With the recent release of Magic Chess on January 17th, we can now enjoy the Auto Battler as a game mode of Mobile Legends. Before, Magic Chess Bang Bang used to have its own app that will be shut down from January 24th. Even though Magic Chess comes as a new game mode, it actually has its fair share of similarities with Chess-TD. While the generic game-design is different, synergies, items and playstyle will definitely remind you of the ladder. So let us get started with an in-depth Magic Chess Beginner’s guide.
Read – Complete guide to Chess-TD
What is Magic Chess? The Basics
As an Auto Battler game, Magic Chess is all about strategy. You face 7 other players over the course of several rounds on a chesslike battlefield. Instead of fighting yourself, you buy, equip and line up units (that constitute Mobile Legends Heroes).
Apart from different types of synergies, you have to delegate the random items you gain while also taking care of the specific position of each Hero on the battlefield. Additionally, you can increase your gold income by economizing or going on winning/ losing streaks.
In the end, you have to eliminate the other competing players by reducing the Health Points of the commander to 0. Depending on your placement you’ll gain a certain amount of Rank points after the game; starting at Warrior 5, you can rank up to Mythic similar to the Mobile Legends Ranking system.
The Heart of your Gameplay: Units
Similar to Chess-TD, you gain a 2-star unit by combining 3 of the same units. Combining a total of 9 1-star units (or 3 2-star units) will upgrade the respective Hero to the maximum 3-star unit.
In order to place your units on the battlefield, you have to buy additional experience for your commander to level up. Even though you gain 1 point of experience after each round, at a certain point you want to invest into the experience to gain more synergies and combat power. For each level of your commander, you get one bonus spot on the chessfield, up to 9. However, you can get even more spots with the help of the Fate Box. We’ll take a closer look at this later on in our Magic Chess Beginner’s guide.
The main way of purchasing units is from the Shop. After every round, you’ll get a preparation phase where the Shop will automatically refresh. Unit costs go from 1 to 5 gold coins per unit; the probability of getting higher cost Heroes will always be displayed below the Shop; also, it rises with the Commander’s level.
The Commander
As of now, a total of 4 Commanders are available to play. Each of them has 3 unique abilities of which you can equip one for battle. While at first, you’ll only have the 1st skill unlocked, the more you play a specific Commander, the more experience you’ll gain to unlock the other 2.
Their abilities, while not providing a significant power bonus, do give you a small edge in-game. Each Commander has a different way of manipulating the battlefield. Remy, for example, allows you to gain additional gold whereas Eva can boost the stats of deployed units.
Economy: Be stingy
While it might look appealing to reroll the Shop for 2 gold coins only, it’s a high risk – high reward action. By economizing early on you can gain up to 4 additional gold per round from interest (2 coins for 10 gold, 4 for 20). Therefore it makes sense to stay above the specific thresholds as long as you aren’t in severe danger of losing the game.
Also, both winning and losing streaks will reward you with bonus gold. This means “strategic losing” actually is a decent strategy. While winning streaks do prevent you from losing HP, it often becomes the most effective strategy if you’re planning to economize early on anyways.
You can also always sell units you do not need to regain some additional coins. Furthermore, the Eruditio synergy will provide some extra gold per round as well.
Synergies: Same same but different
Talking about Eruditio, synergies might be the most game deciding factor of Magic Chess – therefore we are going to take a close look at them in our Beginner’s guide right now:
Factions & Roles
While some of those might look familiar, the synergy bonuses in Magic Chess mostly differ from Chess-TD. Currently, there is a total of 10 different Role synergies available, complemented by 12 Factions. Most units have one designated Faction and Role, with some exceptions having a total of 3 synergies. Below you’ll find a table with all synergies as well as the unit costs.
| Role/ Faction | Weapon Master | Targeman | Marksman | Elementalist | Mage | Guardian | Summoner | Support | Wrestler | Assassin |
| Elf | Miya (1) Irithel (5) | Eudora (2) | Belerick (3) | Estes (4) | Karina (4) Selena (3) | |||||
| Western Desert | Claude (4) | Valir (3) Vale (1) | Esmeralda (3) | Minotaur (5) | ||||||
| The Eruditio | Claude (4) | Diggie (2) | Diggie (2) | Chou (1) | ||||||
| Cyborg | Alpha (1) | Johnson (4) | Angela (3) | Alpha (1) | ||||||
| Scarlet Shadow | Hanabi (2) | Kagura (4) | Hayabusa (2) | |||||||
| Dragons Altar | Zilong (1) | Baxia (2) | Wanwan (3) | Chang’e (2) | Akai (1) | Sun (4) | Ling (5) | |||
| Monastery of Light | Alucard (3) | Granger (4) | Rafaela (1) | |||||||
| Northern Vale | Freya (3) | Aurora (4) | Aurora (4) | Masha (2) | ||||||
| Abyss | Argus (2) Terizla (4) | Moskov (2) | Alice (3) | Dyroth (3) | ||||||
| Celestial | Martis (1) | Karrie (3) | Zhask (2) | Gatotkaca (5) | ||||||
| Empire | Tigrael (3) | Odette (5) Harith (1) | Guinevere (4) | Lancelot (2) Gusion (3) | ||||||
| Undead | Leomord (5) | Moskov (2) | Vexana (4) | Khufra (3) |
Strongest Synergies
Since this is meant to be a Beginner’s guide to Magic Chess, we’re not going too in-depth here. Nonetheless, let’s take a quick look at some good synergies.
