i also came back recently, this is one of the games it never gets really boring over a decade in between breaks. you can play it in 2025 and still have a lot of fun. plus mods ;)
I swear the "don't break shields" tip helped me get out more than anything. I use to break them all the time and sustain injuries/casualties and wonder what I was doing wrong.
@@taomahNEGEV Not always. 95% of the time it is. There are a few exceptions. But less experienced players will not know how to recognize these exceptions so it is better for them to simply not do it at all.
#1 - Not said clearly enough - get yourself between a fleeing enemy and a fighting enemy and go last, waiting on your AOO before making a hit. You may make opponent waver because you just killed the fleeing enemy with AOO, thus improving your chance to hit the fighting enemy. #8 - If you're surrounded anyway and outnumbered, go last so that the not yet surrounding enemies have to first move before attacking you, instead of attacking straight away (x2) because you freed up a spot for them to take before next turn #9 - Dogs in early game are a temporary terrain feature to save you from otherwise bad map roll. They block a tile, tire out opponents, in effect removing some of the more powerful attacks from being chosen by AI, and deal enough damage that about equals out to you standing solo on the high ground.
I was hoping for one of these. You two along with pug know your shit. Saved me a lot of trial and error. I don’t have the time learn the minute details. Skip a lot of the growing pains
Lol...normally, I just listen to videos, so imagine my surprise when I randomly picked this one to listen to, and happened to glance down to see, to my horror, that I was the "what not to do" example! I do, and don't, agree with your assessment. If you look at the guys shown, I think most had high fatigue and stars in fatigue, so they were being built towards having heavy armor. At the time, though, they only had raider-level gear, so battleforged was not effective, and certainly not as effective as nimble. Long-term, though, it was needed for where those Brothers were planned to go. That does bring up some other discussions, though, regarding if you build some Brothers for early game success, and others for late game success, or use the same Brothers throughout, struggling in some parts of the run while having it easier in others. As one of you mentioned, I've played from the very early days, so still have a negative gut feeling on nimble. I have been adding it a lot more in my builds, but still mostly on back-row guys, and less on my front-liners. edit- I went back and looked at some of the comments in my videos, wondering if either of you had said anything. Yes, indeed...one comment I clearly remember, because I was trying to formulate a good answer: "Why don't you use nimble"? lol
Lmao love the bit at the end of your comment. Nimble is just plain not bad, so i fully believe you should take the power spike early and not wait for later BF bros to come online. Late game nimble bros aren't bad so you really aren't losing much (yeah probs a little I won't lie). Idk if I've commented on your channel, James, but it's pretty neat! I like seeing someone else make guides for the game. I suggest a bit more preparation / editing for videos - the orc warlord one should really have been only the warlord fight. Keep it up though, and reach out any time :)
@@CarveaHole Funnily enough, I prefer watching heavily edited videos, but A: my editing skills suck and B: I hardly have time to play and record, let alone edit. What's most surprising, though, is how many people in the comments seem to like the relaxed play along and just talk. I wouldn't watch my own content, but there is an audience for it! I should work on at least a few "specials" with some editing, though. With practice, it'll probably go quicker and add production value.
@@GrimaldiJ Idk how much of my stuff you've seen, but lots of my stuff has minimal editing. That being said, cutting out (tens of) minutes of fluff is simple to do and takes little time. But yeah, I'm in the same boat of having too little time.
I read one day, at reddit some guy that said that most of the "guides" are late oriented and I think that its true. Its allright, when you have 10k money, like 5 front line at level 8 with mimble/BF to start doing a "better" perk selection and start hiring better bros. But at the beggining, with only 1k money and all your 3 bros at level 1, you need to do other things to "protect" your company, because you dont have yet, chads and mega-chads to care for your valluable 3 star member knight. Yes they are some worse bros, but a bro its more important and valluable than a dog. You lose a dog, not a problem, its there to distract or give a number advantage. That hit that was "wasted" to killing your dog, saved your brother. Not a big deal (except the money for buying the animal) A bro dying, and thats a problem, also when he is at level 1 after paying 40 coins.
I disagree about the dog vs low lvl bro. Dogs have no wage, they cost no food, they don't need repairs, always start the fight at 100%. Unless the recruit has good potential or an exquisite starting statblock, i rather kept the doggo than the bro.
@@rafaelcastor2089 That's... weird. Dogs do not gain levels, cannot shieldwall, cannot be given targets and they follow a pretty screwed up target selection - unless released right into someone's ugly mug may choose an executioner two turns of movement-worth away. AND when killed (and killed easily) give morale bonuses to your enemies virtually for free. Last two points are quite a killer, and I use dogs only in an emergency retreat, or when things are going well already to mop up faster.
@@killtie15 Again, unless the recruit has good potential i care nothing for keeping it alive to gain lvls and be a little less worthless later on. BTW dogs follow a pretty predictable pattern, so and you can definetly give them targets and make it so they don't just run in and die instantly. You're not using your hounds to full potential by saving them for when battles are won or when you need to flee. Hounds are stronger than pretty much any earlygame unit so they'll carry your battles in the early game; they run at necros and archers and essentially shut them down for at least a turn (and they usually can kill those ranged units by themselves too); they can take care of risen weidergangers while you fight the actual threats; they can do damage spikes both by attacking twice instead of an mediocre bro getting one more and by giving you flanking bonuses; If you have a few of them alp fights become trivial; You can very commonly use the dog placement action to close the gap between you and a unit you're getting to without losing a turn of DPR; You can fix holes in your formation and exploit holes in the enemies' by placing them... Dogs have a lot more going for them, try getting more creative and you'll see how, especially in the early game, they are worth a lot more than a bad or mediocre bro.
@@rafaelcastor2089 Oh, I agree about not worrying for disposable bros. And surround bonus etc, etc but their unreliable targeting (somewhat predictable is not reliable)and the ridiculous fact that killing dogs gives morale, nips (imo) their usefulness almost in the bud. And in the beginning, 150+ g (sometimes X2 or X3) isn't that little to throw away every other battle. Now, if either one could at least tell them who to attack, OR their deaths wouldn't boost morale, 90% of my objections would be removed.
@@rafaelcastor2089 I mean here's a houndmaster releasing a dog with a clear path into archer backlines or even an isolated archer. Dog runs confidently and.. bends around the enemy formation and latches onto a leader (or dudes protecting archers etc etc), who's keeping back a bit or hasn't had time to reach the melee. Dog-swatting commences in the middle of the formation and all the enemies get a positive morale check. Yay.
Just now returning to the game with all the DLCs etc. Do you think it's better to prio the 4 stat-oriented perks you mentioned in this video (Colossus, Dodge, Fast Adaptation, Gifted) or is Adrenaline still strong like you mention in a lot of your other videos? Or is the intent here more for beginner players who may not be familiar with initiative manipulation, including how to leverage Adrenaline?
I would have put adren in this video but because this is a collaboration with Deducter I compromised by not putting it in. Likewise there are some things of mine that he made little compromises on too. That's all :)
@@CarveaHole That makes sense, and I think it's probably easier for a new player to play around just having more stats than manipulating initiative (with Adrenaline or otherwise). Thanks for the reply!
Sweet vid, and looking thru comments, I think the topic of Dogs may also make for an interesting discussion vid. Edit: Lawd just realized I wasn't subscribed all the while :O Error corrected :D
Advice for future videos. Especially lists. Use a script. I listened to number 1 and heard both of you say the same thing. But the second one took 3 times longer for no reason.
how could i get battleforge on my best brothers? 3 stars attack and 2 stars defense then I can't get nimble on him to throw him away in the lategame and have to retrain another guy.. but I trust you, I'm doing tests, creating trash fronts that have 3 attack stars but nothing in m defense... but with nimble...
Good tips. But i think poorly presented tbh. Didnt need 40 minutes to explain all of this. The background footage also switched between being random filler footage to actually useful footage with no verbal prompt so someone whos listening in but not paying attention to the footage wont see.
I can't believe this game after years is still this rétarded, beginner, second 300 gold quest is a 12 undead armored horde as a 6 man party what the fuck is wrong with the devs
Breaking shields was a trap I ran into myself, so I wholeheartly agree on trying to avoid breaking them. Tying them up & making them fail morale checks later is a better course of action. And if you are really struggling with shield walled opponents you can bring flails which ignore shields or if you run a dedicated shield user shield bash them to cancel shield wall.
The only shields you really need to break are Schrat shields lol. Letting a Brigand Leader start double-gripping is a recipe for getting cheapshotted when you don't need to let it become a thing.
Adding to #1: also if there is an enemy banner/leader that can rally a fleeing enemy. It's worth it to kill the fleeing if a bro in danger is in range of an enemy who can rally.
I like how you pointed out that in an early battle, 10 good hits is all you need to win. When you look at it that way, it does make a perk like fast adaptation look really good, even if it only leads to one extra hit.
Dodge and relentless stack nicely. Dodge provides the defence and relentless allows you to pass without taking an initiative penalty which means you can pass and still go before the opponents. It also stops dodge dropping below 50% of the max bonus.
