Pawns of Loki!

[Diovani Bressan]

A new game mode is here: Pawns of Loki!

 

In this event, players use Forma, special units made in the image of Heroes, that are specific to this mode

to create a brigade of Heroes. Devise strategies with your units to challenge Loki inher game of the gods!

Pawns of Loki is an event held in a world controlled by Loki where you can participate in the game of the gods.
Use Forma, special units made in the image of Heroes, that you've recruited into your brigade or from your friends' Heroes.
Achieve a high score in the first through third rounds to reach a high tier and earn rewards!

The mode works with a 3 round of 44 hours system, like Voting Gauntlet. Each Round will have a score bonus, being:

• Round 1: Melee units (sword, axe, lance, dragon, beast);
• Round 2: Ranged units (bow, dagger, tome, staff);
• Round 3: All units.

But what are the steps to plays Pawn of Loki?

1. Draft Forma units in the Setup Phase.
2. Automatically battle foes in the Battle Phase.
3. Your score is calculated based on the results of the battle and type bonuses!

Steps 1 through 3 are repeated f or nine to twelve turns. Af ter a set number of turns have taken place, your total score will be recorded.

During the Setup Phase, you buy forma heroes to use with your war funds. The higher the Forma's Level, the higher the cost, so use your war funds wisely.

The Formas you can get will be based on the Brigade you select. You can use your own units, but also your friends' units!

If you draft 3 formas of the same hero (example: 3 Sharenas), they will combine into one forma with increased level.

After the Setup Phase, comes the Battle Phase, where your forma units will engage in combats. The first 3 turns, you will fight generic Emblian Soldiers,
but starting on Turn 4, you will fight foes created by others players (like how in modes like Grand Conquest works)

By creating a certain combination of Formas, you will make a combo. These combos increase the stats of the Formas in that combination.
Chech the spoilers tab below to more info about combos:

Spoiler

In Pawns of Loki, Formas can reach Lv 99. The level of the Forma in the mode (not the level in the brigade) determines the Forma's rarity and skills they have. More info in the spoilers tab below:

Spoiler

If he Forma's level is 19 or below, it's considered a 3* unit.

• The weapon and special they can learn will cost 150 SP or less
• The A/B/C Skills and Sacred Seals they can have will cost 75 SP or less.

If he Forma's level is between 20 to 29, it's considered a 4* unit.

• The weapon and special they can learn will cost 250 SP or less
• The A/B/C Skills and Sacred Seals they can have will cost 150 SP or less.

If he Forma's level is 30 or higher, it's considered a 5* unit.

• For 5* Formas, there is no SP limitation for skills.

The way Merges and Dragonflowers are counted in Pawn of Loki is also different:

If the Forma's Level is 39 or below, merges and flowers are calculated as:
Number of merges/flowers x current Forma's Level / 40 (rounded down)
Example: If Marth is a +10 unit, but in Pawns of Loki he is Lv 25, he will be considered to have +6 merges.

If the Forma's Level is 40 or above, merges and dragonflowers will be applied as-is.

In Pawn of Loki, Ally and Summoner Support works normally.
Example: Male Corrin has ally support with Azura. So if Corrin is within 2 spaces of Azura in the board, he will grant the refined Yato effect to Azura.

Some skill will not activate in Pawns of Loki:

• Duo and Harmonized Skills don't work in this mode;
• Skills thare are Aether Raids only (like Disarm Trap);
• Assist Skills (Reposition, Rally, Restore) and skills that trigger when Assist Skills are used (Link skills, Live to Serve);
• After combat movement skills (Hit and Run, Knock Back) and "teleportation" or movement skills (Aerobatics, Armor March).

However, Armor March's effect will still trigger skills that require these effects to work (Brave Ephraim's Garm, for example).

How score works in Pawns of Loki?

On each turn af ter the end of the Battle Phase, your score will go up based on the results of that turn.

Your base score will be calculated based on difficulty level and Tier, plus an amount totaling
how much HP your team has remaining minus how much HP the enemy team has remaining.

If there are Forma with the bonus weapon type on your team on turn f our or beyond, a bonus (up to a maximum of 100)
will be added to your score based on their number.

Example of teams f or which a bonus of 100 (the maximum) will be added:

• 1 to 3 Formas of the bonus weapon type: 1
• 2 to 6 Formas of the bonus weapon type: 2
• 7 to 8 Formas of the bonus weapon type: 3

You will get 200 points added to your score if your team's remaining HP is higher than the enemy team's.
If you defeat all of the enemy team's units you will get an additional 50 points.

If there are still turns remaining af ter receiving your score, the next Setup Phase will begin. If you suffer more than two losses in a row in the Battle Phase,
the amount of war funds you receive in the next Setup Phase will be 1.5 times the normal amount.

