Hi there folks. There was supposed to be a funny Banepost in this video as well, but TH-cam decided to copyright strike it. Instead of waiting 30 days to get it resolved, we opted to remove it from the video and then re-upload it as a separate shitpost once TH-cam stops being dumb.¨ Anyway, enjoy almost two hours of a stupid egg talking about Dual Strike. 🕑 Timestamps: 0:00 Intro 2:46 Jake 7:07 Rachel 10:48 Andy 13:20 Sami 16:00 Max 17:18 Nell 18:55 Hachi 20:12 Olaf 25:14 Grit 27:56 Colin 32:06 Sasha 37:51 Kanbei 39:24 Sonja 45:46 Sensei 49:45 Grimm 53:32 Eagle 59:01 Drake 1:02:17 Jess 1:06:37 Javier 1:13:46 Flak 1:15:19 Adder 1:16:32 Lash 1:19:41 Hawke 1:23:01 Jugger 1:25:30 Koal/Zak 1:30:40 Candy/Kindle 1:37:42 Von Bolt 1:41:28 Complete Tier List 1:42:43 Days of Ruin? 1:44:40 Outro
man, the balancing in dual strike is truly baffling when you think about it. "I'm sure making the conditional firepower boosts weaker than the permanent firepower boosts will make the new COs good. also nerf max" -a dual strike designer. edit: rachel is actually sturm's Vtuber avatar.
i'm confused about max in all of Mang's other videos I kept hearing how OP Max is and how's S Rank and *insert pls nurf Nintendo memes* What happened here in dual strike? I thought Max was OP in AW2 as well actually, was he not?
@@Broockle Mangs rated Max as a C tier in AW2. He was really only a monster in AW1, purely because of how completely overtuned his firepower bonus was. (50% day to day firepower is so utterly insane that I cannot fathom how they allowed it in without a second thought.)
i wish they would just add all the dual strike COs to the Switch Remake. The Dual strike special powers were indeed too broken and they can keep them :D
I'm 99% sure Sonja remove Lash's defense stars before they are doubled. By the way, Sonja is also better in the campaign, as her defense star reducing ability also applies during her allies' turn.
I remember it like that as well. Also in free-for-alls she reduces the terrain stars for everyone on the map, even units not atacking her, which seems like a pretty big development oversight...
The way I read most of "senile" moments from Sensei was actually him just *pretending* to be senile to be a snarky jerk. That sneer avatar shows up a lot, especially after he has a "senile" moment. Honestly, it just reads as though Sensei is just taking the piss out of everyone and having the last laugh.
As far as I’m concerned he’s just making the enemy think "Did I just get my ass kicked by a senile man?" (Would’ve add "old" there but then again it’s implied the new COs of black hole are old too)
>'that there's like whackin' snakes with a bucket, pa-hyuck!' >sonja and colin regressing into their pre-AW2 selves >emo hawke Are these all for the lulz too? There comes a point where rationalizations like this stop making sense, and the more obvious answer (it's just bad writing) becomes inescapable.
With Dual strike it feel a bit too crowded but also empty. Like they are all standing in a room with over 20 people of which the majority never say a word. It's why I love the story of Days of Ruin because there is a far better sense of space. Even with just a few portraits at a time you have a good idea just who is in the scene, where they are and what the current mood is.
@@qzecwx Those are genuine complains but Sensei has always been kind of a troll Also, apparently some of the problems regarding characterization come from the american translation
"But Rachel...why did you pretend to be space Hitler?" "No one respected me a a CO until I put on the mask. They all said I had no skill -- that I was just *lucky.* Well who's lucky now!? All of *you* just to survive under the iron rule of my Black Hole Army!" It's also worth remembering Sturm's ultimate weapon to destroy his enemies was a giant missile silo.
Could also have a short Super Famicom Wars tierlist, considering 4/7 COs have no powers, just different AI (which obviously doesn’t matter at all in PvP), and the 3 with D2D powers are all very strong. Famicom Wars and the GB Wars 1/2/3 don’t have COs at all so tierlist might be good for an April Fool’s vid, but nothing else.
@@Broockle they kept nerfing him in each game. AW he had a ludicrous passive 50% increase to direct combat but then it was lowered to 20% in AW2 but he got movement bonuses with his CO powers, then DS got rid of his movement bonuses from his CO powers and made his indirects deal normal damage instead of reduced damage.
Rachel is just kind of a mishmash of stolen mechanics when you get down to it. Her day-to-day repair bonus feels like it belongs on either a healing CO like Andy and Hawke or a money CO like Colin and Sasha, her normal CO power is a nerfed version of her sister's, and her Super CO Power is a much better version of Sturm's. She feels incredibly incoherent as a result - the only thing about her that really works is her Super CO Power, which has nothing to do with either of her other effects. I think they were running out of ideas by the time they made her.
@@alexanderkosten7611 also why did orange star get two new co's when the other protagonist nations only got one each? At least Black Hole getting a bunch makes sense considering they're the bad guys and you want to give the players some new people to fight
@@iprobablysuck9107 because they wanted two teenagers for the protagonist nation that aren't stupids like Andy, a boy and a girl, because they thinked that with those two, more teenagers will buy this game. And we can see this specially with American Jake.
@@theultimatetactician1712 yeah i was referring to FE in AW he is REALLY strong and he also gived me some lessions (also he fucked up only once in his new AW1 LP so that's something)
@@robertharris6092 good point with the naval units but I was focusing more on the units koal gets buffs for, although he is kinda like a more middle ground eagle
Would certainly be useful to newbies like me, who only have maybe 3 hours logged into one AW game. Watching these tier lists may make me consider trying Dual Strike again (only AW game I have), but actually knowing what I’m doing would help me stick with it.
I heard that the extra bonus in CO meter from infantry is actually a buff to the one who built the infantry, as you gain double CO meter from losing a unit than destroying one, making spamming infantry and mechs possibly even better than in AW 2
This. Defensive charging means building infantry provides a very big benefit, and that you want to invest more of your army into infantry. As such, characters that boost infantry in this tier list are kind of underrated (Sami especially). Sensei is also underrated, but not so much because of his infantry but because of his insane unit count. There are a ton of ways to simply abuse him and I would not be surprised if he is the second best character in the game (after Hachi), with Colin and Kanbei following up (and if 80% of your army is infantry, Sami is probably next in line on most maps).
@@aasgier9091 Exactly, quantity over quality is a big thing in AW. Even if your opponent has medium tanks and such, an artilary defended by an excessive amount of infantry making it nearly impossible to hit is very scary. I've experienced the sensei horde before, it is quite scary
Good thing they remedied this in Dark Conflict. A unit that finishes a unit off will rank up and gain firepower and defense bonus, regardless of the value of the destroyed unit. This punishes infantry spamming, and not protecting wounded units.
In the Spanish translation, they made Jake not talk like you described, so he just comes out as a chill (and I remember sometimes a little shy) boy who likes music and tanks.
That would fit more with his caracter design, listening to music because he doesn't talk much or is afraid to say something wrong ratter than for ignorance, although i don't like the idea to force people into being shy
I remember stuff like this being the case even in the English versions between the EU and US versions. Especially once Nintendo started doing more simultaneous releases with a direct EU translation team (instead of doing the other languages based of the US translation). The US localisers have a more more liberal approach, often exaggerating things for laughs, whereas the EU scripts are a lot more faithful, if dry.
I honestly headcanon Jake as just a chill dude who likes spending time with people, listening to music, and tanks, but he tries too hard to be cool and uses waaaayyy too much slang. However, in more quiet environments, he uses very little slang.
From what I remember, that is essentially his personality in the Japanese original. His "totally rad" mannerisms where the product of the English localization.
For Kindle/Candy, I agree with Mangs because tons of fights are over properties, especially heavily urbanized maps with areas that the infantry units are fated to clash first.
This game might have a bad story and game-breaking gimmick, but I love the new COs and gameplay additions (Com Towers, Black Boats, Megatanks) Still my personal favorite in the series
I agree who cares about the story. And the game breaking gimmick is the most fun thing in the single player mood. The song allone is enough to make me smile. Thunder thunder. WHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO.
Story was no worse than the first two, I liked it better actually. The gimmick is pretty far out but i wouldn't call it game breaking. Just like the old games, if you don't want to deal with op powers and dual strikes, dont play them. It's my favorite, with 1 and 2 being close behind. Like mangs, I wish they would implement some of the great changes in this game to the remakes of 1 and two, let's keep hoping.
I really liked Dual strike because Jess is my favorite CO and shes an absolute power house in it. Her theme is an absolute banger too, it got even better on the DS. I hope this Jess is used in the remake.
Sonja subtracts terrain stars before Lash doubles her own. Also Javier does not get a defence bonus from the +5% comm tower effect skill, it is however still a very good skill to pick as any CO if you have at least 1 comm tower.