I fully agree on Colossus, Dodge, and Gifted, which are excellent perks, though Dodge is a bit more situational and more for early game bros. I essentially disagree that Fast Adaptation is a very good perk. Colossus, Gifted, and Dodge should be taken before FA for any frontline bro (unless you have crazy heavy armor to put on, in which case skip Dodge). Even by the time you reach level 5, you'd only want to give FA to a guy that you literally want or expect to die. Your good bros don't really need it and I think there are better options, the frontline bros who will swing twice per turn need Colossus, Dodge, and Gifted for survivability (Gifted can also improve striking) and eventually just need good striking stats either way (or they're a pure tank and striking doesn't matter), and backline bros only swing once per turn so you're not going to get very many FA stacks. Adrenaline is also better for backline polearms IMO - strike first, get the kill or get the morale break. Maybe for an early game brother who uses throwing weapons, FA is more reasonable, for example ahead of Dodge since he's in the backline. I would still take Colossus and Gifted first. I can see other situational uses for FA before Dodge, like a really bad bro and you're going to put heavy Fallen Hero armor on him and have him tank and possibly die in a hard fight to spare your better brothers, and you want to give him a little more swinging power just because why not, plus Dodge won't work due to heavy armor. But yeah, to me, FA is very situational. If fast adaptation ends up on a brother at level 11, I feel like I made a mistake and I'd prefer a different, more powerful perk. Buyer's remorse, basically. Gifted is absolutely better than FA in basically all situations, for example you get +3 to hit and +3 to defend EVERY melee strike both coming and going, plus another needed stat. Compare that to FA, where he gets 0% for strike 1 and misses, 10% for strike two then hits, then he swings again at 0. That's 3.3% improvement per swing. If he gets a 4th swing at +10% in that scenario, then it averages out to 5%. In other words, in a fairly typical striking scenario, Gifted increasing MAtk by +3 ALONE is pretty similar to FA, and Gifted also allows leveling two other important stats. For +4 RAtk the advantage is even more stark. I guess FA gets better if you're taking on tons of shieldwall-spam units, because you'll get the hit eventually with your crappy spear and sword bros, but again, it feels situational. Long story short, take Gifted, it's a great perk.
#1: Agree with the caveat. It is risk/reward to go for the morale break but it can pay off in a HUGE way! (also note firearms with fearsome + overwhelm are amazing for this). Also a note that with almost everything in Battle Brothers it is situational to playstyle, weapon you are using, ranged vs melee, heavy armor vs dodge etc. There is no "one best way" to play this game IMO as many different styles can work. That said some perks are highly variant based on enemy fights - like crippling strikes and executioner are just not useful vs undead (as an example). BB is so well made - one of my favorite games :D
Yea brother, this game is so well thought out I love the low fantasy setting and there are just so many different builds you can play around with and mix up. Hopefully several more expansions to come, I'd love to see a jungle one with South American influence and monsters
I already used the tips 1, 2, 4, 5 and 6(regarding breaking shields, one option if I really want to free up a brother engaged on a shieldwalling enemy is to shieldbash them and move him to where needed.) About the battleforged I was really in doubt about perks and I guess this is going to help me. About throwing weapons, I find the axes a safer choice despite having a bit worse stats than the javelins because certain enemies like ancient undeads are resistant to piercing dmg giving more versatility to the archers. Very solid tip on #7, although I would only give 'fast adaptation' to a very shit brother that I would dismiss anyway(if he can't hit consistently he is almost useless), colossus and gifted remain usefull the whole game, dodge is essential to certain brothers and still somewhat usefull through midgame but loses utility as they get heavier and heavier armor.
@1:00 hahahaha. It sounds like you were about to say "if you do these 7 things, you'll never die" but then you remembered that we're talking about Battle Brothers and that's just not a promise anyone can keep 😂
Carve just want to tell you that I went adren on all my non-shield early game bros and I've been rolling through the early game fights. Thank you for all your videos and teaching me to be a better commander!
I got this mission to defend a holy site, against a army of southerners. Well they came with an army of handcannons and I was destroyed. Any advice on how to win that fight. I used mammoths and 2h folks. Oh did I mention the buggers brought a mortar
Southerners are tough as hell. I have a couple of videos on them, one w/ mortars and one without. One of the few times archers are cool cause they kill the engineers.
Lol same. It was a 1 star job too. Seems like a noob trap. Those measly "fortifications", too: not only useless against Handgonners but actually help them as you can't polearm through them but the Handgonnes can still shoot over them. So they're safe behind a shieldwall of Conscripts and those walls while blasting your frontline to hell.
@@BuzzKirill3Din the end I got tired of defending, I just charged and the losses were horrendous. But still it was a victory. Won't fight the southerners again
About the Highground, the AI will always try to avoid fighting on the low ground, so a few tips you can do is to put polearms or ranged on the HighGround and the frontline on the same height as the enemy. They will fight the frontline normally, but you still get the bonus of the highground. also be careful against orc warriors and unholds. They can throw soldiers and swap positions with them, meaning you can end up at the low ground and out of position. also, this is my opinion, but axe mastery should stagger an enemy when you break their shield. it would put them further in the turn order, so your other soldiers can attack and kill the before they get their turn
I'd say shield breaking is situational. Certainly not required or often, but theres nothing more annoying than some random Mercenary/brigand with a shit weapon holding up 2-3 brothers with shieldwall. Using rotate also burns fatigue, and doesn't "free" a brother. You simply trade one, and footwork isn't taken often. Also doesn't help free multiple brothers. So you could burn 9 ap and X fatigue on a guy to smash the shield and kill him /break him with the other 1-2 guys, or risk spending 8 AP a turn on 3 guys hoping to hit through the shield. Sometimes taking 2-5 turns to finally kill the guy. Where as if you smash the shield the guy can be done in 1-2 turns if he's holding up a multiple brothers. Sometimes it is indeed more timely and cost effective to go through the shield, rather than around it. I suppose you can argue "Just move away" but in my experience those times I -need- to move away, I get double or triple hit. So I avoid trying to dodge out unless theres some heavily debilitating injury to lower hit chance. Like all things battle brothers, shield breaking is risk management and should be assesed on a case by case. Not just written off.
I think in 1/70 battles I may break a shield. Yeah what you said is true, I just don't find myself in that situation too much. If it takes more than one (or *maybe* two) actions to break the shield I won't do it.
@@CarveaHole Which is fair, but that's why I don't think it should be one of the major 7 rules. There's definitely a time and place for it, though it may be less common. Mind you I also like Shield breaking Orc Warlords because I tend to go Nimble heavy, and have a couple whip bros, so daggering down the Warlord it usually faster than trying to armor break through shield. I actually really prefer fighting orcs over undead / Ancients. Segway, I'm using adrenaline on a Junk Caravan hand because of this video, and Accidentally triggered a 6 vs 19 (Saw a stack of 9 nomads, but there was another stack literally underneath I didn't notice at first) and the Adrenaline guy absolutely demolished them, and Morale broke 6 guys in 1.5 turns.
@@HauntingSpectre I think for newer players it is a good rule to have and then you can learn when to break it later. I would not suggest adding shield breaking to your repertoire of normal tactics.
Great video! A little sub-tip sort of related to tip 1 in a way. In general I don't attack zombies that were just resurrected, their turn is done and can't attack till the next round. I think of it as the zombie is "fleeing" for that turn and they are basically irrelevant. Often you are better doing something else then spending fatigue killing it again right away. Only time I'll shield break out of a schrat fight is rarely in the library. If I have a guy holding me up with a shield, I have things I need to do, and I have a guy with a long axe/mastery I'll think about it. Definitely falls in the 1% haha
I've played a lot of battle Bros and Nimble is garbage on anybody after day 100. Even when you have 170 Named Armor, and 100 HP, you're still a Crit away from having no armor and then you're two hits from dead fighting anything other than Brigands, Nomads or lower tier beasts. I've watched a guy with 120hp and Light Champion Barbarian Armor get put down by and Orc in 3 hits. Where as a Battleforged Brother standing beside him will tank those same hits 10 to 15 times before it's an issue.... Nimble is great in the early part of the game but don't expect your nimble brothers to be hanging in the Sunken Library or Black Monolith.
HELP!!!! I dont know what happened but my UI scale went to 200 and I cant scroll to modify back to 100 I tried going to the pc setting and scaled back to 100 but it only helped a little, not enough
Yes swong with a 18% chance to hit for a few rounds rather than smash the shield and kill the guy in one round lol. Even with only 200 total armor thats 10%damage reduction with bf. Throwing weapons are only accurate at point-blank ra ge where as my bow is accurate at 7 tiles. Ive got a few play throughs now and hardly ever lose men to battle and i dont do most of these. The few that i do use like elevation advantages are no sht Sherlocks. You didnt mention anything useful like combining short and long spears for the wall with archers to decimate the enemy before closing to melee.
I swear by the don’t break shield rule after losing half of my company to the orc warriors…. Just beat the living orc shit out of them, don’t even bother with the fancy breaking armor or shield
Carve, "Use the Best First Perks" is nice and all, but what if I do find some very good brothers early game? 3 stars in proper places with highest possible stats on a Farmhand, Thief, Squire, Militiaman, etc?
Well you should take colossus on everybody so that doesn't change (I can explain that if you want). If somebody is *super* good then you should be extra sure they do not die! Put them in the back or whatever and let them level up. You can likely drop FA on the bro you're describing, but the other perks you may still want. Depends on what you're going for really.
