Greyfield being D tier is extremely fitting considering that, canonically, he's a really shitty CO. Lin even calls him out for it, says that he was mediocre at best.
He is good in maps that have combined weapons(air and sea units), but if its only one type or two and not the three he is pointless, specially without sea.
And his specialization being what it is kind of fits too. Where he only excels when he is in a dominant position anyway. When things get tough he can't do anything.
It's a dumb little addition, but I love how the CO is inside the bar in combat on normal units but has their full picture during battle when they're in the unit.
It's not dumb, it's attention to detail and it's ingenious as you can tell at a glance if the CO is in the unit or not both in combat or on the field screen :)
Thinking about their abilities, and these tiers you made, it makes me wonder how deliberate all of these are. Waylon is a cowardly pilot whose abilities are all defensive and meant to keep his sorry ass alive, Tasha is blinded by revenge so her abilities are all offensive and largely make her ineffective (as you'd expect of someone so obsessed with revenge they weren't thinking straight), Grayfield is all but outright stated to have been a crappy wannabe soldier before the apocalypse and so is largely ineffective without massive support, Penny is a batshit insane broken girl whose CO powers are weird, unlike any other, and entirely random and unpredictable, Lin the cold analytical strategist has the stat boosts of both the heroism-obsessed Will and Brenner combined but they're slower to work since she's more reluctant to rush in and spends more time gathering intel, Isabella is out of place compared to the other COs but is insanely effective at movement and ranged attacks which makes sense if you consider her backstory (no spoilers) and how she has encyclopedic knowledge of how units work and move, Tabatha's abilities are focused on affecting herself with her other units being an afterthought, Gage whose quiet and focused on getting the job done is largely designed to just quickly build up an offensive and take the opponent down from a distance as quickly and effectively as possible, Forsythe who is an honorable man who doesn't fight dirty is designed to just be largely effective overall in any scenario and focuses on long-term buffs to all his troops without sacrificing that for a quick dirty strike with a CO power (or is perhaps too old to use one now), and of course Caulder is OP as fuck since he's the final boss. Maybe I'm overthinking it and drawing conclusions from coincidences, but it's like the developers actually didn't care about balance or tiers or anything, and were focused 100% on giving them abilities that fit their personalities and backgrounds. It might even explain why you don't actually get to pick which COs you want to use in the campaign and are forced to use a specific CO for each mission, and maybe the reason they added a no CO option to VS mode was they knew the character were unbalanced.
well, i think it makes sense to an degree that youre not gonna have the best of the best NCOs anymore after the world fell to ruin, youre barely going to still have leaders that are better then randomly selected soldiers baptized by fire maybe you dont even have those anymore.
to paraphrase Whoisthisgit's view on Waylon, "to play waylon well, you have to become Waylon" stay just out of the enemy range and push them back, while growing your CO zone in the process, using it when you have pushed them back far enough to cut through their defences.
Love the irony. The STORY says that Finn is irresponsible, selfish, and rides his men to their deaths for thrills and comfort; all too eager to sacrifice them to save his own skin. The GAMEPLAY makes Finn into a defensive air commander who relies on supporting his wingmen by leading the line from the front, refusing to be too cavalier and instead pushing forward gradually, minimising casualties while bottling the enemy, then popping his Power to make a sudden, explosive wildcat strike on enemy air defenses while minimising friendly losses. Sure, he'd still sack a friendly to save himself, but even O'Brian would do the same. Finn and Zadia should have had each other's kits. Maybe Finn was planned to be a completely different kind of man earlier in the scriptwriting?
Use a lot of indirects and make sure that they are on Waylon CO zone (the air units have high movility so is not that hard) and when you are close to get wingman (bad company) buy a lot of air units to do a big push
DoR had the misfortune of coming out at the wrong time, and coming out on a console that couldn't really handle what they wanted. I actually liked how they reinvented the series, and gameplay wise it needed a shake-up because it didnt change all that much from AW to Dual Strike. And though it's a small thing, i at least never got the feeling of "why are we throwing away people in a horrible meatgrinder while being so cheerful" that the other AW games had.
One thing I really like is that you can annihilate half your enemy's army, and NOT have to suffer them wasting your time with their superpower afterward, because this game doesn't reward you for losing like the previous ones. No global health draining CO who starts with a huge mass of expensive units, forcing you to let them repeatedly kick you in the shin no matter how hard they're beaten.
I don’t mind them treating war as the serious and messed up thing that it is, or that they explored new gameplay stuff. I just wish they did it using the old esthetics and characters, as the dissonance between colourful characters and graphics with the real consequences of war could’ve been quite powerful. Would’ve also been cool if they explored the ideologies of each individual nations, what they actually fought for, and how the morals of the individual COs either lined up, clashed or got challanged by the very nations they fought for. Could’ve been really interesting. Instead we just got drab late 2000’s esthetics that felt like a fruitless attempt to rope in the CoD crowd. Which, fine, it’s very much a product of its time. It’s just bot what I personally wished for. Though I do still respect game devs who dare to challenge what they’ve done previously and try something new, without feeling limited or trapped by their established audience.
i had never heard of it until I watched this channel I played all the other AW games tho as they came out and I even had a DS and 3DS but this game never came to my attention smh. not sure what happened there
It mostly suffered from the characters being overly generic: Lin is the only one that really stands out. Dual Strikes suffered from much the same, but it had the excuse of having too many characters to develop.
I wish The Beast from campaign was a CO. Always felt like he should've been a spiritual successor to Sami and have him have capture game related traits and abilities (cause hes a raider).
@@kittogashi8561 Maybe 1* offense and defense for infantry, and lower starting fuel, but defeating an enemy with a unit replenishes a bit of ammo and fuel on them? Something not crazy, so he still eases you in, but playing in to his raider aesthetic and setting him apart a bit.
I feel like the game really suffered from introducing CO mechanics way late. They tried to focus on the narrative and that's nice and all, but that wasted a lot of potential. Having the Beast roam around in a recon buffing his units would have been a nice place to introduce it.
according to tv tropes, lorewise The beast was a sergent before the meteor strike so, some ranks lower than CO, maybe that is the reason that he didnt have a co power
Here to clear up some misinformation: the 10% attack and defense from CO zone is applied BEFORE any benefits from the CO themselves, so, 1 star is functionally a 20% boost, meaning Isabella's zone does make her units stronger than say, a Gage zone with no indirects.
And one thing too about fog of war iirc you dont need to be adjacent on the building to reveal it you can have a unit path pass it and reveal it by just passing it
@@localmilkanyoulocalmilkan3930 That isn't just buildings, every unit scouts the entire path they move along and the extra vision is lost when your turn ends.
Ah yes, Days of Ruin. The second best Advanced Wars game, only losing out to the true king, Battalion Wars II. Another IS game with some chick named Lin and some dude nicknamed the Beast that I played a bit too much as a kid. Always had a good time with it, despite getting trashed by my buddy's Isabella after school.
Weird. I really don't like the Days of Ruin soundtrack, with a couple exceptions. It was the weakest part of the game for me. A lot of tracks just sounded to me like they were trying to compensate for a lack of material by turning up the distortion.
So, we've gone through every CO, over every game in the franchise, ranking them to the best of his ability, going over what works in AW and what doesn't, and seeing where the ideas come to a head in the right ways. What's next? I'd honestly like to see Mangs take a crack at *designing* a CO at this point. Maybe something he'd like to see, or something he feels like never got to be put into use. I dunno, seeing Mangs theorycraft some new niche would be enjoyable for me, at least.
He says a lot of things are "broken" when he actually means "strong," and when he says "very strong," he usually just means "solid." He exaggerates a lot.
I honestly really like the animations for this game. They definitely don't move as better as the originals, but the camera view that makes all the vehicles look tall, angled, and imposing, and the way larger units almost crumple in on themselves when defeated is very satisfying.
Thia is completely personal, but I didn't really liked that the battle animation used both screens. I like seen the animation front to front, and having one above other felt weird (Maybe except for bombers)
I like the far more liberal use of camera shake and the far larger muzzle blasts and impacts. Especially ships since now they actually break apart and sink rather than just disappearing or drawing back. Guns also fire slower so you can take them in. That being said in very large and long games with lots of war tanks and battle ships the slow fire can get annoying but usually there is only like 1 or 2 of each unit on the field so it's not a big issue.
I really like the battle animations here, mostly because the units look more detailed and you can appreciate those sexys T-34 (Lazurian tank), M1 Abrams(Rubinelle Md tanks), Hind-Ds (Laz B-copter) B-52 Stratofortress and A-10s (Rubinelle Bombers and seaplanes) Those Flaks 88 (both) also get a mention for depicting a rarely seen hardware
I kind of like the balance of Days of Ruin over the OG games. More indirect units,CO powers feel more effective,warships are not useless,etc. CO sniping is a interesting strategy and allows for more interesting strategies.
Navy in DOR actually feel powerful and influential. Cruisers especially got the biggest underrated buff as they can now attack other boats and are actually tank brawlers worth their cost. AW 1/2/ds cruiser gets zoned out and crippled by a single battlecopter, but the DOR cruiser takes almost no damage from copters and shoots them down in return, even bombers without attack boosts won't completely destroy them and will take enough return fire to take off a lot of their bite against other targets. Meaning cruisers can actually zone out aircraft as long as the enemy isn't massively outvaluing you. Add the cheap and cheery gunboat that can swarm out to find subs as well as ward off the more pricey units like battleships through numbers and you get actual naval combat that feels like a strategy you can use to win even when aircraft are an option.
@@MrDadhhg Yeah, sea warfare is an actual option in DoR. A cheap skirmisher unit that's even cheaper than black boats were, cheaper battleships that move, all together it's a lot better to play water than in AW1, 2, DS.
"Every character is black and white" - Not Lin This is my favorite Advance Wars game, btw. Love the gameplay and mature story that has more depth than most AAA games nowadays
One really fun thing about the battle animations for DoR/DC that isn't immediately obvious is that you can actually hold the L/R buttons during them to either speed them up or slow them down, which is pretty cool.
Yeaaah... having a more focus on darker visual, quasi realistic and less is more kind of animation is... kinda not widely accepted when you compared the previous advance war more cartoonist art style (it might be because the Hiroaki, the artist for SNK that tries to match Shinkiro artistic quality kinda influenced it but meh)
I can kinda see Isabella's theme making sense given her origin in the game; she might as well be from an entirely different world from all these seasoned commanders, cut throats and survivors. It's largely a upbeat synthetic song. Major props for this! This is the game I wished I played but had my handheld stolen.
So, to make Waylon work, you need a very unorthodox air strategy of using your air units to "contain" the enemy, which means "clustering" your air to form a "net" that your opponent cannot profitably approach, since air units are almost always more mobile than ground units. When you have a sufficient force to break the stalemate, pop his CO power and target all anti-air units in range. Anything close to you will be pretty much helpless, and you can mop up the mess the following turn.
That and encirclement tactics with his power. If you can clear a chokepint with a bomber or rockets, and park a duster or battle copter on that choke point with his power active, there is basically nothing the other player can do to get in and support the entrapped units, or stop a capture Waylon starts.
Battalion Wars is more of a squad based shooter and the COs are more for narration. Mangs would have to make a tier list for every UNIT if you want that to happen.
