Mechabellum Meta: Key Units, Balance, and Strategy

Mechabellum Meta: Key Units, Packs, and Balance

Void Eye and Meta Shifts
High-Level Meta Description
Regarding Void Eye
Key Meta Units
Phoenix
Hound
Rhino
Abyss
Wasp
Tarantula
War Factory
Sledgehammer
Arclight
Farseer
Other Units
Crawler
Fang
Mustang
Stormcaller
Sandworm
Wraith
Steel Ball
Marksman
Raiden
Scorpion
Phantom Ray
Fortress
Melting Point
Multimelter
Vulcan
Fire Badger
Sabertooth
Overlord/Hacker/Typhoon
Notes on Meta Build Patterns
Closing Thoughts

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Void Eye and Meta Shifts

Void Eye came out just after this report was written, so none of the analysis below will account explicitly for void eye. However, the general consensus right now is that void eye is underpowered and does not significantly affect the meta at all beyond diluting starting unit packs. This will probably change soon with a balance patch. The main use case for void eye is to take range, aerial mode, and charged shot for extremely high mid-ranged DPS, but this tends to make void eye into a worse phoenix.

I want to see a rework to void eye that differentiates it from other single-target DPS options rather than simply making it a bit better at being a budget phoenix. Perhaps it could use more movement speed, less range, and more HP, for example. Currently, the void eye’s tank techs feel completely misplaced. I also don’t like the EMP armor tech as it stands. It is not fun to play against and has very little use outside of niche cheese plays and knowledge checks.

High-Level Meta Description

Aggro and Standard/Defensive play seem about equally strong right now, with the caveat that on average, you need to play a starting pack with balls, tarantulas (aggro), or sledgehammers (standard/defense) to be on relatively equal footing.
In general, starting packs are unbalanced. Stormcaller starts feel like they have too little starting HP across the board, and sledgehammers feel like the best starting option overall given their lack of bad matchups and their solid starting HP totals. Mustangs are too weak in the early game and sabertooth still feels like a weak unit overall except when obtained from a unit drop in a board state that supports it.
Phoenixes are by far the best DPS option in most games, except standard vs standard games where other options are sometimes used instead. Generally, the only potential problem with phoenixes is a perfectly timed fortress AA play, and even that tends to have significant counterplay.
Players are often fighting to maintain air superiority so that their wasps and phoenixes can work relatively unopposed without relying on mustangs, which can be weak to abyss in the late game.
Giants feel relatively weak this patch in general, but can be played successfully off of drops or as punishes to other giant plays. Worms are also played fairly often in standard games.
Hounds and tarantulas are the dominant chaff clear units in aggro comps, while arclights are the dominant chaff clear units in long-ranged standard comps. In defense, wraiths, hounds, and arclights all see successful play. We have also seen strong standard hound setups using flank pulls and a hound - crawler - phoenix composition.

General Considerations

Void Eye discussion acknowledges upcoming balance shifts and does not alter the current dominance of phoenix. The meta currently favors phoenix heavily due to efficiency and range constraints, with various techs augmenting its DPS and survivability.
Air superiority remains a critical factor in many matchups, influencing which chaff clear troops see play and how teams value anti-air elements like fortress AA and arclights.

Regarding Void Eye

Key Meta Units

Phoenix

Phoenix has remained untouched for months and has been the premier aggro DPS option almost this entire time. It has exactly one real counter in the game (fortress with the AA tech) and even that has plenty of counterplay and needs to be timed precisely in order to not end up as either an economic deficit (when the phoenix player sells) or mostly ineffectual (when they tank it with another unit, AM it, or take shield/quantum and ignore it). On the other hand, if phoenix is uncontested, it offers the best dps / range compromise in the game and potentially scales out of control with many of the most efficient technologies in the game.