I find shield breaking useful when trying to do pierce attacks on a Tanky foe whose armor I want intact. One guy breaks the shield while the rest surround with daggers.
If you're at the point where an enemy is surrounded and you have daggers out, you've already won. Breaking the shield is irrelevant to actually winning, so you can do whatever you want. These are rules for when when the lines are engaged and the battle still hangs in the balance.
If there's a reason to break shield early game, it's because it's a raider with no headgear, decent 110 armour and there's a perfect line up to crush his skull with a flail. Lash vs an unshielded target will always crit when connected.
Not only that but if you have 2 brothers or 3 breaking a shield will more likely guaranted to make big dmg with the other brothers and not just with a spear that is a high accuracy but low dmg weapon. So there is reason to do it but not to do it always. I believe the tip was not bad but mostly wrong expressed. Do not shield break always. Only when you have an advantage for do it
Nice video guys! Really solid advice, especially for the early game. Question, would you ever think about doing a video on bb logistics?(ie advice for the game outside of combat.) Knowing where and when to buy and sell, how to size up early contracts, when you should buy equipment, etc. It's sorta the other half of the game people don't talk about that much, but understanding it helps your play tremendously!
This is an advanced subject. I make tons of videos where I discuss this exact topic and how I maximize my fight density, but it's not necessary to succeed. This is more for players who can beat the Black Monolith on day 200, but now they want to learn how to do it by day 100. The main reason why this isn't really part of the game is because there's no time limit. It'd be interesting to see some sort of tournament mode where there's a time limit and players compare results to one another.
@@deducter that's definitely true! But I was even thinking of more intro level stuff. Like what percentages are worth buying tools or selling loot at, or what to use your money on in the early game. Just simple tips to get people started. It can definitely be kinda overwhelming at first. But yeah, bb logistics have TONS of nuance and room for optimization. I'm still learning lots as I go
Dogs are definitely very strong. I've noticed the AI has been tweaked recently to deprioritize attacking dogs, so they still provide the surround bonus and the extra attacks, but you can't rely on them to be as good of a distraction as they used to be.
@@PaulSeoulOLD they can dodge, and even if they die they are a life saver. You can slow ennemy, save a bro, retreat with dogs attacking ennemies, and nachzeeter take huge damages from them.... And when lvl 3 eat them instead of one of your bro (of course i avoid to use dogs against many lvl 1-2). It allows to almost double your troop, and give surround bonus i think. Add fatigue to ennemy, etc. Of course as u say, moral check. Idk for our bro, but the ennemy can get confident
Yeah check my channel lol. I have a playlist specifically to guides and builds, and then numerous videos of me using them in all sorts of fights. If you want something more specific lemme know and I'll direct you
58 hours in and still didn't make it past day 40ish because it has always been so hard, as enemies get too good I had the feeling. And nachzehrer, wolfs and orcs and goblins just totally overwhelm me or get past my shield wall and just hit the shit out of my bros.. not fun. I always come back to this game and currently it's the 4th successful company that I get past day 10. Also I struggle a lot with the first days, as my bros just die so easily.
Losing brothers in the early game is guaranteed to happen. What you need to do is make sure it's the right bro that dies, being the bro with bad stats, and put him in the dangerous position. Also give them bad armour so that the enemy will target him instead of the good bros. And if the fodder brother lives, give him 9 lives.
About day 35 to 45, raider bands begin to appear with pikes. Beast hordes increase from under 10 to nearly 20. The game enemies have a massive power spike around this time and in all likelihood your gear isn't keeping up. If you're not in footman tier (140/130 armour) and tier 2/3 weapons by now I'd recommend buying yourself out of trouble. Armouries sell +30 attachment for around 400 to 500g. Start getting them and applying to any of the 100 to 110 raider/nomad suits. Armour is essentially free with dagger and flail use, using attachment will give you defence parity to a noble army for a third of the price. Also, battleforge at 140 to 150 defence becomes a viable option. Will allow the bro to soak at least 3 more hits and that's equal to taking nimble.
I recently had an interesting early game run. Ever tried using Houndmasters with Adrenalin. I got 2 and with 2 determined dog´s (and 2 extra bodys for surround) I destroyed raiders and beast. Also very good to bumrush Geists with Spear+Shield+Dog+Adrenalin no sergant needed (been doing that before without the dogs, much less relieable but still works).
I've tried this before. But it's just RNG to try to fight geists without bannerman. I lost a offline deserters campaign to this. Sooner or later you will fail to land your hits and the geists will chain rout you. The rules in this video are for minimizing RNG so you can get to the point where you always win battles. Once you get good at BB there's no RNG, it's all skill.
Point 8 would be. Placing your Bro with 30% chance to get hit next to 3 webknechts and complain that out of 6 attacks 2-3 hits you. Then complain about the RNG. get the Bro killed and reload the save.
Great Advice in general, really enjoyed the video, thank you. I did want to say that I don't think your shield breaking discussion was nuanced enough. I agreed with most of it but there are definitely situations where you should break the shields. The most obvious time is when you're attacking a fort early-mid game and are being pummeled by crossbowmen who have infinitely superior positioning. You don't have time to attack the guy shield walling the entrance with 25% attacks from two brothers on low ground or swamp - he isn't the threat, the crossbowmen and pikemen behind him are. Situations like this, where your brothers are bottlenecked by a few shieldwalls, are different. Obviously flails help, so do kite shields, but you may not always have a lot of those hanging around. In short, if a shield is blocking you from the true threats and you don't have easy paths around it, smash the shield...
this game i played years ago, and now i play again, is a wonderful game. But after soo much time and soo much versions, the game is soo diferente. Watching this video i saw things i don't saw on my game today (43 days). But is little things like armor of same character. Today i play with the veteran difficult and was really scare, the undead kick my ass. kkk its funny, i loved.
You can kill fleeing enemies to let a place to one of your bro to fix their second line, you can kill them if it's the turn of one of your tank, and he can't damage at all a fully armored enemy, you can kill fleeing enemies, you can kill fleeing enemies if they have a good gear and have a chance to leave, you can kill fleeing enemies to proc morale checks, you can kill fleeing enemies to encircle other frontline enemies, you can kill fleeing enemies to free one of your bros of its zone of control and so make them chase archers.. There are so much situations where it's better to kill fleeing enemies than hitting someone else. In mid / lategame, you can't have so much surrounding bonuses. Enemies will always outnombers you. And you can't run a company with only frontliners. It's good only in first 20 - 30 days "don't run your dudes into 2 or 3 enemies" but tanks are made to do this, so the damage bro's won't get surrounded. Breaking shield can be good, if your poleaxe man is behind one of your tank, when he has no target. With a riposte tank, you break the shield, and enemy will be forced to attack and maybe get hit I'm completely fan of throwing weapons, i'm playing with them on two of my bro in a completely cheated run with some mods (i can oneshot knights, i can deal more than 300 damages with one hit, yeah it's completely cheated but it's very, very fun) And yes, barbarians throwing weapons are so worth to have. They are better than legendary throwing weapons (maybe barbs can have some legendary throwing weapons, i don't know at all) Fast adaptation perk is to me a waste of a perk. Or, use it only on garbage bros. If your bro is a tank, he has better perks than this. If he's a damage bro, he his supposed to have high chances to hit, so this perk is useless and there's other perks that will be way better For the dodge perk, if you have a tank with it, and he has 0 chance to hit, just pass your turn without doing anything. If you use your fatigue, your initiative will decrease, and so, your bonuses
First, get every one outside of bowshot range Second send your damage dealers with a tank that can rotate the out of trouble to circle the fortification outside of bowshot range. There are always gaps at the back of fortifications Rest their fatigue from moving and attack all at once. Lock the front of the fortificarion, where the enemy is protecting and get the rest to attack from behind.
@@lucaslimal3 Don't let the entire enemy team have elevation advantage. You can possibly run straight up the hill, but more likely you can run up the side. In my Oathtakers stream there's an excellent example of me doing this. Starts at 29:40, not putting it as a link, youtu. be/gePfjXaDvPw?t=1788
@@CarveaHole wow!! Hahahah What a bad map you got there!! That is the idea of what I do. I circle some guys around and when I start pouring through the gaps I engage with the other to hold the enemy in place.
You have to reposition, either by falling back and baiting the archers out, or try to find somewhere you can climb the hill with all your bros. See these videos: th-cam.com/video/F0U948JAZfg/w-d-xo.html th-cam.com/video/IFlz6HcSU98/w-d-xo.html
You can have transitional bros who get nimble, and you swap them out for Battle Forged. Or at the very least buy 200+ armor for guys with Battle Forged.
@@deducter Ideally yes, switch out some of your early nimble bros for BF bros. I can't stand losing guys though, so I rarely hire fodder bros and generally keep my guys throughout the game(not counting BS rng deaths of course).
I find breaking shield useful in some situations but if you have the enemy surrounded or at least with others to hit the target before he can attack. So you secure the killing faster and avoid wasting more attacks on the shield if your Melee skill is not amazing.
Great video. I have a question to you guys on the topic of Nimble/BattleForged (BF) in regard to tanks. How do you choose to go one over the other for, say, a tank? Only focus on Ini and Fat when deciding? What about the number of Nimble tanks vs BF tanks?