I always found it odd that Rachel got this +1 repair D2D rather than Andy, the kid that's always been holding a wrench. It'd be a better D2D if it restored +3 hp per turn for the standard repair costs (so -1400g for +3 hp to a tank), but clearly you don't want to have a unit repairing for too long
I think that even without knowing Dual Strike (or at least Rachel probably), I was already thinking that Andy needed exactly that D2D power, it made sense for him. And because it isn't bad if you play along that, on the contrary, yeah, you got more repair costs, but in 2 turns you could repair pretty much any unit back to almost full power if it only took 1 attacker of the same level (Infantry VS Infantry, Tanks VS Tanks, heck, Medium tanks without boosted Fire power engaging agaisnt another MD tank with slighty boosted defense will probably end in about 3-4 damage, repairing almost or completely a Medium tank in a single turn seems way better than having to sacrifice it and buy another one). And then we aren't considering the fact that Properties under that CO would be pretty tough to battle, unless you damage it badly in just 1 round of attacks (heck, not even a Mech and another Tank could completely win a property that easily against a Tank, the increased defense will make the unit do great chip damage to these units, alongside resisting much, only to have it repair 3 HP on the next turn, making it probable that not even a second round of these units would destroy that tank protecting the property).
@@gicrueldad9520 Exactly, Rachel's whole strength is heavily based on camping: while she doesn't get improved defense on cities, 30% defense plus 3 HP regeneration means that unless you focus fire on the unit on top of the tile, you simply ARE NOT outpacing the healing it's getting. If Rachel puts a tank on a city she owns, say bye bye to it, because unless you divert most of your unit against it you are not capturing it any time soon. Between that and the fact her normal power is awful, but has one of the strongest Super Powers in the game means Rachel performs far better in bigger maps than smaller ones, like Hawke
Personally, I found that +1 extra heal particularly useful for staying in fights in urban areas, as opposed to cutting down time a damaged unit would need to be pulled back. Basically, my dream scenario with the D2D is to also have the heal skill to bring it to +4 HP per turn, and then park a rocket on a city overlooking contested areas. Or a neo/megatank on a city IN the contested areas. Get the healing WHILE they’re engaged in battle, that unit might as well be in Caulder’s CO zone at that point.
finally finished the video gotta say davis' editing was complimenting your commentary making the whole tier list incredibly engaging and amazing throughout 10/10 would spend almost two hours watching an egg talk about advance wars again
a pencil? where she had a giant pencil at least in my emulator of gba that was a gian ammo which made sense since she was a vehicle specialist, also i think that eagle should had a 10% less power in his ground units while jess should had 10% less power in his naval units only and with drake and his 10% less power in air units you have a perfect triangle too bad that they didnt do it since in the og drake and eagle were meant to be opposite to each other since one was a serious and focus commander while drake was more laidback and tranquill one
Yeah the story *really* pulls this, IMO otherwise pretty greatly designed character, down. I mean, he got a good design, an amazing theme and a really fun and unique Super Power that also packs quite a punch - its really just that he is very poorly written and, when compared to the previous final boss Sturm, appears underwhelming.
@@kazekamiha honestly, i don’t think that would help him stand up to Sturm (which IMO he should be able to, considering he is the final boss), as he would still get beat both in passive effects and special effects by Sturm. Honestly, ive been thinking a lot lately as to how i would buff Von Bolt in a way that would allow him to stand up to Sturm as an equal. I’ve thought about increasing his stats to 120/120, but then he’d still be lacking a passive ability which Sturm had (he got to ignore all terrain travel costs) and his SCOP would also still be weaker than Sturms (Sturm did 8 dmg and heavily boosted his firepower, while Von Bolt does 3 dmg and stuns those hit units for a turn - both dmg effects have the exact same range, so Von Bolt is missing out on the global firepower boost). So a stat increase alone isn’t going to cut it, which is why i started thinking about a passive effect that might work - and i think i found one that would work and make sense: What if Von Bolt would not allow his enemy to counterattack? That would mean that every time one of Von Bolts units gets the first strike on an enemy unit, this unit would not fire back at him, allowing him to use damaged and weaker units to still deal sone decent damage and stop the enemy from advancing further. This would be an immensely powerful effect, would work beautifully together with his SCOPs stun effect (he would get two turns of uninterrupted attacks on those units) and would justify him having weaker stats than Sturm did, while still allowing him to enter the same liege. If that sounds like too much i also thought about 120/120 stats and adding the not firing back effect to stunned units.
@@kazekamiha But what i was talking about wasn’t a small bonus - plus im not altering his stats… A small bonus would be something like +10% firepower during a sandstorm or somethinglike that (in which case he would still get beaten by Sturm due to the SCOP being so much weaker than his)
Von Bolt's super power is much more scary in the story campaign, where a one-turn freeze can allow the ozzium to one-shot your units while they cannot move.
Oh my god! Is that the Coveted Design Doc i see over here? I think my respect for you passed a normally insurmountable levels.... Now that i realize that you are a fan of the Advance Wars Series. Hats off.... err, i mean, Market Crashes off to you, Good Sir!
It's the first time I've seen Javier and as an Spanish, I couldn't stop laughing. It's design is inspired by the classic literature figure of Don Quijote, and his name is a Spanish name (so, if you want to be faithful to the origins, for the pronunciation you treat the J as an h, for example in "hat") Great satiric character, I love when videogames do that And great video, btw
@@Artemas_16 I mean, Eagle is kind of a mix of references to Germany in both World Wars, albeit mostly limited to air units and his power being the English translation of Blitzkrieg.
you know i've noticed in these rankings you often mention how you've never tested or are interested about a certain interaction between CO powers or game mechanics and i think combining them all into an "Advance Wars Mythbusters" would be a really cool video idea.
I’m surprised that max wasn’t a D tier commander. Personally, I feel that he is extremely underwhelming and his powers don’t compete without his movement like in black hole rising.
Excellent video! Advance Wars Dual Strike was a big part of my childhood, but I usually just picked a CO based on how much I liked their music. That ended up with me playing Jugger most of the time!
I honestly would rate Sasha as a B tier CO just because of some overlooked aspects of her playstyle: If the opposing CO has no day-to-day abilities or a more detrimental/trivial one (Andy, Rachel) she essencialy has a 10% edge over the opponents funds, thus making her easier to win, not to mention that the CO power still gives buffs to the army so using the power + her day-to-day bonus just makes her a superior unit to a lot of other COs. When you are on a team-based match, the Market Crash will shut down the teams power while your ally maintains theirs... So basically you have the whole game on the back just because you and your ally can use CO powers while your enemy cannot... That 10% income increase is a nerfed Colin power, and it works really well. If you have 5 propeties, which is the easiest thing to have, you get an infantry every 2 days. If you have 10 propeties, you have an infantry every day. If anything it just covers the cost of repairing when your expensive units get shot at cities. Needless to say, on long terms, she will outmatch your army.
Your first point is obsolete because most most of the dual strike CO's have beneficial day 2 days and your second point is obsolete because mangs literally said he's not taking team matches into account
@@cringekid3993 your point is obsolete because I'm allowed to rate units the way I want 😎 Also, Andy Jake Nell Rachel Sami (kinda) Olaf Drake Grimm Adder Flak Jugger Koal Sasha herself 13/27 COs are those whose day2day abilities aren't that great and thus Sasha has an advantage over, that's half the COs in the game and there are still some other COs she can still have an advantage over, although more evenly matched. Get off your high horse please
Another nuance I noticed about Sasha on AWBW (as in, one match because I am very new) is that the extra funds makes the question to capture out-of-the-way cities vs. cities in key conflict areas a lot easier to resolve. If I have extra income, I can feel more confident about harassing the center because I have cash to fall back on. In that match however, my opponent was playing Adder, which kind of made Market Crash kind of pointless given that Adder uses his power very quickly and he doesn’t necessarily rely on it. I was caught a bit off guard by that choice because it was a T1 game, and Adder is officially T4, but it was actually a smart counter.
@@benjaminparent4115 well yeah, the best COs win agaisnt 80 to 90% of the cast already. The best COs have advantages over the weakests COs, so that's already to be expected, but I see where you're coming from the already countered by Market Crash COs
At first I was like "Oh okay, it's been ages since I played Dual Strike. Was she really that bad...?" and then I said "No, stop. She's literally the worst thing."
Can I just say that Dual Strike was my first ever advance wars game and the characters introduced in it are some of my favourites. I absolutely love playing Sasha, Grimm, Javier, Jake and Rachel
I can see why it would difficult to make a tier list without a lot of play testing. There are many variables you have to think about. CO zone effect, its range, the CO power effect itself, along with fact it also makes CO zone global for a turn and how difficult/easy it is to keep Commander alive to take advantage of all those bonuses. It would a nice video to spark more discussion and maybe even more videos about Days of ruin.