What makes the technologies so good? First of all, phoenix often does not need range until very late into the game, if at all. A phoenix stays behind a ranged hound or an unteched sledgehammer or tarantula. Even a ranged tarantula tends to provide good cover for a baseline phoenix. So this eliminates a range tax needed by most other DPS units. Then, on top of that, all of the phoenix’s technologies are among the most efficient in the game. Jump drive provides pressure across the whole map for 100. Charged shot, at 200, turns phoenix into the most cost-efficient single-tech ranged DPS unit in the game (by comparison, burst mode phantom ray is the second best, dealing 15% less DPS at 30 less range but with higher initial burst, and doubleshot saber is the third best, with both lower DPS and lower burst than charged shot phoenix at the same range). Phoenix has EMP at 200, cheaper than Marksman or Arclight. With a couple levels, you can pay 200 for energy shield to make you mostly immune to spells and fort AA. Quantum Reassembly can fill a similar role at 150. That’s 5 technologies that are all incredible, not counting range. Nerf one or two and phoenix would struggle to pick 4 techs to run.

The strength of phoenix is fairly meta warping by itself. Giants are difficult to play because they all lose to phoenix with charged shot or EMP except for fortress with AA missiles (sometimes). Scorpion and sabertooth often lose to phoenix even harder than giants. Hounds and Tarantulas are better than they should be because they provide the best synergy with phoenixes. If those units are deemed too strong, nerfing phoenix would hurt them as well. Wasps are fairly effective at slowing down phoenixes sometimes, but an aggro player can counter wasps fairly efficiently and investing significantly in wasp is usually disastrous.

Overall, I think we need some sort of a phoenix nerf. To start, my suggestions are:

Nerf mass-produced phoenix somehow. That card is truly broken. The cheaper phoenixes kill many early-game targets just as quickly as the full-cost phoenixes and the fact that they do full player damage often makes this result in a lethal gain of tempo.
Nerf phoenix base attack, thus hurting all of its builds to some degree
We can also look at some nerfs to charged shot, which I believe is the unit’s most oppressive technology. As long as charged shot exists in its current state, phoenixes will be largely mandatory in headbutts, at the very least.

Hound

Hound is the phoenix’s best friend, but it’s also strong in its own right. The hound has two main pain points to get past: it’s weak against crawlers of equal level and it struggles to advance to level 2. This makes it a fairly polarizing unit: either it fails to get levels and techs and does little all game, or it gets to late game and becomes unstoppable. After all, there are few units that can efficiently clear high-level hounds and just as few units that can match hounds’ ability to clear chaff in the late game. Tarantula and wraith are certainly better chaff clear per cost throughout most of the game, but they also can sometimes be countered more easily or outleveled by the hounds.

After the early game, hound must usually be protected by more than just chaff in order to do its job. There are several options for this protection. Steel balls and sledgehammers often suffice in the early game (mustang + hound is often a poor starting pack due to the lack of a tank), but Rhinos, Fortresses, and Sandworms are usually needed later on for their enormous HP pools or shields. Melting points ostensibly counter high-hp units like rhinos or fortresses, but they are too weak against phoenixes and hounds to be a reliable option. Level 2 rhinos with armor often hit the sweet spot of tankiness, in my experience. They come out early enough to provide stability to hound comps, provide an outlandish amount of HP, and are too low of an investment for it to be attractive to commit a dedicated counter to them. In my experience, the war factory is the best try against rhino + hound, but you’re in a tough spot when you need a titan unit with upkeep to simply not get blown out by a blue rhino backed by hounds and phoenixes.

Nonetheless, there are tools available to exploit the weaknesses of hounds. The best thing you can do is start with a sledgehammer. Given the popularity of hounds this patch, I would suggest picking sledgehammer packs whenever possible. Build arclights to out-clear the hounds early and allow the sledgehammer to tank for them. Build lots of chaff and position them vertically in a way that many of them cannot get pulled to the flank by a single hound. Early missile devices can be invaluable against hounds, as hounds rely on getting levels and it feels like there is often no way to efficiently position against missile devices in the early game as the hound player, especially if you start with sledgehammers or steel balls. Later in the game, you need an efficient way to deal with whatever is protecting the hound, such as a rhino or worm. A timely war factory often does the trick, with the added bonus of being impossible to kill by the hounds alone.