@@HomingRocket1 Nonono my dude, just an AWBW list, as he's mentioned its "official" list he disagrees with; it's also in an interesting position balance-wise by the breadth of COs available, as well as factoring in most likely banned aspects. Mitebcool.
@@BigKlingy I agree completely, she KNOWS that the smartest tactical thing may not be moral and chooses to NOT take those options, she advices the best she can given moral limitations, but she HAS moral limitations, strong ones at that. The only time she puts her morals to the side is when she took out Greyfield, choosing to kill him on the spot as an act of revenge, instead of capturing him and holding a trial (in which he would have likely been executed anyways, but the point stands), i.e. bring him to justice.
Greyfield is better than Flak, though. Greyfield has no downside, he's just an "average" CO if he can't build a navy, and sitting on a useless power is kinda good. Flak is just average, with a downside, and very weak powers, also with a downside.
On the comment on Brenner, that's exactly why it's an interesting spin for DoR :P In the trilogy, you get your power and you use it almost right away in many situations. With DoR, especially Brenner, you can simply hold onto it. The positive is that your CO zone is increased, so more of your units get the buff. You don't gain more power, but you keep the zone that you expanded, helping more units on the field. It's a bit of strategy when to use it, but if you don't, you're still fine since you still give the buffs to the units. Lin is the brains for the Brenner Wolves and even though she can be tough and fall of favor on some people, she is loyal to the Wolves and Brenner. Kind of funny how the CO power and zone play with what the character is. Of course being the brains for the Wolves, she gathers intel, so no shock she can have her units go double time and see hidden units. NOTE: Recons can still be viable! FoW changed. Notice that the unit doesn't move immediately when you select a space? The mechanic changed. If you have any unit move, their vision carries over EVERY SINGLE SPACE it lands and treats it as a vision. While cities are a great place to hide, the recon can move by the city and expose your units, so be careful! With Lin, if this happens, that one recon unit can give a heavy feedback on the map! Combo this with the flares since they can spot hidden units without being trapped. Once you get a good idea where exactly some of the enemy units are, use the recon to scout. Isabella learned from both Max and Grit lol. More mobility and then you have Grit's insane coverage. Something I want to point out that's important: Flares also increase their range! So if you are wondering if there are any units hiding, use the flare's increased range from Isabella's CO power to scout before you attack. Once you know how to move around the fog, it can give a pretty insane coverage and scout intel. Something to add about the CO zones when he talked about Tasha: Even though they don't get a buff, units in the zone can still charge her power up. Even if, say a rocket, isn't getting the buffs, but it is in the zone of Tasha, you still build up your CO power. If I'm not mistaking, every 10 unit damage (including infantry kills by the way), the bar fills to two. After three kills, the CO zone increases. For Tasha, it's best to probably move your units as a whole or be with your indirect to help build the zone. Once the indirect has done its turn, move Tasha to the front lines and try to score a kill. Then support her with a ground tank unit to prevent her from being shot. Gage: Keep in mind, they also change how bridges work. Now, your naval units CAN move into it. This is most likely due to the fact that you're still in the seas, so how is the ship not able to traverse under the bridge? :P The funny thing with this is you can do something illogically stupid, say, putting a sub that is submerged on the bridge lol Forscythe: Keep in mind, if your unit is able to kill something, they rank up. You could have a unit hit another to soften the blow and then have a stronger unit go for the killing blow and they rank up. Remember: Rank up also increases their strength. Waylon: I could give my two cents on this (especially since you pointed out on Eagle's 'horrible' CO power in AW2 :P). Air defense. When is the last time you hear defenses on the air? Aside from Isabella and a few others that buffs units in general, not much. Waylon is a bit tricky since, yes his air units are vulnerable to anti-air and fighters, but they aren't going to get shot down fast. Transport copters become road blocks. You could move your unit that's carrying an infantry, drop them off on one side of the T.copter, and then use the T.Copter to block the enemy from advancing. It is INSANELY hard to take his units down that's on the air. Also, rigs. Suspecting he'll mention it on Greyfield, so will hold that comment for a bit :P But to turn on the tables, you're pulling your units back on a Wingman. It becomes a mindgame. What if he doesn't use it? What if he does? Are you going to let those cities fall just because of Waylon's wingman? I mean you could try to shoot him, but the moment someone knows he's going down, POP wingman. Then your units are exposed. You play around the opponent's expectation and that can lead to a devastating blow. I think you have to do like Sonja did and just play around your opponent's expectations. By playing mindgames, you will throw your opponent off. Greyfield: Getting back to rigs, there's one indirect effect that the rigs do and this is something that could help out, even on ground: Coverage. If you let the rig build a temp airport, sure you don't get the funds, but you essentially build a forest for your ground units. If you position it on the map that could help your indirect units move into the temp airport, you could also give them the defenses by hiding them there. Temp ports also is interesting. Normally, your ships, outside of transport and gunboats, can't traverse through the beach. With the temp port, though, your ships now have an extra space to move into. Also, they are hidden. Putting that with the carrier can also be pretty insane. Commence the attack with your sea planes and then have the carriers dock there. When they are done, they'll go back to the carrier. They are also hidden, so your opponent needs to do something to spot them. Also, one thing, with the temp airport/port, the units movement is also lessened. So in a plain movement, recons are slowed down. But in a temp airport? Their unit can traverse over it to scout further. Tabitha: There's one counter you can do, but it's going to take a lot: Indirect units. Take into consideration that the CO power does not build up if the commander is under attack and they did no damage. The only time you do is when any unit in the CO zone does damage to the opponent, including your commander. Respond fast on her big units. A wartank? Get anti-tanks. A bomber? Get fighters/duster. A fighter? You could surround the CO with your units and they can't do anything outside of deleting their unit. Caulder: Funny you should mentioned that since, while it is a bit broken at times, may I present to you: War Room Challenge. You could simulate it and see who's stronger: Sturm or Caulder (not completely reliable since Caulder, you can spam the CO power to 'load' him up and it costs no money to do that). If I had the choice: Possibly Caulder. The reason why is because right off the bat, you get 50% Offense and Defense. Not only that, but that whole Meteor Strike thing that Sturm does? You could have Caulder go on defense and use something as a Duster to have his most expensive units get hit by the meteor and then the next day, he'll recover the units. Sturm isn't going down without a fight, though, since his units have the global buff, so nothing to sneeze at. The thing that's a HUGE kicker for Caulder: His extra cost to load is just the same as the others. So, if you really wanted to, just deploy a recon and have him go for the throat. In the main campaign, I've seen him being loaded in Dusters/Fighters. Much like Forescythe, rally your units and have him go on something really mobile.
I'd like to see a video about the Days of Ruin units and how they compare to the Dual Strike and earlier games. DoR had a pretty different unit mix, with Bikes, Dusters and that damn Anti-Tank (what a pain!). I also liked the Aircraft Carrier, fun unit to use, as well as Battleships getting a sweet buff.
I don’t play competitive, but they always seemed to have ridiculous defense and clogged up choke points. The low movement is definitely a weakness, though.
@@Jfrost9101 They're two very different units for completely different purposes. Recons are more expensive for their mobility, firepower, and defence over Bikes, and while Bikes can capture they just don't have the vision. Bikes do get interesting on plains compared to Recon because of their tire types though, so it really comes down to what unit is for what job.
In case you were interested in specific numbers, *Wingman* gives your air units a 270% boost to Defense. Yes, you read that right, *two hundred and seventy percent*. When combined with the +30% you get from his day-to-day, that means that his air units have QUADRUPLE defense during Wingman.
@@greg_mca It's the same formula as AW 1 and 2 Fire Power. Say your anti-air deals 10 dmg, with 20% Power Increase, you multiply by 1.2, meaning it now deals 12 dmg. So, Wingman, it multiplies the health of his units by 2.7, (+0,4 because CO power) So the copters would have 31 hp (10 x 3.1). Now the copter takes that 12 dmg, so it ends up with 19 hp, displaying a 6 or 6/10 hp (since is around a 40% decrease and units hp is displayed in 100% and multiples of 10%)
I was going to say check WarsWorldNews (www.warsworldnews.com/wp/aw4/co-aw4/waylon/), but that is wrong. But yeah, the game value is 300% Defense to the air units during his CO Power. Well +310% if you count the default.
Greyfield's CO Power seems to be build exactly for Sea Planes. Since those things run out of fuel as fast as they run out of ammo, popping it allows you to continue the offensive (If you're willing to let a sea plane hang around), giving the plane one or two more turns before it has to return to refuel. Just don't overextend it, or it'll run out of fuel on the trip back!
I actually liked Days of Ruin more than the other games. It felt like the old games told there nice little story and with dual strike overstayed there prime. Days of ruin was something fresh mature and the themes of the Co's were crazy good. I would love to see another game like that.
I liked all of them but Days of ruin in my opinion is my favorite one. One of the main reason why I liked days of ruin better was because it’s more strategic based and frankly I just liked the story better. Days of ruin is criminally underrated.
@@Ubersupersloth Advance Wars By Web, basically lets you play online against others with any co from 1, 2, and DS. COs from 1 or 2 use their 2 iterations, COs from DS use how they are in DS.
I may be alone on this, but I actually prefer Days of Ruin's graphics over the classic series. I get that most people scoff at gray-brown aesthetics because they feel too Call-of-Dutyiesque, but when I think of war games, I really don't like cartoonish graphics. Maybe if Days of Ruin had more greenery it could be both more realistic as well as more colorful, but remember that it's a plot point that the athmosphere was altered.
I think the biggest problem with graphics is the battle animations. They’re... lacking. I think more people would forgive the gritty color scheme if the animations didn’t look like animated cardboard.
@@Davtwan I think they are just as good. Sure they are more static but the screen shake, sound design and sound effects more than compensate. Also some animations look better especially the naval units which now actually break up and sink.
Also, no matter whether Forscythe is good or not, the fact that he's clearly inspired by Robert E. Lee makes him awesome in my book. I also like the way they mechanically show his old age and experience - he *starts* at the maximum CO zone instead of having to level up into it, and indeed *can't* level up at all, because he's already learned as much as he's ever going to.
Isabella and Forsythe get 20 attack and defence in practice, 10 from the universal CO boost (which is hidden) and another 10 from their own bonus. Penny is the only CO that doesn't have CO Zone bonus and only gets the universal boost.
In terms of a challenge between Sturm vs Caulder, I recommend looking up an AW2 mod called "War Room Challenge" by Xenesis. It is simply a collection of very difficult to S rank maps for veteran players to try and complete. It does a few balances of the CO's but more importantly they actually incorporated Caulder into it. Thus, you can do a match of Caulder vs Sturm.
