Boss Strike Tips

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Here are are some tips for maximizing your Boss Strike points, please add your own.

• Mass produce units: In preparation for the BS, mass produce LCTs, Hvyrs, MG Turrets, Chuckers, AA Turrets, Wimps, Trebs, Electric Walls even Troopers. As a first goal try to build 100 units of each (1,000 wimps), and then 200 and then more, some top players have 1,000 heavier tanks! The more units you have, particularly the harder hitting ones, the more points you can earn. You can also mass produce high & units such as PKs and Walls etc. Refer to the Unit Reviews section for suggested units to mass produce.
• Strong Front Line: The front row takes most of the punishment and keeps your key AoE (Area of Effect damage type) units behind alive. Focus on building a strong front line first. The best units for this are blocking units such as tanks, mammoths tanks, walls etc, however, Peacekeepers (PKs), ET's and Vets can also hold down the front line but must be rank 6. Electric Fences (70% stun for 3 turns) are shaping up to be a key front line unit for level 65+ players now you can now deploy three ignorable units (as of 4.0 update), rank these as fast as possible. Equip your PKs with the EMP canister and they can then stun the last unit (troop or tank) of each wave to allow your key unit attacks such as jetpacs to recharge.
• Maximize resources: A few days before the BS, conserve resources. You never know what the donation resource will be, so to be safe, let them all build up. Upgrade all resource facilities mines and mills to level 10 and consider building advanced facilities to increase the rate. Boost production with nano decorations. Occupy things like Coal Plants, Artificial Ponds, propane clusters etc. during BSs.
• Resource Occupations: Just before a BS evict non-guild or non-Alliance occupations from your resource clusters to allow Guldies and Alliance members only to occupy to maximise donations. As we are now an Alliance with two main fighting guilds, we may sometimes be called on to allow members of the other guild to occupy to allow them to get to a target if time is short. Watch your Guild chat and Groupme app for the call. Be a team player, don't occupy all the resource points i.e. silos or ponds on someones land, share the love.
• Alt Accounts: Start at least one other alt account for BN. Level it to at least 12 so you can build Vehicle Factories to occupy for gears (clusters of 4). These alt accounts take a bit of time to level up but are essential for a continuous stream of resources under your control. I know of one top player who has five level 65 (soon level 70) accounts as Alts!! Some keep these alt accounts low (level 27 is optimal) and then get rank 6 wimps and fight these accounts in BS's for masses of points. Some have one alt account focusing on each resource, i.e. one for concrete, one for lumber etc.
• Maximize Hospitals and Repair Bays: All should be level 10. Consider building Advanced and possibly multiple Advanced. These are absolutely critical to keep you in the fight longer.
• Assists During a Boss Strike: When giving assist (visits and taps) think of what is best for the person/Guild you are assisting first i.e. tap hospitals and repair bays first (esp advanced ones), then the donating resource, and then the tier 1 resource mine (i.e. if concrete, tap the mill first and then stone mines). Each building is allowed 20 assists in one day. When you see assists waiting, ensure your hospt and repair bays are loaded with your key units first as each assist knocks 30 minutes of repair times getting your units back into battle quicker.
• Focus: During the boss strike, focus on the task at hand. Ease up on missions, AS, AC, GT, PvP, etc. Don't ask for wimp occupations as these are banned during BS's except in limited circumstances. Your guildmates are battling, so you must keep battling. Plenty of time for that when the boss strike is over. Share your thoughts on easiest encounters and any battle tips in chat / Groupme.
• Donating later earns more points: At higher tiers, donations are worth more so hold off donating until later (Tier 10 = 1,000 points). Obviously if you max your storage out, then donate the resource in small quantities to keep production at max. If the donation resource is, for example , ensure that you have enough to repair units - don't give it all away and then lack for fixing Trebs. The donating resource is most often lumber and concrete. Occupy ponds for gold and lumber.
• Go easy on the battles: The last thing you need is for a boss strike to start with all your best units in the repair bay. When the date is announced a few days before, make sure you get as repaired as possible, and stay away from the big battles (e.g. Ancient Sentinel), that could take out your units.
• Record the formations: When you take on your first battles, get a pen and paper (or something more high tech) and annotate the units in the front line of each first wave. Also note what happens in the next five waves, the points earns and rate it easy, ok or hard etc. This way you will be able to quickly pick your battles in the future with greater certainty and avoid those pig awful formations that kill everything. Battle Nations Outpost usually posts them live, but know which ones work best for you.
• Share strategy: If you find a good strategy for defeating all waves, or maximizing points, share it on the guild chat. Tactics will be added here as well.
• Quit difficult formations: Once you've learned the formations, if you come up against a known difficult one (There was one in the Yazul, The Raptor Trainer BS which started with 5 Watchtowers), just quit, go in again, and you will get a different one.
• Every little helps: Don't expect others to get us through, everyone should do as much as they can, given their circumstances. If you are totally out of units, help others bases, donate resources or just fight with low level units if it comes to it.
• Wimp Grinding: When Wimp grinding, put the 3 Wimps 1 space apart. Add several random cheap troops over the board to draw fire. Put MG turrets up front next to Wimps if you have them. R6 Wimps are very cheap and quick to produce and heal and are ideal for grinding. Other cheap and useful units when grinding include AMRs & Chuckers.
• Non-Nano Grinding Formations: (Share your formations). The key to high BS scores is not one or two key nano units, but rather hundreds of non nano grinding units (hence the need to mass produce). One such formation that will usually get through to wave 4 or 5 (even occasionaly finish it) and earn 2,500 to 4,000 points each time is as follows:
  • Front row: Wimp PK Wimp PK Wimp (all rank 6) 
  • Second row: MGT Hvyr MGT Hvyr MGT (all rank 6) 
  • Back row: Treb Chucker Treb (all rank 6) 
  • To beef this up further replace the center column with a PK, hvyr and treb. 
• Donations aren't enough. Fight, Fight, Fight! If you don't have a hospital bill a week long by the end of boss strike, you may want to fight some more. 