It's basically all about stam. BF tanks have much much higher sustain capability with their heavy armor, so I think they're superior in sum. Nimble tanks aren't bad, in fact they're quite good against lots of enemies. I like at least 125 stam on my BF tanks, more the better.
Nimble tanks are much easier to get online. Pretty much anyone with melee defense stars and acceptable HP/resolve can work. They are good enough for everything except the Black Monolith, although they are at much more risk against large numbers of Chosen, Lindwurm, and especially the southern armies. I wouldn't even be sad about losing a nimble tank in a huge fight, that's just part of the job.
I like it a lot more than Deducter does and I wasn't willing to die on that hill for this video. I have toned down my usage a bit, but I still think it's a great choice if you use it how I describe in my series.
early game =/= late game. 1) fleeing enemies: stop them from running! more loot, more morale damage! (else you are right, always prioritize everything above fleeing enemies) 2) yes, but only surround if the skipping doesnt increase the chance of receiving damage due to standing around (instead of dishing out damage) and never surround if there are chance of AOE attacks unless you know you can tank them. 3) nible is super overrated for frontliners with few build exceptions. it is fantastic on backline fighters (2h and ranged). nible-forged was not bad, but tldr: frontline = BF, backline = nimble. colossus and HP outperform most fatigue builds by far, you might attack less, but in most cases the additional fatigue you wasted doesnt really give more attack opportunities, it only helps with versatility of tanks (rotation, taunting or weapon switching). 3b) no raider gear. period. though it depends on what raider gear means. ragged stuff? scrap it, if its standard armor, then most raider gear is too low for BF, but in nearly every case you should have good enough armor once you reach BF anyways. either with EELI-Lone Wulf or other frontline heavy origins. exceptions ofc are the cannon-fodder or ranger origins. as said: build specific but BF is not as bad as the nimble-folks thing. 4) much more important with weak brothers and in early game. late game you should be able to tank against most low to mid damage enemies without issues. high ground is always favorable, but not a must have. if you can shut down or control the battlefield with pressing forward, thats always better than just waiting it out. 5) BS. and thats the nicest way to call it. most of the times, sure, you can ignore shields and kill them anyway, but before a enemy is holding up five guys with his shield wall turtleling, just get rid of the shield. maybe it is like your point 1 and it is just badly worded (absolutes). but esp. lategame getting rid of the shield and killing the enemy EVEN with risking higher damage/more attacks, is most of the time faster and less overall incoming damage than leaving it up and clobbing away on the shields (and getting held up and getting pounded). 6) even more BS. if you play bows and crossbows right, they FAR, FAR outdamage ANY kind of throwing weapon, even famed ones. you got WAY further range and with executioner, crippling strikes, berserker and killing frenzy you kill a lot of things in 2-4 shots, 1-2 with famed bows/cbs. you get two shots with CBs / three with bows if you get a kill. the crippling strikes damages the moral of the enemies and wounds them and if your frontline has executioner they ALL get extra damage. you are FAR less limited by the range penalty nor brothers that are in the way. TLDR: throwing weapons are for people who dont understand B/CB fighting. their place is on hybrids or backline-non archers, though a good billhook/whip outperforms most throwing weapons, even heavy javelins (via versatility and field impact). at least with "early game they are far more usefull" you are right, though even then they get outperformed by a hunting bow, since crippling strikes is a level 2 or 3 talent. 7) fast adaptation: nah. only useful on certain builds and it gets absolutely wasted in late game. gifted is rarely useful. it give a max roll level up, but unless you already got a sucky bro with low rolls, it is wasted. nearly any good perk has more overall impact and is still relevant in late game, gifted is not. colossus - only useful on high HP brothers (though if you dont go max morale or fatigue or initiative, that should always be a choice imho). dodge is useful, though i wouldnt take it as first priority. student -> steel brow -> executioner is by far the easiest perk start imho. crippling strikers, killing frenzy and berserk are no-brainers. foot-work on ranged rotation and maybe taunt on tanks nible/bf after weapon specification. dodge and colossus for leftover points, maybe brawny if you have difficulties with fatigue. ignore nine lives and underdog. lone wulf obvs. for lone wulfs. indom for tanks if necessary fortified mind for the standard bearer.
I bought the game 2 days ago and I think the game it's awesome! Many people recommended it to me, but I was hesitant. Now, I'll score from 1 to 10 these advices, according on how I reacted to each one of them (The higher the score, the better I consider it is and the lesser I apply it): 1. 8/10 Ouch! That's the first thing I do, so they don't take my loot away! :( 2. 9/10 I always forget this and go full braindead attacks! lol 3. 5/10: I haven't tried this yet, but it sounds logical. I mean, severañ guides suggest "Battleforged". 4. 6/10 I always take Elevation. And, man, I gotta say I'm addicted to Pathfinder 'cause of this. The advice about avoiding high ground when enemies with knockback or repel are nearby. 5. 9/10 LMAO Were you watching me play? That is/WAS the first thing I do with "The Merciless" dude, the one with a Woodcutter Axe. He oneshots shields and I thought it was "a good strat"... 6. 8/10 Why Bow sucks so much? Any strategy I'm missing here? 7. 10/10 Probably the best advice! I use "Student" on everybody, but end up being massacred almost everytime! lol I'm trying to build a Fencer. I'm Lvl.5 with him and got Falchion + Buckler. Eventually planning to get rid of Buckler, specially when I get Duelist. Btw, I would love to see an updated playthrough to see all this in action! I think I'm stuck on the starting Origin with Tutorial. I've tried twice the New Company origin, but can't pass the first few contracts! ...
The Video would be better without this other guy. His mic sound and voice is so annoying... and you guys basically repeat each other. Your mic and voice is really nice to listen to... but Deducter is it(?)... im sorry but nope. Appart from that... thank you so much for these tipps... The content is great.
BB recently had a huge renaissance for me, appreciate the content
i also came back recently, this is one of the games it never gets really boring over a decade in between breaks. you can play it in 2025 and still have a lot of fun. plus mods ;)
I have no idea from which mountain Deducter and Carve descended but I can dig these 7 commandments.
Mount Bro from the Brountain mount chain!
I almost wanted to say it was Brokeback mountain 😂
I swear the "don't break shields" tip helped me get out more than anything. I use to break them all the time and sustain injuries/casualties and wonder what I was doing wrong.
Only use it on gladiators or hedge knights that you basically cannot pierce otherwise
Break shield then net. AI is coded to use their turn to break free. Or net anyway, then slam and OHKO with an orc axe.
@@mrbluebell2735 thanks for the tip, was wondering how to incorporate nets
@@michael5068 Break Shield is a trap. A waste of time and stamina.
@@taomahNEGEV Not always. 95% of the time it is. There are a few exceptions. But less experienced players will not know how to recognize these exceptions so it is better for them to simply not do it at all.
#1 - Not said clearly enough - get yourself between a fleeing enemy and a fighting enemy and go last, waiting on your AOO before making a hit. You may make opponent waver because you just killed the fleeing enemy with AOO, thus improving your chance to hit the fighting enemy.
#8 - If you're surrounded anyway and outnumbered, go last so that the not yet surrounding enemies have to first move before attacking you, instead of attacking straight away (x2) because you freed up a spot for them to take before next turn
#9 - Dogs in early game are a temporary terrain feature to save you from otherwise bad map roll. They block a tile, tire out opponents, in effect removing some of the more powerful attacks from being chosen by AI, and deal enough damage that about equals out to you standing solo on the high ground.
I was hoping for one of these. You two along with pug know your shit. Saved me a lot of trial and error. I don’t have the time learn the minute details. Skip a lot of the growing pains
Yeah basically the point of my channel lol, good to hear it's working as intended.
Lol...normally, I just listen to videos, so imagine my surprise when I randomly picked this one to listen to, and happened to glance down to see, to my horror, that I was the "what not to do" example! I do, and don't, agree with your assessment. If you look at the guys shown, I think most had high fatigue and stars in fatigue, so they were being built towards having heavy armor. At the time, though, they only had raider-level gear, so battleforged was not effective, and certainly not as effective as nimble. Long-term, though, it was needed for where those Brothers were planned to go.
That does bring up some other discussions, though, regarding if you build some Brothers for early game success, and others for late game success, or use the same Brothers throughout, struggling in some parts of the run while having it easier in others. As one of you mentioned, I've played from the very early days, so still have a negative gut feeling on nimble. I have been adding it a lot more in my builds, but still mostly on back-row guys, and less on my front-liners.
edit- I went back and looked at some of the comments in my videos, wondering if either of you had said anything. Yes, indeed...one comment I clearly remember, because I was trying to formulate a good answer: "Why don't you use nimble"? lol
Lmao love the bit at the end of your comment. Nimble is just plain not bad, so i fully believe you should take the power spike early and not wait for later BF bros to come online. Late game nimble bros aren't bad so you really aren't losing much (yeah probs a little I won't lie).