I never played Days of Ruin, and when you said Caulder's abilities my eyes literally opened up more like never before An AW1 Max BUT with his ability affecting all types of units, with 50% more defence (which is even better than firepower), no flaws at all, and that can heal 5 whole fucking HP in a wide area every single turn? And I thought Sturm was scary Jesus freaking Christ
Tabitha is generally considered closer to C tier and for good reason. She doesn't charge on counterattacks. You really can just suicide infantry/mechs/etc into her to give her no power charge and deny her the ability to go on the attack. Also, don't pop firestorm when you get it. Firestorm's strength is that with a CO zone of 2, nothing can get to Tabitha through the extreme defense of her units. Any efforts to push through her will require an INCREDIBLY dense concentration of force... which you can immediately respond to with firestorm into a total wipe. So long as you have firestorm and a defensive blockade around Tabitha, there really is very little the enemy can do to stop the snowball, and if they do actually muster a force to push into you, firestorm stops that immediately. Also, common Tabitha strategy is to put her in a recon or other fast unit and bully out captures early. the enemy loses funds with how badly you stall them, and they HAVE to respond immediately or you threaten zone.
Not sure if this was addressed, but, as someone who plays Waylon a lot, he works really well, but he is a bit of an odd CO as he demands a very different playstyle for an Air specialist. Namely, Waylon is a CO that you want to take a super defensive line with, adjusting your playstyle so as to maximize his benefits. Basically, to be the best Waylon you can be, you literally need to become Waylon. That means... 1. Avoid trouble and act like a jerk. Always park your units just outside of the enemy range, but always in a location that can threaten something they have. Ideally, they will also be within your CO Zone. Force the enemy to attack you first, but always be in a position to attack them in return. Waylon flies around acting like a jerk, so do as he does and annoy your opponent whenever you can. 2. Don't be afraid to sacrifice your Ground and Naval units to charge your CO Zone. Waylon didn't care much for his men, so neither should you. Shield your Air units with your other units and generously use indirect-combat units to cover for them and force your enemy to trade poorly with you. Even if he is an Air specialist, his Ground and Naval game is still important. 3. Be a total 130% coward, just like Waylon. Once you have the CO Unit, keep him out of battles if possible. Whereas other CO Units can see some combat and leverage their boosts to take out key units, Waylon's CO Unit should never actively pick fights. Exclusively use other units within the CO Zone to do your fighting. Try to only attack with Waylon himself as a last resort, or if he's safe after the attack. 4. Don't be too quick to use his CO Power. Wingman is great, but so is a 4-square CO Zone, especially when we're playing like the cowardly jerkface we all know and love. The boost is not insignificant, so you can pressure very hard with a 4-square CO Zone and a healthy supply of Air units. Wingman should be saved for decisive strikes where you can potentially dismantle large portions of the enemy army. I've had tons of success with him by playing Waylon like I was Waylon. I still think he's a B-Rank at best, however. The A-Rank girls still give him some trouble, and he'll usually lose to a not-incompetent Caulder, but he's definitely able to take games off the other C-Ranks (except for Penny; she should be B-Rank because of her huge CO Zone and how powerful weather can be for her, easily offsetting the advantages the other B-Rank and C-Ranks have).
I only played this game in the AW series, and my favorite unit to put my CO into was the seaplane, with Caulder and Tabitha being my favorite COs. Since it's essentially a more powerful fighter but with less ammo and fuel, I'd then just wizz around the map one-shotting enemy units.
I would love a "design tier list" where you said your opinions about CO music, design and flavour for each CO(how it complement and work in tandem with mechanics)
Advance Wars Days of Ruin is the only AW game I have played and owned and I really like it, I have played it on and off every year but I have never had the chance to play against other people, still I am happy that my favorite CO Isabella (or Catleia as she is known in Spanish) is ranked so highly, was a bit worried that the fact she only gives the basic CO bonus on a area that is not that big might dock her points but it has to be recognized that her CO power is insane. I certainly hope Nintendo might someday decide to remaster the game as I actually liked the artstyle and the animations of this one, would certainly like to actually test my strategies for this game against other people.
I'm the exact same but in the UK. I always played Catleia unless I wanted to go on a rampage with Stolos. Her abilities make battleships absolutely ludicrous
As someone who often came to your channel to watch your AW content, being the type of guy who looked up your old playthroughs, the ones where you started every video with a rhyme, this new wave of content is a blessing. Seeing you mention the fun fact about Waylon's theme that has been on that video since time immemorial was the icing on the cake for this one, loved it.
I was playing the DOR campaign recently and in the 1st tabitha mission she put herself in a fighter and so I baited her in with a bomber and infantry walled her CO unit for the mission. It was hilarious
On top of all it's other issues, the main reason Days of Ruin never sold well is that Nintendo's primary market is Japan, especially for tactics games. Days of Ruin _NEVER RELEASED_ in Japan. It just got pushed back and pushed back and pushed back until it was canceled.
@@CSDragon Well yeah but you can get points fairly easily by buying other things, but fair point I'd still consider that a "release" though I just feel the way you worded it makes is seem like they never got it, which is false
It sounds like Defense is calculated linearly at first but then flattens horizontally as a “curve.” (I put it in quotes because it’s probably more like a bunch of smaller linear lines that _look_ like a curve.) No doubt this is done due to Javier from the third game.
I think the real downer when it comes to battle animations is the fact that despite featuring a handful of factions devs only made two sets of unit designs, we say goodbye to Yellow Comet and Green Earth fighting some kind of super space invaders in the form of Black Hole, instead we get watered down conflict with only the notOrange Star vs notBlue Moon, despite IDS definitely fitting the bill for this game's Black Hole. More realistic tone also hurts a bit because seeing far less caricaturistic Abrams tanks fighting IS-2s is far more silly than their more comical predecessors.
Yeah, as a long time AW player, I was super disappointed by the vehicle designs. The fact they made so few and they looked so badly matched to each other sucked bad. A shame I haven't seen a proper attempt to port over the DoR units to the Wars World style. Though it admittedly would be a lot of effort.
Yeah, at least a little bit of variety would have helped. Keep the New Rubinelle Army looking the same, as well as the Lazarian's. Old Rubinelle could have had a more warn/adapted look. Maybe even a slight hint of Mad Max crap since they're always on the move in a post-apocalyptic world. Of course, IDS could have had an experimental Tech look.
I guess I'll take a thematic stab at it. AW2's aesthetics were all based off of WW2 and WW2 aesthetics of the 2 largest nations of each faction (USA, Soviet Union, Germany and Japan). From the looks of the video, they kind of ditched the latter two and made it look more like the two major Cold War factions which kind of fits in a post-apocalyptic universe.
Yeah that is unfortunate but I do think the story presentation is far better. Since they have all those high quality background illustrations and music pieces that create a sense of atmosphere and place that the previous games never had.
As a Days of Ruin player myself, I would have to say that everything rated is mostly true, the powers, the strats used for each co, the counters to them and the arguments on a CO rating. The only one thing I am a bit against is Penny's rating, BUT as said in "Clear Weather" docks her down a lot. Snow can devastate the early capture game for players, especially when there is mountains and rivers, and hard counters players that go for a spamming mech rush, not going to be able to do much when mechs only go 1 space. Had someone attempt the mech spam rush while it snowed, his units got blown away by my artillery. Rain can completely catch your player opponent off guard if they don't prepare flares, and the sandstorm just gives a defense buff to Penny's units as said. Penny is my Favorite CO, but she's very situational and does require some higher level of skill to play. Tabitha is/was the most popular choice of the online gameplay, extremely strong. "Put Tabitha in Recon and Wreck the capture game..." It's a very effective strategy in smaller maps with a road straightway to the enemy base. Just setting the enemy back from capturing a building or two for two turns in the early game can hurt them economically, usually they won't get a tank out until the third or fourth turn... if they choose to scrap the early capture game a bit. But the third turn you should have her at +1 CO zone with a tank coming to the frontline to support her vs other tanks. Can either just have her run around blowing up infantry in hopes of power up fully, use her as a buff support or use her as a distraction for a couple turns as the enemy focuses her instead of capturing. If she's alive long enough and you have a better unit to place her by next turn, just sacrifice her by doing a purposely putting her in harms range. Put Tabitha in Anti-Air and she can be a credible threat to standard tanks and other lighter vehicles, and she will zero any infantry or air units. As for using her power when she gets it, really depends on the CO's health. If you're CO is mostly likely going to be killed, use it! If not hold onto to it until for a good push or when you're gonna die! Caulder a bit mixed about him, to be honest. Yeah he's OP... but only truly OP if he has the economy and units to back him up... which you need ECONOMY to build said units and keep them repaired. Since he doesn't have a CO power, I usually just send recon units to kamikaze him when he's out of a resupply range/tile when he's in a war tank. Once he's out of ammo for the main cannon then he's not really an issue vs even the standard tanks. Just swarm around him with tanks or Un-targetable units, fill his CO zone +1 tile, and deal damage to him but don't kill him to drain the players starting funds. Not going to do much with a Caulder in a tank with only a machine gun vs other tanks, oh he healed 5 on his war tank... but only has 10 buildings? He just wasted half his funds to repair, so he can't really build much. I just purposely trap him and exploit his power mechanic. Tabitha at least has a scary game changing CO power that you did not want to have her power up at any cost. I've had friends having to delete Caulder when trapped, just to escape, and that's a painfully delete too, LOL. Just lucky that he was not available in online nintendo network random play. Of course, as always it depends on the skill level of the opponent you're facing. I will say that I was a bit disappointed that you couldn't play as The Beast, they could've made him like Flak LOL.
Mangs, there's this super talented AW guy, XenesisXenon, who managed to modify AW2 to contain all CEOs from all games, which I think also adds Caulder as a playable guy. Dunno if he added field-commanders, but if he did it could be a cool match up.
i've got an idea on how to make Tasha and Waylon work. load these CO into a ground unit, i recommend a rocket and surround it with tanks. then you build a bunch of air units and spread them out while using your ground units to build up the CO meter. once the CO meter is full use it to have your air units unleash hell on your enemy across the entire map.
The days of ruin by web has been found! Its called tinywars online! And its a lot more polished than AWBW, it has CO music and the website is really clean a nice. Though the website is in chinese at the start but theres a english option on the side.and it also requires and account to do anything, apart from that is great! Ps: The CO music must be selected in the options, it doesnt choose on its own, also thers seems to be some custom CO's which dont seem as good as the OG's tho i havent played for long.
To answer your question about playing DoR online, when Nintendo shut down services for their old DS games some fans decided to host their own servers instead. It's just like playing classic Phantasm Star Online today, and it works for most DS games, including DoR. All you need to do is go into the Wi-Fi settings for the game and change your connection's DNS settings to the fan server's address. (I don't recall DoR specifically. You'd have to look that up.) This even works for emulators that support internet connections, like MelonDS. (Edited for clarity and to fix my bad grammar.)
Days of Ruin was my introduction to Advanced Wars, it’s funny how biases work too because of this fact, the initial Advanced Wars feel very cartoony and less impactful to me and I was never able to get into them, that’s just my heavily biased opinion though
Longtime fans of Mangs who watch say... regularly 1/7 of the videos (not just advance wars ones) will quickly understand days of ruin even if they missed out the Advance Wars Days of Ruin specific videos. Just plop a unit on a property and then put your CO in. Now you got a Groove.
Hello Mangs! Thanks for making this video! I really love the AW series (too bad i suck at it!) and i´ve finally found someone who loves it and explained all the games and CO´s! DoR videos are hard to find and you did such great work! Keep´em coming, i'll watch them all! Best regards from Brazil!
