Contents

TLDR

If you don’t want all the details but just the most important info you want these links:

• Structure Points cheatsheet
• Strategies

The setup

The challenge puts you against another alliance with a comparable battle power (at first game stages it will be an alliance of your server, later on of a different server) .

The goal is to collect as many Battlefield points as possible during combat to win!

The battle takes place on a desert map and lasts 40 minutes; multiple buildings will appear at different moments of the battle.

Event Overview

1. Two alliances will be matched in the battlefield, each aiming to control the Nuclear Silo
   Spawn zone for the 2 alliances:
   
2. Gaining and holding facilities earns Battlefield points. The side with more points wins
3. Troops in this campaign will not die thanks to a mysterious force and will automatically heal after battle.
4. Commanders will periodically get 1 free teleport in this campaign, 2 minutes of cooldown after each use
5. Each alliance can deploy up to 20 commanders to participate in this campaign (+ 10 substitutes)

Event Stages

1. Selecting Participants
   Only the top 20 Alliances in Warzone power rankings can join each event. Only commanders with bases over Lv. 15 are eligible.
   Alliance R4s and R5s must decide on the battle time, starting players, and substitutes during the registration stage.
   Each Alliance can assign up to 20 starting players an 10 substitutes, with starting players getting priority battlefield access.
2. Entering the Battlefield
   Players must meet 3 conditions to enter the battlefield
   A. Be a starting player or a substitute for this battle
   B. Belong to the registered Alliance
   C. Their main base should not be on the Contaminated Land near the Capitol
3. Battle Stages
   Preparation Stage: Participants from both sides can enter the battlefield’s safe zone. Your side will be marked in blue, the enemy in red. You can’t be attacked in the safe zone
   Stage 1(At game start): Capture Oil Refineries, Science Centers, Info Centers, and Field Hospitals to earn Battlefield Points
   Stage 2 (10 minutes after game start): Capture the Nuclear Silo, Arsenal, and Mercenary Factory to gain Battlefield Points
   Stage 3 (20 minutes after game start): Oil Wells will appear on the map, harvest them to get Battlefield Points

The side with the most Battlefield Points at the end of the countdown of 40 minutes wins the battle

Special Rules

1. In the battle, killing hostile commander units grants significant Individual Points but no Battlefield points. Higher-level enemies yield more points
2. You’ll get free teleport opportunity every 2 minutes, followed by a cooldown. Teleporting is suspended during cooldown.
3. You won’t suffer unit casualities in this battle, they will be sent to the hospital with unlimited capacity. All recover after battle.
4. Commanders who leave the battlefield can’t re-enter (you can still switch from battlefield to normal map mode)
5. Buffs from Tech, VIP, Base Skins, Titles, Decorations and Squad Gear are active during battle

Structures and Map

Here are all the details regarding the structures you can capture during the battle. Some provide a high amount of points, other provide powerful boosts that might change the course of the battle.

Nuclear Silo

It is the main structure of the game and it provides the highest amount of Initial Capture points and also Capture Yields per minute. It is possible to capture it only starting from Stage 2, so after 10 minutes since the beginning of the game.

Science Hub

This structure provides less points but it has a powerful boost:

• Reduce cooldown for free relocation and marching speedup by 50%

Info Center

This structure provides a powerful boost for building capture. Whenever you try to capture a building it takes a certain amount of time before you own that building: 1 minute. With this boost you reduce that time by 50%

Field Hospital I/II

Strategy wise these are the most important buildings to capture to ensure you will be able to keep fighting for the whole 40 minutes of the battle. In fact these buildings provide a healing boost that recovers 15 units of any level every 10 seconds for each Field Hospital owned. There are 4 Field Hospitals.

Use Field Hospital during the battle

If your team captured the field hospital it will heal your soldiers, to collect them go on the icon with the field hospital (house and the cross sign) on the lower left part of your screen, and collect each tome new units are healed.

