sure that I’m playing a slightly modified version early on that’ll get me a couple of earlier wins and keep me in the game longer so I can get to that late game stage.

Team ups do exist. All of the existing teamups in the game are available. And as you pick characters that have teamups, those characters are going to activate those abilities. Again, some of these are way stronger than others. Rocket’s team up with Penny is really, really strong where like Hela and Thor doesn’t really seem to come up very often.

Issues and Suggestions for Improvement

Once you start Getting kills, you tend to win the match anyways. So getting a res on somebody that’s died doesn’t tend to come up very often. If your Thor has died, likely you’re losing that match and you don’t get any kills, so you don’t get that resurrect.

All Right, so what are the glaring issues with the game? First up, it’s really long. It’s like 30 plus minutes if you’re going to win a match to be able to play through it, and it’s at least 20-ish minutes if you’re losing. That’s a lot of time investment, and it can be a real grind to get through.

Number two is the issue of just stacking the same type is really oppressive and it can be kind of unfun to play against. If your enemy team is just running full tanks and you try to run any other composition, for the most part, the full tank comp is going to end up taking over the game and winning pretty reliably. The same can be said for the full duelist comp, which is a little bit more reliant on the proper cards, but still a really oppressive force that can melt through most strategies. I think they’re going to have to do a slight change up to this mode and change how many characters can give you the benefit from each of the different card types, making it so the cards say each duelist does this up to a maximum of three or something like that to make sure that you can’t just have the six-stack comp. Even just say even to a maximum of four. I think four is fine. If you want to run one healer, one tank, and four DPS and run a heavy DPS squad, I think that’s perfectly good and it should be encouraged to be played as. But this whole six-stack just isn’t that fun.

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Third up, some of the character-specific buffs need a significant improvement. There is a wild discrepancy in power between them. Getting the increased attack speed on Hela is going to be so much more likely to get you a win than getting something like the increased punch on Thing. And it’s a wild discrepancy in how powerful some of the different moves are.

I would like them to try and figure out a way to consolidate the power of these a little bit tighter and make it so it’s a little bit more fair when you’re picking these up and it feels like each one of them is actually a good choice. Right now, if you get both of the thing’s bonuses, it’s actually the wrong move to make because the one increases how often he’s charging and the other encourages him for spamming his punch more. If he’s constantly charging, he can’t spam his punch and these just don’t work well together. It doesn’t feel good.

Next up, we don’t have access to our emojis. Not being able to spam emojis in this mode really doesn’t feel that fun. Emojis were a huge part of other auto battlers and a great way to be able to interact with other players. Right now, our only real interaction back and forth is the chat itself, as well as just trying to shoot at each other with our little Ultron bots. Speaking of shooting, you can left click as your Ultron bot to unleash a blast. But this doesn’t do anything.

The Importance of a Non-Damaging Mechanic

It doesn’t do any damage. It doesn’t help the fight at all. It does give a kind of damage indication when you’re shooting an enemy, but it doesn’t actually apply anything. I basically just use this to shoot at the other player to get their attention. I’ve been having fun with this game mode. Although it’s not something I’m going to want to be playing a lot, I would actually like it.

Strategic Usage of Non-Damaging Elements

While seemingly ineffective in combat situations, the non-damaging mechanic serves a crucial purpose in drawing attention and engaging opponents strategically. Despite its negligible impact on the battle outcome, this feature adds an element of surprise and diversion, enhancing the overall gameplay experience. Integrating such mechanics creatively can introduce new dimensions to the game dynamics, providing players with unique tactical opportunities.

Enhancing Engagement Through Tactical Gameplay

Incorporating non-damaging elements into gameplay not only offers a refreshing twist but also fosters interactive engagement among players. By utilizing these mechanics judiciously, individuals can employ various strategies to outmaneuver adversaries and create intriguing scenarios within the game environment. The strategic deployment of such features can significantly enrich the gaming experience, promoting diversity and innovation in player interactions.

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