Jugger actually is an S tier CO when you use his alt costume. Office attire is his real CO Power. Only thing I would say that you didn't point out is how strong Grimm is when playing with 2 COs. Yeah it's not the best way to play competitively, but using the games intended mechanics and for campaign play, he can be really good to switch out into a high-defense CO afterwards. Only cause you do bring up how good some COs/abilities are in the campaign as well :p
Probably there is only 4 OS COs; 2 COs for BM, GE and YC; 1BH CO in AW1. AW2 add 1 more CO to each faction except BH who has 4 more COs. AW:DS also add 1 morr CO to each faction except OS who has 2 more COs and BH who has 4 more COs. It's kinda like comparing time to grade students in small class of 11 students to big classes that have 30s students.
Ironically sasha would be pretty good in competitive (especially vs high power bar cos ) But my god many characters need rebalancing Oh he mentioned it
@@flatty4657 It does because, if you are playing well, you should be smashing through their units by the 10s each turn, meaning their CO powers charge faster than yours to compensate for the loss in units
Mangs talking about Olaf: They(CO powers) still work exactly the same as they used to, Blizzard still makes it snow for a day. Also Mangs talking about Olaf: However, both of his powers now make it snow for 2 days instead of 1. Me: wut
Based on what you said about Candy (unless I'm missing something >_< ) it's amazing she's only considered A Rank here and listed lower elsewhere. As you said, Advance Wars is a game about captures. Her Power and Super Power not only work best when used by a player who knows how to play the game properly but she also works better if her OPPONENT knows how to play the game properly. She actively rewards the player who uses her and plays the game right while also actively punishing the opponent for doing the same damn thing lol. (mindsplosion)
Without even realising just how dumb the firepower bonus was for Kindle I'd been thinking even without her day to day bonus her powers would push her into B tier alone, but potentially all the way to A off powers alone even if she didn't have the day to day
I think one of the reasons there is such a big gap in your rating of Kindle compared to the AW by Web's rating is that Mang mostly plays on custom maps with Panzer that has a overabundance of properties, making her feel much more powerful. On the average AW by Web map there are far less properties hence the lower ranking.
One thing to consider is that alot of the AWBW maps that people play, are balanced symmetrical maps, which tend to have properties clustered in key central locations. I definitely think that AWBW is wrong on this one, any capture game boost is big in aw and candy's is insane.
Mangs: "People are getting upset at how I'm saying their name. I think it's pronounced [pronounces it correctly] but IDK how to pronounce it so I'm just gonna keep calling them [cringe pronunciation]"
I think it would come natural for him to pronounce Javier name correctly if he knew spanish: Javier is based partially on Don Quijote after all, as Green Earth is basically the European Union
I think a good compensation for Tag mode could be to just disallow Tag Power. That's generally the strongest component, and disallowing that will still let you take advantage of changing COs to cover their weaknesses, go from defensive to offensive or vice versa, ramp some gold, etc. Broken COs are still broken of course, but it changes up the balance a bit, I would think so anyway.
In my brief time in Advance Wars By Web, that was actually an option I noted when setting up a custom game. Tag powers are never allowed, but dual COs can be turned on for a match. Never did it myself, and I have a strong feeling no one ever does, but the option’s there.
My boy Olaf! He's actually even better than described here. His snow bonus is passive and unrelated to his COP so on turn one of COP hes actually 130/110 and second turn is 120/100. That's nuts considering you can keep this going pretty much indefinitely since he's the only CO that can charge his power while still benefitting from it on turn 2. Also since he focuses on his regular COP Sasha can't shut him down. He plays way different than before but hes definitely legit stronger in awds.
This list is pretty spot on. I think Sonja/Grit are B tier depending on the map you play on. Grit relies on choke points and being able to scale to late game while sonja actually wants to build more indirect rather than direct units since she has no counterattack mechanic. I never thought Olaf would be strong in dual strike, but you have convinced me.
Very good list, Dual Strike is my favorite in the series. I only can hope and pray it gets a remake as well with the original art style. Also as a Sasha main I find her to be pretty good, high C tier or low B tier imo. Her little power is extremely good against certain CO's with deadly Powers. She is pretty effective at evening the playing field.
One thing I really dislike about Dual strike is that weird and useless perspective effect they added on the map, making everything aliased and messy. AW2 looks so much cleaner in comparison.
Yes it's terrible. Worst game in the series. Dark Conflict does look a little pixelated too but somehow it just looks a lot better. Plus it's a vastly better game in general.
@@F3udF1st Worst game is a bit of a big claim… I mean, yes, Dual Strike definitely has its flaws; but, in my opinion, it gets a bad rap. I’d honestly say that the first is worst. I don’t care how big of a hot take that is, the game was unbalanced as heck, didn’t have SCOPS, and the graphics were HECKING UGLAY!!!! Not to mention that the story was super BOORRAAAAANG!!!!!! (Well, until Sturm showed up, that is.) Advance Wars 2 is the best game because of gameplay, aesthetic, and story, with Days of Ruin being a close second. Dual strike somewhere close below Days imo, and AW1 is barely at the bottom…but it’s still at the bottom.
@@Broockle In AW1 his day to day power was 150%. No, seriously. In AW2 they nerfed it to a balanced 120%. AW3 they robbed the movement boost from his CO powers.
In response to the Sonja/Lash stuff, I asked a few of my friends who know a lot about it, and they said the following: "If Sonja's Super was popped first, the terrain star reduction would be taken into consideration BEFORE Lash doubles it. But if Lash pops hers first, first the doubler goes away, the terrain stars are reduced by two, and THEN the doubler is put back into play." So it looks like Sonja indeed hard counters Lash. Those train star doubling takes effect only after Sonja reduces the stars as much as she can.
I only found your channel today and had no idea there was a competitive AW scene, so it's been a really interesting ride. Cool stuff my dude. The only game I ever put any time into was dual strike, but after watching these tier lists I'm itching to go back to the others.
50:20 That's actually a really big one. The terrain ability gave Sturm the mobility to push hard enough that his lower defense wasn't as big an issue and perhaps more importantly it allowed him to be in cover at all times to compensate for his lower defense.
If you plan to cover Days of Ruins, you may need to make a video about the changes made in that game, and give an rough idea of how the matches go for pvp first. Even comparing AW1 to Dual Strike can't match the differences between this game and the previous 3.
They actually say at the start of the campaign that it's only been a few months or so since the end of Advance Wars 2's campaign. So that makes Colin's inexperience make even LESS sense.
@@sasir2013 Normally yes, but considering he was in the thick of the fighting in the Advance Wars 2 campaign and even had a bit of character growth throughout that game, it didn't make sense for them to almost completely walk his character back to the inexperienced buffoon he's presented as in Dual Strike.
Solid tier list. I've been playing AWDS for a long time and have play tested many COs in custom games. I'm glad that our findings line up very closely.
13:12 I have to disagree. The new units are quite expensive, so you can’t afford to lose them. Hyper Repair/Upgrade can really help with maintaining units on the frontlines. just sit down, make a infantry wall, place some indirects and slowly creep forward using Hyper Repair/Upgrade to keep units on the frontlines.
The way to think about repairs is that you recover some of your firepower and endurance for your units, but you don't get back any of the *value* you lost when that unit took damage in the first place. Repairing a 2hp MD tank to full health is the same as if you could produce an 8hp MD tank at one of your bases. You don't have to move them back to the front, but this benefit is often canceled out by having to wait for the repairs themselves to take effect. The exception to this is things like Andy's power because you *do* get your value back because those repairs come free of charge. One good situation for repairs is when it happens passively because you're trying to hold a chokepoint on top of an allied city because both of the costs to doing so are mitigated: You're not going anywhere with that unit so it isn't a waste of a turn to keep them on the same tile, and you get a 30% def bonuses at the same time, which means any direct unit that attacks that space are going to trade more poorly against the unit holding it: you pay 20% of a units cost to recover 20% of it's health but your opponent has to commit more resources to drain that health by the same amount. The more health a wounded unit has, the more of a difference it will make to repair them. Repairing a 2hp tank to 4hp still doesn't leave the unit with much firepower, but repairing a 6hp tank to 8hp makes the difference between something that can dent light vehicles and infantry and a unit that can cripple them. At the end of the day, units are supposed to die because it would be very hard for the game to progress if they didn't, so the game naturally encourages offensive action over defensive action, such as repairs.
US translation Jake: CRINGE. PAL translation Jake: Responsible, polite, I'd rather not kill but I have to. Seriously, Jake is still generic in the PAL translation, but he's WAY better of a character.
As a PAL kid watching US channels from time to time, I noticed that NoA has put out quite a few cringey localizations over the years. It always seems like they think they are really hilarous with all of the memes, but, eh...
@@rewrose2838 The European version. Featuring a new translation and some different names from the US version, as usual with AW. Sometimes for the better (like what they did with Jake), sometimes for the worse (Lash is named Kat) to the Okay, I guess? (Kindle is named Candy in Europe.)