Arsenal

Killing troops provides a huge amount of individual points, so capturing this building that boosts Heroes’ Attack, Defense and HP by 15% is a good way of increasing your points.

Mercenary Factory

This structure weakens your enemy with a reduce enemy Heroes’ Attack, Defense, HP by 15%.

Oil Wells

These structures are similar to fields and mines of the game, you send squads and they gather resource, in this case points. No initial capture points.

Structure Points cheatsheet

All the info above compressed in this clear cheatsheet that allow you to plan your strategy.

	Initial Points		Capture Yields		Available	Boosts
Structure	Alliance	Individual	Alliance	Individual
Nuclear Silo	6750	3375	+4500/m	+2250/m	After 10 min
Oil Refinery	4500	2250	+3000/m	+1500/m	Immediately
Field Hospital	2700	1350	+1800/m	+900/m	Immediately	yes
Science Hub	900	450	+600/m	+300/m	Immediately	yes
Info Center	900	450	+600/m	+300/m	Immediately	yes
Arsenal	900	450	+600/m	+300/m	After 10 min	yes
Mercenary Factory	900	450	+600/m	+300/m	After 10 min	yes
Oil Wells	0	0	+240/m	+120/m	After 20 min

Rewards

[TODO]

Registration

Each member of an alliance can request to participation when registrations are open. 

The maximum number of players is 20 per team, you can have 10 substitutes. Once registrations are closed not even R4 and R5 can change participants. R4/R5 are the ones that will decide the final line up of the players that will participate.

Request participation for each time ranges only if you actually can participate as you cannot be replaced afterwards, only 10 substitute can be selected.

The Battle

Now let’s talk about the serious part, the battle itself.

Entering the battlefield

When the event countdown in the event detail page ends and the event begins, participants must enter the battlefield on time, after another 5 minutes the substitutes can enter if necessary and those who were not connected remain outside. 

• You enter the game with troops of the highest level you can train and the amount equal to your drill grounds’ capacity.
• Troops can be injured during the event and will go to a special event hospital (you can heal them during the event if you need them, and if you have the field hospital the healing is expedited), but at the end of the event the injured troops return to normal as if nothing had happened. So use all the troops at your disposal. The alliance help is not available in the event hospital unfortunately.
• Only squads that in the normal game are in the base are available in Desert Storm, if you left some in fields just call them back to base, they will be available in DS once they enter the base.

Here a video of how to enter the battlefield and a gameplay of first attack:

Goals

During the event you must aim to score as many alliance points as possible to win the event, a nice HUD banner with real-time ranking will help in keeping track of progress.

Alliance points are earned by capturing structures and maintaining their possession. At first capture there are some additional points. A capture is completed only once an alliance cleared the building from enemies, if any is reinforcing, and after the capture countdown of 1 minute is passed. From that moment the capture yields are added to the real-time scoring banner.

Additional points can be collected gathering the point supply boxes that appear when a building is captured (when there are additional points). Send scouts to collect them fast.

Individual points will provide individual rewards instead but the focus should remain on the alliance points as the alliance rewards are better than the individual ones.

Most important things to know

• You cannot use alliance help to heal your soldiers from the hospital as you are used to in the normal game, but you can use healing speed ups
• You will be able to use squads in the mini-game desert storm only if your squad is in the base in the normal map. So make sure your squads are back to base before desert storm starts. Basically if a squad is in use in normal map mode it is not available in desert storm.
• if you miss the registration phase or if you are not added as participant or substitute there is no way at participating in the desert storm battle
• teleports in the Desert Storm are free but limited to 1 every 2 minutes with the cooldown period shown in the left bottom part of the screen, right above the Heroes button
• in Desert Storm the durability of your base is of 4000 points, after 4 hits your base is burned and you are teleported back to the safe zone. The cooldown to teleport does not reset in this case so if it was running you have to wait
• most of the time people that don’t have experience in Desert Storm end up with no troops after a couple of minutes, make sure you read the strategies below to see how you can limit your troop loss
• in Desert storm you cannot move freely your squads, they have to reach a target and go back to base before they can be sent against another target. So forget about burning a base with a couple of quick clicks and 1 squad in few seconds.
• in Desert storm if the cooldown period of the teleport is met, you can teleport to any location of the map regarless of your squads being in the base or not. This is a nice change from the normal teleport rules in the normal game where you need all your squads to be back in your base before teleporting. P.s. the same rule applies during duel vs day 6 when you port to and from the other server.

