You’ve always wanted to pit heckling Zoidberg against a cocaine-covered Bullock in a card game death match, right? Now you can! For those just getting started on the cartoon mayhem, below we cover what you need to know to develop a winning Animation Throwdown strategy. Still need more help? Be sure to also check out:
The Basics
There are a few key differences here from the standard CCG. First up, all cards automatically deal overrun damage, with no skill required. If your card deal 5 damage and the opposing card has 1 health, 4 remaining damage will be dealt to the opponent directly.
Card health also doesn’t restore at the start of each turn like in Magic, and instead must be healed through skills. “Summoning Sickness” is still on display however, as cards don’t attack the turn they are put down.
Combos And Card Order
Setting down skilled cards quickly is paramount. For instance, playing a card with Shield early keeps your lineup defended over subsequent turns, while it’s a good idea to play a card with Recover when you know you will be setting down a combo in the next turn.
Sometimes combos will actually make a card less useful, so know what you are getting into ahead of time. While combos typically raise stats, they can also replace the card’s skills.
The order you play cards doesn’t affect a combo. For instance you can play Crack on turn 1 and Steve Smith on turn 2 or vice versa, but either way you still end up with Withdrawal Steve.
Keep your lanes full and your cards combined!
Deck Building
Always recycle shards and old, redundant cards to earn more Power, which is used to upgrade cards. Unlike other CCGs, your cards aren’t static – upgrading not only increases stats, but also gives new skills.
After upgrading, the most important aspect of deck building is synergy. If a card can’t combo with most of the other cards in your deck, cull it out.
Finally, pay attention to a card’s details when building a deck, as skills marked with a star only affect a specific type of card – either a cartoon set (Family Guy, Futurama, etc.) or a specific trait (Hyper, Armed, Educated, Artistic, Drunk).
Always be upgrading!
Traits
Traits are especially important as they affect whether a card’s skill will affect all cards or just those of the same trait. This doesn’t apply to all skills, but it’s something you have to keep in mind when building your deck.
Note: Skills with the Special trait will only work on characters from the same series.
Artistic
Armed
Artistic
Athletic
Drunk
Educated
Hyper
Rich
Special
Those are all the basics you need to know – so go ahead and join a guild and have fun annihilating your enemies in every Arena match!
