Stick War Legacy beginner's guide - Top tips to silhouetted strategy

Stick War Legacy takes a lot of cues from Age of War, the Flash classic, which shouldn't be surprising since it also seemed to originate from the Adobe Flash boom. Essentially, you send out miners to collect materials, using them to recruit soldiers that then move out to attack your enemy and eventually destroy the statue, which represents their base.

Units come in a good variety, usually costing more depending on their utility. Clubmen, for example, cost only 125, while Bowmen come in at a slightly larger 300. As you play the campaign, you'll slowly be unlocking new units based on which factions you've defeated, gradually introducing more and more complexity.

As you play, you'll gradually be able to upgrade your units with new equipment, as well as unlock spells. As you might expect, spells function as basic buffs that do everything from directly damaging enemies to increasing the rate at which your miners gather ore. Upgrades don't carry over to different campaigns or modes, so feel free to experiment.

However, whereas Age of War focused on base defence and the occasional special ability, Stick War Legacy has some mechanics which mix up the format a bit. For one, rather than automatically attacking, your units will (by default) hold position to defend your base. You need to switch their posture to attack, or even fortify your position, which causes your miners (who can also be killed) to retreat behind the lines.

And on top of that, you can actually take control of characters as well! In my time playing, I found this had limited value. Well, except when you take control of miners. Because much like Total War: Shogun II, your controlled unit actually gets a buff to their abilities. For miners, that means faster harvesting of ore, so if you switch between them, you can quickly build up resources without having to spend magic spells.

For my part, I didn't find controlling actual individual units all that useful. However, if you're quite skilled, you might be able to find yourself doing fairly well. But you can still progress quite nicely by just playing it as a normal RTS.

Here's some of my quick tips 'n tricks I found while playing!

• Units are a simple rock, paper, scissors-type deal. However, having some sort of ranged option is vital, especially to counter the enemy's own ranged units.
  


• Spells are one-and-done, so try to save up your gems for when they're needed. The mining and archidon buffs are always worth grabbing.
  


• Skins also offer special abilities in some cases, but can be extremely expensive because of this.
  


• Chests can only be found in the menu between missions or on the main menu. Set these to open when you finish playing because they don't expire once they've finished opening.
  


• In the endless zombie mode, buy the barrier at least every other night, as this will heal your units and offer more starting capital. It also offers more breathing room to gather gold.
  


• Don't forget to upgrade your statue! This offers extra reinforcements, as well as other boons such as increasing the natural gold you accrue.

Stick War Legacy was something I found myself quite enjoying. For fans of the Flash era of web games, it's a great throwback, and the monetisation is lenient enough that free-to-play fans can also find a great amount of content to dig into.

Other than that, apply the same thinking you do to every tower defence. Don't get overconfident, and always be ready to retreat because you never know what the opponent might be building up to.

In the meantime, if you're looking for other great strategy experiences on mobile, well, as you might have guessed, we've already got you covered. Check out our list of the best strategy games on Android for more options.