The editing is on point. Also love the Ben's opinion section, would have been cool to see another game with him knowing about the strategy to see if he can counter it.
@@Pistolsatsean Overlords would counter both the fangs and the hacker. but they could just get some mustangs wasp pheonix and marksmen to deal with your overlords. you would need to kill the fangs fast so you can target the hackers. without giving the hacker more to take over.
@@drakota185 You can say that about anything, but this is exactly why I suggested a composition including crawlers as they are low value targets for the hackers, and are a great counter to marksmen, arcs as they counter crawlers and mustangs, and overlords that spawn wasps so that the wasps absorb hacks and fire so that the overlords clean up, and your own hackers are insurance against other giant units
@@Pistolsatsean every time a hacker hacks 1 crawler all your other units will stop to kill that 1 crawler. slowing down the rate they kill the fangs. and hackers with 5 beams can take over whole groups of crawlers very fast.
@@drakota185 If your opponent has spec'd into 5 beams the counter is very obvious then. It might even be worth baiting that depending on what you get in the match. Also can't you get an upgrade to reposition crawlers (or is that an item?)
I have bought more games I wouldn't have otherwise tried because of Tom than any other TH-camr/streamer. Off the dome I've discovered and loved Total Warhammer, Peglin, Vampire Survivors, Dicey Dungeons, and now this game. What can I say my man's got taste.
Oddly enough, I don't watch this channel regularly, but I got Tom to thank for me finding Mechabellum, Frostpunk, and Airborne Kingdom. Because of him, I found out about them way before my friends who play more games did.
I have a similar strat, but with Overlords and Wasps. You play normally for the first 4 rounds, trying to bait your opponent into not building AA units. Then outright throw round 5 and save all the money, then, pop out 3 Overlords with the cannon and wasp spawning upgrades. If that isn't GG right there, next round you pop out a Wasp and give them shields, as then that will apply to the Overlord spawned wasps. Those wasps will then eat whatever counter your opponent has gotten for your Overlords, be it snipers or melting points, allowing the Overlords to close and destroy them. It's very funny.
a Strat i love if the other player builds their army at the back of the map just place storm crawls as fr us as possible and they just destroy the enemy towers within the first like five seconds. so they then either have to come forward and build more units just to kill the like two storms or start every round mega debuffed.
Day[9] is a really great guy. I met him at a Starcraft 2 tournament, and he was every bit as kind and patient as he seems in his streams. Also quite clever and willing to methodically learn things.
Overlords counter this so easily though. Make them spawn wasps and ether give them self-repair or anti-ground cannons and this just folds. The overlords do good damage to shields *and* aoe to clean up fangs or mustangs and the wasps shield from snipers, meanwhile hackers can't shoot up and therefore can't steal anything. Maybe throw some crawlers on the ground to slow them from reaching the tower, and if you give them the upgrade to turn to acid when they die then they'll mostly kill themselves if hacked. Suddenly he's heavily invested into stuff that is useless and/or hard countered.
My favourite strategy so far is upgraded Mustangs with Range and Attack buffs. Often lose the early rounds as I save money to buy the upgrades. Then once the upgrades kick in, it's just then either countering what the opponent has done or buying more Mustangs. Plus there is a tower upgrade for even more range during that round. So you can give Mustangs an extra 55m range in total in the late game. Mustangs are just an all-round decent pick into most builds in my opinion and giving them upgrades have just turned losing match-ups into winning ones. Only really lose to Sledgehammers because they can be tanky and have AoE shots. Then other units they can lose to are Vulcans if they can get close enough, and Stormcallers if they are accurate enough. But all of those are useless against Air units, which I typically bring Phoenixs to counter giant/medium sized units. Or Wasps/Overlords against more swarm style units.
I have 2 strats I love that are dependent on cards. If I ever see mass produced fortress or mass produced overlords, I take the card and just buy those units forever. One important thing is that you don't waste money leveling them up, more is better! Tech is good though depending on what the opponent does. 12+ forts or overlords is truly a sight to see.
Reminds me of cheese strats in SC2. Which makes sense given Day9's background. It's like that one kill-all strategy that works for a day until everyone is countering it.
this is one of the reasons stormcallers are so powerful with just chaff at the front you can't steal the heavy artillery in the back that's most of your ground power, and if they go only big units steel balls shred them. i'm glad to see tom is learning and having fun tho 🙂
One of my favourite builds is stormcallers and snipers (+mustangs/fangs) by the towers, then get 4 exploding rhinos rounds 3 and 4 to just wipe out their front line.