I do not think hound itself needs changes. Nerfing phoenix will already nerf hound and hound has not felt oppressive to me overall. Some starting hound packs could also lose some HP (especially sledgehammer + hound) if it turns out they are overperforming.

Rhino

After many months of seeing virtually no use outside of rhino specialist from anybody but SaraTzch, the rhino is making a bit of a meta comeback. It’s still played mostly off of a rhino drop, but pairs nicely with hound in the midgame, as stated above. Armor is almost always the first and only tech used on rhino, though photon can be stacked with armor for extreme late game survivability. Heavy rhino investment is always risky, since units like melting point and war factory can often easily eliminate the rhino as a threat if needed.

Abyss

Abyss is the newest unit in Mechabellum, and after several rounds of extreme buffs, it is finally finding its place in the meta. The usage of abyss has mostly been defined by its missile barrage technology, which may be underpriced at 200 supplies, but finally provides a long-awaited answer to protected mustangs. In addition to this, the default attack of abyss is fantastic against all large, slow-moving ground units and is especially effective at countering all varieties of fortress and war factory builds. Therefore, a playstyle has started to emerge where players will try to bait mustangs and giant ground units by playing other difficult-to-handle units like sledgehammers and wasps. In the late game, sledgehammers stay in front of abyss without requiring abyss range, and wasps can provide late chaff against heavy anti-air.

However, if you can bait your opponent into fortress/mustang or scorpion/mustang, winning with abyss still isn’t so simple. Abyss seems to struggle as a unit without extreme investment, usually 2000 credits or more. Even then, its attack can be neutered by the presence of a single chaff unit in range. Sledgehammers, fangs, and wasps cannot be hit more than once by a single abyss beam, making them uniquely difficult to clear if they have an energy shield or (in the case of sledgehammer) sufficiently high HP. If the abyss player lacks air superiority, they are likely to lose to enemy phoenix, wasp, or overlord. Energy absorption on melting point seems to reliably help them survive long enough to lock on and kill an abyss in a duel.

However, once you meet the conditions needed to play abyss, it performs well and just keeps getting better with investment. If someone can clear ground chaff, sledgehammers, and wasps, and makes it to 3000 credits worth of abyss with swarm missiles, and has a solid frontline or enough chaff to tank for the abyss, they are probably going to win. Getting there without the game ending is quite the challenge, though.

I still am not happy with some of the aspects of the abyss:

I consider the vertical sweep technology to have no real use other than to cheese a tower. In practically all other cases, as far as I’m concerned, it makes the abyss’s attack less useful. I like Apooche’s suggestion to change this tech to add a vertical sweep in addition to the horizontal sweep, with whatever balance is needed to support this change.
In general, all the techs other than the swarm missiles feel very situational. It’s not that you won’t ever click any of those techs, but in my opinion you won’t ever unlock abyss because of those techs.
The unit details list its splash radius at 10 meters, which is clearly a lie.
The abyss may be too strong against all the units that can effectively kill wasps, except for wasps themselves.

Wasp

In the past, wasp was mostly seen as a late game chaff gutshot against marksman, phoenix, or melting point. However, wasp is finding a lot more widespread success than usual in the current meta, as it enjoys success against the most popular compositions while being more difficult than usual to counter. In particular, hound/phoenix and tarantula/phoenix can quickly kill nearly every non-giant unit in the early and midgame, except for wasps. At the same time, wasp is one of the most efficient flank defenders in the game. Both of these points provide an excuse to start investing into wasps. And if fortress anti-air and/or mustang come out against a wasp-heavy board, the abyss provides an all-in-one answer to both units.