You were so distraught discussing the strengths of seaplanes during Greyfields review that you missed that he can make much better use of Bcopters, cruisers can carry two of them and keep them protected the from Anti air, I was weylon on an earlier game with Bcopters but If I was fielding only choppers I might as well had played Greyfield instead.
You definitely should talk more about DoR! There are lot of things to talk. Like the new unit, unit buff debuff, new mechanic, new direction of story, and what the AW series could learn from DoR. From your video I could see that you want to talk more but because it is CO tier list video, you have to go back to the topic. Kinda feels you are holding back.
I've never played days of ruin, but with the defense thing if I had to guess, I imagine they would've finally made defense multiplicative rather than additive like it was before. So instead of adding up 20%+ 30%+ 50% to get 100% defense which makes you completely invulnerable, you'd apply each one separately instead. 20% defense means you take 80 damage instead of 100, then take away 30% of that to get 48 damage, and then finally 50% to cut that in half and leave you with 24, or 76% damage reduction. At lower levels of defense this doesn't really change much (10 + 10 just goes from 20% defense to 19%), but it makes it where no matter how much defense you stack you'll never be completely invincible (which is why I'm guessing they changed it)
I'm definitely one of those fans that holds Days of Ruin as a favorite of the series. I think it had the best characters, best story, and I even thought the animations were better honestly.
Totally agree with you. It has some issues: balance of the CO's, cut content (No Warroom, advanced Campaign), MP games become stally easier compared to the previous titles, but still one of the best games I've ever played.
On Sturm vs Caulder: If we got the ability, I would like to see it. Each CO would have to play by his own rules, though. Sturm would be AW2 version, while Caulder would be his version from Days of Ruin. This does mean that they would operate under slightly different rules. Sturm's +20% Defense is 20% damage reduction, while Caulder's +50% defense is roughly equivalent to 33% damage reduction. Sturm's Meteor Strike does counter the death blob pretty well, since it will cover most of the CO Zone, and those 2-hp units, even with their +Defense will still die since they are so weakened. So Sturm would be outperformed day-to-day but stronger during his Power turn so long as the meteor's positioning does not screw him over by hitting something off to the side instead of where it needs to hit. Overall, I think that it will probably depend on the map size. Sturm has the advantage on larger maps, as Caulder's Zone boost cannot be everywhere at once, but on small maps or maps with hard chokepoints, Caulder will win pretty hard on the day-to-day. Though, it is worth noting that Sturm's global 120/120 units will perform better against Caulder in general, than basically any CO's units in Days of Ruin would, especially since Caulder's units have no bonus outside of his zone. But it requires more thought, like against Andy in AW2 you have to kill Caulder's units, rather than weaken them, to be effective.
Love this video. Thank you for the refresher on the gameplay and world differences in DoR. I played it upon release and really enjoyed it, but didn't play through it as much as 1, 2, or DS.
Waylon has a huge capping power, think about 30% defense boost to a transport copter and just surrounding it with more battle/transport copters, you could probably troll aggressive players with it
I actually do have an idea for Caulder's CO Power. In lore, he attempts to tempt Forsythe with a device that will essentially win him the conflict against Brenner with the press of a button. Forsythe rejects this of course, but I have tried to think of what sort of device he'd offered. My first idea was "Your Opponent is locked out of moving with any of their units" and while that would be considered a dishonorable way to win, it'd fit the "insane scientist with evil-genius levels of tech" that we're going for. Recently though, I've managed to come up with something even more twisted. When Caulder pops this CO Power, his opponents lose *all* fuel and ammo reserves. This I think would almost work better because that combined with making the CO Zone global for a turn would work thematically as a "I just win" button, and it fits Caulder's cruelty to watch the will to fight leave his opponent as their air and naval investments are rendered worthless and their push comes to a complete and utter halt in front of his 180/180 units.
I watched all of this... and as a person who has played AW:DoR since 2010 up to today... Your rankings are all justified and I feel you landed this effectively. My personal favorite CO has to be Brenner because he feels balanced. and his CO theme feels so "Justice" like lol.
Something extremely important to point out, because I didn't think about this until I simulated a match between Sturm and Caulder. The damage formula from AW and AW2 makes Caulder unstoppable, because the way defense works in those games in comparison to Days of Ruin is completely different. With a Caulder boosted 160/160 unit on a city or a mountain with the damage formula from AW2, you can't touch him since it's a flat percentage reduction in damage. So on a mountain an infantry would take 0% damage from anything at all times, because 100% protection, no matter how big the number, is still a 100% reduction in damage. So even at 1,000,000% damage, reducing it by 100% of it's value will make it 0%. However, if you use the damage formula from Days of Ruin, suddenly your chances of beating Caulder become much more viable. Because instead of a flat reduction in percentage, the formula simply divides by an integer. So if you had 20% defense, instead of multiplying the damage by 80%, you would divide by 1.2 instead. This makes a huge difference. So if you have 1,000,000% damage, and the opponent has 100% extra defense using the DoR formula, 1,000,000 ÷ 2 is still 500,000% damage, instead of 0% damage if you simply removed 100% of the damage. So now instead of an infantry on a mountain taking 0% damage in Caulder's CO zone, the infantry would instead take around 34% against a Sturm infantry with Sturm's damage bonus using the DoR formula, which makes taking down Caulder much more feasible.
I remember when I played this game, I just mained Tabitha in all the cpu matches I did. Putting her in one of the big tanks and just well.... walk over every enemy for fun. Though the AI was still terrible and you could win with literatlly just spamming bike infantry and your CO literally did not matter I just loved her in the tank tanking entire armies
Did you know that Sturn was so powerfull in advance wars 1 & 2 that he is the reason why almost all of humanity was wiped out in days of ruin? To balance this out, he was killed in black hole rising. Trust me my uncle works at intelligence systems, he has confirmed this.
I know I’m late to this but defence works with the same sort of calculation as offence. A 100% defence boost will halve your damage like how a 100% offence boost doubles it. So if your offence is the same as their defence then you deal a normal amount of damage compared to barely any in previous games
From what I’ve heard, the way people deal with Tabitha is to not engage with her CO unit at all, and instead “bully” the units around her. Basically shut down the rest of the army. Think basketball, where you let the superstar get his points but shut down the role players. Tabitha can’t win the entire fight with just her unit, so you make it just her unit.
Greyfield being D tier is extremely fitting considering that, canonically, he's a really shitty CO. Lin even calls him out for it, says that he was mediocre at best.
Him being money hungry also works honestly, he doesn’t strike me as someone who is good with a tight budget
He is good in maps that have combined weapons(air and sea units), but if its only one type or two and not the three he is pointless, specially without sea.
But in my guess, the worst CO in the game is in fact "no CO"
And his specialization being what it is kind of fits too. Where he only excels when he is in a dominant position anyway. When things get tough he can't do anything.
*INSOLENCE! I WANT THAT EGG EXECUTED!*
It's a dumb little addition, but I love how the CO is inside the bar in combat on normal units but has their full picture during battle when they're in the unit.
It's not dumb, it's attention to detail and it's ingenious as you can tell at a glance if the CO is in the unit or not both in combat or on the field screen :)
Thinking about their abilities, and these tiers you made, it makes me wonder how deliberate all of these are. Waylon is a cowardly pilot whose abilities are all defensive and meant to keep his sorry ass alive, Tasha is blinded by revenge so her abilities are all offensive and largely make her ineffective (as you'd expect of someone so obsessed with revenge they weren't thinking straight), Grayfield is all but outright stated to have been a crappy wannabe soldier before the apocalypse and so is largely ineffective without massive support, Penny is a batshit insane broken girl whose CO powers are weird, unlike any other, and entirely random and unpredictable, Lin the cold analytical strategist has the stat boosts of both the heroism-obsessed Will and Brenner combined but they're slower to work since she's more reluctant to rush in and spends more time gathering intel, Isabella is out of place compared to the other COs but is insanely effective at movement and ranged attacks which makes sense if you consider her backstory (no spoilers) and how she has encyclopedic knowledge of how units work and move, Tabatha's abilities are focused on affecting herself with her other units being an afterthought, Gage whose quiet and focused on getting the job done is largely designed to just quickly build up an offensive and take the opponent down from a distance as quickly and effectively as possible, Forsythe who is an honorable man who doesn't fight dirty is designed to just be largely effective overall in any scenario and focuses on long-term buffs to all his troops without sacrificing that for a quick dirty strike with a CO power (or is perhaps too old to use one now), and of course Caulder is OP as fuck since he's the final boss.
Maybe I'm overthinking it and drawing conclusions from coincidences, but it's like the developers actually didn't care about balance or tiers or anything, and were focused 100% on giving them abilities that fit their personalities and backgrounds. It might even explain why you don't actually get to pick which COs you want to use in the campaign and are forced to use a specific CO for each mission, and maybe the reason they added a no CO option to VS mode was they knew the character were unbalanced.
Nah it's absolutely deliberate.
Gage is a sniper too, hence the indirect buffs
Lin only effects ground units though. Brenner effects land air and sea.
well, i think it makes sense to an degree that youre not gonna have the best of the best NCOs anymore after the world fell to ruin, youre barely going to still have leaders that are better then randomly selected soldiers baptized by fire
maybe you dont even have those anymore.
wait, what about Brenner and Will?
to paraphrase Whoisthisgit's view on Waylon, "to play waylon well, you have to become Waylon" stay just out of the enemy range and push them back, while growing your CO zone in the process, using it when you have pushed them back far enough to cut through their defences.
Just use a bullshit amount of bombers and battle copters
Yeah, if the opponent keeps his anti air out of range, you can basically push him back with the threat of his power.
So just 8th Air Force the enemy into oblivion?
Love the irony.
The STORY says that Finn is irresponsible, selfish, and rides his men to their deaths for thrills and comfort; all too eager to sacrifice them to save his own skin.
The GAMEPLAY makes Finn into a defensive air commander who relies on supporting his wingmen by leading the line from the front, refusing to be too cavalier and instead pushing forward gradually, minimising casualties while bottling the enemy, then popping his Power to make a sudden, explosive wildcat strike on enemy air defenses while minimising friendly losses. Sure, he'd still sack a friendly to save himself, but even O'Brian would do the same.
Finn and Zadia should have had each other's kits. Maybe Finn was planned to be a completely different kind of man earlier in the scriptwriting?
Use a lot of indirects and make sure that they are on Waylon CO zone (the air units have high movility so is not that hard) and when you are close to get wingman (bad company) buy a lot of air units to do a big push
DoR had the misfortune of coming out at the wrong time, and coming out on a console that couldn't really handle what they wanted. I actually liked how they reinvented the series, and gameplay wise it needed a shake-up because it didnt change all that much from AW to Dual Strike.
And though it's a small thing, i at least never got the feeling of "why are we throwing away people in a horrible meatgrinder while being so cheerful" that the other AW games had.
One thing I really like is that you can annihilate half your enemy's army, and NOT have to suffer them wasting your time with their superpower afterward, because this game doesn't reward you for losing like the previous ones. No global health draining CO who starts with a huge mass of expensive units, forcing you to let them repeatedly kick you in the shin no matter how hard they're beaten.
I'll have to agree Days Of Ruin is my Favorite Advance Wars game.