This strat can be improved if you have a melting point with two hackers behind it, take the upgrade where taken enemy’s get full hp, they will all attack the same target, making the hack very easy as health gets merked by the melting point.
Silliest build I use every time I get amplifying core: plonk it in Overlord with armor & healing. That thing can just shrug off anything smaller than Phoenix&Marksman, and take even them on for a good while. :p Staying alive and killing stuff to get promotions, and eventually the Overlord has so much HP that the x%/s healing gets silly.
Wow, just before I watched this video I met someone who used this strat and beat it with maxupgraded arclights, marksmen and crawlers as the meatshield
@@tumbleweed1551 Ah right, forgot about their anti-air, but I guess that's where protecting it comes in. They can't shoot up and forward at the same time, so I guess wasps and drilly boys are the best counter, until doctor fame-o comes in. Good ol' counter countering dilemma.
To anybody wondering the counter to this build. Air. Hackers don't hit air units. Wasps and Overlords spawning Wasps hard counter most ground based strategies. To be fair that has it's own weakness, why I like this game. Fairly balanced for now and many more changes to look forward to.
@@TheCoolCucumber Yes, and your arguement is good, however everything has a counter. For the fangs being a threat to Overlords, not if you have the proper build for them, then they tickle and have aoe attacks that decimate hordes if not killed quick enough. Add in wasps spawning with shields, always first upgrade if going overlord spawn strat, then it's all around very annoying to counter. Mass wasps with Overlord support is one of those builds that on mass has no real counter. Anything you can do to stop it has a response. And this is not the only build to be death on mass. Similar but to lesser degree, massed snipers and pheonix with upgrades just melt everything. High Damage and long range is just broken if nothing ever shoots back. And yes I know the counter to these builds. Makes game interesting, there is a few strats if you sneak past just win, and beyond that it's very much rock, paper, scissors.
When i saw another video of tom's where someone used hacker's with shields i knew they were op. The only way to counter them is with stuff like crawlers, but then you can just buy a flamer. maybe the overlord with spawning wasps is also a counter since the wasps will distract the hackers, but that's what the fangs are for.
I‘ve heard that Mustang-Ball is a good combo, however I don’t know the actual strategy for playing it. You can probably ask around or find someone playing it if you want to try it out yourself :)
*stormcallers have entered the chat* btw another fun dumb strat, especially if you get arc xp or heavy arclights in one of the early rounds, go all arclights. range, power, elite, and aerial upgrades. as long as you have a good start, it beats everything. also onlyfangs is even better with elite spec
Daily reminder that Tom is an amazing person and to thank him for all he has done/will do - Day 1323 WOOOOOO Hell Yeh :D a Hacker Build, such fun :D. And god, a good one at that, very much great success here. I mean, as Tom said, 80% of the time it works every time :D Awww, Draith, what a nice guy :D good to have players like him. He he he, damn, sorry there was a surrender OOOOO, yey, a little bonus Ben :D, such fun. Seems Tom has regained his crown of Hacker King from Ben.
Seems like outranging the hackers with massive amounts of stormcallers and having a couple overlords near the front for ccing quick moving hordes would be an effective counter, still was a pleasure to see hackers get their heyday!
Hey! In terms of fun strats, have you tried Laser Vulcans? Vulcans with range upgrades stacked on them are tons of fun, you can get them to outrange snipers, and they do AOE damage across the whole thing
so the rule of thumb is "if you're gonna go hackers, go BIG on hackers" and make sure your other units deal with the hordes of little guys, leaving your hackers to hack the enemy big guys. Hacker spam!
Spiff: makes fun of hackers
Tom: "and I took that personally"
day9 took it personally :D
I think Andrew Tate is a worse case scenario than Tom haha 😂
I didn’t know he smoked until that comment 😂
Can you hear it, in the distance? Day[9] chanting: Hacker Fang; Hacker Fang!
"Your health is just a resource you can spend."
-Tom, a smoker
Lol, but I think Toms audience like much of the Yogs have started to skew towards the older generations 😅 But that's just a gut feeling from comments
I would guess the majority of Toms viewers are 25+ lol
Yep i am 35+
@@Ganinoish I wonder if Tom has access to his viewership demographics.
I'm in my 30's, huge Tom fan!
The editing is on point. Also love the Ben's opinion section, would have been cool to see another game with him knowing about the strategy to see if he can counter it.
I imagine the best counter would be some combination of crawlers, arcs, wasp spawning overlords, also your own hackers
@@Pistolsatsean Overlords would counter both the fangs and the hacker. but they could just get some mustangs wasp pheonix and marksmen to deal with your overlords.
you would need to kill the fangs fast so you can target the hackers. without giving the hacker more to take over.