As far as gaining power, the most cost effective units are infantry and recon. As a result, the optimal strategy for most COs is to spam those units like crazy, while saving up for stronger, more decisive units. COs that can spam more infantry and recons are top tier because they also get to spam their powers. Haci, Colin, and Sensei are top-tier. COs that can damage enemies without building up the opponent's power are high tier by default, because their super-powers also slow down the opponent's meter gain. (Rachel, Olaf, Hawke, etc.) Note that the black bomb is arguably the best unit in the game, because it can deal huge damage to the opponent without increasing their meter. COs who just have good attack are mid/low tier. Even Jess and Kanbei can't keep up. Though with tag powers, Kanbei is a lot better. Andy, Sasha, and Eagle are hard to rank. Andy is great against most high tier COs, but nothing special against most others. Eagle's CO power is good, in part because he can build vehicles and infantry on the same bases in a single turn. However, he doesn't have the economy to abuse his CO power like Colin and Sensei can. Sasha is great against COs who rely on their super power, and have a bad CO power. Like Andy, she's very matchup dependant. Her extra income is a good day-to-day bonus, and she keeps up with most high tier COs. Also, I remember reading a better description of Sasha's CO power some time ago. She reduces the enemy power by a certain number of stars depending on her current funds; it's definitely not a percentage. Also, every time a CO uses their power, it takes longer to charge up again; she can't prevent the enemy super power forever, but she can delay it for a long time. Market crash is situational, best used when her CO power isn't very helpful.
I think Grim would be a good CO if he had some movement boost; like -1 Movement cost for anything over 1. Without movement he can't get the 1st hit reliably.
Get us those Days of Ruin deets, and play through the game again, egg-king. Might be good for getting some new comers familiar with the gem that it is.
You're underestimating the value of defense, but only for Sonja. Her day to day is NOT a 10% bonus to firepower against enemies with terrain stars. A Kanbei on a city takes 50% reduced damage. Against Sonja that's only 40%, meaning an attack that would normally deal 50% will deal 60%,effectively a 20% attack power bonus. Her little power bumps that to 77%, an effective 54% damage increase! The more defense her opponents have, the better her abilities are. Of course, they do nothing against air units...
well kinda. I mean, you are not wrong, but at the same time, at a certain point, the buff she gets from removing the defense stars doesn't matter anymore. or better said, if she uses her super power and attacks an enemy on a plain, she doesn't do that much more damage, because the normal 1 star is allready gone from her dtd power, her damage boost is rather small. only against units on high defense terrain her powers are rather good.
@@Dr.AvenVon her day to day is almost always relevant, her little power is often relevant, but her super less so. Often times the most valuable units are kept on the best terrain though, so it's more likely to be useful when it's more important.
Hey Mangs. I discovered your videos after the AW: Reboot reveal and I’ve been addicted to your AW playlists now. I already watched your AW2 playlist and now I’m going to move on to your other AW content. Definitely one of my favorite channels now for AW content. Really looking forward to your AW content leading up to the reboot!
1:23:20 Jugger's theme uses a motif from Flak's theme. So at the very least, the game's music must have been composed after they decided Jugger would just be a copy of Flak in the final game.
At what rank could we put a Javier withou Com Towers ? personally, I would say E tier, being probably even worse than Flak as because his Day to day, CO power and super power are designed mainly to take advantage of the presence of Com Towers, withou them, he just becomes a Average CO with a semi better resistance against indirect units
Hi there folks. There was supposed to be a funny Banepost in this video as well, but TH-cam decided to copyright strike it. Instead of waiting 30 days to get it resolved, we opted to remove it from the video and then re-upload it as a separate shitpost once TH-cam stops being dumb.¨
Anyway, enjoy almost two hours of a stupid egg talking about Dual Strike.
🕑 Timestamps:
0:00 Intro
2:46 Jake
7:07 Rachel
10:48 Andy
13:20 Sami
16:00 Max
17:18 Nell
18:55 Hachi
20:12 Olaf
25:14 Grit
27:56 Colin
32:06 Sasha
37:51 Kanbei
39:24 Sonja
45:46 Sensei
49:45 Grimm
53:32 Eagle
59:01 Drake
1:02:17 Jess
1:06:37 Javier
1:13:46 Flak
1:15:19 Adder
1:16:32 Lash
1:19:41 Hawke
1:23:01 Jugger
1:25:30 Koal/Zak
1:30:40 Candy/Kindle
1:37:42 Von Bolt
1:41:28 Complete Tier List
1:42:43 Days of Ruin?
1:44:40 Outro
I hate you youtube
We were robbed
God damn it youtube.
Minor correction: Max has no firepower nerf for indirects in DS
Having bots in charge was such a mistake, Facebook is responsible for the same thing too.
Drake being C rank in every tier list maks him a great C-man
I love and hate this
Dead
I c what you did there. :P
Take your damn like
Ba dum tss ~
man, the balancing in dual strike is truly baffling when you think about it.
"I'm sure making the conditional firepower boosts weaker than the permanent firepower boosts will make the new COs good. also nerf max" -a dual strike designer.
edit: rachel is actually sturm's Vtuber avatar.
Well, you could say the imbalance is what makes the game fun to an extent. :D
i'm confused about max
in all of Mang's other videos I kept hearing how OP Max is and how's S Rank and *insert pls nurf Nintendo memes*
What happened here in dual strike? I thought Max was OP in AW2 as well actually, was he not?
@@Broockle Max was OP in AW1, but got nerfed to a balanced level in AW2, then further nerfed in Dual Strike
@@Broockle Mangs rated Max as a C tier in AW2. He was really only a monster in AW1, purely because of how completely overtuned his firepower bonus was. (50% day to day firepower is so utterly insane that I cannot fathom how they allowed it in without a second thought.)
oh my bad.
I'm just trying to keep up and I thought it was weird that he was just thrown into C without mentioning is S Rank history.
As Orange Star CO getting worse as they get older, I fear to see how Hachi was when he was younger in his prime.
After seeing this comment, I like to imagine in his prime he just ignored the unit limit and would literally FLOOD the battlefield with units.
I just imagine Sensei‘s power with Neo Tanks instead of infantry :)
His prime would probably be way cheaper units and have his super as a day to day bonus.
@@MrxD-cg5xs Sensei would spawn mecs for his normal and battle compters for his super
i imagine barter is his d2d and his power and super gives him 20% or even 10% cost
i wish they would just add all the dual strike COs to the Switch Remake. The Dual strike special powers were indeed too broken and they can keep them :D
Oh no, it just ocurred to me, they might launch them as paid DLCs, I don't know if I like it or not
They might add them as dlc for non campain maps down the road if not just remake dual strike all together for a DLC if this dose well
You uploaded 8 months ago. Get to it
Should be optional to turn them on or off in multiplayer. Loved them personally, could do some absolutely insane stuff.
@@nicolasiturra4036 More content & COs the better!
I'm 99% sure Sonja remove Lash's defense stars before they are doubled.
By the way, Sonja is also better in the campaign, as her defense star reducing ability also applies during her allies' turn.
Man, Sonja putting in work.
Going by the footage on screen when its being discussed, it looks like the stars are reduced before being doubled.
I remember it like that as well. Also in free-for-alls she reduces the terrain stars for everyone on the map, even units not atacking her, which seems like a pretty big development oversight...
@@GrandmasterIsegrim not really, everything not you dieng faster is amazing in free for all
So I know my set team for the campaign
The way I read most of "senile" moments from Sensei was actually him just *pretending* to be senile to be a snarky jerk. That sneer avatar shows up a lot, especially after he has a "senile" moment. Honestly, it just reads as though Sensei is just taking the piss out of everyone and having the last laugh.
As far as I’m concerned he’s just making the enemy think "Did I just get my ass kicked by a senile man?" (Would’ve add "old" there but then again it’s implied the new COs of black hole are old too)
>'that there's like whackin' snakes with a bucket, pa-hyuck!'
>sonja and colin regressing into their pre-AW2 selves
>emo hawke
Are these all for the lulz too? There comes a point where rationalizations like this stop making sense, and the more obvious answer (it's just bad writing) becomes inescapable.
With Dual strike it feel a bit too crowded but also empty. Like they are all standing in a room with over 20 people of which the majority never say a word. It's why I love the story of Days of Ruin because there is a far better sense of space. Even with just a few portraits at a time you have a good idea just who is in the scene, where they are and what the current mood is.
@@qzecwx
Those are genuine complains but Sensei has always been kind of a troll
Also, apparently some of the problems regarding characterization come from the american translation
Sensei scaring Adder out was one of the funniest moments I've seen and AWDS took Sensei's smugness away which makes me sad.
Drake will forever be in the Sea rank with his exposed navel and his naval units
"But Rachel...why did you pretend to be space Hitler?"
"No one respected me a a CO until I put on the mask. They all said I had no skill -- that I was just *lucky.* Well who's lucky now!? All of *you* just to survive under the iron rule of my Black Hole Army!"
It's also worth remembering Sturm's ultimate weapon to destroy his enemies was a giant missile silo.
Nice pfp
@@Eladio316 well I can Sea that.
