Brawl Mode

Brawl was added late 2019 as an end-game platform for relatively high-level players to spend their coins in exchange for other resources, such as rubies, fusion stones or valuable cards. In June 2021, it was revamped to be more inclusive and welcoming to all players.

Despite being still primarily aimed at high-level players with its rather steep and cost curve, it still benefits new players alike. In this guide, we will see why you should care about the Brawl regardless of your experience, and what are the best strategy to maximize output.

The Brawl is a weekly event starting every Thursday at 9:00 AM and ending the following Sunday at 9:00 AM. It is an alternative to the “Ranked” mode with additional rules, usually buffing a unit type (e.g. Dwarf, or Raven) by increasing its strength, movement or reducing its mana cost.

Unfortunately, matches are not free to join, and get progressively more expensive as you climb the milestones. Every week, three levels of difficulty are available and one can compete in some or all 3 of them: Casual, Warrior and Ultimate.

  • In the Casual event, the Fortress Level is capped to 12 health, and the level of all cards is set to 1. All matches need to be settled within 10 turns otherwise they will lead to a draw*.
  • In the Warrior event, the Fortress Level is capped to 14 health, and the level of all cards is limited to 3 at most. All matches need to be settled within 15 turns otherwise they will lead to a draw.
  • In the Ultimate event, the Fortress Level and cards level are not capped and depend to each player. All matches need to be settled within 20 turns otherwise they will lead to a draw.
Draw

A draw can happen when both players have the same amount of health by the end of the last turn (10th in Casual, 15th in Warrior and 20th in Ultimate).

Every match regardless of outcome grants crowns: victories grant crown 5 crowns, defeats yield only crown 1 crowns and draws yield crown 2 crowns. When reaching a certain amount of crowns, you get to claim the reward of the current milestone, and move on to the next. Milestones require more and more crowns to be completed. The first one asks for a meagre crown 7 crowns to complete, the second one crown 20 crowns (including the 10 from the first one), and so on.

When losing 3 times within a given milestone, the amount of crowns is reset to the previously completed milestone. For instance, if losing for the 3rd time when attempting to reach milestone 5 at crown 70 crowns, crowns are reset to 50.

Last crown for milestone

If missing crown 1 crowns to reach a given milestone while having lost twice already, losing a 3rd game will not reset the crowns to the previous milestone. Instead, the last crown awarded by the loss will be enough to reach the next milestone.

Required crownsCost per match (Casual)Reward once reached (Casual)
crown 7 crownscoin 0 coinscoin 10 coins
crown 20 crownscoin 5 coins1 Humble Book
crown 35 crownscoin 10 coinsruby 5 rubies
crown 50 crownscoin 20 coinsfusion stone 1 fusion stones
crown 70 crownscoin 30 coinsruby 15 rubies
crown 95 crownscoin 40 coinsrare card 1 rare card
crown 125 crownscoin 50 coinsfusion stone 7 fusion stones
crown 160 crownscoin 65 coinsruby 60 rubies
crown 200 crownscoin 80 coinsrare card 5 rare cards
crown 250 crownscoin 100 coinsruby 200 rubies
Required crownsCost per match (Warrior)Reward once reached (Warrior)
crown 7 crownscoin 0 coinscoin 20 coins
crown 20 crownscoin 10 coins1 Humble Book
crown 35 crownscoin 25 coins1 Noble Book
crown 50 crownscoin 50 coinsfusion stone 4 fusion stones
crown 70 crownscoin 75 coins1 Heroic Tome
crown 95 crownscoin 100 coinsepic card 2 epic cards
crown 125 crownscoin 125 coinsfusion stone 20 fusion stones
crown 160 crownscoin 150 coinsruby 125 rubies
crown 200 crownscoin 200 coinsepic card 7 epic cards
crown 250 crownscoin 250 coinsruby 500 rubies
Required crownsCost per match (Ultimate)Reward once reached (Ultimate)
crown 7 crownscoin 0 coins1 Humble Book
crown 20 crownscoin 20 coinsruby 5 rubies
crown 35 crownscoin 50 coins1 Classic Tome
crown 50 crownscoin 100 coinsfusion stone 10 fusion stones
crown 70 crownscoin 150 coins1 Mythic Tome
crown 95 crownscoin 200 coinslegendary card 1 legendary card
crown 125 crownscoin 250 coinsfusion stone 50 fusion stones
crown 160 crownscoin 300 coinsruby 250 rubies
crown 200 crownscoin 400 coinslegendary card 5 legendary cards
crown 250 crownscoin 500 coinsfusion stone 200 fusion stones

Crowns are reset every week, and there is no way to skip a milestone or start the Brawl beyond the first milestone. The only way to move on is to fight other players, and hopefully win.

The idea is that after every victory in Brawl, you will be offered one of two random bonuses, amongst a set of 9 different possible bonuses (see the complete list below). Some of them will provide resources while some will improve your livelihood in Brawl by redeeming and refilling hearts.