I don’t mind them treating war as the serious and messed up thing that it is, or that they explored new gameplay stuff. I just wish they did it using the old esthetics and characters, as the dissonance between colourful characters and graphics with the real consequences of war could’ve been quite powerful. Would’ve also been cool if they explored the ideologies of each individual nations, what they actually fought for, and how the morals of the individual COs either lined up, clashed or got challanged by the very nations they fought for. Could’ve been really interesting.
Instead we just got drab late 2000’s esthetics that felt like a fruitless attempt to rope in the CoD crowd. Which, fine, it’s very much a product of its time. It’s just bot what I personally wished for. Though I do still respect game devs who dare to challenge what they’ve done previously and try something new, without feeling limited or trapped by their established audience.
i had never heard of it until I watched this channel
I played all the other AW games tho as they came out and I even had a DS and 3DS but this game never came to my attention smh.
not sure what happened there
It mostly suffered from the characters being overly generic: Lin is the only one that really stands out. Dual Strikes suffered from much the same, but it had the excuse of having too many characters to develop.
Penny: "Darude!"
Will: "What?"
*Random Sandstorm appears*
Will: "Oh..."
Time for the Seizure Procedure!
AW1 : "what's an airport again?"
AW:DOR : "what's a war crime again?"
War Crimes? You mean trolling the enemy?
If there is no geneva, then no one can uphold the standard
War Crimes? I call them "suprise tactics".
War crimes? The only law is the beasts law
@@freetimeidiot4541 "prime tactics"
I wish The Beast from campaign was a CO.
Always felt like he should've been a spiritual successor to Sami and have him have capture game related traits and abilities (cause hes a raider).
Absolutely agree. Or make him the true Flak, high offense, more ammo use or something, I dunno.
@@kittogashi8561 Maybe 1* offense and defense for infantry, and lower starting fuel, but defeating an enemy with a unit replenishes a bit of ammo and fuel on them? Something not crazy, so he still eases you in, but playing in to his raider aesthetic and setting him apart a bit.
I feel like the game really suffered from introducing CO mechanics way late. They tried to focus on the narrative and that's nice and all, but that wasted a lot of potential. Having the Beast roam around in a recon buffing his units would have been a nice place to introduce it.
@@Jfrost9101 Weird but thematic. Mebbe add recons to his specialty, make him a fast starter.
according to tv tropes, lorewise The beast was a sergent before the meteor strike so, some ranks lower than CO, maybe that is the reason that he didnt have a co power
Here to clear up some misinformation: the 10% attack and defense from CO zone is applied BEFORE any benefits from the CO themselves, so, 1 star is functionally a 20% boost, meaning Isabella's zone does make her units stronger than say, a Gage zone with no indirects.
And one thing too about fog of war iirc you dont need to be adjacent on the building to reveal it you can have a unit path pass it and reveal it by just passing it
@@localmilkanyoulocalmilkan3930 That isn't just buildings, every unit scouts the entire path they move along and the extra vision is lost when your turn ends.
The 10/10 also applies to all units and not just the one the CO boosts, which is sometimes an important feature.
This confused me a lot about his Isabella analysis since I was sure she had a moderate boost to everything.
So Forsythe gives 20/20 to all of his units in CO zone then? In that case he might be better then he seems.
Ah yes, Days of Ruin. The second best Advanced Wars game, only losing out to the true king, Battalion Wars II. Another IS game with some chick named Lin and some dude nicknamed the Beast that I played a bit too much as a kid.
Always had a good time with it, despite getting trashed by my buddy's Isabella after school.
Thank you for reminding me of Batallion Wars.
**runs off to download them both**
Lin... Lyn
The Beast... Batta the Beast...
I need help
Ok but when are we getting battalion wars tier list kappa
Ah Battalion Wars good game lots of memories
Battalion Wars.
Nice.
The music in this game is genuinely incredible.
lin's theme... all the badass themes i wish got a fucking clean remaster man
Weird. I really don't like the Days of Ruin soundtrack, with a couple exceptions. It was the weakest part of the game for me. A lot of tracks just sounded to me like they were trying to compensate for a lack of material by turning up the distortion.
Requesting Mangs rate all CO themes again 😂
@@AaronRotenberg somethings wrong with your ears, or you dont like rock and techno.
Tbh the biggest issue I have with the OST is that we never got a high quality version of them, just the crusty DS quality ones.
Fun fact: the composers of the CO themes in this game also did the soundtrack for Paper Mario Thousand Year Door. Yoshito Hirano and Yuka Tsujiyoko.
Does explain the bangin soundtracks
Oh huh. You know I can kinda hear it.
I can definitely hear it, especially in the themes of Caulder and his children.
@@SomeFreakingCactus I hear a little of ttyd's doopliss theme in penny's theme
No wonder they both slap.
So, we've gone through every CO, over every game in the franchise, ranking them to the best of his ability, going over what works in AW and what doesn't, and seeing where the ideas come to a head in the right ways. What's next?
I'd honestly like to see Mangs take a crack at *designing* a CO at this point. Maybe something he'd like to see, or something he feels like never got to be put into use. I dunno, seeing Mangs theorycraft some new niche would be enjoyable for me, at least.
Ok now that’s all over. Mangs. We demand you make a waifu CO tier list!
What about the husbando tier list?
Yes!
He should do this for his 90k special
@@aasgier9091 Every husbando is a waifu to me and I won't accept other outcome.
@@aasgier9091 Put 'em together. "How Babe/Hunk Are the Advance Wars CO's?"
14:34 he said it, he said Lyn was broken
clip the audio, put a Lyn jpeg and victory is assured.
Well, she is hecking cute and valid.
He says a lot of things are "broken" when he actually means "strong," and when he says "very strong," he usually just means "solid." He exaggerates a lot.
Lyn is a liar, everyone from Sacae is broken
We're gonna see memes of this on his next stream, aren't we?
I honestly really like the animations for this game. They definitely don't move as better as the originals, but the camera view that makes all the vehicles look tall, angled, and imposing, and the way larger units almost crumple in on themselves when defeated is very satisfying.
Thia is completely personal, but I didn't really liked that the battle animation used both screens. I like seen the animation front to front, and having one above other felt weird (Maybe except for bombers)
I like the far more liberal use of camera shake and the far larger muzzle blasts and impacts. Especially ships since now they actually break apart and sink rather than just disappearing or drawing back. Guns also fire slower so you can take them in.
That being said in very large and long games with lots of war tanks and battle ships the slow fire can get annoying but usually there is only like 1 or 2 of each unit on the field so it's not a big issue.
I thought the war tank deflating was the only bad animation in the game.
I really like the battle animations here, mostly because the units look more detailed and you can appreciate those sexys T-34 (Lazurian tank), M1 Abrams(Rubinelle Md tanks), Hind-Ds (Laz B-copter) B-52 Stratofortress and A-10s (Rubinelle Bombers and seaplanes)
Those Flaks 88 (both) also get a mention for depicting a rarely seen hardware
I kind of like the balance of Days of Ruin over the OG games. More indirect units,CO powers feel more effective,warships are not useless,etc. CO sniping is a interesting strategy and allows for more interesting strategies.
Navy in DOR actually feel powerful and influential.
Cruisers especially got the biggest underrated buff as they can now attack other boats and are actually tank brawlers worth their cost. AW 1/2/ds cruiser gets zoned out and crippled by a single battlecopter, but the DOR cruiser takes almost no damage from copters and shoots them down in return, even bombers without attack boosts won't completely destroy them and will take enough return fire to take off a lot of their bite against other targets. Meaning cruisers can actually zone out aircraft as long as the enemy isn't massively outvaluing you.
Add the cheap and cheery gunboat that can swarm out to find subs as well as ward off the more pricey units like battleships through numbers and you get actual naval combat that feels like a strategy you can use to win even when aircraft are an option.
@@MrDadhhg Yeah, sea warfare is an actual option in DoR. A cheap skirmisher unit that's even cheaper than black boats were, cheaper battleships that move, all together it's a lot better to play water than in AW1, 2, DS.
Even though gage isn't that good he's still my favorite due to his theme being so awesome.
He's one of my faves too
i have a simillar thing to jake from dual strike and waylon in this game
For me Lin, Tasha n Tabitha
Days of Ruin was the only AW title with an actual storyline. I watched your old playthrough, and the story is what I will love Days of Ruin for.
"Every character is black and white" - Not Lin
This is my favorite Advance Wars game, btw. Love the gameplay and mature story that has more depth than most AAA games nowadays
69th like 😏
"If you kill me, you're be just as bad as me." "Yeah, guess I am."
The graphics and animations were why the game wasn’t widely accepted, but the mechanics are top tier
One really fun thing about the battle animations for DoR/DC that isn't immediately obvious is that you can actually hold the L/R buttons during them to either speed them up or slow them down, which is pretty cool.
Yeaaah... having a more focus on darker visual, quasi realistic and less is more kind of animation is... kinda not widely accepted when you compared the previous advance war more cartoonist art style (it might be because the Hiroaki, the artist for SNK that tries to match Shinkiro artistic quality kinda influenced it but meh)
@@James-oj6ru It actually sold better than Dual Strike. I wouldn’t say it bombed, really.
I can kinda see Isabella's theme making sense given her origin in the game; she might as well be from an entirely different world from all these seasoned commanders, cut throats and survivors. It's largely a upbeat synthetic song.
Major props for this! This is the game I wished I played but had my handheld stolen.
*emulators intensify*
So, to make Waylon work, you need a very unorthodox air strategy of using your air units to "contain" the enemy, which means "clustering" your air to form a "net" that your opponent cannot profitably approach, since air units are almost always more mobile than ground units. When you have a sufficient force to break the stalemate, pop his CO power and target all anti-air units in range. Anything close to you will be pretty much helpless, and you can mop up the mess the following turn.
That and encirclement tactics with his power. If you can clear a chokepint with a bomber or rockets, and park a duster or battle copter on that choke point with his power active, there is basically nothing the other player can do to get in and support the entrapped units, or stop a capture Waylon starts.
YES
MY DUDE
_THAT MEANS CAN WE GET AN AWBW (IN YOUR OPINION) TIER LIST TO CAP THIS OFF?_
Battalion Wars is more of a squad based shooter and the COs are more for narration. Mangs would have to make a tier list for every UNIT if you want that to happen.
I think he meant Advance Wars By Web
@@HomingRocket1 Nonono my dude, just an AWBW list, as he's mentioned its "official" list he disagrees with; it's also in an interesting position balance-wise by the breadth of COs available, as well as factoring in most likely banned aspects. Mitebcool.
Does awbw change anything?
I thought they use aw2 for everyone that isn't from ds.
@@AlexanderMartinez-kd7cz it changes some things but mostly that AWBW play with a differant ruleset than mangs
14:24 For a moment I read "The 12th Battalion's unfappable second in command".
And I was like, "Are you sure about that?".
"Days of ruin is very white and black with its characters"
Lin: im the grayest person around
To me Lyn is more "Good Is Not Nice/Good Is Not Soft" than morally grey.
@@BigKlingy I agree completely, she KNOWS that the smartest tactical thing may not be moral and chooses to NOT take those options, she advices the best she can given moral limitations, but she HAS moral limitations, strong ones at that. The only time she puts her morals to the side is when she took out Greyfield, choosing to kill him on the spot as an act of revenge, instead of capturing him and holding a trial (in which he would have likely been executed anyways, but the point stands), i.e. bring him to justice.