@@drakota185 You can say that about anything, but this is exactly why I suggested a composition including crawlers as they are low value targets for the hackers, and are a great counter to marksmen, arcs as they counter crawlers and mustangs, and overlords that spawn wasps so that the wasps absorb hacks and fire so that the overlords clean up, and your own hackers are insurance against other giant units
@@Pistolsatsean every time a hacker hacks 1 crawler all your other units will stop to kill that 1 crawler. slowing down the rate they kill the fangs. and hackers with 5 beams can take over whole groups of crawlers very fast.
@@drakota185 If your opponent has spec'd into 5 beams the counter is very obvious then. It might even be worth baiting that depending on what you get in the match. Also can't you get an upgrade to reposition crawlers (or is that an item?)
I have bought more games I wouldn't have otherwise tried because of Tom than any other TH-camr/streamer. Off the dome I've discovered and loved Total Warhammer, Peglin, Vampire Survivors, Dicey Dungeons, and now this game. What can I say my man's got taste.
Oddly enough, I don't watch this channel regularly, but I got Tom to thank for me finding Mechabellum, Frostpunk, and Airborne Kingdom. Because of him, I found out about them way before my friends who play more games did.
You should try army of ruin if you like vampire survivors
I play a lot of similar games, and it feels like a personal victory any time I manage to make content for a game before I see it on this channel 😂
Backpack Hero, HoloCure, and Timberborn are a few others I picked up cuz of him. He really does a lot of quality free advertising for games.
Damn, that 3k hp swing in one round got me hootin! Fun build!
Tom has hacked his way into our hearts
Funny because when I saw Day9 do this, I immediately thought "Well Tom would love this"
Same, lol.
I have a similar strat, but with Overlords and Wasps. You play normally for the first 4 rounds, trying to bait your opponent into not building AA units. Then outright throw round 5 and save all the money, then, pop out 3 Overlords with the cannon and wasp spawning upgrades.
If that isn't GG right there, next round you pop out a Wasp and give them shields, as then that will apply to the Overlord spawned wasps. Those wasps will then eat whatever counter your opponent has gotten for your Overlords, be it snipers or melting points, allowing the Overlords to close and destroy them. It's very funny.
Great to see hackers working and Ben as a test subject
a Strat i love if the other player builds their army at the back of the map just place storm crawls as fr us as possible and they just destroy the enemy towers within the first like five seconds. so they then either have to come forward and build more units just to kill the like two storms or start every round mega debuffed.
8:05 "My meat goes down too fast!" - Me too Tom, me too.
Day[9] is a really great guy. I met him at a Starcraft 2 tournament, and he was every bit as kind and patient as he seems in his streams.
Also quite clever and willing to methodically learn things.
I love Day[9] and Tom, it would be amazing to see a collab cause they have the same gamer energy.
I think it's fairly important to recruit the Hackers as Level 2. It also increases the HP of the shield.
I've been watching a lot of Day[9] recently and it's crazy how the Hacker Fang combo momentum spikes after a couple of rounds.
Overlords counter this so easily though. Make them spawn wasps and ether give them self-repair or anti-ground cannons and this just folds. The overlords do good damage to shields *and* aoe to clean up fangs or mustangs and the wasps shield from snipers, meanwhile hackers can't shoot up and therefore can't steal anything. Maybe throw some crawlers on the ground to slow them from reaching the tower, and if you give them the upgrade to turn to acid when they die then they'll mostly kill themselves if hacked. Suddenly he's heavily invested into stuff that is useless and/or hard countered.
super happy to see hackers being viable, mechabellum is probably some of my favorite content you've put out :)
I love the wild Ben encounter
My favourite strategy so far is upgraded Mustangs with Range and Attack buffs. Often lose the early rounds as I save money to buy the upgrades. Then once the upgrades kick in, it's just then either countering what the opponent has done or buying more Mustangs. Plus there is a tower upgrade for even more range during that round. So you can give Mustangs an extra 55m range in total in the late game. Mustangs are just an all-round decent pick into most builds in my opinion and giving them upgrades have just turned losing match-ups into winning ones. Only really lose to Sledgehammers because they can be tanky and have AoE shots. Then other units they can lose to are Vulcans if they can get close enough, and Stormcallers if they are accurate enough. But all of those are useless against Air units, which I typically bring Phoenixs to counter giant/medium sized units. Or Wasps/Overlords against more swarm style units.
Surprised Ben at the end! Huzzah!