I think wasp has a lot of potential to become a problematic unit, for the following reasons:

The only units that can quickly and reliably eliminate wasps in the late game are mustangs and wasps, with an honorable mention to fortress AA. None of these work without an investment comparable to that in the wasps they are trying to counter, and fortress AA is usually only an option against carry wasps, being too slow and unreliable to clear shielded wasp chaff. Mustangs and fortresses are vulnerable to abyss now, as well (farseers and typhoons can clear wasps in the midgame but are rare units and are too slow at clearing and too vulnerable, respectively, to generally deal with late-game wasps).
There is no giant unit that is effective against wasp. This makes it especially difficult to pivot into a wasp answer later in the game and is one of the many things that can make giant specialist suffer.
Improved wasp is a monstrously strong card. Once you have ~4 packs with levels and 2-3 techs, it has no remaining cost-effective counter in the game. If the wasp player runs energy shield, then even lightning storm and orbital bombardment are usually not enough to kill the wasps, let alone fortress anti-air. If they run splash instead of energy shield, fortress anti-air is usually the only serious try, and even that can fail. I advocate for a nerf to improved wasp.

It seems we are done adding new units to the game for now (after the void eye, which is decidedly not a wasp answer). Without a new unit to address wasps, I think we need another giant technology that can be built in response to wasps. The easy option here might be vulcan anti-air, as seen in free-for-all and survival modes, but I’m sure there are some other creative ways to do it.

Tarantula

After the latest hound nerfs, tarantula is once again the best aggro starting unit. Its strength lies in the late game, once you are allowed to click both range and high-explosive ammo. At that point, nothing in the game can match the tarantula’s chaff clear. The ideal partner for tarantula is phoenix, which stays safe behind the tarantula and has unmatched single-target DPS to delete the units exposed by the tarantula. However, the tarantula plays nicely with almost any DPS unit that can drop in the midgame. This can help you consistently survive long enough to get fully online. The tarantula player should also liberally employ crawler and possibly wasp chaff, more than most aggro compositions, to take advantage of their chaff clear advantage.

In my opinion, there is no consistent answer to tarantula + phoenix in the late game. However, here are some situational counterplay options that you can choose from, depending on the situation:

Tarantula is useless without techs, so you can try to land EMP with marksman or phoenix. Combine this with late shield fangs to neuter the non-tarantula units once the tarantula is disabled. Of course, killing the tarantula is even better. Sabertooth drops are especially good for this early in the game.
If the enemy has low chaff and low phoenixes/raiden, consider hackers. Hackers are an especially good option if the tarantulas are paired with other large ground units like scorpions.
Even if the tarantulas have lots of crawlers behind them, they may only have one pack of chaff in front of them. Missile it away in the late game if it gets you a quick lock onto the tarantula with a DPS unit.
Force the tarantula player to solve problems with things other than phoenix and tarantulas and their techs, if you can. Late pressure on a weak tower with medium units or wasps can be difficult to stop, for example.
Fortress anti-air can work against tarantula + phoenix, but it must be perfectly timed. If the phoenixes have too many levels, it is too late. If there are only a couple without techs, it is likely too early unless the AA is game-ending.

Tarantula should probably be on the watch list for nerfs, especially if the upcoming void eye is not a useful tarantula counter.

War Factory

The production war factory build is finally basically dead; an immediate abyss response seems to consistently shut it down. This makes me very happy, as I found playing against production war factory to be very frustrating.

The blue factory finisher is still frustrating to play against, though. A blue armor war factory is practically unkillable by most boards on turn 5-7. This is a good follow-up to a wasp play, too; none of the units that can kill wasp can also damage an armored factory, so watch out for that quick one-two punch. After turn 7, the natural damage of most teams starts to get reliably high enough to deal with the factory gutpunch, but it can still work in some scenarios, especially if it is allowed to assassinate key enemy units before it dies.

There are two main other uses of factory I have seen: a ranged factory commit is played by a few strong ladder players in aggro and defense, and factory is a strong option against a clump of sandworms in standard. Both of these uses seem to be in a fairly healthy spot, though I don’t play either of these lines very often.

I would like to see something done about the blue armor factory on the line. Some people have called for the removal of the armor tech entirely on war factory. This would force the cheese play to run photon factory instead, which has less survivability in most common midgame situations.