Petition to rename the lowest Tier level in every game Flak tier in honor of our glorious leader.
Greyfield is better than Flak, though.
Greyfield has no downside, he's just an "average" CO if he can't build a navy, and sitting on a useless power is kinda good.
Flak is just average, with a downside, and very weak powers, also with a downside.
only E rank will be flak tier, so greyfield ain't there
Flak is like Nell with cancer
@@user-ov2kx8ql5i more like under chemotherapy in a hospital during power outage and tightly low budge for bothy personal and equipment
On the comment on Brenner, that's exactly why it's an interesting spin for DoR :P In the trilogy, you get your power and you use it almost right away in many situations. With DoR, especially Brenner, you can simply hold onto it. The positive is that your CO zone is increased, so more of your units get the buff. You don't gain more power, but you keep the zone that you expanded, helping more units on the field. It's a bit of strategy when to use it, but if you don't, you're still fine since you still give the buffs to the units.
Lin is the brains for the Brenner Wolves and even though she can be tough and fall of favor on some people, she is loyal to the Wolves and Brenner. Kind of funny how the CO power and zone play with what the character is. Of course being the brains for the Wolves, she gathers intel, so no shock she can have her units go double time and see hidden units.
NOTE: Recons can still be viable! FoW changed. Notice that the unit doesn't move immediately when you select a space? The mechanic changed. If you have any unit move, their vision carries over EVERY SINGLE SPACE it lands and treats it as a vision. While cities are a great place to hide, the recon can move by the city and expose your units, so be careful! With Lin, if this happens, that one recon unit can give a heavy feedback on the map! Combo this with the flares since they can spot hidden units without being trapped. Once you get a good idea where exactly some of the enemy units are, use the recon to scout.
Isabella learned from both Max and Grit lol. More mobility and then you have Grit's insane coverage. Something I want to point out that's important: Flares also increase their range! So if you are wondering if there are any units hiding, use the flare's increased range from Isabella's CO power to scout before you attack. Once you know how to move around the fog, it can give a pretty insane coverage and scout intel.
Something to add about the CO zones when he talked about Tasha: Even though they don't get a buff, units in the zone can still charge her power up. Even if, say a rocket, isn't getting the buffs, but it is in the zone of Tasha, you still build up your CO power. If I'm not mistaking, every 10 unit damage (including infantry kills by the way), the bar fills to two. After three kills, the CO zone increases. For Tasha, it's best to probably move your units as a whole or be with your indirect to help build the zone. Once the indirect has done its turn, move Tasha to the front lines and try to score a kill. Then support her with a ground tank unit to prevent her from being shot.
Gage: Keep in mind, they also change how bridges work. Now, your naval units CAN move into it. This is most likely due to the fact that you're still in the seas, so how is the ship not able to traverse under the bridge? :P The funny thing with this is you can do something illogically stupid, say, putting a sub that is submerged on the bridge lol
Forscythe: Keep in mind, if your unit is able to kill something, they rank up. You could have a unit hit another to soften the blow and then have a stronger unit go for the killing blow and they rank up. Remember: Rank up also increases their strength.
Waylon: I could give my two cents on this (especially since you pointed out on Eagle's 'horrible' CO power in AW2 :P). Air defense. When is the last time you hear defenses on the air? Aside from Isabella and a few others that buffs units in general, not much. Waylon is a bit tricky since, yes his air units are vulnerable to anti-air and fighters, but they aren't going to get shot down fast. Transport copters become road blocks. You could move your unit that's carrying an infantry, drop them off on one side of the T.copter, and then use the T.Copter to block the enemy from advancing. It is INSANELY hard to take his units down that's on the air. Also, rigs. Suspecting he'll mention it on Greyfield, so will hold that comment for a bit :P But to turn on the tables, you're pulling your units back on a Wingman. It becomes a mindgame. What if he doesn't use it? What if he does? Are you going to let those cities fall just because of Waylon's wingman? I mean you could try to shoot him, but the moment someone knows he's going down, POP wingman. Then your units are exposed. You play around the opponent's expectation and that can lead to a devastating blow. I think you have to do like Sonja did and just play around your opponent's expectations. By playing mindgames, you will throw your opponent off.
Greyfield: Getting back to rigs, there's one indirect effect that the rigs do and this is something that could help out, even on ground: Coverage. If you let the rig build a temp airport, sure you don't get the funds, but you essentially build a forest for your ground units. If you position it on the map that could help your indirect units move into the temp airport, you could also give them the defenses by hiding them there. Temp ports also is interesting. Normally, your ships, outside of transport and gunboats, can't traverse through the beach. With the temp port, though, your ships now have an extra space to move into. Also, they are hidden. Putting that with the carrier can also be pretty insane. Commence the attack with your sea planes and then have the carriers dock there. When they are done, they'll go back to the carrier. They are also hidden, so your opponent needs to do something to spot them. Also, one thing, with the temp airport/port, the units movement is also lessened. So in a plain movement, recons are slowed down. But in a temp airport? Their unit can traverse over it to scout further.
Tabitha: There's one counter you can do, but it's going to take a lot: Indirect units. Take into consideration that the CO power does not build up if the commander is under attack and they did no damage. The only time you do is when any unit in the CO zone does damage to the opponent, including your commander. Respond fast on her big units. A wartank? Get anti-tanks. A bomber? Get fighters/duster. A fighter? You could surround the CO with your units and they can't do anything outside of deleting their unit.
Caulder: Funny you should mentioned that since, while it is a bit broken at times, may I present to you: War Room Challenge. You could simulate it and see who's stronger: Sturm or Caulder (not completely reliable since Caulder, you can spam the CO power to 'load' him up and it costs no money to do that). If I had the choice: Possibly Caulder. The reason why is because right off the bat, you get 50% Offense and Defense. Not only that, but that whole Meteor Strike thing that Sturm does? You could have Caulder go on defense and use something as a Duster to have his most expensive units get hit by the meteor and then the next day, he'll recover the units. Sturm isn't going down without a fight, though, since his units have the global buff, so nothing to sneeze at. The thing that's a HUGE kicker for Caulder: His extra cost to load is just the same as the others. So, if you really wanted to, just deploy a recon and have him go for the throat. In the main campaign, I've seen him being loaded in Dusters/Fighters. Much like Forescythe, rally your units and have him go on something really mobile.
Lin's tummy is definitely top tier
Yesssss
And very cute and Valid.
Tasha's as well.
Yes that's definitely true
Uuoooooohh 😭
I'd like to see a video about the Days of Ruin units and how they compare to the Dual Strike and earlier games. DoR had a pretty different unit mix, with Bikes, Dusters and that damn Anti-Tank (what a pain!). I also liked the Aircraft Carrier, fun unit to use, as well as Battleships getting a sweet buff.
I don’t play competitive, but they always seemed to have ridiculous defense and clogged up choke points. The low movement is definitely a weakness, though.
Sami with bikes isn't real, she can't hurt you.
@A Cool YooToobist One of the things I noticed in my playthroughs Infantry/Mechs take less damage from anti-tanks.
Would be interesting seeing a comparison between, say, Recons and Bikes, and explaining why one is better than the other.
@@Jfrost9101 They're two very different units for completely different purposes. Recons are more expensive for their mobility, firepower, and defence over Bikes, and while Bikes can capture they just don't have the vision. Bikes do get interesting on plains compared to Recon because of their tire types though, so it really comes down to what unit is for what job.
In case you were interested in specific numbers, *Wingman* gives your air units a 270% boost to Defense. Yes, you read that right, *two hundred and seventy percent*. When combined with the +30% you get from his day-to-day, that means that his air units have QUADRUPLE defense during Wingman.
How does that work mathematically? How are the percentages applied?
@@greg_mca It's the same formula as AW 1 and 2 Fire Power. Say your anti-air deals 10 dmg, with 20% Power Increase, you multiply by 1.2, meaning it now deals 12 dmg. So, Wingman, it multiplies the health of his units by 2.7, (+0,4 because CO power) So the copters would have 31 hp (10 x 3.1). Now the copter takes that 12 dmg, so it ends up with 19 hp, displaying a 6 or 6/10 hp (since is around a 40% decrease and units hp is displayed in 100% and multiples of 10%)
I was going to say check WarsWorldNews (www.warsworldnews.com/wp/aw4/co-aw4/waylon/), but that is wrong.
But yeah, the game value is 300% Defense to the air units during his CO Power. Well +310% if you count the default.
Greyfield's CO Power seems to be build exactly for Sea Planes. Since those things run out of fuel as fast as they run out of ammo, popping it allows you to continue the offensive (If you're willing to let a sea plane hang around), giving the plane one or two more turns before it has to return to refuel.
Just don't overextend it, or it'll run out of fuel on the trip back!
It also resupplies materials, IRRC, allowing APCs to set up temp Airports, and Carriers to churn out more sea planes.
I actually liked Days of Ruin more than the other games. It felt like the old games told there nice little story and with dual strike overstayed there prime. Days of ruin was something fresh mature and the themes of the Co's were crazy good. I would love to see another game like that.
I loved the addition of Dusters, they really added much needed depth to air combat.
I liked all of them but Days of ruin in my opinion is my favorite one. One of the main reason why I liked days of ruin better was because it’s more strategic based and frankly I just liked the story better. Days of ruin is criminally underrated.
@@JWonn don't forget seaplanes
"If they merged the two games into one."
Is this a bad time to mention AWBW has ongoing testing of classic AW-style DoR COs?
“AWBW”?
@@Ubersupersloth Advance Wars By Web, basically lets you play online against others with any co from 1, 2, and DS. COs from 1 or 2 use their 2 iterations, COs from DS use how they are in DS.
That sounds fucking sick
wait what?! for real? this is seriously making me consider playing awbw when i got the time
@@gameknight504 yeah, while it takes finagling to get everyone in (co zones for example just aren't a thing), it's still an interesting project
I may be alone on this, but I actually prefer Days of Ruin's graphics over the classic series. I get that most people scoff at gray-brown aesthetics because they feel too Call-of-Dutyiesque, but when I think of war games, I really don't like cartoonish graphics. Maybe if Days of Ruin had more greenery it could be both more realistic as well as more colorful, but remember that it's a plot point that the athmosphere was altered.
I think the biggest problem with graphics is the battle animations. They’re... lacking. I think more people would forgive the gritty color scheme if the animations didn’t look like animated cardboard.
I prefer it on all fronts despite maybe CO variety although it was a good mix
@@Davtwan I think they are just as good. Sure they are more static but the screen shake, sound design and sound effects more than compensate. Also some animations look better especially the naval units which now actually break up and sink.
Also, no matter whether Forscythe is good or not, the fact that he's clearly inspired by Robert E. Lee makes him awesome in my book. I also like the way they mechanically show his old age and experience - he *starts* at the maximum CO zone instead of having to level up into it, and indeed *can't* level up at all, because he's already learned as much as he's ever going to.
General Lee wasn't the one who razed entire towns for siding with his enemies.
Isabella and Forsythe get 20 attack and defence in practice, 10 from the universal CO boost (which is hidden) and another 10 from their own bonus. Penny is the only CO that doesn't have CO Zone bonus and only gets the universal boost.