Top Units for Boss Strike

• Trebuchet . A resource unit that becomes a beast at R6, when you unlock the Baby Raptor Attack. It can one-shot anything without armor, and take down Mega Tanks that are frozen in one shot. At least one should be in every Boss Strike formation. Latest update allows the stone to hit air units. 

• Mega Tank . At high ranks, does great damage and has three versatile attacks. At R6 it gets a combined 940 in & , making it a great damage sponge. Heavier Tanksand Super Tanks also are worthy, but do not have as much or versatility for higher level players. 

• The Wimp . Cheap and quick to heal. When your best units are in the hospital/repair bay, you can still earn boss strike points by throwing three wimps into a formation with throwaway units, gaining anywhere from 200 to 2,000, depending on the choice of grinding units. 

• Elemental Trooper . At R3, gets a useful area freeze attack. In later Boss Strike waves, the freeze attack can lock down a burdensome enemy while you deal with his friends. 

• Veteran . Three versatile attacks unlocked at the moment of purchase, including an anti-air, anti tank attack. At R6, gets high defense and high dodge, allowing him to hold his own into the later waves.

• Legendary Mammoth . If you were lucky to pick up this limited time unit during BS5, you probably don't need convincing. This beast is, well, a beast at R6 higher, stunning enemies and hitting with critical attacks on the log throw. 

• Heavy and Light Chemical Tanks. Decent hit points at higher levels, and great chemical attacks that can melt away the hit points of even the most heavily armored units. Their biggest drawback is that they are front-line units that don't often last all five waves. 

• Thundercloud F-10 . The Tier 3 reward from BS3, arguably one of the top air units produced in a BS. Three attacks, including a sweeping piercing ground attack and a great anti-air attack. 

• Other honorable mentions: Railgun Trooper

Other Useful Units for Boss Strike

The following units won't necessarily help you clear five waves of enemies during Boss Strike, but they will help you to continue earning points when your top units are in the Hospital/Repair Bay.

• Machine Gun (MG) Turret. Cheap to produce, cheap to heal. Put two of these in the front line and watch them mow through enemy units. The drawback is that they are easily killed, and enemies tend to target them first.
• Allied Mammoth Rider. Wait, doesn't this unit suck? Well, for most situations it does. But if I told you that you could have a tank that hits both ground and air, costs only gold to heal, takes less than an hour to heal, and heals in the hospital instead of the repair bay, would you use it to grind boss strike points? Also in this vain is the Allied Dustwalker. Cheap to produce, and only to heal.
• Frontier Chucker. Cheap to produce (what else are you going to do with those merits?) and costs only 150 to heal in a fully upgraded Repair Bay, the Chucker can hit land or air and gets critical hits 70% of the time at R6, but dies quite quickly.

A good resource during the boss trike, showing prizes, points needed, and even the detailed formations, is http://bnoutpost.appspot.com/events. Hopefully that page is updated next boss strike too. That site in general has a wealth of information on it, some not even present on the main Battle Nations Wiki. It appears to be scraped from the game files in some way.