Sledgehammer

Sledgehammer is the best starting unit in the game for standard or defense. The sledgehammer starting packs have decent starting hp, no bad matchups, the best matchup into hounds or balls, and synergize well with phoenixes. They require no investment and contribute positively without any levels or techs throughout the entirety of the game on most boards.

Lately, field maintenance sledgehammers have also seen a rise in popularity. Sledgehammers tank well for and against abyss, and their classic counters of fortress and scorpion can struggle mightily to deal with an abyss pivot.

The sledgehammer starting packs could probably use slightly less starting HP to put them in line with other starting units.

Arclight

Arclight is a very divisive unit in the current meta, with players rating it anywhere from unplayable to very strong. I think arclight is currently the strongest overall chaff clear unit in a standard game. Arclight significantly outperforms the hound at low levels of investment while staying relatively safe due to its long range. It provides a stable and consistent foundation in the early game to transition to any build later in the game, as needed, without overcommitting to anything. In aggro, arclight is merely okay, and in a headbutt, arclight should be abandoned after the first few rounds in favor of options that clear chaff faster at short range like tarantula, fire badger, or wraith.

Farseer

Apooche likes to joke that the farseer is a great “support unit” because it supports the team by killing everything by itself. This is very true in the early game, where farseer is almost always the best possible unit drop. It protects flanks and pressures a weak-side tower all at once as a one-man army. It disables wasps as an early-game threat. It can kill a horde of hounds by itself and gets good value out of every equipment in the game. It has the best EMP in the game at 100 cost. Late game, its stats are no longer impressive, but having a farseer unlock enables a unique photon option for your team.

Farseer is probably too strong. I think the round-2 farseer drop should not exist, as it provides far too much tempo compared to other options, to the point where the late-game weakness of farseer is unlikely to manifest. Farseer could also likely use a stat nerf to attack or HP.

Other Units

These units aren’t necessarily bad, but I feel like they are less meta defining or I have less to say about them.

Crawler

Crawler is of course the bread and butter of almost every comp in mechabellum. However, crawler is not warping the entire meta as it has in the past. Against almost any chaff clear option, either loose crawler or subterranean blitz will provide incredible value late game, and I believe that any other crawler techs such as replicate should be clicked very sparingly to make the defensive crawler techs as inexpensive as possible.

Fang

Fangs are almost entirely relegated to the chaff role now. They are still often an essential unit and late fangs in both standard and defense are still incredibly powerful if the enemy chaff clear can be dealt with successfully. Ignite fangs are sometimes tried against sandworms, but this can be inconsistent, especially when there are multiple layers of worms and larvae to clear.

Mustang

I don’t build many mustangs anymore unless I get a good item for them or desperately need them to clear wasps or fangs or provide anti-missile support. Investing into mustangs tends to dilute my army, especially if I am using units like tarantula that need techs quickly to be strong. At the same time, mustang is a weak early game unit and now has an additional late-game weakness in abyss missiles. If farseer drops, it is usually better than mustang until late game at performing the same role. Still, sometimes mustang is necessary.

Stormcaller

I don’t want to start with stormcaller, because the HP of the starting pack is low and it is a weak unit on round 1, especially against asymmetric aggro pushes. Still, stormcaller is an essential unit in standard games. It does a bit of everything, from long range, without ever needing a single tech. You can build 3-4 fairly safely without needing to worry too much about AM until the late game, as it takes a fairly significant AM investment to really turn off stormcallers late into the fight. The primary weakness of stormcaller is against sandworm, which often wastes volleys from range and later exploits the stormcaller’s melee weakness while being too tanky for stormcallers to easily kill.

I think stormcaller starting packs could use a bit more starting HP, to make them more consistent against a variety of enemy starting packs. If this makes them too OP, maybe the unit itself needs a nerf.