@@eIiteofneon you saw the perfect oppurtunity and took it
@@Eladio316 originally, my joke was going to be about Clear skies but, the Joke wasn't that Clear obvious to Anyone
The lore deepens :o
Now all we need is that Days of Ruin/Dark Conflict tier list to finally add Advance Wars to the Mangs Cinematic Universe.
i personally would prefer another awbw match
1:42:43
I think Eggs will... eventually. It's content after all :D
Could also have a short Super Famicom Wars tierlist, considering 4/7 COs have no powers, just different AI (which obviously doesn’t matter at all in PvP), and the 3 with D2D powers are all very strong.
Famicom Wars and the GB Wars 1/2/3 don’t have COs at all so tierlist might be good for an April Fool’s vid, but nothing else.
@@IONATVS weren't the three with day to day powers effectively Nell, Colin, and Kanbei, all with no downsides?
Fun Fact: While Max in Duel Strike has -1 range on his in-directs, he no longer gets a firepower penalty on them.
I'm still never buying any of them
@@OldManTastic I mean, that's up to you, and if you're playing as Max, you probably don't want any indirects, really.
that's character development
How is Max not S rank anymore?
@@Broockle they kept nerfing him in each game. AW he had a ludicrous passive 50% increase to direct combat but then it was lowered to 20% in AW2 but he got movement bonuses with his CO powers, then DS got rid of his movement bonuses from his CO powers and made his indirects deal normal damage instead of reduced damage.
Rachel having +1 repair on properties per day. So that's where Andy's true Day to Day power went, Nell stole it and gave it to Rachel.
Agreed. It would make a lot more sense with Andy.
Rachel is just kind of a mishmash of stolen mechanics when you get down to it. Her day-to-day repair bonus feels like it belongs on either a healing CO like Andy and Hawke or a money CO like Colin and Sasha, her normal CO power is a nerfed version of her sister's, and her Super CO Power is a much better version of Sturm's. She feels incredibly incoherent as a result - the only thing about her that really works is her Super CO Power, which has nothing to do with either of her other effects. I think they were running out of ideas by the time they made her.
@@alexanderkosten7611 also why did orange star get two new co's when the other protagonist nations only got one each? At least Black Hole getting a bunch makes sense considering they're the bad guys and you want to give the players some new people to fight
@@iprobablysuck9107 because they wanted two teenagers for the protagonist nation that aren't stupids like Andy, a boy and a girl, because they thinked that with those two, more teenagers will buy this game. And we can see this specially with American Jake.
@@alexanderkosten7611 Rachel does go along with American military strategy and stereotypes though much like most of the Orange Star
The true orange star nerf that hurts the most is nells looks
I geuss they gave us her sister so it isnt all bad.
lol they gave her the pregnancy nerf, she is not very lucky... or maybe she is too lucky?
@@germmanator 😂
I think she looks way better in AWDS than in AW2.
Alt costume is awful lol
Grimm is the AW reincarnation of Mangs, he "doesn't care about details", he is bad and, most important of all, he is *e g g*
Wait, did you just call da man bad? Out with you!
@@FireBurn256 i honestly don't know if that's an insult but ok thanks(?) Man
Mangs is not bad at all I would say he's a lot above average.
@@theultimatetactician1712 yeah i was referring to FE in AW he is REALLY strong and he also gived me some lessions (also he fucked up only once in his new AW1 LP so that's something)
Amico, mi dispiace così tanto per il tuo cognome: io non mi voglio manco immaginare come sono state le medie per te
Flak should had his own tier on F tier, the literal Flak tier
He’s the Dan of AW and I wouldn’t have him any other way.
Nah, cause grim is just worse
Flak has his own tier in Andy's Adventure rom hack :D
what about jugger, he is the same thing, just slightly better?
Flak battle ship army and bomber , great use of his power 😎
"I avoid Roads like the plague"
So Mangs is Libertarian now, just like Lash
Hey at least Mangs still needs it for transport (unlike Lash while using her power)
Koal is mini eagle with half his bonuses and weaker naval units
@@silversword404
1. How are they aanything alike.
2. Koals naval units are stronger than eagles.
@@robertharris6092 good point with the naval units but I was focusing more on the units koal gets buffs for, although he is kinda like a more middle ground eagle
@@silversword404 koals buff affect air units.
Nobody:
Olaf alt. costume:
"On an unrelated note, I'm into trains now!"
trains commander, get a bonus using war trains and units placed on railroads
A shame only a few maps have trains and Mr. Yamamoto is still stronger.
Relatable
@@germmanator he can now send enemy units to the gulags faster
Bro you are like the only one to akncowledge alt costumes, how do i get them tho?
If you need another video idea here's one: Advance Wars Unit Guide!
I second that
Would certainly be useful to newbies like me, who only have maybe 3 hours logged into one AW game. Watching these tier lists may make me consider trying Dual Strike again (only AW game I have), but actually knowing what I’m doing would help me stick with it.
Congratulations! He did!
@@nickzagoon8134 I expected one video on all of them, but this is awesome too.
I heard that the extra bonus in CO meter from infantry is actually a buff to the one who built the infantry, as you gain double CO meter from losing a unit than destroying one, making spamming infantry and mechs possibly even better than in AW 2
This.
Defensive charging means building infantry provides a very big benefit, and that you want to invest more of your army into infantry. As such, characters that boost infantry in this tier list are kind of underrated (Sami especially).
Sensei is also underrated, but not so much because of his infantry but because of his insane unit count. There are a ton of ways to simply abuse him and I would not be surprised if he is the second best character in the game (after Hachi), with Colin and Kanbei following up (and if 80% of your army is infantry, Sami is probably next in line on most maps).
@@aasgier9091 Exactly, quantity over quality is a big thing in AW. Even if your opponent has medium tanks and such, an artilary defended by an excessive amount of infantry making it nearly impossible to hit is very scary. I've experienced the sensei horde before, it is quite scary
Good thing they remedied this in Dark Conflict. A unit that finishes a unit off will rank up and gain firepower and defense bonus, regardless of the value of the destroyed unit. This punishes infantry spamming, and not protecting wounded units.
In the Spanish translation, they made Jake not talk like you described, so he just comes out as a chill (and I remember sometimes a little shy) boy who likes music and tanks.
That would fit more with his caracter design, listening to music because he doesn't talk much or is afraid to say something wrong ratter than for ignorance, although i don't like the idea to force people into being shy
I remember stuff like this being the case even in the English versions between the EU and US versions. Especially once Nintendo started doing more simultaneous releases with a direct EU translation team (instead of doing the other languages based of the US translation). The US localisers have a more more liberal approach, often exaggerating things for laughs, whereas the EU scripts are a lot more faithful, if dry.
I honestly headcanon Jake as just a chill dude who likes spending time with people, listening to music, and tanks, but he tries too hard to be cool and uses waaaayyy too much slang. However, in more quiet environments, he uses very little slang.
From what I remember, that is essentially his personality in the Japanese original. His "totally rad" mannerisms where the product of the English localization.
For Kindle/Candy, I agree with Mangs because tons of fights are over properties, especially heavily urbanized maps with areas that the infantry units are fated to clash first.
I died at "Rachel was Sturm all along." It finally makes sense!
This game might have a bad story and game-breaking gimmick, but I love the new COs and gameplay additions (Com Towers, Black Boats, Megatanks) Still my personal favorite in the series
I agree who cares about the story. And the game breaking gimmick is the most fun thing in the single player mood. The song allone is enough to make me smile. Thunder thunder. WHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO.
I don't know about black bombs tho.
@@AlexanderMartinez-kd7cz you just don't use it it's all fun when you don't deploy it
Word.
- Jake
Story was no worse than the first two, I liked it better actually. The gimmick is pretty far out but i wouldn't call it game breaking. Just like the old games, if you don't want to deal with op powers and dual strikes, dont play them. It's my favorite, with 1 and 2 being close behind. Like mangs, I wish they would implement some of the great changes in this game to the remakes of 1 and two, let's keep hoping.
I really liked Dual strike because Jess is my favorite CO and shes an absolute power house in it. Her theme is an absolute banger too, it got even better on the DS. I hope this Jess is used in the remake.
Sonja subtracts terrain stars before Lash doubles her own. Also Javier does not get a defence bonus from the +5% comm tower effect skill, it is however still a very good skill to pick as any CO if you have at least 1 comm tower.
I always found it odd that Rachel got this +1 repair D2D rather than Andy, the kid that's always been holding a wrench.
It'd be a better D2D if it restored +3 hp per turn for the standard repair costs (so -1400g for +3 hp to a tank), but clearly you don't want to have a unit repairing for too long
New AW conspiracy, Rachel isn't Nell's sister at all but Nell and Andy's lovechild.
I think that even without knowing Dual Strike (or at least Rachel probably), I was already thinking that Andy needed exactly that D2D power, it made sense for him.