Real time score update

At the top of the screen you will always see the real time score of the match.

You can see there:

• your current score (you are always blue and the enemy is red)
• your current capture yield per minute
• numer of participants
• battle time remaining (it starts at 00:45:00 with 5 minutes being the preparation stage where you can’t do any action. The battle starts at 00:40:00)

Clicking on this banner you can access the individual points rankings:

Strategies

There are many strategies you can use to win Desert Storm. If your team is very communicative the best thing would be to organize a Vocal Chat in discord, so that given the fact you can use teleport in the game, you will be very effective to capture or re-capture structures based on real-time info.

Team Coordination

Given the fact you will be in 20 people (hopefully) the best thing is to coordinate the battle with your team members and divide the capture of the structures among different groups.

Let the big players take care of structures that provide more points as most probably enemies will do that too. Make sure you agree on a strategy on which boosts you want and so focus one or more groups to capture the specific structures to gain those boosts.

Usually most of the teams aim to capture Oil refinery at the battle start, as that building among those available gives the most points both as initial capture and as capture yields. When Nuclear silo unlocks most the strongest opponents will for sure try to take that one.

Capture an empty building

Capturing an empty building is quite easy, just attack it and it will be yours.

After 1 minute it will start producing points for your alliance (and for your individual points) based on the capture yield. If it is the first capture you will also gain the Initial Capture points.

Strategy to capture empty buildings lowering troop loss

If you are capturing a building (but you are still not gaining capture yield points) and an enemy shows up, you can use the following strategy to win the battle lowering your troop loss (this works well if the enemy has hq/power similar or lower than yours):

• Keep your squad in the building unless the enemy starts the attack (especially if it is the first building capture where you can gain the Initial Capture points)
• When the enemy begins an attack on the building and you aren’t earning yet the capture yield (so you are reinforcing for less than 1 minute), retreat the squad avoiding the enemy to hit your squad on the building and thus avoiding troop loss
• Most probably the enemy sent his A team to capture the building so he might be defenseless. Remember that if he wants to attack your base with that squad he has first to make it go back to his base and then send it towards your base
• Send all your troops, with A squad in first position to attack the enemy base.
• If you are lucky the enemy will have no defense or have weak squads, so once the enemy is zeroed send your squad to conquer the base
• If you use scout you can make sure that the squads you are sending can actually win the battle against the base. Send scouts multiple time the moment before your squads hit the enemy to be able to retreat a squad if the enemy enables defense.

Pros:

1. You avoid losing troops on the first hit from the enemy that most probably will send A team to capture base
2. If the enemy has no defense lineup you can zero him with 0 troop loss, especially if you are fast and the enemy is close to you
3. No points are earned by the enemy if you are fast as it takes 1 minute to start capture yield

Cons:

1. If the enemy has a strong B squad and sets it as defense this strategy might work but it takes more time as you will have to hit him only with your A squad, this would work better if you are close to the enemy
2. If multiple enemies show up you might be exposed to their attack if you sent your A squad to attack the enemy
3. The enemy might enable defense right the moment you hit him, so using a squad with only 1 low level hero might be a good strategy to lower even more troop loss risk.
4. If it is the first capture of the building and you are not fast enough zeroing the enemy he will gain those points.

Keep in mind that this strategy aims at lowering the troop loss but at the same time makes you lose precious seconds of building capture, so use it wisely based on the current battle status and the amount of troops you have left.