Idk if I've commented on your channel, James, but it's pretty neat! I like seeing someone else make guides for the game. I suggest a bit more preparation / editing for videos - the orc warlord one should really have been only the warlord fight. Keep it up though, and reach out any time :)
@@CarveaHole Funnily enough, I prefer watching heavily edited videos, but A: my editing skills suck and B: I hardly have time to play and record, let alone edit. What's most surprising, though, is how many people in the comments seem to like the relaxed play along and just talk. I wouldn't watch my own content, but there is an audience for it!
I should work on at least a few "specials" with some editing, though. With practice, it'll probably go quicker and add production value.
@@GrimaldiJ Idk how much of my stuff you've seen, but lots of my stuff has minimal editing. That being said, cutting out (tens of) minutes of fluff is simple to do and takes little time. But yeah, I'm in the same boat of having too little time.
I read one day, at reddit some guy that said that most of the "guides" are late oriented and I think that its true. Its allright, when you have 10k money, like 5 front line at level 8 with mimble/BF to start doing a "better" perk selection and start hiring better bros. But at the beggining, with only 1k money and all your 3 bros at level 1, you need to do other things to "protect" your company, because you dont have yet, chads and mega-chads to care for your valluable 3 star member knight.
Yes they are some worse bros, but a bro its more important and valluable than a dog. You lose a dog, not a problem, its there to distract or give a number advantage. That hit that was "wasted" to killing your dog, saved your brother. Not a big deal (except the money for buying the animal) A bro dying, and thats a problem, also when he is at level 1 after paying 40 coins.
I disagree about the dog vs low lvl bro.
Dogs have no wage, they cost no food, they don't need repairs, always start the fight at 100%. Unless the recruit has good potential or an exquisite starting statblock, i rather kept the doggo than the bro.
@@rafaelcastor2089 That's... weird. Dogs do not gain levels, cannot shieldwall, cannot be given targets and they follow a pretty screwed up target selection - unless released right into someone's ugly mug may choose an executioner two turns of movement-worth away. AND when killed (and killed easily) give morale bonuses to your enemies virtually for free.
Last two points are quite a killer, and I use dogs only in an emergency retreat, or when things are going well already to mop up faster.
@@killtie15 Again, unless the recruit has good potential i care nothing for keeping it alive to gain lvls and be a little less worthless later on.
BTW dogs follow a pretty predictable pattern, so and you can definetly give them targets and make it so they don't just run in and die instantly.
You're not using your hounds to full potential by saving them for when battles are won or when you need to flee. Hounds are stronger than pretty much any earlygame unit so they'll carry your battles in the early game; they run at necros and archers and essentially shut them down for at least a turn (and they usually can kill those ranged units by themselves too); they can take care of risen weidergangers while you fight the actual threats; they can do damage spikes both by attacking twice instead of an mediocre bro getting one more and by giving you flanking bonuses; If you have a few of them alp fights become trivial; You can very commonly use the dog placement action to close the gap between you and a unit you're getting to without losing a turn of DPR; You can fix holes in your formation and exploit holes in the enemies' by placing them... Dogs have a lot more going for them, try getting more creative and you'll see how, especially in the early game, they are worth a lot more than a bad or mediocre bro.
@@rafaelcastor2089 Oh, I agree about not worrying for disposable bros. And surround bonus etc, etc but their unreliable targeting (somewhat predictable is not reliable)and the ridiculous fact that killing dogs gives morale, nips (imo) their usefulness almost in the bud. And in the beginning, 150+ g (sometimes X2 or X3) isn't that little to throw away every other battle. Now, if either one could at least tell them who to attack, OR their deaths wouldn't boost morale, 90% of my objections would be removed.
@@rafaelcastor2089 I mean here's a houndmaster releasing a dog with a clear path into archer backlines or even an isolated archer. Dog runs confidently and.. bends around the enemy formation and latches onto a leader (or dudes protecting archers etc etc), who's keeping back a bit or hasn't had time to reach the melee. Dog-swatting commences in the middle of the formation and all the enemies get a positive morale check. Yay.
Just now returning to the game with all the DLCs etc. Do you think it's better to prio the 4 stat-oriented perks you mentioned in this video (Colossus, Dodge, Fast Adaptation, Gifted) or is Adrenaline still strong like you mention in a lot of your other videos? Or is the intent here more for beginner players who may not be familiar with initiative manipulation, including how to leverage Adrenaline?
I would have put adren in this video but because this is a collaboration with Deducter I compromised by not putting it in. Likewise there are some things of mine that he made little compromises on too. That's all :)
@@CarveaHole That makes sense, and I think it's probably easier for a new player to play around just having more stats than manipulating initiative (with Adrenaline or otherwise). Thanks for the reply!
Great video. Awesome job
Thank you!
I never knew fleeing enemies didn’t effect a ZOC with OHs. Game changer.
It was patched at some point.
O h?
@@alext5497 opportunity hits
Thanks for the great tips guys. Now I'm in the mood for some BB!
Man, after playing Legends mod for months I could never go back to vanilla, the amount of perk expansion is insane.
Sweet vid, and looking thru comments, I think the topic of Dogs may also make for an interesting discussion vid. Edit: Lawd just realized I wasn't subscribed all the while :O Error corrected :D
Fantastic video! Both content and presentation are great. I will come back to both channels for more Battle Brothers Content :)
Cheers Vampiro! I really liked your BB tutorial for the switch :)
Advice for future videos. Especially lists. Use a script.
I listened to number 1 and heard both of you say the same thing. But the second one took 3 times longer for no reason.
Good vid thanks a lot shout out deducter
Just one tip from me: use polearms instead of bows/crossbows in your second line.
Good job fellas 👍
Thank you!
How do you get such cool banners? Mine always looks very plain?
If you have the DLCs then you get some new ones. I don't use any mods I just click through the options.
@@CarveaHole Vey strange, I have all the DLCs, but my shields never look like this :|
@@jacquesventer3170 oh shields? You paint a shield and it'll look like your banner.
how could i get battleforge on my best brothers? 3 stars attack and 2 stars defense then I can't get nimble on him to throw him away in the lategame and have to retrain another guy.. but I trust you, I'm doing tests, creating trash fronts that have 3 attack stars but nothing in m defense... but with nimble...
40 minutes? You could make separate video for each tip.
I'm pressing the space bar.
I press f
Shield breaking is good against schrats and for farming hedge knight armour or noble equipment.
Good tips. But i think poorly presented tbh. Didnt need 40 minutes to explain all of this. The background footage also switched between being random filler footage to actually useful footage with no verbal prompt so someone whos listening in but not paying attention to the footage wont see.
Game need need fix fightgrund is nonsense leveling up down just make nice map not this stupid levrling up down map
I can't believe this game after years is still this rétarded, beginner, second 300 gold quest is a 12 undead armored horde as a 6 man party what the fuck is wrong with the devs
Breaking shields was a trap I ran into myself, so I wholeheartly agree on trying to avoid breaking them. Tying them up & making them fail morale checks later is a better course of action. And if you are really struggling with shield walled opponents you can bring flails which ignore shields or if you run a dedicated shield user shield bash them to cancel shield wall.
I just go full QH and swap to reach weapon to kill the backline, ignoring the shield line altogether
Shield break is only good with a Orc Mansplitter with axe mastery you can even break metal shields in one hit
The only shields you really need to break are Schrat shields lol. Letting a Brigand Leader start double-gripping is a recipe for getting cheapshotted when you don't need to let it become a thing.
Adding to #1: also if there is an enemy banner/leader that can rally a fleeing enemy. It's worth it to kill the fleeing if a bro in danger is in range of an enemy who can rally.
I love it when I miss a few 70% swings in a row and then the guy with one eye lands three 30% shots at max damage with his flail.
I like how you pointed out that in an early battle, 10 good hits is all you need to win. When you look at it that way, it does make a perk like fast adaptation look really good, even if it only leads to one extra hit.
Fast adaptation is massively underrated. It's one of the best traits for ranged characters.
Dodge and relentless stack nicely. Dodge provides the defence and relentless allows you to pass without taking an initiative penalty which means you can pass and still go before the opponents. It also stops dodge dropping below 50% of the max bonus.
Useful tips but this could have said the same sips under 10 mins
Aye nice one lads, very happy to see this in my timeline.
I fully agree on Colossus, Dodge, and Gifted, which are excellent perks, though Dodge is a bit more situational and more for early game bros.
I essentially disagree that Fast Adaptation is a very good perk. Colossus, Gifted, and Dodge should be taken before FA for any frontline bro (unless you have crazy heavy armor to put on, in which case skip Dodge). Even by the time you reach level 5, you'd only want to give FA to a guy that you literally want or expect to die. Your good bros don't really need it and I think there are better options, the frontline bros who will swing twice per turn need Colossus, Dodge, and Gifted for survivability (Gifted can also improve striking) and eventually just need good striking stats either way (or they're a pure tank and striking doesn't matter), and backline bros only swing once per turn so you're not going to get very many FA stacks. Adrenaline is also better for backline polearms IMO - strike first, get the kill or get the morale break. Maybe for an early game brother who uses throwing weapons, FA is more reasonable, for example ahead of Dodge since he's in the backline. I would still take Colossus and Gifted first. I can see other situational uses for FA before Dodge, like a really bad bro and you're going to put heavy Fallen Hero armor on him and have him tank and possibly die in a hard fight to spare your better brothers, and you want to give him a little more swinging power just because why not, plus Dodge won't work due to heavy armor. But yeah, to me, FA is very situational. If fast adaptation ends up on a brother at level 11, I feel like I made a mistake and I'd prefer a different, more powerful perk. Buyer's remorse, basically.