And because it isn't bad if you play along that, on the contrary, yeah, you got more repair costs, but in 2 turns you could repair pretty much any unit back to almost full power if it only took 1 attacker of the same level (Infantry VS Infantry, Tanks VS Tanks, heck, Medium tanks without boosted Fire power engaging agaisnt another MD tank with slighty boosted defense will probably end in about 3-4 damage, repairing almost or completely a Medium tank in a single turn seems way better than having to sacrifice it and buy another one).
And then we aren't considering the fact that Properties under that CO would be pretty tough to battle, unless you damage it badly in just 1 round of attacks (heck, not even a Mech and another Tank could completely win a property that easily against a Tank, the increased defense will make the unit do great chip damage to these units, alongside resisting much, only to have it repair 3 HP on the next turn, making it probable that not even a second round of these units would destroy that tank protecting the property).
@@gicrueldad9520 Exactly, Rachel's whole strength is heavily based on camping: while she doesn't get improved defense on cities, 30% defense plus 3 HP regeneration means that unless you focus fire on the unit on top of the tile, you simply ARE NOT outpacing the healing it's getting. If Rachel puts a tank on a city she owns, say bye bye to it, because unless you divert most of your unit against it you are not capturing it any time soon.
Between that and the fact her normal power is awful, but has one of the strongest Super Powers in the game means Rachel performs far better in bigger maps than smaller ones, like Hawke
Personally, I found that +1 extra heal particularly useful for staying in fights in urban areas, as opposed to cutting down time a damaged unit would need to be pulled back.
Basically, my dream scenario with the D2D is to also have the heal skill to bring it to +4 HP per turn, and then park a rocket on a city overlooking contested areas. Or a neo/megatank on a city IN the contested areas. Get the healing WHILE they’re engaged in battle, that unit might as well be in Caulder’s CO zone at that point.
finally finished the video
gotta say davis' editing was complimenting your commentary making the whole tier list incredibly engaging and amazing throughout
10/10 would spend almost two hours watching an egg talk about advance wars again
My biggest disappointment in advance wars was discovering that jess'big pencil was actually a tank ammo
*Wait whaaat*
Agree
a pencil? where she had a giant pencil at least in my emulator of gba that was a gian ammo which made sense since she was a vehicle specialist, also i think that eagle should had a 10% less power in his ground units while jess should had 10% less power in his naval units only and with drake and his 10% less power in air units you have a perfect triangle too bad that they didnt do it since in the og drake and eagle were meant to be opposite to each other since one was a serious and focus commander while drake was more laidback and tranquill one
Von Bolt literally broke out of a nursing home to take over Black Hole
Yeah the story *really* pulls this, IMO otherwise pretty greatly designed character, down.
I mean, he got a good design, an amazing theme and a really fun and unique Super Power that also packs quite a punch - its really just that he is very poorly written and, when compared to the previous final boss Sturm, appears underwhelming.
I think if they upped his Att/Def by 10% and maybe gave, say, one more small bonus he'd be a terror.
@@kazekamiha honestly, i don’t think that would help him stand up to Sturm (which IMO he should be able to, considering he is the final boss), as he would still get beat both in passive effects and special effects by Sturm.
Honestly, ive been thinking a lot lately as to how i would buff Von Bolt in a way that would allow him to stand up to Sturm as an equal.
I’ve thought about increasing his stats to 120/120, but then he’d still be lacking a passive ability which Sturm had (he got to ignore all terrain travel costs) and his SCOP would also still be weaker than Sturms (Sturm did 8 dmg and heavily boosted his firepower, while Von Bolt does 3 dmg and stuns those hit units for a turn - both dmg effects have the exact same range, so Von Bolt is missing out on the global firepower boost).
So a stat increase alone isn’t going to cut it, which is why i started thinking about a passive effect that might work - and i think i found one that would work and make sense:
What if Von Bolt would not allow his enemy to counterattack?
That would mean that every time one of Von Bolts units gets the first strike on an enemy unit, this unit would not fire back at him, allowing him to use damaged and weaker units to still deal sone decent damage and stop the enemy from advancing further.
This would be an immensely powerful effect, would work beautifully together with his SCOPs stun effect (he would get two turns of uninterrupted attacks on those units) and would justify him having weaker stats than Sturm did, while still allowing him to enter the same liege.
If that sounds like too much i also thought about 120/120 stats and adding the not firing back effect to stunned units.
@@MrxD-cg5xs I DID say add one other small bonus, right?
@@kazekamiha
But what i was talking about wasn’t a small bonus - plus im not altering his stats…
A small bonus would be something like +10% firepower during a sandstorm or somethinglike that (in which case he would still get beaten by Sturm due to the SCOP being so much weaker than his)
Von Bolt's super power is much more scary in the story campaign, where a one-turn freeze can allow the ozzium to one-shot your units while they cannot move.
Loving these tier lists. I don't know if you've addressed this but I'm curious if you would also do one on the current patch Wargroove COs?
Oh my god! Is that the Coveted Design Doc i see over here?
I think my respect for you passed a normally insurmountable levels.... Now that i realize that you are a fan of the Advance Wars Series.
Hats off.... err, i mean, Market Crashes off to you, Good Sir!
It's the first time I've seen Javier and as an Spanish, I couldn't stop laughing. It's design is inspired by the classic literature figure of Don Quijote, and his name is a Spanish name (so, if you want to be faithful to the origins, for the pronunciation you treat the J as an h, for example in "hat") Great satiric character, I love when videogames do that
And great video, btw
Javier’s obsession with comm towers is also sort of a reference to don quijote and windmills lol
@Jett Lucas Hayes units looks like germans tho.
@@Artemas_16 I mean, Eagle is kind of a mix of references to Germany in both World Wars, albeit mostly limited to air units and his power being the English translation of Blitzkrieg.
@Jett Lucas Hayes Yup. Orange Star = WW2-Viet Nam era US, Blue Moon = Soviet Russia, Yellow Comet = Imperial Japan, Green Earth = WW2 Europe
@@CSDragon And Black Hole = Star Wars Empire x Terminator AI :D
you know i've noticed in these rankings you often mention how you've never tested or are interested about a certain interaction between CO powers or game mechanics and i think combining them all into an "Advance Wars Mythbusters" would be a really cool video idea.
I’m surprised that max wasn’t a D tier commander. Personally, I feel that he is extremely underwhelming and his powers don’t compete without his movement like in black hole rising.
I'd honestly use grimm over max just because it's more interesting, you use indirects, and the CO theme :D
Yet fucking stupid mangs put max in low tier list in aw2
Excellent video! Advance Wars Dual Strike was a big part of my childhood, but I usually just picked a CO based on how much I liked their music. That ended up with me playing Jugger most of the time!
Jess is the epitome of "Be careful of who you call bad in middle school."
I honestly would rate Sasha as a B tier CO just because of some overlooked aspects of her playstyle:
If the opposing CO has no day-to-day abilities or a more detrimental/trivial one (Andy, Rachel) she essencialy has a 10% edge over the opponents funds, thus making her easier to win, not to mention that the CO power still gives buffs to the army so using the power + her day-to-day bonus just makes her a superior unit to a lot of other COs.
When you are on a team-based match, the Market Crash will shut down the teams power while your ally maintains theirs... So basically you have the whole game on the back just because you and your ally can use CO powers while your enemy cannot...
That 10% income increase is a nerfed Colin power, and it works really well. If you have 5 propeties, which is the easiest thing to have, you get an infantry every 2 days. If you have 10 propeties, you have an infantry every day. If anything it just covers the cost of repairing when your expensive units get shot at cities. Needless to say, on long terms, she will outmatch your army.
Your first point is obsolete because most most of the dual strike CO's have beneficial day 2 days and your second point is obsolete because mangs literally said he's not taking team matches into account
@@cringekid3993 your point is obsolete because I'm allowed to rate units the way I want 😎
Also,
Andy
Jake
Nell
Rachel
Sami (kinda)
Olaf
Drake
Grimm
Adder
Flak
Jugger
Koal
Sasha herself
13/27 COs are those whose day2day abilities aren't that great and thus Sasha has an advantage over, that's half the COs in the game and there are still some other COs she can still have an advantage over, although more evenly matched. Get off your high horse please
Another nuance I noticed about Sasha on AWBW (as in, one match because I am very new) is that the extra funds makes the question to capture out-of-the-way cities vs. cities in key conflict areas a lot easier to resolve. If I have extra income, I can feel more confident about harassing the center because I have cash to fall back on.
In that match however, my opponent was playing Adder, which kind of made Market Crash kind of pointless given that Adder uses his power very quickly and he doesn’t necessarily rely on it. I was caught a bit off guard by that choice because it was a T1 game, and Adder is officially T4, but it was actually a smart counter.
we're simps of collin's sister that's enough for me
@@benjaminparent4115 well yeah, the best COs win agaisnt 80 to 90% of the cast already. The best COs have advantages over the weakests COs, so that's already to be expected, but I see where you're coming from the already countered by Market Crash COs
Bruh, I'm glad someone said it, I saw Kindle's rank on AWBW and was like "That's not right."