I love that lil chat Tom had with his opponent at around minute 13 of the vid.. just shows some lovely, not toxic players having fun playing the game.
Using this opportunity to ask for a return to teardown! One of my favs. Keep the good content flowing! 🎉
Yeah Teardown has a lot of new stuff since Tom played it, that would be great
I have 2 strats I love that are dependent on cards. If I ever see mass produced fortress or mass produced overlords, I take the card and just buy those units forever. One important thing is that you don't waste money leveling them up, more is better! Tech is good though depending on what the opponent does. 12+ forts or overlords is truly a sight to see.
The surprise Ben cameo was nice!
Nice to see that Hackers aren't just a meme unit
Spiff is somewhere in his tea cave concocting a strat to counter this, I can already feel it
I'm _so_ glad Tom has a Hacker strategy that's viable! Thanks to whoever messaged him with these excellent tactics.
I know, right? Before he didn’t even have the shield equipped, which is like the most important thing for hackers imho.
Reminds me of cheese strats in SC2. Which makes sense given Day9's background. It's like that one kill-all strategy that works for a day until everyone is countering it.
this is one of the reasons stormcallers are so powerful with just chaff at the front
you can't steal the heavy artillery in the back that's most of your ground power, and if they go only big units steel balls shred them.
i'm glad to see tom is learning and having fun tho 🙂
One of my favourite builds is stormcallers and snipers (+mustangs/fangs) by the towers, then get 4 exploding rhinos rounds 3 and 4 to just wipe out their front line.
This strat can be improved if you have a melting point with two hackers behind it, take the upgrade where taken enemy’s get full hp, they will all attack the same target, making the hack very easy as health gets merked by the melting point.
Seems like a pretty solid strat! Well played.
I spend hours on Mechabellum hoping to be matched against Tom
Please Tom, call this the "Wololo"-strat. From Ages of Empire, the priests goes "wololo".
DAYNINE'S HACKERFANG BUILD? HECK YEAH!
Anyway, I need a human to beat…
*enter, BEN*
Silliest build I use every time I get amplifying core: plonk it in Overlord with armor & healing. That thing can just shrug off anything smaller than Phoenix&Marksman, and take even them on for a good while. :p Staying alive and killing stuff to get promotions, and eventually the Overlord has so much HP that the x%/s healing gets silly.
We always need more Tom and Ben videos :) Love you both!
Wow, just before I watched this video I met someone who used this strat and beat it with maxupgraded arclights, marksmen and crawlers as the meatshield
Spiff makes fun of hackers
Tom creates a hacker exploit
I dont play this game, but always felt like Hackerspam could be grand. Wasnt sure why it is a meme tier unit.
I love how every time Tom thinks out loud "Should I get more hackers?" The answer is ALWAYS yes.
I would love to see what a mirror match would look like with this strat.
Love a surprise Ben!
I want to see someone else using this strat against tom while he tries to counter it now
This is a joy to watch! 😄✨
Pretty sure this falls apart to the giga-armour Overlords. Still a great video though! Loving the mechabellum
Ignite on Fangs is pretty good against Overlords
maybe Tom can Team up with day9 with a 2v2 game?
Tom is using the special power of every protagonist and turning all his enemies int friends.
I assume the best counter to this strat is to double down on an air force, and protecting it.
To be honest upgraded fangs are great against air force
@@tumbleweed1551 Ah right, forgot about their anti-air, but I guess that's where protecting it comes in. They can't shoot up and forward at the same time, so I guess wasps and drilly boys are the best counter, until doctor fame-o comes in. Good ol' counter countering dilemma.
how many robots do you think were actually hacked and how many do you think saw which way the battle was going and just pretended?
I think the hackers should be nerfed. Not in combat, but in the damage to the commander. The hacked units should do at most half the damage.
To anybody wondering the counter to this build. Air. Hackers don't hit air units. Wasps and Overlords spawning Wasps hard counter most ground based strategies. To be fair that has it's own weakness, why I like this game. Fairly balanced for now and many more changes to look forward to.
@@TheCoolCucumber Yes, and your arguement is good, however everything has a counter. For the fangs being a threat to Overlords, not if you have the proper build for them, then they tickle and have aoe attacks that decimate hordes if not killed quick enough.
Add in wasps spawning with shields, always first upgrade if going overlord spawn strat, then it's all around very annoying to counter. Mass wasps with Overlord support is one of those builds that on mass has no real counter. Anything you can do to stop it has a response. And this is not the only build to be death on mass.