Gifted is absolutely better than FA in basically all situations, for example you get +3 to hit and +3 to defend EVERY melee strike both coming and going, plus another needed stat. Compare that to FA, where he gets 0% for strike 1 and misses, 10% for strike two then hits, then he swings again at 0. That's 3.3% improvement per swing. If he gets a 4th swing at +10% in that scenario, then it averages out to 5%. In other words, in a fairly typical striking scenario, Gifted increasing MAtk by +3 ALONE is pretty similar to FA, and Gifted also allows leveling two other important stats. For +4 RAtk the advantage is even more stark. I guess FA gets better if you're taking on tons of shieldwall-spam units, because you'll get the hit eventually with your crappy spear and sword bros, but again, it feels situational. Long story short, take Gifted, it's a great perk.
#1: Agree with the caveat. It is risk/reward to go for the morale break but it can pay off in a HUGE way! (also note firearms with fearsome + overwhelm are amazing for this). Also a note that with almost everything in Battle Brothers it is situational to playstyle, weapon you are using, ranged vs melee, heavy armor vs dodge etc. There is no "one best way" to play this game IMO as many different styles can work. That said some perks are highly variant based on enemy fights - like crippling strikes and executioner are just not useful vs undead (as an example). BB is so well made - one of my favorite games :D
Yea brother, this game is so well thought out I love the low fantasy setting and there are just so many different builds you can play around with and mix up. Hopefully several more expansions to come, I'd love to see a jungle one with South American influence and monsters
@@redstarling5171 Wait till you hear about Legends and PTR mods.
I already used the tips 1, 2, 4, 5 and 6(regarding breaking shields, one option if I really want to free up a brother engaged on a shieldwalling enemy is to shieldbash them and move him to where needed.)
About the battleforged I was really in doubt about perks and I guess this is going to help me.
About throwing weapons, I find the axes a safer choice despite having a bit worse stats than the javelins because certain enemies like ancient undeads are resistant to piercing dmg giving more versatility to the archers.
Very solid tip on #7, although I would only give 'fast adaptation' to a very shit brother that I would dismiss anyway(if he can't hit consistently he is almost useless), colossus and gifted remain usefull the whole game, dodge is essential to certain brothers and still somewhat usefull through midgame but loses utility as they get heavier and heavier armor.
@1:00 hahahaha. It sounds like you were about to say "if you do these 7 things, you'll never die" but then you remembered that we're talking about Battle Brothers and that's just not a promise anyone can keep 😂
Carve just want to tell you that I went adren on all my non-shield early game bros and I've been rolling through the early game fights. Thank you for all your videos and teaching me to be a better commander!
So glad to hear that! Keep it up dude
I got this mission to defend a holy site, against a army of southerners. Well they came with an army of handcannons and I was destroyed. Any advice on how to win that fight. I used mammoths and 2h folks. Oh did I mention the buggers brought a mortar
Southerners are tough as hell. I have a couple of videos on them, one w/ mortars and one without. One of the few times archers are cool cause they kill the engineers.
Lol same. It was a 1 star job too. Seems like a noob trap. Those measly "fortifications", too: not only useless against Handgonners but actually help them as you can't polearm through them but the Handgonnes can still shoot over them. So they're safe behind a shieldwall of Conscripts and those walls while blasting your frontline to hell.
@@BuzzKirill3Din the end I got tired of defending, I just charged and the losses were horrendous. But still it was a victory. Won't fight the southerners again
About the Highground, the AI will always try to avoid fighting on the low ground, so a few tips you can do is to put polearms or ranged on the HighGround and the frontline on the same height as the enemy. They will fight the frontline normally, but you still get the bonus of the highground. also be careful against orc warriors and unholds. They can throw soldiers and swap positions with them, meaning you can end up at the low ground and out of position.
also, this is my opinion, but axe mastery should stagger an enemy when you break their shield. it would put them further in the turn order, so your other soldiers can attack and kill the before they get their turn
I'd say shield breaking is situational.
Certainly not required or often, but theres nothing more annoying than some random Mercenary/brigand with a shit weapon holding up 2-3 brothers with shieldwall.
Using rotate also burns fatigue, and doesn't "free" a brother. You simply trade one, and footwork isn't taken often. Also doesn't help free multiple brothers.
So you could burn 9 ap and X fatigue on a guy to smash the shield and kill him /break him with the other 1-2 guys, or risk spending 8 AP a turn on 3 guys hoping to hit through the shield. Sometimes taking 2-5 turns to finally kill the guy.
Where as if you smash the shield the guy can be done in 1-2 turns if he's holding up a multiple brothers.
Sometimes it is indeed more timely and cost effective to go through the shield, rather than around it.
I suppose you can argue "Just move away" but in my experience those times I -need- to move away, I get double or triple hit. So I avoid trying to dodge out unless theres some heavily debilitating injury to lower hit chance.
Like all things battle brothers, shield breaking is risk management and should be assesed on a case by case. Not just written off.
What he said)) +++
I think in 1/70 battles I may break a shield. Yeah what you said is true, I just don't find myself in that situation too much. If it takes more than one (or *maybe* two) actions to break the shield I won't do it.
@@CarveaHole Which is fair, but that's why I don't think it should be one of the major 7 rules.
There's definitely a time and place for it, though it may be less common.
Mind you I also like Shield breaking Orc Warlords because I tend to go Nimble heavy, and have a couple whip bros, so daggering down the Warlord it usually faster than trying to armor break through shield. I actually really prefer fighting orcs over undead / Ancients.
Segway, I'm using adrenaline on a Junk Caravan hand because of this video, and Accidentally triggered a 6 vs 19 (Saw a stack of 9 nomads, but there was another stack literally underneath I didn't notice at first) and the Adrenaline guy absolutely demolished them, and Morale broke 6 guys in 1.5 turns.
@@HauntingSpectre I think for newer players it is a good rule to have and then you can learn when to break it later. I would not suggest adding shield breaking to your repertoire of normal tactics.
Great video! A little sub-tip sort of related to tip 1 in a way. In general I don't attack zombies that were just resurrected, their turn is done and can't attack till the next round. I think of it as the zombie is "fleeing" for that turn and they are basically irrelevant. Often you are better doing something else then spending fatigue killing it again right away.
Only time I'll shield break out of a schrat fight is rarely in the library. If I have a guy holding me up with a shield, I have things I need to do, and I have a guy with a long axe/mastery I'll think about it. Definitely falls in the 1% haha
Both good points!
could have been a wy more watchable 7 minute video guys
Great format
Straight to the point
Useful tips
The game is just brutal no matter what you do, but the tips are much appreciated.
I've played a lot of battle Bros and Nimble is garbage on anybody after day 100. Even when you have 170 Named Armor, and 100 HP, you're still a Crit away from having no armor and then you're two hits from dead fighting anything other than Brigands, Nomads or lower tier beasts. I've watched a guy with 120hp and Light Champion Barbarian Armor get put down by and Orc in 3 hits. Where as a Battleforged Brother standing beside him will tank those same hits 10 to 15 times before it's an issue....
Nimble is great in the early part of the game but don't expect your nimble brothers to be hanging in the Sunken Library or Black Monolith.
HELP!!!! I dont know what happened but my UI scale went to 200 and I cant scroll to modify back to 100 I tried going to the pc setting and scaled back to 100 but it only helped a little, not enough
Yes swong with a 18% chance to hit for a few rounds rather than smash the shield and kill the guy in one round lol. Even with only 200 total armor thats 10%damage reduction with bf. Throwing weapons are only accurate at point-blank ra ge where as my bow is accurate at 7 tiles. Ive got a few play throughs now and hardly ever lose men to battle and i dont do most of these. The few that i do use like elevation advantages are no sht Sherlocks.
You didnt mention anything useful like combining short and long spears for the wall with archers to decimate the enemy before closing to melee.
I swear by the don’t break shield rule after losing half of my company to the orc warriors…. Just beat the living orc shit out of them, don’t even bother with the fancy breaking armor or shield
Carve, "Use the Best First Perks" is nice and all, but what if I do find some very good brothers early game? 3 stars in proper places with highest possible stats on a Farmhand, Thief, Squire, Militiaman, etc?
Well you should take colossus on everybody so that doesn't change (I can explain that if you want). If somebody is *super* good then you should be extra sure they do not die! Put them in the back or whatever and let them level up. You can likely drop FA on the bro you're describing, but the other perks you may still want. Depends on what you're going for really.
i have 20 hours in and ive been nonstop watching videos while i play and this was the best one i've seen
Glad it helps! I always plug "battlefield nuances" on my channel if you haven't already seen it.
I find shield breaking useful when trying to do pierce attacks on a Tanky foe whose armor I want intact. One guy breaks the shield while the rest surround with daggers.
If you're at the point where an enemy is surrounded and you have daggers out, you've already won. Breaking the shield is irrelevant to actually winning, so you can do whatever you want.
These are rules for when when the lines are engaged and the battle still hangs in the balance.