Weapon Master
Their unique synergy at the maximum level (6 units) provides insane amounts of sustain. Paired with some decent items, Weapon Master might be the most sustainable line-up to play. Also, due to the natural distribution amongst different factions, you can profit from additional synergies without much need of other units: Leomord triggers Undead all by himself, Terizla and Argus provide Abyss synergy for higher damage and it doesn’t hurt that the Weapon Master units themselves are all really decent, too.
Elementalist – Western Desert
The trickiest part about this line-up is getting Aurora. Ideally, you find her in an early Fate Box. The 4-unit synergy of Elementalists gets very scary later on, especially once you have no level 2 units on your board and are guaranteed 2 level 3 units. Paired with Western Desert, this composition thrives against Basic Attack reliant line-ups. You can also add Northern Vale to instantly freeze the whole enemy team with Aurora, or grab some Summoners to spam the battlefield with creeps.
Dragons Altar
While it takes a while to lay hands on a total of 6 Dragons Altar units (especially Ling), the comp gets really scary if you manage to get some good items/ synergies on-top. Assassins, Marksmen and Targeman can all round your comp up reasonably well.
Just make sure you make it through the midgame, since Dragons Altar doesn’t do too much with only 3 of the Faction. Summoners can help you make it through, going with Assassins will also do the job.
Everything can work
Unlike Chess-TD, synergies feel much more balanced and their effectiveness also somewhat relies on who you encounter, how you place your units and which items you get. While some of them arguably have an edge over others (RIP Undead), you can explore a variety of different options without fearing to get stomped.
Talking about unit placement
Another highly strategic element of Magic Chess that deserves to be mentioned in a Beginner’s Guide. Unit placement can win or lose you the game.
Similar to MLBB, you usually want squishy damage dealers in the backline with Tanks frontlining. However, you need to pay attention to some specific rules as well as the enemy’s lineup.
- Assassins will jump into the backline of the enemy’s lineup. This means you want to place a tanky unit in the back to protect squishies or pull the important units into the front, with a rather unimportant unit as a meatshield.
- Pay attention to the enemy’s comp. While this only becomes relevant later on, you do not want to clump up your units against an Aurora with Northern Vale synergy. Spread your units, most importantly the core pieces, so your 3-item 2-star Irithel doesn’t get one-shot.
- Range! By putting a melee Hero into the corner, surrounded by other friendly units, the unit will have to walk around the whole Battlefield in order to participate in the fight, wasting precious seconds that might have made a difference.
- Watch the fight and evaluate. Sometimes things might just not work out, even though your placement looked fine on paper. Just try out different stuff to identify what works and what doesn’t. Since the fights are somewhat RNG based, we cannot anticipate everything.
Read – Magic Chess Release: New game mode for Mobile Legends
Don’t sleep on Items
Similar to Chess-TD, you can equip your Heroes with purchased items. However, the only way to obtain items is by defeating monsters (that you automatically encounter every couple of rounds) or via Fate Box.
Try to identify your gameplan as early as possible in order to choose the right items. There is a broad variety available and Tank Items really don’t help you that much when you’re running a Marksmen lineup. Also, pay attention to the specific passives of items, that do differ from their MLBB pendants. For example, Blade of Despair will execute enemy units below a certain threshold.
While every unit can have a total maximum of 3 items equipped, it makes sense to strengthen the most valuable Heroes of your lineup. Check their costs, their overall damage output and your synergies to identify the win condition of your setup and play around it.
Aside from traditional items, you can also gain “synergy items”. Those provide a decent stat boost but more importantly will add the shown synergy to whomever you give the item. This makes it possible to get a multitude of oppressive synergies without the need of investing all your gold in levelling your commander for additional units.
The Fate Box – Losing pays off
Finally coming to the Fate Box, it really holds up to its name. The Fate Box will open every couple of rounds (it will display in-game) and provides a randomly generated pool of items and (high-cost) units.
The commander with the lowest HP left gets to choose first, the one with the highest remaining HP will be the last one. Therefore it does make sense to economize heavily during the first few rounds to secure the first pick in the 1st Fate Box. You’re guaranteed to get the best pick, probably getting a crucial late-game unit for your synergy or a powerful item to boost your carries. You can also gain a specific item for your commander that allows you to place an additional unit without levelling up.
So, that’s it for our Magic Chess Beginner’s guide. Stay tuned for more in-depth content and let us know what you want to read more about! In the meantime, make sure to visit us on us on Facebook and Twitter.
Can you teach us some more in-depth guide? I’d like to know more about items and spells selection with decisions on whom to be given.