Sandworm

Sandworm, in standard, is the main force preventing vulcans from being meta. Although the sandworm unit drops are not very efficient anymore, it is a strong unit to unlock and play the moment you see or suspect a commitment into marksman or vulcan, as those units tend to lose to sandworm without support from other dedicated anti-sandworm units. Marksman and phoenix also struggle against mechanical division, which has been gaining popularity as a way to dramatically enhance the distraction value of sandworms for a low investment. Still, there are plenty of units and techs that are effective against sandworm. In particular, level 2 war factory is a good option against a worm “blender” consisting of many leveled and teched worms, all beaconed together into a tower.

Wraith

Since the latest balance change to wraith, it stays fairly comfortably behind sledgehammer when given range. In general, as a defensive unit supported by sledgehammers and/or lots of chaff, it is one of the best options for clearing enemy crawlers. A defensive wraith can be difficult to target before it finishes clearing crawlers, even with anti-air marksman, the best counter an aggro player often has for wraith. As an aggro unit pushing into a tower, wraith struggles a bit more. It is much more difficult to protect when it needs to move forward, and can often be easily countered by multi-melter, enemy wraiths, and spells.

Steel Ball

Along with sledgehammer, steel ball is the other main starting pack in standard, as well as an ever-popular midrange and aggro pack (especially with hound). I find that steel ball is best played asymmetrically, even in standard, as it requires a critical mass of value nearby to lock onto key units and it takes more advantage of tower debuffs than most units. Personally, I dislike steel ball on defense and will play it midrange if I suspect my opponent might play aggro.

As a unit, steel ball is plagued by a multitude of hard counters and usually must be sold unless it acquires levels and items. It also cannot clear chaff, so it requires more support than most other tanky units. For these reasons, I almost always prefer sledgehammer to steel ball, as sledgehammer provides its own limited chaff clear and pairs better with other strong units like phoenix.

Marksman

Marksman is a fine, flexible unit in the current meta, if generally overshadowed by phoenix. As a starting unit, marksman provides good tempo in combination with sledgehammer or tarantula. It has better synergy with arclight than phoenix has due to its long range. It has a nice toolkit of techs that allow for powerful plays from unit drops, including anti-air and the newly buffed assault mode. However, marksman does have low damage and can suffer to kill giants, especially sandworms. This can make it dangerous to invest in Marksman techs at the wrong time, especially range.

Raiden

Raiden is mostly a worse phoenix, except with extremely heavy investment when you absolutely need to kill lots of medium units or have a high-level raiden that can delete giants. As a result, it doesn’t see very much play, except from a unit drop or an early aerial/giant specialist unlock. Raiden also tends to lose the 1v1 to phoenix, though if the phoenix clicks charged shot the matchup is more even, and if Raiden clicks chain and range and emp then the phoenix can get scammed.

Scorpion

The unlock cost reduction of scorpion really helped scorpion, but it is still fairly niche in the current meta. Because scorpion is not very tanky without levels or equipment, it often dies instantly to phoenix or an air giant. Therefore, to be viable, scorpion usually needs to get a lot of value out of its attack. This is generally achieved either by playing aggro and overwhelmingly winning the chaff war, or by playing the scorpion into high-level balls or sledgehammers. Sometimes scorpion can also be an effective short-term tank from a high-level drop. A commitment to scorpion is likely to lose to an air pivot if poorly timed.

We also see some siege scorpion with acid in standard games off of a unit drop. The siege scorpion has a crippling weakness to air superiority comps and can easily get outscaled by vulcan + marksman, but it can also be a devastating cheese play if the scorpions can instantly lock on to valuable targets due to a dearth of frontline chaff.

Phantom Ray

Phantom ray continues to be quite niche. Currently, it has two uses: oil and armor, usually off of a unit drop. The oil is difficult to counter with anti-missile, is very cheap, and has a large area. If lit on fire, it can force a fire extinguisher hound in response. The armor is a cheese play against mustangs that must always be considered if a high-level phantom ray drop appears. All phantom ray DPS builds are too weak to anti-missile and/or units like raiden or multi-melter to be viable choices in the current meta.