In terms of a challenge between Sturm vs Caulder, I recommend looking up an AW2 mod called "War Room Challenge" by Xenesis. It is simply a collection of very difficult to S rank maps for veteran players to try and complete. It does a few balances of the CO's but more importantly they actually incorporated Caulder into it. Thus, you can do a match of Caulder vs Sturm.
I never played Days of Ruin, and when you said Caulder's abilities my eyes literally opened up more like never before
An AW1 Max BUT with his ability affecting all types of units, with 50% more defence (which is even better than firepower), no flaws at all, and that can heal 5 whole fucking HP in a wide area every single turn?
And I thought Sturm was scary Jesus freaking Christ
AW1 Max doesn’t buff defenses, Caulder does
In case he wasn’t busted enough
@@BoltTheEmolga Yes I forgot to add that up somehow, I'll edit it now
He's more like a mobile Samurai Spirit that pumps out daily Hyper Upgrades.
The only weakness being that the Hyper Upgrades aren't free.
Me: Mom, can we have Lin at home?
Mom: We have a Lin at home.
Lin at home: Lyn
My jaw actually dropped when you described Caulder's day-to-day
Mine did as well. Caulder's power is broken insanity.
That reaction! Those gestures! Fascinating...
Tabitha is Mangs waifu? Now that's a man of culture right there, and just for that I'll subscribe.
I agree with what you say about the lacklustre animations. But I will say that battleships firing and sinking naval units is satisfying as hell.
I think youre wrong about forsythe and isabella. Im pretty sure their 10% bonuses are _on top_ of the standard 10% every other zone gets
Aparently heah whatever a CO description is ontop of the base 10%
Tabitha is generally considered closer to C tier and for good reason. She doesn't charge on counterattacks. You really can just suicide infantry/mechs/etc into her to give her no power charge and deny her the ability to go on the attack.
Also, don't pop firestorm when you get it. Firestorm's strength is that with a CO zone of 2, nothing can get to Tabitha through the extreme defense of her units. Any efforts to push through her will require an INCREDIBLY dense concentration of force... which you can immediately respond to with firestorm into a total wipe. So long as you have firestorm and a defensive blockade around Tabitha, there really is very little the enemy can do to stop the snowball, and if they do actually muster a force to push into you, firestorm stops that immediately.
Also, common Tabitha strategy is to put her in a recon or other fast unit and bully out captures early. the enemy loses funds with how badly you stall them, and they HAVE to respond immediately or you threaten zone.
Not sure if this was addressed, but, as someone who plays Waylon a lot, he works really well, but he is a bit of an odd CO as he demands a very different playstyle for an Air specialist. Namely, Waylon is a CO that you want to take a super defensive line with, adjusting your playstyle so as to maximize his benefits. Basically, to be the best Waylon you can be, you literally need to become Waylon. That means...
1. Avoid trouble and act like a jerk. Always park your units just outside of the enemy range, but always in a location that can threaten something they have. Ideally, they will also be within your CO Zone. Force the enemy to attack you first, but always be in a position to attack them in return. Waylon flies around acting like a jerk, so do as he does and annoy your opponent whenever you can.
2. Don't be afraid to sacrifice your Ground and Naval units to charge your CO Zone. Waylon didn't care much for his men, so neither should you. Shield your Air units with your other units and generously use indirect-combat units to cover for them and force your enemy to trade poorly with you. Even if he is an Air specialist, his Ground and Naval game is still important.
3. Be a total 130% coward, just like Waylon. Once you have the CO Unit, keep him out of battles if possible. Whereas other CO Units can see some combat and leverage their boosts to take out key units, Waylon's CO Unit should never actively pick fights. Exclusively use other units within the CO Zone to do your fighting. Try to only attack with Waylon himself as a last resort, or if he's safe after the attack.
4. Don't be too quick to use his CO Power. Wingman is great, but so is a 4-square CO Zone, especially when we're playing like the cowardly jerkface we all know and love. The boost is not insignificant, so you can pressure very hard with a 4-square CO Zone and a healthy supply of Air units. Wingman should be saved for decisive strikes where you can potentially dismantle large portions of the enemy army.
I've had tons of success with him by playing Waylon like I was Waylon. I still think he's a B-Rank at best, however. The A-Rank girls still give him some trouble, and he'll usually lose to a not-incompetent Caulder, but he's definitely able to take games off the other C-Ranks (except for Penny; she should be B-Rank because of her huge CO Zone and how powerful weather can be for her, easily offsetting the advantages the other B-Rank and C-Ranks have).
This comment is epic. Basically just be like Waylon, be a jerk.
The alternative title of this game is “Advance Wars: But it’s a little more balanced”
I only played this game in the AW series, and my favorite unit to put my CO into was the seaplane, with Caulder and Tabitha being my favorite COs. Since it's essentially a more powerful fighter but with less ammo and fuel, I'd then just wizz around the map one-shotting enemy units.
I would love a "design tier list" where you said your opinions about CO music, design and flavour for each CO(how it complement and work in tandem with mechanics)
Forscythe's final payback: Being better than Grayfield.
To be fair, so is everyone else :P
@@LordTyph He does not really need one, a CO zone of 5 is a huge advantage...this does not really make him good, but still better than Grayfied, IMO.
Greyfield's just a massive 1 trick pony
@@bigtimetimmyjim6486 And this weakens my point how?
I would love for them to carry over the battleship mechanics into the Reboot Camp, but that probably won’t happen 😔
Also how subs are built underwater so you really have to pay attention when facing them
Advance Wars Days of Ruin is the only AW game I have played and owned and I really like it, I have played it on and off every year but I have never had the chance to play against other people, still I am happy that my favorite CO Isabella (or Catleia as she is known in Spanish) is ranked so highly, was a bit worried that the fact she only gives the basic CO bonus on a area that is not that big might dock her points but it has to be recognized that her CO power is insane.
I certainly hope Nintendo might someday decide to remaster the game as I actually liked the artstyle and the animations of this one, would certainly like to actually test my strategies for this game against other people.
I'm the exact same but in the UK. I always played Catleia unless I wanted to go on a rampage with Stolos. Her abilities make battleships absolutely ludicrous
As someone who often came to your channel to watch your AW content, being the type of guy who looked up your old playthroughs, the ones where you started every video with a rhyme, this new wave of content is a blessing. Seeing you mention the fun fact about Waylon's theme that has been on that video since time immemorial was the icing on the cake for this one, loved it.
I was playing the DOR campaign recently and in the 1st tabitha mission she put herself in a fighter and so I baited her in with a bomber and infantry walled her CO unit for the mission.
It was hilarious
On top of all it's other issues, the main reason Days of Ruin never sold well is that Nintendo's primary market is Japan, especially for tactics games.
Days of Ruin _NEVER RELEASED_ in Japan. It just got pushed back and pushed back and pushed back until it was canceled.
Weirdly enough it actually got a digital only release on the 3DS back in 2013... but yeah too little too late
@@Lucrei. as a rewards perc, so it still wasn't buyable lol
@@CSDragon Well yeah but you can get points fairly easily by buying other things, but fair point
I'd still consider that a "release" though
I just feel the way you worded it makes is seem like they never got it, which is false
I tried using Caulder against an AI without prior knowledge and thought wow this is really unfair to the enemy. I could be brain dead and still win.
The sound effects of boats sinking and planes getting destroyed never gets old
It sounds like Defense is calculated linearly at first but then flattens horizontally as a “curve.” (I put it in quotes because it’s probably more like a bunch of smaller linear lines that _look_ like a curve.) No doubt this is done due to Javier from the third game.
Waylon aka if Albert wesker and Johnny bravo had a kid
People didn't like the battle animations? I loved them!
deaths are cool but these outlines aaahh
I loved the themes playing for each CO in this. Such a nice touch
I think the real downer when it comes to battle animations is the fact that despite featuring a handful of factions devs only made two sets of unit designs, we say goodbye to Yellow Comet and Green Earth fighting some kind of super space invaders in the form of Black Hole, instead we get watered down conflict with only the notOrange Star vs notBlue Moon, despite IDS definitely fitting the bill for this game's Black Hole. More realistic tone also hurts a bit because seeing far less caricaturistic Abrams tanks fighting IS-2s is far more silly than their more comical predecessors.
Yeah, as a long time AW player, I was super disappointed by the vehicle designs. The fact they made so few and they looked so badly matched to each other sucked bad. A shame I haven't seen a proper attempt to port over the DoR units to the Wars World style. Though it admittedly would be a lot of effort.
Yeah, at least a little bit of variety would have helped. Keep the New Rubinelle Army looking the same, as well as the Lazarian's. Old Rubinelle could have had a more warn/adapted look. Maybe even a slight hint of Mad Max crap since they're always on the move in a post-apocalyptic world. Of course, IDS could have had an experimental Tech look.
I guess I'll take a thematic stab at it. AW2's aesthetics were all based off of WW2 and WW2 aesthetics of the 2 largest nations of each faction (USA, Soviet Union, Germany and Japan). From the looks of the video, they kind of ditched the latter two and made it look more like the two major Cold War factions which kind of fits in a post-apocalyptic universe.
the engine sounds are nice but why the fuck these black outlines aaaahh
Yeah that is unfortunate but I do think the story presentation is far better. Since they have all those high quality background illustrations and music pieces that create a sense of atmosphere and place that the previous games never had.
As a Days of Ruin player myself, I would have to say that everything rated is mostly true, the powers, the strats used for each co, the counters to them and the arguments on a CO rating.
The only one thing I am a bit against is Penny's rating, BUT as said in "Clear Weather" docks her down a lot.
Snow can devastate the early capture game for players, especially when there is mountains and rivers, and hard counters players that go for a spamming mech rush, not going to be able to do much when mechs only go 1 space. Had someone attempt the mech spam rush while it snowed, his units got blown away by my artillery. Rain can completely catch your player opponent off guard if they don't prepare flares, and the sandstorm just gives a defense buff to Penny's units as said. Penny is my Favorite CO, but she's very situational and does require some higher level of skill to play.
Tabitha is/was the most popular choice of the online gameplay, extremely strong. "Put Tabitha in Recon and Wreck the capture game..." It's a very effective strategy in smaller maps with a road straightway to the enemy base. Just setting the enemy back from capturing a building or two for two turns in the early game can hurt them economically, usually they won't get a tank out until the third or fourth turn... if they choose to scrap the early capture game a bit. But the third turn you should have her at +1 CO zone with a tank coming to the frontline to support her vs other tanks. Can either just have her run around blowing up infantry in hopes of power up fully, use her as a buff support or use her as a distraction for a couple turns as the enemy focuses her instead of capturing. If she's alive long enough and you have a better unit to place her by next turn, just sacrifice her by doing a purposely putting her in harms range. Put Tabitha in Anti-Air and she can be a credible threat to standard tanks and other lighter vehicles, and she will zero any infantry or air units. As for using her power when she gets it, really depends on the CO's health. If you're CO is mostly likely going to be killed, use it! If not hold onto to it until for a good push or when you're gonna die!
