Cal and crew are back. Star Wars Jedi: Survivor released on Friday, and brought us the newest minigame craze: Holotactics. Holotactics plays like Auto-Chess with Star Wars figures. While we’ve only played it briefly (so far) in my first eleven hours, we do have Holotactics tips and tricks to improve your success.
Much like Gwent in The Wild Hunt, you earn pieces for Holotactics by playing the main game. As such, part one focuses on the overworld things you can do to build your strategy and part two focuses on the actual game.
Editor’s Note: We were given a code from EA for Star Wars Jedi Survivor.
How to Prep for Holotactics Throughout the Galaxy
Kill Everything You Can
No joke, the more you kill, the more options you have. Whenever you take down a new enemy, BD-1 can scan their corpse for information. Part of that information is how they play in Holotactics. What I’m saying is keep trying to kill that Rancor, you’ll get to unleash it back on the game.
More Recruits Means More Matches
When you first reunite with Greez, his bar (Pyloon’s Saloon) needs people. You can send people to the Saloon as you meet them throughout the Galaxy. Many of these people will play Holotactics with you, and give you different cosmetic rewards for winning. So if you can walk up to talk to somebody, say hi.
Maybe don’t throw your prospective pieces off a cliff, but you get the idea
How to Play the Game
Playing the game is simple: you set up defenses to ward off attacks from your opponent. You have a pool of points to buy units and place them across ten different spots on the board (two rows of five). To win a round, you need to destroy all of your opponents pieces, and to win a match, you need to win every round. Opponents have varying amounts of rounds, and since we’re still playing the game, we’ll update this on the max amount of rounds.
Now that’s taken care of, let’s give your tips.
Placement Matters
You don’t always want to bunch your pieces together. Some matches put you up against troops with explosive ammo, and they pack a punch. If they connect on a group, then you’re down a chunk of your crew, and then your survivors are outnumbered.
Simultaneously, pay attention to which pieces you put where. Pieces generally split between ranged and melee. Melee troops will rush the attack at the word “Go” and Ranged troops won’t. Don’t put your shooters up front, keep them on the backline.
Speaking of the melee pieces: everyone moves around the field. Holotactics isn’t a Tower Defense game, you set your pieces and they move based on their nature. This will affect where ranged pieces aim and can help you spread out your pieces.
Points Rollover Between Rounds
If you don’t use all of your points, they can be used for the next round. So if you’re having trouble with a specific round, try cutting down on your early round crews. Those points can go towards a big shiny Imperial Walker for the later round (and yes, you can get them as pieces).
Some Pieces Work Better Against Others
Finally, play your pieces to your round opponent. There’s a similar game design principle to Rock-Paper-Scissors to an extent. There’s not a defined mechanic where one group of pieces play best against another, but there are definitely some pieces that hold the line better than others. For example: there’s a Stormtrooper unit with a gatling gun that does very well until it faces units that have shields on them.