Fortress

The main role of fortress in the current meta is to provide anti-air against wasps or phoenixes. This is the main thing keeping phoenixes from being even more dominant in the current meta, but it must be perfectly timed or the phoenixes will ignore the anti-air or be sold. Otherwise, fortress requires significant investment to become a threat and tends to be an easy target for the abyss.

Note: Early fortress AA can actually make sense in a phoenix mirror. If you can get your opponent to sell out of phoenix, then phoenix counters everything that can effectively kill fortresses including melting point and abyss.

Melting Point

The melting point is the only unit you can build to kill a sufficiently tanky unit, so it will always have a role. However, that role is a bit narrower than usual in the current meta. Phoenix is very strong and is one of the best units in the game at killing melting point when equipped with charged shot or EMP. This discourages the use of melting point in many games. However, melting point has very efficient unit drops and can provide immense tank value, especially equipped with a number of items. It is also the premier anti-abyss unit if no option already exists on board. To kill abyss, the melting point ideally equips range and energy absorption (but must still be wary of enemy wasps).

Multimelter

Multimelter is as powerful as ever on defense and completely shuts down a variety of aggro comps, including ball + wraith and assault scorpion. It pairs well with wraith, which clears both air and ground chaff that would otherwise prevent the melting point from locking on.

Vulcan

Vulcan is a risky pick in the current standard meta. It is outperformed by arclights until it acquires a significant investment, while being quite vulnerable to tempo plays with worms or war factory. However, vulcan + marksman is still the best-scaling composition I can think of in standard. It’s just very difficult to get all the way to the late game without losing to tempo first. (Vulcan is basically useless in aggro. Don’t build aggro vulcan.)

Fire Badger

Fire badger is the best chaff clear option in a headbutt with range + scorch. The early-game fire badger drops are also very powerful and can provide some piecemeal chaff clear or dangerous flanks while you focus on other aspects of your team composition. However, you must always be wary of enemy armored units if you run fire badger, due to their extremely low base damage. Fire badger also quickly becomes useless in long-ranged games.

Sabertooth

Sabertooth feels like a very lackluster starting unit, that must be taken in aggro and must get early tempo to contribute to the board in the long term. However, various sabertooth drops have sometimes felt oppressive when added to a well-rounded aggro board with a good investment in tarantulas, hounds, or typhoons. It feels like there is nothing you can put on the ground that won’t get immediately deleted by sabertooth and there is nothing you can put in the air that won’t get immediately deleted by phoenix.

The main problem with sabertooth is its slow movement speed, especially if you want to use the side armaments technology. I think it would be nice if side armaments provided a little bit of movement speed to make it more usable.

Overlord/Hacker/Typhoon

I do not play these units enough to have useful insights about their place in the current meta. Broadly, though, I think all of them are currently very situational, even though they all have some specific use cases.

Notes on Meta Build Patterns

The meta is characterized by a balance between high-DPS air units (phoenix, wasp) and ground-based chokepoleminating units (hounds, tarantulas, scorpions), with anti-air and anti-chaff support from arclights, fortress AA, and melting point as a counter to super-tank roles.
Abyss serves as a counter-meta option that can threaten mustangs and giants when properly piloted, but it requires significant frontline support and air superiority to be effective.
The ongoing question in balance patches often centers on nerfs to phoenix mass production, charged shot efficiency, and potentially void-eye reworks to diversify early-game options.

Closing Thoughts

Overall, players seek to maximize DPS while managing chaff-clearing capabilities and anti-air counters. The balance between aggro and defensive strategies remains delicate, with phoenix currently at the center of many metas, and support units like farseer and arclight providing critical early-game stability. Strategic selection of starting packs—favoring sledgehammers for standard/defense, or balls and tarantulas for aggressive lines—shapes the pace and outcome of most games. The meta continues to evolve as new balance patches roll out and as players discover innovative interactions between units like abyss, wasp, and tarantula in concert with phoenix.

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