If there's a reason to break shield early game, it's because it's a raider with no headgear, decent 110 armour and there's a perfect line up to crush his skull with a flail. Lash vs an unshielded target will always crit when connected.
Not only that but if you have 2 brothers or 3 breaking a shield will more likely guaranted to make big dmg with the other brothers and not just with a spear that is a high accuracy but low dmg weapon.
So there is reason to do it but not to do it always.
I believe the tip was not bad but mostly wrong expressed. Do not shield break always. Only when you have an advantage for do it
Ace use of chapters! Thanks!
That "Thanks" at the end of the description haha
Ich bin nur hier, um "Hallo" zu sagen. HALLOOOO!!! Ich hab knapp 400std in dem Game und es noch nie geschafft, die Kriesen zu bestehen xD
Nice video guys! Really solid advice, especially for the early game. Question, would you ever think about doing a video on bb logistics?(ie advice for the game outside of combat.) Knowing where and when to buy and sell, how to size up early contracts, when you should buy equipment, etc. It's sorta the other half of the game people don't talk about that much, but understanding it helps your play tremendously!
Thanks Jon! That is a valuable topic, you're right, and we'll add it to our list.
This is an advanced subject. I make tons of videos where I discuss this exact topic and how I maximize my fight density, but it's not necessary to succeed. This is more for players who can beat the Black Monolith on day 200, but now they want to learn how to do it by day 100.
The main reason why this isn't really part of the game is because there's no time limit. It'd be interesting to see some sort of tournament mode where there's a time limit and players compare results to one another.
@@deducter that's definitely true! But I was even thinking of more intro level stuff. Like what percentages are worth buying tools or selling loot at, or what to use your money on in the early game. Just simple tips to get people started. It can definitely be kinda overwhelming at first. But yeah, bb logistics have TONS of nuance and room for optimization. I'm still learning lots as I go
One tip : use dogs. Lot's of them. I have 12 bro, 10 with dogs
I never tried dog spamming but to me they die pretty easily, leading to big morale debuffs
Dogs are definitely very strong. I've noticed the AI has been tweaked recently to deprioritize attacking dogs, so they still provide the surround bonus and the extra attacks, but you can't rely on them to be as good of a distraction as they used to be.
@@PaulSeoulOLD they can dodge, and even if they die they are a life saver. You can slow ennemy, save a bro, retreat with dogs attacking ennemies, and nachzeeter take huge damages from them.... And when lvl 3 eat them instead of one of your bro (of course i avoid to use dogs against many lvl 1-2).
It allows to almost double your troop, and give surround bonus i think. Add fatigue to ennemy, etc.
Of course as u say, moral check. Idk for our bro, but the ennemy can get confident
@@deducter i didn't knew that dogs were prioritized
@@PaulSeoulOLD +++++++ (and free morale buffs for enemies)
Do you know of a good place I can find good builds for early-late game? Maybe another for what type of brothers are worth keeping with what stats etc?
Yeah check my channel lol. I have a playlist specifically to guides and builds, and then numerous videos of me using them in all sorts of fights. If you want something more specific lemme know and I'll direct you
1 tip DONT FIGHT THE RED SPIDERS DEAR GOD IF YOU SEA ONE RUNE FOR YOUR LIFE
Why not just attack then move brothers into position then attack again with the chance of doing double damage instead of waiting and doing nothing.
Waiting still let's you attack later in the round, and then you have the adjacent bonus. Don't skip your attacks lol
Actual very good tips, it was fun watching the video.
Thank you my dude :D
58 hours in and still didn't make it past day 40ish because it has always been so hard, as enemies get too good I had the feeling. And nachzehrer, wolfs and orcs and goblins just totally overwhelm me or get past my shield wall and just hit the shit out of my bros.. not fun. I always come back to this game and currently it's the 4th successful company that I get past day 10.
Also I struggle a lot with the first days, as my bros just die so easily.
Losing brothers in the early game is guaranteed to happen. What you need to do is make sure it's the right bro that dies, being the bro with bad stats, and put him in the dangerous position. Also give them bad armour so that the enemy will target him instead of the good bros. And if the fodder brother lives, give him 9 lives.
About day 35 to 45, raider bands begin to appear with pikes. Beast hordes increase from under 10 to nearly 20. The game enemies have a massive power spike around this time and in all likelihood your gear isn't keeping up. If you're not in footman tier (140/130 armour) and tier 2/3 weapons by now I'd recommend buying yourself out of trouble. Armouries sell +30 attachment for around 400 to 500g. Start getting them and applying to any of the 100 to 110 raider/nomad suits. Armour is essentially free with dagger and flail use, using attachment will give you defence parity to a noble army for a third of the price.
Also, battleforge at 140 to 150 defence becomes a viable option. Will allow the bro to soak at least 3 more hits and that's equal to taking nimble.
I recently had an interesting early game run. Ever tried using Houndmasters with Adrenalin. I got 2 and with 2 determined dog´s (and 2 extra bodys for surround) I destroyed raiders and beast. Also very good to bumrush Geists with Spear+Shield+Dog+Adrenalin no sergant needed (been doing that before without the dogs, much less relieable but still works).
Dogs are extremely good. Against all kind of ennemy, even nachtzeeter !
I've tried this before. But it's just RNG to try to fight geists without bannerman. I lost a offline deserters campaign to this. Sooner or later you will fail to land your hits and the geists will chain rout you.
The rules in this video are for minimizing RNG so you can get to the point where you always win battles. Once you get good at BB there's no RNG, it's all skill.
@@deducter indeed, bannerman is a must have
Especially if like me u have some 20-30 resolve guys 😅
Dogs are a boon, I have almost every single brother with a dog and half a dozen spare in inventory. Has saved me many times
Point 8 would be. Placing your Bro with 30% chance to get hit next to 3 webknechts and complain that out of 6 attacks 2-3 hits you. Then complain about the RNG. get the Bro killed and reload the save.
Great Advice in general, really enjoyed the video, thank you. I did want to say that I don't think your shield breaking discussion was nuanced enough. I agreed with most of it but there are definitely situations where you should break the shields. The most obvious time is when you're attacking a fort early-mid game and are being pummeled by crossbowmen who have infinitely superior positioning. You don't have time to attack the guy shield walling the entrance with 25% attacks from two brothers on low ground or swamp - he isn't the threat, the crossbowmen and pikemen behind him are. Situations like this, where your brothers are bottlenecked by a few shieldwalls, are different. Obviously flails help, so do kite shields, but you may not always have a lot of those hanging around. In short, if a shield is blocking you from the true threats and you don't have easy paths around it, smash the shield...
this game i played years ago, and now i play again, is a wonderful game. But after soo much time and soo much versions, the game is soo diferente. Watching this video i saw things i don't saw on my game today (43 days). But is little things like armor of same character. Today i play with the veteran difficult and was really scare, the undead kick my ass. kkk its funny, i loved.
Gifted perk is a trap. There is always that other perk you need yesterday to take.
I used to think this... it actually really good and never a bad idea to take.
You managed to condense 7 mins worth of information into 40 mins of waffles, incredible... thanks for the tips though
You can kill fleeing enemies to let a place to one of your bro to fix their second line, you can kill them if it's the turn of one of your tank, and he can't damage at all a fully armored enemy, you can kill fleeing enemies, you can kill fleeing enemies if they have a good gear and have a chance to leave, you can kill fleeing enemies to proc morale checks, you can kill fleeing enemies to encircle other frontline enemies, you can kill fleeing enemies to free one of your bros of its zone of control and so make them chase archers.. There are so much situations where it's better to kill fleeing enemies than hitting someone else.
In mid / lategame, you can't have so much surrounding bonuses. Enemies will always outnombers you. And you can't run a company with only frontliners. It's good only in first 20 - 30 days
"don't run your dudes into 2 or 3 enemies" but tanks are made to do this, so the damage bro's won't get surrounded.
Breaking shield can be good, if your poleaxe man is behind one of your tank, when he has no target. With a riposte tank, you break the shield, and enemy will be forced to attack and maybe get hit
I'm completely fan of throwing weapons, i'm playing with them on two of my bro in a completely cheated run with some mods (i can oneshot knights, i can deal more than 300 damages with one hit, yeah it's completely cheated but it's very, very fun) And yes, barbarians throwing weapons are so worth to have. They are better than legendary throwing weapons (maybe barbs can have some legendary throwing weapons, i don't know at all)
Fast adaptation perk is to me a waste of a perk. Or, use it only on garbage bros. If your bro is a tank, he has better perks than this. If he's a damage bro, he his supposed to have high chances to hit, so this perk is useless and there's other perks that will be way better
For the dodge perk, if you have a tank with it, and he has 0 chance to hit, just pass your turn without doing anything. If you use your fatigue, your initiative will decrease, and so, your bonuses
Says there's a 122 comments and I only see the one before I click on it and then it's gone.
Great video. I have over 1k hours in BB and i've never thought of taking duelist on my Archers/Throwers...
Mix fearsome in there too and it's so much fun
so you guys like to watch ey?
Just a questions regarding elevation - what about when you are attacking camps that start on massive hill advantage? Any tips then?
First, get every one outside of bowshot range
Second send your damage dealers with a tank that can rotate the out of trouble to circle the fortification outside of bowshot range.
There are always gaps at the back of fortifications
Rest their fatigue from moving and attack all at once.