Similar but to lesser degree, massed snipers and pheonix with upgrades just melt everything. High Damage and long range is just broken if nothing ever shoots back. And yes I know the counter to these builds.
Makes game interesting, there is a few strats if you sneak past just win, and beyond that it's very much rock, paper, scissors.
When i saw another video of tom's where someone used hacker's with shields i knew they were op. The only way to counter them is with stuff like crawlers, but then you can just buy a flamer. maybe the overlord with spawning wasps is also a counter since the wasps will distract the hackers, but that's what the fangs are for.
So lovely to get a surprise ben guest appearance!
Saw the Hacker Fang build on Day9's channel too. Flipped my ratio to 80/20 too :D
Tom and Ben should really play battlesector, basically 40k tabletop in videogame form!
you know it will work only in low-low/mid level, come to higher ranks and you would be demolished by mass overlords
I‘ve heard that Mustang-Ball is a good combo, however I don’t know the actual strategy for playing it. You can probably ask around or find someone playing it if you want to try it out yourself :)
Love that it took out a upgraded flammer lol
*stormcallers have entered the chat*
btw another fun dumb strat, especially if you get arc xp or heavy arclights in one of the early rounds, go all arclights. range, power, elite, and aerial upgrades. as long as you have a good start, it beats everything. also onlyfangs is even better with elite spec
Bless the editor
Sledgehammers. They are a wall with no equal. Chain them and give them regen. Pair them with wasps or any other attacker and youll win
Tom is getting so good at Mechabellum
Daily reminder that Tom is an amazing person and to thank him for all he has done/will do - Day 1323
WOOOOOO Hell Yeh :D a Hacker Build, such fun :D. And god, a good one at that, very much great success here. I mean, as Tom said, 80% of the time it works every time :D
Awww, Draith, what a nice guy :D good to have players like him.
He he he, damn, sorry there was a surrender
OOOOO, yey, a little bonus Ben :D, such fun. Seems Tom has regained his crown of Hacker King from Ben.
"my goes down way to fast!"
its okay tom, ED is a very common problem
Next episode: Tom chains Spiff to a chair in the office and 1v1s him until he admits hackers are good.
I would get the health upgrade, esp for like the vulcans, so they get converted then healed to full. #MajorTanks
Seems like outranging the hackers with massive amounts of stormcallers and having a couple overlords near the front for ccing quick moving hordes would be an effective counter, still was a pleasure to see hackers get their heyday!
wow! surprise cameo out of nowhere! :D
i'm astonished that only Ben was the only one flanked you, since youre entire rear was exposed every game.
Hackers seem to be really really bad until you hit a critical mass of them.
Hey! In terms of fun strats, have you tried Laser Vulcans? Vulcans with range upgrades stacked on them are tons of fun, you can get them to outrange snipers, and they do AOE damage across the whole thing
This seems perfectly balanced.
Ahhhhhhhhh!!
Gotta recruit the hackers at level 2.
Makin a killing with this strat in the trench mmr brackets.
I'm interested to know if there are other variations on this.
You’ve gotta gotta gotta get the hacked units go to 100% hp upgrade. Oh boy.
Moar Bon, more Mechas! 🤖💥 🤖
"We're not dead, but we're not happy."
Tom, 2023
That round where the opponent went from 3100 to 148... THE BUILD IS ONLINE
TOOMMM 😁
Are you going to play some of the new massive hololive update??? I'd super love a few videos on it!!
❤❤❤
I see a Tom mechabellum video, I click.
Many voices called out at once "I CALL HACKS!"
And they were silenced.
So let me get this strategy straight...
You spam a bad unit so much that it loops around into being good?
👁️ overflow start
It's a surprise Bean!
with hackers you dont want high dmg units as they kill the unit being hacked
I'm guessing they're gonna nerf hacker barriers next patch
"My meat goes down way too fast!" Angory Tom, probably
Bro I knew it! I knew the hackers are a legit strat!
Let's fucking goooo
FINALLY, HACKER SUPREMACY!
That was fun
How dare you defeat our boy Ben like that
oh, pleeease invite day9 to a game of HORSE! :D:D
Yup, hacker fangs worked way too well for Sean "Day[J]" Plott.
with hackers being ground only, im wondering why none of your opponents seem to use air
so the rule of thumb is "if you're gonna go hackers, go BIG on hackers" and make sure your other units deal with the hordes of little guys, leaving your hackers to hack the enemy big guys.
Hacker spam!
would mustang rhinos and overlords be a counter to this strat?
Does this really beat Fang sledge sniper?
I dont know anyþing about Mechabelum, could someone tell me what þe fangs doing in þis strat?