You begin a Brawl adventure with 3 full green hearts. When you lose a match, you lose one heart (it gets emptied and red). If all hearts are lost, then your crowns get reset to the beginning of the current milestone.

Choice between 2 bonuses after a victory in Brawl

Here is the breakdown of every victory bonus:

  • Resources bonuses: Picking these bonuses will immediately grant you a certain amount of resources, varying based on the Brawl difficulty and milestone.
  • Fortress Up bonus: Picking this bonus will increase your Fortress Level by 1 within the current Brawl difficulty and only for Brawl matches. It will not increase the Fortress Level beyond the cap for that Brawl. This bonus cannot be drawn if already capped.
  • Life/Lives Up bonuses: Picking these bonuses will refill a heart (or all hearts), giving you extra chances to climb the milestones without being reset to the start of the current milestone.
  • Rusty Slot: Picking this bonus will grant you an extra heart slot (up to 5 heart slots in total). Once you lose a life from this slot, the slots destroys itself. It also destroys itself on milestone reset or moving to the next milestone.
  • Solidify: Picking this bonus will make one of your hearts indestructible. From there on, it behaves like one of three default slots.
  • Ice Armor: Picking this bonus will give an Ice Armor to the first full heart. After a loss, the Ice Armor gets destroyed while keeping the heart beneath it intact.

Every week brings new rules, so it is unlikely to be able to play the same deck two weeks in a row. For instance, if dwarves cost less mana in week A, but satyrs have more strength in week B, it will be necessary to adapt to the week’s theme in order to stay competitive.

Find below the existing modifiers:

  • Natural Sprint: Dwarves -2 mana
  • Pirate Treasure: Pirates -2 mana
  • Scavengers: Raven +1 movement
  • Aftershock: Structures =2 mana
  • Small Plague: Rodents +3 strength
  • Pirate Mercenaries: Pirates =2 movement
  • Noble Coalition: Felines +2 strength
  • Self-control: Satyrs +1 movement
  • Eye of the Tempest: Spells -2 mana
  • Goddess Boon: Frostlings +4 strength
  • Freedom Fight: Toads =2 mana
  • Elderly Wisdom: Elders +3 strength
  • Lucrative Project: Construct =2 movement
  • Heavy Metal: Knights -2 mana
  • Unleashed Fury: Dragons +1 movement
  • Swift Demise: Undead +2 strength
  • Heroic Deeds: Heroes +3 strength
  • Pure Amalgamation: Randomly merged deck
  • Fights of Threes: Max 3 friendly units
  • Thin No-Man’s Land: High frontline
  • Stunning attack: Confusion on damage
  • Reserve Management: Unspent mana is carried over
  • Chaos Unleashed: Units get a random status effect upon play
  • Steady Growth: Cards level up when cycled
  • The Great Mill: Hand is always full

A good way to practice Brawl and try decks outside of the event itself to avoid spending coins needlessly is to rely on the extended friendly matches. There is a way to do friendly games with Brawl modifiers, and it is a great way to get prepared before the real thing.

All that being said, it can be interesting to take the Brawl as an opportunity to level up cards that you would not otherwise play (provided your finances allow it), and therefore increasing your fortress level. For instance, leveling up some construct cards as a Swarm player.

The featured decks offer quite a few deck for every single Brawl, which should be a solid base for every one to compose a deck they feel comfortable with.

Deck detail & dry-runner

It is possible to analyse the mana-curve of a deck with a Brawl mana-modifier in the deck detail of the site (for example, Mirc’s deck for the spell Brawl). Additionally, it can be practiced in the dry-runner, if only to test whether mana gets wasted or if the cards flow nicely.

Once again, the Brawl is a content platform generally aimed at players with a) a solid card collection able to make a variety of decks and b) a decent amount of coins to burn through in order to reach interesting milestones. For most players, going far and high every week is not an option.

At the very least, everyone should reach the first milestone of every difficulty level which grants coins and a Humble book. It is free to play and requires only crown 10 crowns (in each difficulty) which is at best 2 victories, and at worst 10 losses.

If you plan on going further, it can be interesting to willingly lose a few games while they are free in order to sit at 8 or crown 9 crowns before having a victory boosting you out of the free milestone.

From there, it really depends how many coins you can realistically spend, and how successful you are at beating your opponents. Most players able to reach milestone 5 (the one granting interesting books) consistently would stop there, because that is the perfect sweet spot between coins spent and rewards earned.

Resources guide

The resources guide from Roman expands a bit more into the math behind the Brawl strategy, as well as whether or not it is wise to spend coins in the Brawl.

Given how expensive the Brawl is, regardless of which milestone you aim for, really, it only makes sense that players get hyper-cautious and invested. Countless spreadsheets have circulated for players to record their match, yielding the coins balance.

The site offers a Brawl tracker where you can record the outcome of your matches as you play them. In return, it gives you the amount of coins you spent in fees, the amount of coins and rewards you received, and even gives you handy statistics on your win/rate ratio.