Video showing this strategy (no scout was used and I was lucky, always use scouts):

Capture a building owned by the enemy

If the building is owned by the other team you can have 2 approaches:

1. Attack directly the building with your most powerful squad, trying to defeat all the squads that are reinforcing the building (similar to village capture).
   This strategy has a serious problem as most probably you will lose a lot of soldiers and after a couple of captures you will run out of troops
2. Identify bases that have reinforcements in the building, and burn them down.
   This approach usually works well if the bases have no defense set, else this has the same problem as the approach above but probably you will lose less soldiers as the enemy sends the first squad to reinforce.

Video of approach 2:

What not to do

In Desert Storm your troops are very precious so you shouldn’t do things that put them at risk.

Here some examples of what you shouldn’t do, as it will cause you most probably loss of troops:

1. If a weaker enemy is attacking you, wait with main squad in defense, then attack when his main squad is returning, instead of letting him burn you because your defense squads are out. Remember that if you remove defense lineup you will anyway lose a certain amount of troops at every hit.

2. don’t attack idle enemies with weak squads, they have time to set their defense and you lose troops. It’s better to do it when enemies are doing multiple things as they might not have time to set up the defense the moment they see you are attacking (works best if you are close to the enemy base)

Defeating Enemies in Desert Storm

So as you can see in Desert Storm battles, defeating enemies requires strategy beyond brute force. Here are some generic suggestions to efficiently take down opponents:

1. Identify Vulnerabilities

• Scout Enemy Defenses: Before attacking, scout to see if the enemy has set up defenses.
• Exploit Weaknesses: Some enemies may prioritize offense over defense, leaving their base vulnerable. Hit them when you see all their squads are out of the base.

2. Implement “David vs Goliath Strategy”

• Target Defenseless Bases: If an enemy has sent their main squad to capture a building and left their base undefended, attack their base directly rather than engaging their squad on the building
• Minimize Risk: Use weak squads with only one low-level hero to minimize troop loss and reduce risk.

3. Hit enemies to cause damage with low troop loss

• Reduce Troop Loss: By targeting defenseless bases, you risk losing fewer troops, even with multiple attacks. If you use weak squads with only one low-level hero this is even more optimized.
• Inflict Damage: Each successful hit on a defenseless enemy inflicts him troop losses that he must heal before he can reuse those troops.
• Force Retreat: Consistent attacks can force the enemy to retreat to the safe zone, disrupting their operations. A cooldown period of 2 minutes after each teleport will slow down your enemies.
• Immediate Reinforcement loss: If an enemy was reinforcing a building and then gets burned down, his base is sent to safe zone and the reinforcement squad on the building will be immediately removed

4. Execution Tips

• Scout Continuously: Keep scouting the enemy to ensure defenses remain down before launching an attack.
• Coordinate Attacks: Launch simultaneous attacks with multiple squads, but be prepared to call them back if defenses are enabled.
• Lure enemies: If your main squad is in your base lure the enemy to come hit you disabling first the defense if he is scounting you, and enable the defense if you see him attacking with his weak squad. Kills of his troops will earn you individual points

Defeat stronger enemies with small troop loss risk

In Desert Storm, but also during warzone duel you are able to defeat even stronger enemies if some conditions are met.

Here a video that shows how a level 30 is burned down by a level 27 in a warzone duel battle using a mix of the strategies explained in this article.

Additional things you need to know

• You cannot access the alliance store from within the Desert Storm interface, but you can switch to the normal game and from there go to the alliance store. Be careful to not to exit the battlefield as in that case you can’t re-enter. To switch safely to normal game just click on the bottom right icon “Base”, and once you are done click on the battlefield banner that is at the top of the screen to come back to Desert Storm game.
• You can keep your base in the safe zone and send out troops to attack or reinforce, but you cannot move the troops freely so it is a long ride from the safe zone to your targets
• There is no limit of re-spawns, your only limitation is that if you lose all your troops you will not be able to attack or defend, you actually can’t even go to gather in the oil wells.