At first I was like "Oh okay, it's been ages since I played Dual Strike. Was she really that bad...?" and then I said "No, stop. She's literally the worst thing."
Validation has arrived, years later
Colin in Dual Strike: * sucks pacifier *
Sensei in Dual Strike: * yells at cloud *
Can I just say that Dual Strike was my first ever advance wars game and the characters introduced in it are some of my favourites. I absolutely love playing Sasha, Grimm, Javier, Jake and Rachel
I can see why it would difficult to make a tier list without a lot of play testing. There are many variables you have to think about. CO zone effect, its range, the CO power effect itself, along with fact it also makes CO zone global for a turn and how difficult/easy it is to keep Commander alive to take advantage of all those bonuses. It would a nice video to spark more discussion and maybe even more videos about Days of ruin.
Jugger actually is an S tier CO when you use his alt costume. Office attire is his real CO Power.
Only thing I would say that you didn't point out is how strong Grimm is when playing with 2 COs. Yeah it's not the best way to play competitively, but using the games intended mechanics and for campaign play, he can be really good to switch out into a high-defense CO afterwards.
Only cause you do bring up how good some COs/abilities are in the campaign as well :p
Maybe instead of a Days of Ruin CO Tier List, you could do a DoR CO Impressions video? Reduce the authoritative aspect that comes with a tier list.
Part 1: 25 minutes
Part 2: 1 hour 19 minutes
Part 3: 1 hour 46 minutes
LET'S FUCKING GOOOOOOOOOOO
Probably there is only 4 OS COs; 2 COs for BM, GE and YC; 1BH CO in AW1. AW2 add 1 more CO to each faction except BH who has 4 more COs. AW:DS also add 1 morr CO to each faction except OS who has 2 more COs and BH who has 4 more COs. It's kinda like comparing time to grade students in small class of 11 students to big classes that have 30s students.
Ironically sasha would be pretty good in competitive (especially vs high power bar cos )
But my god many characters need rebalancing
Oh he mentioned it
Sasha vs Sasha.
@@F3udF1st that's almost like playing Hachi vs Hachi and agreeing to not using powers
@@flatty4657 It does because, if you are playing well, you should be smashing through their units by the 10s each turn, meaning their CO powers charge faster than yours to compensate for the loss in units
@@germmanator I guess you can use war bonds?
@@salamence6828 ya but war bonds isnt good :(
Mangs talking about Olaf: They(CO powers) still work exactly the same as they used to, Blizzard still makes it snow for a day.
Also Mangs talking about Olaf: However, both of his powers now make it snow for 2 days instead of 1.
Me: wut
editor missed that one!
Based on what you said about Candy (unless I'm missing something >_< ) it's amazing she's only considered A Rank here and listed lower elsewhere. As you said, Advance Wars is a game about captures. Her Power and Super Power not only work best when used by a player who knows how to play the game properly but she also works better if her OPPONENT knows how to play the game properly. She actively rewards the player who uses her and plays the game right while also actively punishing the opponent for doing the same damn thing lol. (mindsplosion)
Can't believe they made olaf went through a enemies to best friends arc with drake
Without even realising just how dumb the firepower bonus was for Kindle I'd been thinking even without her day to day bonus her powers would push her into B tier alone, but potentially all the way to A off powers alone even if she didn't have the day to day
I absolutely can't get enough of these rankings my dude. Making me want to play Advance wars again so badly!
I'm gonna be happy about any Days of Ruin content, just acknoledging its existence is like christmas
I think one of the reasons there is such a big gap in your rating of Kindle compared to the AW by Web's rating is that Mang mostly plays on custom maps with Panzer that has a overabundance of properties, making her feel much more powerful. On the average AW by Web map there are far less properties hence the lower ranking.
He said he goes against her in AWBW quick matches.
One thing to consider is that alot of the AWBW maps that people play, are balanced symmetrical maps, which tend to have properties clustered in key central locations. I definitely think that AWBW is wrong on this one, any capture game boost is big in aw and candy's is insane.
Mangs: "People are getting upset at how I'm saying their name. I think it's pronounced [pronounces it correctly] but IDK how to pronounce it so I'm just gonna keep calling them [cringe pronunciation]"
Honestly the fact that they're not hard to pronounce names makes it all the more painful
Yeah jokingly or not it’s a bit annoying saying the names wrong.
I think it would come natural for him to pronounce Javier name correctly if he knew spanish: Javier is based partially on Don Quijote after all, as Green Earth is basically the European Union
Donald Kwidgeoat
I think a good compensation for Tag mode could be to just disallow Tag Power. That's generally the strongest component, and disallowing that will still let you take advantage of changing COs to cover their weaknesses, go from defensive to offensive or vice versa, ramp some gold, etc. Broken COs are still broken of course, but it changes up the balance a bit, I would think so anyway.
In my brief time in Advance Wars By Web, that was actually an option I noted when setting up a custom game. Tag powers are never allowed, but dual COs can be turned on for a match.
Never did it myself, and I have a strong feeling no one ever does, but the option’s there.
Hachis music is so relaxing.
It makes me think about watching a yellowish sunset in Hawaii at the beach with a partner...
While buying everything with a cost reduction and watching how your cities pop up some neo tanks that were at sale . He is my favourite CO
My boy Olaf! He's actually even better than described here. His snow bonus is passive and unrelated to his COP so on turn one of COP hes actually 130/110 and second turn is 120/100. That's nuts considering you can keep this going pretty much indefinitely since he's the only CO that can charge his power while still benefitting from it on turn 2. Also since he focuses on his regular COP Sasha can't shut him down. He plays way different than before but hes definitely legit stronger in awds.
This list is pretty spot on. I think Sonja/Grit are B tier depending on the map you play on. Grit relies on choke points and being able to scale to late game while sonja actually wants to build more indirect rather than direct units since she has no counterattack mechanic. I never thought Olaf would be strong in dual strike, but you have convinced me.
Very good list, Dual Strike is my favorite in the series. I only can hope and pray it gets a remake as well with the original art style. Also as a Sasha main I find her to be pretty good, high C tier or low B tier imo. Her little power is extremely good against certain CO's with deadly Powers. She is pretty effective at evening the playing field.
Imagine the NIGHTMARE that would be 2 turn 20% stronger snow Olaf on AW2
He could've been an actual counter to Sturm on those conditions...
Not, but the old guy would sure put up a fight.
Silly Mangs, Jake is no Zoomer. Jake is old enough now to have kids and a mortgage at this point.
Andy still don't know what a airpot is he didn't even know about fog of war
i think im with andy on this one... what the heck is an "airpot"
He's like an outdated version of what old people think how teens act.
Rawk.
word
One thing I really dislike about Dual strike is that weird and useless perspective effect they added on the map, making everything aliased and messy. AW2 looks so much cleaner in comparison.
Yes it's terrible. Worst game in the series. Dark Conflict does look a little pixelated too but somehow it just looks a lot better. Plus it's a vastly better game in general.
I know, even Reboot Camp looks better because it at least has clean graphics to boot.
@@F3udF1st Worst game is a bit of a big claim… I mean, yes, Dual Strike definitely has its flaws; but, in my opinion, it gets a bad rap. I’d honestly say that the first is worst. I don’t care how big of a hot take that is, the game was unbalanced as heck, didn’t have SCOPS, and the graphics were HECKING UGLAY!!!! Not to mention that the story was super BOORRAAAAANG!!!!!! (Well, until Sturm showed up, that is.) Advance Wars 2 is the best game because of gameplay, aesthetic, and story, with Days of Ruin being a close second. Dual strike somewhere close below Days imo, and AW1 is barely at the bottom…but it’s still at the bottom.
Congratulations to Drake for being a very consistent Sea rank across the entire Advance Wars series. It truly fits you.
Just found this channel recently absolutely loving the content.
IS: Now the meta is going to be all power and direct attack
Max: so now i'll become top tier agai...
IS: NO
They REALLY should have let him keep his movement.
So Max was S rank in AW1 but he dropped in AW2 and is still bad now?
Is that what happened?
@@Broockle In AW1 his day to day power was 150%. No, seriously.
In AW2 they nerfed it to a balanced 120%.
AW3 they robbed the movement boost from his CO powers.
@@kazekamiha
ic thx
@@Broockle No worries.
Grimm was a victim of the dual strike mechanic. He was not designed to be played solo.
Unless you're playing Muck Amok.
@@newcheesegrater is that a level? I haven't played in so long but that sounds familiar
@@shelbyramin1376 it is.
@@newcheesegrater God the Ozzium or something level...
He is a great top screen commander for any map that involves a Black Obelisk.
In response to the Sonja/Lash stuff, I asked a few of my friends who know a lot about it, and they said the following:
"If Sonja's Super was popped first, the terrain star reduction would be taken into consideration BEFORE Lash doubles it. But if Lash pops hers first, first the doubler goes away, the terrain stars are reduced by two, and THEN the doubler is put back into play."