Lock the front of the fortificarion, where the enemy is protecting and get the rest to attack from behind.
@@lucaslimal3 Don't let the entire enemy team have elevation advantage. You can possibly run straight up the hill, but more likely you can run up the side. In my Oathtakers stream there's an excellent example of me doing this. Starts at 29:40, not putting it as a link, youtu. be/gePfjXaDvPw?t=1788
@@CarveaHole wow!! Hahahah
What a bad map you got there!!
That is the idea of what I do. I circle some guys around and when I start pouring through the gaps I engage with the other to hold the enemy in place.
You have to reposition, either by falling back and baiting the archers out, or try to find somewhere you can climb the hill with all your bros. See these videos:
th-cam.com/video/F0U948JAZfg/w-d-xo.html
th-cam.com/video/IFlz6HcSU98/w-d-xo.html
or u can ambush them at night. so they will get out from their hideout to reach range shoot
The reason I take BF earlier is because in late game I want that bro to be a BF bro.
You can have transitional bros who get nimble, and you swap them out for Battle Forged. Or at the very least buy 200+ armor for guys with Battle Forged.
@@deducter Ideally yes, switch out some of your early nimble bros for BF bros.
I can't stand losing guys though, so I rarely hire fodder bros and generally keep my guys throughout the game(not counting BS rng deaths of course).
The early bros that aren't good enough to be Bf or tanks get dismissed...
@@alext5497 I rarely ever get good stars on high cost backgrounds. 3/4 of my BF guys are always lowborn.
His a tip 8 tips in 8 mins would be nice
Jeeez, this could have been donw in 1 minute! Everybody, just skip to the end summary.
27:46 As a javelin enjoyer, I support this message. I never had a gameplay without throwing weapons.
Bows sucks tbh
BB sucks with its rigged RNG.
I find breaking shield useful in some situations but if you have the enemy surrounded or at least with others to hit the target before he can attack.
So you secure the killing faster and avoid wasting more attacks on the shield if your Melee skill is not amazing.
The thing in poker you are talking about is folding a set when only a higher set beats u
Great video. I have a question to you guys on the topic of Nimble/BattleForged (BF) in regard to tanks. How do you choose to go one over the other for, say, a tank? Only focus on Ini and Fat when deciding? What about the number of Nimble tanks vs BF tanks?
It's basically all about stam. BF tanks have much much higher sustain capability with their heavy armor, so I think they're superior in sum. Nimble tanks aren't bad, in fact they're quite good against lots of enemies. I like at least 125 stam on my BF tanks, more the better.
@@CarveaHole Gotcha. Thanks!
@@CarveaHole actually. One more question. I assume you mean 125 after levels without gear?
Nimble tanks are much easier to get online. Pretty much anyone with melee defense stars and acceptable HP/resolve can work. They are good enough for everything except the Black Monolith, although they are at much more risk against large numbers of Chosen, Lindwurm, and especially the southern armies.
I wouldn't even be sad about losing a nimble tank in a huge fight, that's just part of the job.
@@joshman5217 yeah that's what I meant
Nimble brudders
Adrenaline isn't among the "best first perks" you list here: have you changed your mind about it since your video series on adrenaline?
I like it a lot more than Deducter does and I wasn't willing to die on that hill for this video. I have toned down my usage a bit, but I still think it's a great choice if you use it how I describe in my series.
With 135 hours played, i 100% agree.
Really smart ideas, guys, thanks a lot, I'll think about them and check in the game
early game =/= late game.
1) fleeing enemies: stop them from running! more loot, more morale damage! (else you are right, always prioritize everything above fleeing enemies)
2) yes, but only surround if the skipping doesnt increase the chance of receiving damage due to standing around (instead of dishing out damage) and never surround if there are chance of AOE attacks unless you know you can tank them.
3) nible is super overrated for frontliners with few build exceptions. it is fantastic on backline fighters (2h and ranged). nible-forged was not bad, but tldr: frontline = BF, backline = nimble. colossus and HP outperform most fatigue builds by far, you might attack less, but in most cases the additional fatigue you wasted doesnt really give more attack opportunities, it only helps with versatility of tanks (rotation, taunting or weapon switching).
3b) no raider gear. period. though it depends on what raider gear means. ragged stuff? scrap it, if its standard armor, then most raider gear is too low for BF, but in nearly every case you should have good enough armor once you reach BF anyways. either with EELI-Lone Wulf or other frontline heavy origins. exceptions ofc are the cannon-fodder or ranger origins. as said: build specific but BF is not as bad as the nimble-folks thing.
4) much more important with weak brothers and in early game. late game you should be able to tank against most low to mid damage enemies without issues. high ground is always favorable, but not a must have. if you can shut down or control the battlefield with pressing forward, thats always better than just waiting it out.
5) BS. and thats the nicest way to call it. most of the times, sure, you can ignore shields and kill them anyway, but before a enemy is holding up five guys with his shield wall turtleling, just get rid of the shield. maybe it is like your point 1 and it is just badly worded (absolutes). but esp. lategame getting rid of the shield and killing the enemy EVEN with risking higher damage/more attacks, is most of the time faster and less overall incoming damage than leaving it up and clobbing away on the shields (and getting held up and getting pounded).
6) even more BS. if you play bows and crossbows right, they FAR, FAR outdamage ANY kind of throwing weapon, even famed ones. you got WAY further range and with executioner, crippling strikes, berserker and killing frenzy you kill a lot of things in 2-4 shots, 1-2 with famed bows/cbs. you get two shots with CBs / three with bows if you get a kill. the crippling strikes damages the moral of the enemies and wounds them and if your frontline has executioner they ALL get extra damage. you are FAR less limited by the range penalty nor brothers that are in the way. TLDR: throwing weapons are for people who dont understand B/CB fighting. their place is on hybrids or backline-non archers, though a good billhook/whip outperforms most throwing weapons, even heavy javelins (via versatility and field impact). at least with "early game they are far more usefull" you are right, though even then they get outperformed by a hunting bow, since crippling strikes is a level 2 or 3 talent.
7) fast adaptation: nah. only useful on certain builds and it gets absolutely wasted in late game.
gifted is rarely useful. it give a max roll level up, but unless you already got a sucky bro with low rolls, it is wasted. nearly any good perk has more overall impact and is still relevant in late game, gifted is not.
colossus - only useful on high HP brothers (though if you dont go max morale or fatigue or initiative, that should always be a choice imho).
dodge is useful, though i wouldnt take it as first priority.
student -> steel brow -> executioner is by far the easiest perk start imho.
crippling strikers, killing frenzy and berserk are no-brainers.
foot-work on ranged
rotation and maybe taunt on tanks
nible/bf after weapon specification.
dodge and colossus for leftover points, maybe brawny if you have difficulties with fatigue.
ignore nine lives and underdog.
lone wulf obvs. for lone wulfs.
indom for tanks if necessary
fortified mind for the standard bearer.
3. Dawn of the Balette Battle Brothers 😂
I thinks it’s 5% unmodified
"battle brothers expert" crungo
nice video nice crossover toghether
Thank You!
Good stuff thanks guys.
Great vid! Definetely picking up good advice!
Dodge sucks
Such a great video!
Nimble used to have a max 40% damage reduction at -15 fatigue from armor iirc. So you were still taking 60% of the damage done.
I love dodge. I use it too much on my characters xD.
And can be combined with a light goblin shield wich make it a lot better.
I bought the game 2 days ago and I think the game it's awesome! Many people recommended it to me, but I was hesitant.
Now, I'll score from 1 to 10 these advices, according on how I reacted to each one of them (The higher the score, the better I consider it is and the lesser I apply it):
1. 8/10 Ouch! That's the first thing I do, so they don't take my loot away! :(
2. 9/10 I always forget this and go full braindead attacks! lol
3. 5/10: I haven't tried this yet, but it sounds logical. I mean, severañ guides suggest "Battleforged".
4. 6/10 I always take Elevation. And, man, I gotta say I'm addicted to Pathfinder 'cause of this. The advice about avoiding high ground when enemies with knockback or repel are nearby.
5. 9/10 LMAO Were you watching me play? That is/WAS the first thing I do with "The Merciless" dude, the one with a Woodcutter Axe. He oneshots shields and I thought it was "a good strat"...
6. 8/10 Why Bow sucks so much? Any strategy I'm missing here?
7. 10/10 Probably the best advice! I use "Student" on everybody, but end up being massacred almost everytime! lol
I'm trying to build a Fencer. I'm Lvl.5 with him and got Falchion + Buckler. Eventually planning to get rid of Buckler, specially when I get Duelist.
Btw, I would love to see an updated playthrough to see all this in action! I think I'm stuck on the starting Origin with Tutorial. I've tried twice the New Company origin, but can't pass the first few contracts! ...
Thanks, I might be able to get to day 100, great advice!
Let me know how you're doing, we can talk more :)
@@CarveaHole I'm save scumming my battles, I didn't before! Especially, when I'm on escort missions, those damn orcs!
The Video would be better without this other guy. His mic sound and voice is so annoying... and you guys basically repeat each other. Your mic and voice is really nice to listen to... but Deducter is it(?)... im sorry but nope. Appart from that... thank you so much for these tipps... The content is great.