Caulder a bit mixed about him, to be honest. Yeah he's OP... but only truly OP if he has the economy and units to back him up... which you need ECONOMY to build said units and keep them repaired. Since he doesn't have a CO power, I usually just send recon units to kamikaze him when he's out of a resupply range/tile when he's in a war tank. Once he's out of ammo for the main cannon then he's not really an issue vs even the standard tanks. Just swarm around him with tanks or Un-targetable units, fill his CO zone +1 tile, and deal damage to him but don't kill him to drain the players starting funds. Not going to do much with a Caulder in a tank with only a machine gun vs other tanks, oh he healed 5 on his war tank... but only has 10 buildings? He just wasted half his funds to repair, so he can't really build much. I just purposely trap him and exploit his power mechanic. Tabitha at least has a scary game changing CO power that you did not want to have her power up at any cost. I've had friends having to delete Caulder when trapped, just to escape, and that's a painfully delete too, LOL. Just lucky that he was not available in online nintendo network random play.
Of course, as always it depends on the skill level of the opponent you're facing. I will say that I was a bit disappointed that you couldn't play as The Beast, they could've made him like Flak LOL.
This game looks super fun now that I see it
Definetly gonna check it out
A days of ruin CO tier list? Fascinating...
Settle down Dr. "S-Rank" Caluder :P
Mangs, there's this super talented AW guy, XenesisXenon, who managed to modify AW2 to contain all CEOs from all games, which I think also adds Caulder as a playable guy. Dunno if he added field-commanders, but if he did it could be a cool match up.
i've got an idea on how to make Tasha and Waylon work.
load these CO into a ground unit, i recommend a rocket and surround it with tanks. then you build a bunch of air units and spread them out while using your ground units to build up the CO meter. once the CO meter is full use it to have your air units unleash hell on your enemy across the entire map.
The days of ruin by web has been found!
Its called tinywars online! And its a lot more polished than AWBW, it has CO music and the website is really clean a nice. Though the website is in chinese at the start but theres a english option on the side.and it also requires and account to do anything, apart from that is great!
Ps: The CO music must be selected in the options, it doesnt choose on its own, also thers seems to be some custom CO's which dont seem as good as the OG's tho i havent played for long.
To answer your question about playing DoR online, when Nintendo shut down services for their old DS games some fans decided to host their own servers instead. It's just like playing classic Phantasm Star Online today, and it works for most DS games, including DoR. All you need to do is go into the Wi-Fi settings for the game and change your connection's DNS settings to the fan server's address. (I don't recall DoR specifically. You'd have to look that up.) This even works for emulators that support internet connections, like MelonDS.
(Edited for clarity and to fix my bad grammar.)
I wish there were more COs in the game. They could have made The Beast, Davis, and maybe even the fanatic into COs
Okay. So S rank is for the final boss. A rank is for Waifus. B rank is for Bros. C rank is for common. And D rank is for Dectators. Got it.
Fingers crossed mangs does some DoR multiplayer matches! This game has probably the best balancing and most fun combat (imo)!
Sturm: "It's so powerful that he doesn't need a normal power"
Caulder: "It's so powerful that he doesn't even need a power"
i LOVE days of ruin and it is my favorite advanced wars
the ost goes so friggin hard i legit have a bunch of the songs and remixes on my phone
Days of Ruin was my introduction to Advanced Wars, it’s funny how biases work too because of this fact, the initial Advanced Wars feel very cartoony and less impactful to me and I was never able to get into them, that’s just my heavily biased opinion though
Same here, I also missed some of the units like bikes and the ways things worked like battleships, carriers and cruisers
Longtime fans of Mangs who watch say... regularly 1/7 of the videos (not just advance wars ones) will quickly understand days of ruin even if they missed out the Advance Wars Days of Ruin specific videos. Just plop a unit on a property and then put your CO in. Now you got a Groove.
btw i just happened to notice it, but isabella's frown when she's at a disadvantage in a battle is cute lol
Hello Mangs! Thanks for making this video! I really love the AW series (too bad i suck at it!) and i´ve finally found someone who loves it and explained all the games and CO´s! DoR videos are hard to find and you did such great work! Keep´em coming, i'll watch them all! Best regards from Brazil!
its genius how all characters that fit the coventional evil definition give high defense buffs to their units, it drives home a point.
WOHO! I've been waiting for this since you started ranking COs
You were so distraught discussing the strengths of seaplanes during Greyfields review that you missed that he can make much better use of Bcopters, cruisers can carry two of them and keep them protected the from Anti air, I was weylon on an earlier game with Bcopters but If I was fielding only choppers I might as well had played Greyfield instead.
You definitely should talk more about DoR! There are lot of things to talk. Like the new unit, unit buff debuff, new mechanic, new direction of story, and what the AW series could learn from DoR. From your video I could see that you want to talk more but because it is CO tier list video, you have to go back to the topic. Kinda feels you are holding back.
I've never played days of ruin, but with the defense thing if I had to guess, I imagine they would've finally made defense multiplicative rather than additive like it was before. So instead of adding up 20%+ 30%+ 50% to get 100% defense which makes you completely invulnerable, you'd apply each one separately instead. 20% defense means you take 80 damage instead of 100, then take away 30% of that to get 48 damage, and then finally 50% to cut that in half and leave you with 24, or 76% damage reduction.
At lower levels of defense this doesn't really change much (10 + 10 just goes from 20% defense to 19%), but it makes it where no matter how much defense you stack you'll never be completely invincible (which is why I'm guessing they changed it)
I'm definitely one of those fans that holds Days of Ruin as a favorite of the series. I think it had the best characters, best story, and I even thought the animations were better honestly.
Totally agree with you. It has some issues: balance of the CO's, cut content (No Warroom, advanced Campaign), MP games become stally easier compared to the previous titles, but still one of the best games I've ever played.
On Sturm vs Caulder: If we got the ability, I would like to see it. Each CO would have to play by his own rules, though. Sturm would be AW2 version, while Caulder would be his version from Days of Ruin. This does mean that they would operate under slightly different rules. Sturm's +20% Defense is 20% damage reduction, while Caulder's +50% defense is roughly equivalent to 33% damage reduction. Sturm's Meteor Strike does counter the death blob pretty well, since it will cover most of the CO Zone, and those 2-hp units, even with their +Defense will still die since they are so weakened. So Sturm would be outperformed day-to-day but stronger during his Power turn so long as the meteor's positioning does not screw him over by hitting something off to the side instead of where it needs to hit.
Overall, I think that it will probably depend on the map size. Sturm has the advantage on larger maps, as Caulder's Zone boost cannot be everywhere at once, but on small maps or maps with hard chokepoints, Caulder will win pretty hard on the day-to-day.
Though, it is worth noting that Sturm's global 120/120 units will perform better against Caulder in general, than basically any CO's units in Days of Ruin would, especially since Caulder's units have no bonus outside of his zone. But it requires more thought, like against Andy in AW2 you have to kill Caulder's units, rather than weaken them, to be effective.
Credit to Advance Wars, at least they tried something new as opposed to keeping everything the same (Pokémon)
Pokemon should be ashamed of its laziness in design and programming.
Yes, YES, for the thousandth time, I do want to cut this freakin' tree!!!
1:06:19 Caulder is so strong that Strum and Hachi working together, even with a dual strike power would struggle to beat him.
Love this video. Thank you for the refresher on the gameplay and world differences in DoR. I played it upon release and really enjoyed it, but didn't play through it as much as 1, 2, or DS.
Waylon has a huge capping power, think about 30% defense boost to a transport copter and just surrounding it with more battle/transport copters, you could probably troll aggressive players with it
So it took a page from Military Madness on the units gaining levels. Nice!
The flowers didn't sprout from dead bodies!
They sprouted from living bodies, causing them to die :3
I actually do have an idea for Caulder's CO Power. In lore, he attempts to tempt Forsythe with a device that will essentially win him the conflict against Brenner with the press of a button. Forsythe rejects this of course, but I have tried to think of what sort of device he'd offered. My first idea was "Your Opponent is locked out of moving with any of their units" and while that would be considered a dishonorable way to win, it'd fit the "insane scientist with evil-genius levels of tech" that we're going for.
Recently though, I've managed to come up with something even more twisted. When Caulder pops this CO Power, his opponents lose *all* fuel and ammo reserves. This I think would almost work better because that combined with making the CO Zone global for a turn would work thematically as a "I just win" button, and it fits Caulder's cruelty to watch the will to fight leave his opponent as their air and naval investments are rendered worthless and their push comes to a complete and utter halt in front of his 180/180 units.
I watched all of this... and as a person who has played AW:DoR since 2010 up to today... Your rankings are all justified and I feel you landed this effectively. My personal favorite CO has to be Brenner because he feels balanced. and his CO theme feels so "Justice" like lol.
Something extremely important to point out, because I didn't think about this until I simulated a match between Sturm and Caulder.
The damage formula from AW and AW2 makes Caulder unstoppable, because the way defense works in those games in comparison to Days of Ruin is completely different.
With a Caulder boosted 160/160 unit on a city or a mountain with the damage formula from AW2, you can't touch him since it's a flat percentage reduction in damage. So on a mountain an infantry would take 0% damage from anything at all times, because 100% protection, no matter how big the number, is still a 100% reduction in damage. So even at 1,000,000% damage, reducing it by 100% of it's value will make it 0%.
However, if you use the damage formula from Days of Ruin, suddenly your chances of beating Caulder become much more viable. Because instead of a flat reduction in percentage, the formula simply divides by an integer. So if you had 20% defense, instead of multiplying the damage by 80%, you would divide by 1.2 instead. This makes a huge difference.
So if you have 1,000,000% damage, and the opponent has 100% extra defense using the DoR formula, 1,000,000 ÷ 2 is still 500,000% damage, instead of 0% damage if you simply removed 100% of the damage.
So now instead of an infantry on a mountain taking 0% damage in Caulder's CO zone, the infantry would instead take around 34% against a Sturm infantry with Sturm's damage bonus using the DoR formula, which makes taking down Caulder much more feasible.
I remember when I played this game, I just mained Tabitha in all the cpu matches I did.
Putting her in one of the big tanks and just well.... walk over every enemy for fun. Though the AI was still terrible and you could win with literatlly just spamming bike infantry and your CO literally did not matter I just loved her in the tank tanking entire armies
Mangs, I found your channel recently and you have reignited my love for advance wars. Awesome content, thank you so much for making!
Did you know that Sturn was so powerfull in advance wars 1 & 2 that he is the reason why almost all of humanity was wiped out in days of ruin?
To balance this out, he was killed in black hole rising.
Trust me my uncle works at intelligence systems, he has confirmed this.
I know I’m late to this but defence works with the same sort of calculation as offence. A 100% defence boost will halve your damage like how a 100% offence boost doubles it. So if your offence is the same as their defence then you deal a normal amount of damage compared to barely any in previous games
I haven’t even played advance wars since I had an og ds but I’ve become so addicted to your content. Great stuff again!
From what I’ve heard, the way people deal with Tabitha is to not engage with her CO unit at all, and instead “bully” the units around her. Basically shut down the rest of the army. Think basketball, where you let the superstar get his points but shut down the role players. Tabitha can’t win the entire fight with just her unit, so you make it just her unit.
This seems like a good way to get meteor strike'd
@@VioletteZero This is just what I’ve heard from looking around randomly, no first-hand experience