So it looks like Sonja indeed hard counters Lash. Those train star doubling takes effect only after Sonja reduces the stars as much as she can.
Yeah, thanks for putting gameplay over the explanations, really like these characters expresions when their unit goes down :D
I only found your channel today and had no idea there was a competitive AW scene, so it's been a really interesting ride. Cool stuff my dude.
The only game I ever put any time into was dual strike, but after watching these tier lists I'm itching to go back to the others.
No matter which tier Sasha is, I gonna choose my waifu no matter what.
I stand by my rich duo.
As a Spanish speaker, you are saying the Javier wrong.
The J sound more like a H (funny because the H is usually mute in Spanish)
He's also saying Kanbei, Sonja wrong too :D
wait he says Koal but not Kindle ;|
Sonja's back luck going down is just CHAD STORYTELLING
Mangs, that Colin impression...unreal. Oh and Sasha + Colin in story missions is insane.
50:20
That's actually a really big one. The terrain ability gave Sturm the mobility to push hard enough that his lower defense wasn't as big an issue and perhaps more importantly it allowed him to be in cover at all times to compensate for his lower defense.
If you plan to cover Days of Ruins, you may need to make a video about the changes made in that game, and give an rough idea of how the matches go for pvp first.
Even comparing AW1 to Dual Strike can't match the differences between this game and the previous 3.
Grimm (51:58): "He can't hold properties for shi#"
Oh, boi. When a CO is so bad that Mangs can't control himself.
Sonja was always one of my favorites to use when I was younger. She is a very fun design.
They actually say at the start of the campaign that it's only been a few months or so since the end of Advance Wars 2's campaign. So that makes Colin's inexperience make even LESS sense.
wouldn't being only a few months in the army instead of years justify the inexperience more?
@@sasir2013 Normally yes, but considering he was in the thick of the fighting in the Advance Wars 2 campaign and even had a bit of character growth throughout that game, it didn't make sense for them to almost completely walk his character back to the inexperienced buffoon he's presented as in Dual Strike.
@@AFlyingTaco1 Oh no, I agree with that
I just think that if DS was years later and not months, It would make less sense
What the hell? Why do some of the characters look like they aged a decade if it has only been a couple months lol.
How did Nell get 6 months pregnant in 3 months!?
Solid tier list. I've been playing AWDS for a long time and have play tested many COs in custom games. I'm glad that our findings line up very closely.
13:12 I have to disagree. The new units are quite expensive, so you can’t afford to lose them. Hyper Repair/Upgrade can really help with maintaining units on the frontlines. just sit down, make a infantry wall, place some indirects and slowly creep forward using Hyper Repair/Upgrade to keep units on the frontlines.
Hachi alone is so op.
On every map at every encounter at any weather.
Sounds like mangs needs to run a marathon as candy to drive the point home.
Dual Strike has such a GOAT menu theme man
Love learning the little secrets on each co i never knew.
The way to think about repairs is that you recover some of your firepower and endurance for your units, but you don't get back any of the *value* you lost when that unit took damage in the first place. Repairing a 2hp MD tank to full health is the same as if you could produce an 8hp MD tank at one of your bases. You don't have to move them back to the front, but this benefit is often canceled out by having to wait for the repairs themselves to take effect.
The exception to this is things like Andy's power because you *do* get your value back because those repairs come free of charge.
One good situation for repairs is when it happens passively because you're trying to hold a chokepoint on top of an allied city because both of the costs to doing so are mitigated: You're not going anywhere with that unit so it isn't a waste of a turn to keep them on the same tile, and you get a 30% def bonuses at the same time, which means any direct unit that attacks that space are going to trade more poorly against the unit holding it: you pay 20% of a units cost to recover 20% of it's health but your opponent has to commit more resources to drain that health by the same amount.
The more health a wounded unit has, the more of a difference it will make to repair them. Repairing a 2hp tank to 4hp still doesn't leave the unit with much firepower, but repairing a 6hp tank to 8hp makes the difference between something that can dent light vehicles and infantry and a unit that can cripple them.
At the end of the day, units are supposed to die because it would be very hard for the game to progress if they didn't, so the game naturally encourages offensive action over defensive action, such as repairs.
I love how I’m literally only watching this for character designs and there are two hot COs in A Tier
Love the fact that drake is consistently "sea" tier.
US translation Jake: CRINGE.
PAL translation Jake: Responsible, polite, I'd rather not kill but I have to.
Seriously, Jake is still generic in the PAL translation, but he's WAY better of a character.
What's PAL?
This.
This is why I play the PAL version
As a PAL kid watching US channels from time to time, I noticed that NoA has put out quite a few cringey localizations over the years. It always seems like they think they are really hilarous with all of the memes, but, eh...
@@rewrose2838 The European version. Featuring a new translation and some different names from the US version, as usual with AW. Sometimes for the better (like what they did with Jake), sometimes for the worse (Lash is named Kat) to the Okay, I guess? (Kindle is named Candy in Europe.)
@@TheNekoGentleman Lash is named Kat in the Japanese version though, it's just more literal
The reason Drake is always C rank is because he loves sailing on the C.
As far as gaining power, the most cost effective units are infantry and recon.
As a result, the optimal strategy for most COs is to spam those units like crazy, while saving up for stronger, more decisive units.
COs that can spam more infantry and recons are top tier because they also get to spam their powers. Haci, Colin, and Sensei are top-tier.
COs that can damage enemies without building up the opponent's power are high tier by default, because their super-powers also slow down the opponent's meter gain. (Rachel, Olaf, Hawke, etc.)
Note that the black bomb is arguably the best unit in the game, because it can deal huge damage to the opponent without increasing their meter.
COs who just have good attack are mid/low tier. Even Jess and Kanbei can't keep up. Though with tag powers, Kanbei is a lot better.
Andy, Sasha, and Eagle are hard to rank. Andy is great against most high tier COs, but nothing special against most others.
Eagle's CO power is good, in part because he can build vehicles and infantry on the same bases in a single turn. However, he doesn't have the economy to abuse his CO power like Colin and Sensei can.
Sasha is great against COs who rely on their super power, and have a bad CO power. Like Andy, she's very matchup dependant. Her extra income is a good day-to-day bonus, and she keeps up with most high tier COs.
Also, I remember reading a better description of Sasha's CO power some time ago. She reduces the enemy power by a certain number of stars depending on her current funds; it's definitely not a percentage. Also, every time a CO uses their power, it takes longer to charge up again; she can't prevent the enemy super power forever, but she can delay it for a long time.
Market crash is situational, best used when her CO power isn't very helpful.
I think Grim would be a good CO if he had some movement boost; like -1 Movement cost for anything over 1.
Without movement he can't get the 1st hit reliably.
Get us those Days of Ruin deets, and play through the game again, egg-king. Might be good for getting some new comers familiar with the gem that it is.
Love for the editor. Both of you doing a great job! Great content
You're underestimating the value of defense, but only for Sonja. Her day to day is NOT a 10% bonus to firepower against enemies with terrain stars. A Kanbei on a city takes 50% reduced damage. Against Sonja that's only 40%, meaning an attack that would normally deal 50% will deal 60%,effectively a 20% attack power bonus. Her little power bumps that to 77%, an effective 54% damage increase! The more defense her opponents have, the better her abilities are. Of course, they do nothing against air units...
well kinda. I mean, you are not wrong, but at the same time, at a certain point, the buff she gets from removing the defense stars doesn't matter anymore. or better said, if she uses her super power and attacks an enemy on a plain, she doesn't do that much more damage, because the normal 1 star is allready gone from her dtd power, her damage boost is rather small. only against units on high defense terrain her powers are rather good.
@@Dr.AvenVon her day to day is almost always relevant, her little power is often relevant, but her super less so. Often times the most valuable units are kept on the best terrain though, so it's more likely to be useful when it's more important.
@@GuybrushTThreepwood as I said, you are not wrong
Hey Mangs. I discovered your videos after the AW: Reboot reveal and I’ve been addicted to your AW playlists now. I already watched your AW2 playlist and now I’m going to move on to your other AW content. Definitely one of my favorite channels now for AW content. Really looking forward to your AW content leading up to the reboot!
1:23:20 Jugger's theme uses a motif from Flak's theme. So at the very least, the game's music must have been composed after they decided Jugger would just be a copy of Flak in the final game.
The soundtrack for so many commanders slap
Would love to see a days of ruin CO tier list, even tho it apparently isn't as popular as the other games in the series
Search gamefaqs game message board for November 2010 tier list
At what rank could we put a Javier withou Com Towers ? personally, I would say E tier, being probably even worse than Flak as because his Day to day, CO power and super power are designed mainly to take advantage of the presence of Com Towers, withou them, he just becomes a Average CO with a semi better resistance against indirect units
Really like how you explain everything about these games.
Can't tell you how much I've been waiting for this.