Hey everyone! I thought I would share some common sense and strategies for SA. These are relatively easy things to do and there should be a category for every type of player out there. It is organized from the low IPH player to the higher IPH player along with a guide to spending gold on this event. A fair amount of time and effort went into this post, so enjoy! Feel free to argue about the meta-game I am hoping to set in the comments, if I see something that needs to be changed or someone has a better strategy, I will probably edit this post. All of the info and strategies I have come buy is from being top 250 for SA, top 100 for SA, top 75 for SA and playing against many top 50 and top 25 teams.
I am a completely free player and have a relatively low IPH (<1,500,000)
Buy the best units you can. If they happen to be bottom two units, try to be active throughout the event and use your deploys wisely. Your won’t begin gaining deploys until you at least use 1. If you do manage to build up some video gold, use more of it on the gold units than on refills. 25 gold compared to 37 is not worth it if you are using the lower end units. Those gold units have a lot of firepower and can be very useful.
I am a completely free player and have a fair IPH (I.E. greater than 2 million)
SA is usually early on in the cycle and you can save money to buy those LTB’s later. Again, buy the best units you can and try to be active. If you can afford to buy the best cash units possible and have the gold, use it on refills. In this case 3 of the cash units is equal to 1 of the gold units. This means that the 25 gold it costs for a refill(25 deploys) is much cheaper than buying one of the gold units for 37 gold.
I am a completely free player with a pretty good IPH (I.E. greater than 3 million)
Use the highest cash units possible all the time. If you get lower end units for the syndicate and individual goals, ignore them and use the better units. If you do have extra cash at the end or near the end of the event, buy more of the good units because the prices of the units could rise substantially as they have in MW. They stay in your inventory so you have nothing to lose. If you manage to build up a good amount of free gold, use it on refills. This is for the same reasons as in the previous category.
I am a light gold spender with a pretty good IPH (I.E. greater than 3 million)
Same goes as the previous category, buy the highest cash units and use your gold on the refills. 37 gold is a lot for those big units and in this case, the cash units are still at your advantage.
I am a free gold guru. I can manage to build 300+ gold a cycle and always have some to spare(IPH is greater than 3 million)
You fall into the same boat as the light gold spenders. Those refills are a good deal and at this stage are still much better than the gold units.
I am a medium gold spender with a pretty good IPH (I.E. greater than 3 million)
If you can and will spend about 500-750 gold on this event, you should buy a fair amount of refills to help your team. You should still use the cash units and if you absolutely feel the need that you must use the gold units, don’t buy too many. The refills are mathematically still more efficient than the gold units at this point.
I am a fairly heavy gold spender. I would rather spend gold on this event that any others. (IPH is greater than 3 million)
You should probably do about 75% of your gold on refills and the other 25% on the gold units. Refills are still a little better but those gold units can be valuable at this stage of the game as well as if you are in a consistently top 40 team in SA.
I am a wicked heavy gold spender and am in a top 25 team in every event. I am in the GREE bonus gold reward program and also finish in the top 1500 individually almost very event.
You know who you are. At this point you are probably 50% on refills and 50% on the gold units. If you rank this high in SA, expect hard pushes from your opponents and be prepared to hit back.
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Guide on when to deploy
Being matched against 2 other teams with no idea on when they are going to deploy can be frustrating. Knowing when to deploy is not. This could drastically change depending on lag between the servers and you and how many players are around for a big initial push or a sneaky last minute push. If you have a lot of people on consistently and they are pretty good about saving golf for the right time, this is that time. For sure have 1 or 2 people watching the game for enemy movements. This can be extremely valuable especially for the last 5 minutes. If this is your syndicate in this situation, use about 25-50 deploys a person spreading them out equally across the nodes. If one node is vulnerable, you could have a fairly hard time getting streaks. Usually, the enemy teams will realize that you have a strong hold and will back down. But sometimes the enemy teams will strike back last minute. It has become increasingly harder to tell when or if they are striking back with the recent lag, but that shouldn't stop them from trying to surprise you and it sure as heck should stop you from defending your valuable nodes. Be sure to watch during those crucial last 5 minutes of each battle and be prepared to call out what is happening to your syn buddies. I personally wouldn’t recommend the chat inside the game as it is rarely up, so use your outside chat app.(I.E. GroupMe, Kakao, LINE, Parlingo).
Remember to hit hard, hit consistently, and use those refills if you have them!
Originally Posted by 1Shot