There are still some things to learn when playing the game. A video will be posted in the Pawns of Loki Website,
showing how the game works in action, so make sure to watch it before playing it!

 

Edited November 12, 2020 by Diovani Bressan

[Othin]

Seems like it's good to have a mix of weapon/movement type combinations, particularly within a given weapon class. Fortunately I have all of the ones released so far!

None of the six weapon classes have all 16 possible color/movement combinations covered - the biggest gaps are standard weapons, which have no colorless, and dragons, with have no cavalry. I'll probably go with tomes for ranged and beasts for melee.

[EricaofRenais]

Well this will be interesting I will have to think about who sounds like the best to use for a bit.  

[SockPuppet]

This is what my brigades look like now after spending some time trying to make them as diverse as possible with move types and color combinations. Hope this suffices!

 

The daggers and bows were a pain - wish I had NY Fjorm!

[Diovani Bressan]

2 minutes ago, SockPuppet said:

This is what my brigades look like now after spending some time trying to make them as diverse as possible with move types and color combinations. Hope this suffices!

The daggers and bows were a pain - wish I had NY Fjorm!

Oh, this looks good! I have been working in something like this as well.

For Round 3, will you reuse one of these, or you will create a 3rd one?

Edited November 11, 2020 by Diovani Bressan

[SockPuppet]

16 minutes ago, Diovani Bressan said:

Oh, this looks good! I have been working in something like this as well.

For Round 3, will you reuse one of these, or you will create a 3rd one?

Ooh, not too sure yet! It was definitely rather fun to put together, so I might make a 3rd, but I’ll wait until the third round gets closer probably!

[Diovani Bressan]

2 minutes ago, SockPuppet said:

Ooh, not too sure yet! It was definitely rather fun to put together, so I might make a 3rd, but I’ll wait until the third round gets closer probably!

Yeah. We can see how Rounds 1 and 2 goes, and then think about what to do in Round 3.

[Diovani Bressan]

This video may help.

[Alexmender]

This is harder than I initially thought. I got 25k points on thanks to the 3x points bonus but I had a couple of deaths because I was stubborn and kept using the wrong units when I should've disposed of them and brought stronger ones. 

At the very least this requires a little thought to it even when it is full auto battle. Turns out visible buffs are a trap with F!Julia being in there and the randomized levels means you can't rely on having your level 40 units (and whale friend units too) steamroll the whole thing. 

The mode's kinda fun, 100x times better than Frontline w/e. 

Edited November 12, 2020 by Alexmender

[Roflolxp54]

This looks to be a no-life gamemode (while the event is up, that is).

Tier rankings are based on cumulative score... and aside from time, there are unlimited attempts to score in the gamemode.

Edited November 12, 2020 by Roflolxp54

[Diovani Bressan]

This mode is pretty Fun! I am enjoying my time so far.

I noticed that debuffers, like Aversa, and Galeforcer are very good here.

[Baldrick]

My teambuilding strategy:

- For weapon types, you can only get two three-of-a-kind bonuses so I chose to focus on sword/lance/axe and tomes. For move types, the best team to aim for is two of each type, so I tried to get five of each type in the brigade.

-Since melee weapons are the bonus weapon type, I went with 12 melee because I could have one of each weapon/move combination. The other 8 are tomes; apart from colourless and armoured, it's fairly easy to get a variety there.

-The frontline should be competent in both phases, especially enemy phase. Self-sustain is quite valuable for this mode since every point of HP you have left increases your score. Ideally, your frontline takes all the enemy phase combat so your backline can focus on player phase.

- Because you get units at random, and the AI doesn't use assists, I didn't worry too much about team synergy. I just made each unit as self-sufficient as possible.

 

[LoneStar]

So, annoying enemies so far are Rhajat and Fallen Ike. Other than that this is pretty fun. Galeforce is actually usable here unlike a certain other game mode. Stuff like Threaten seals and Breath of Life can get some use here, which is kind cool.

[Baldrick]

I switched from tomes to beast weapons, and I did a little better, but trying to work out how to position my units is hard enough without adding transformation effects as well. Not to mention deciding whether to aim for merges or new characters... this is the most complex mode by far. I still haven't worked out a consistent strategy.

[daisy jane]

hmmm i put my two brigades together (melee and range). which was really kinda fun. 
Using the video as a template. i have a lot of my effective against units. (so i am thinking about putting in Harm!TikiNinian in for the dragon effectiveness on both blue + Colourless, swapping Nagi in (Instead of Brave Edelgard). so i have more green effectiveness. I also put in my Yarne. and then Caeda (who is effective against you know. the world). 

 

For range.- my love of coloured weapons  is going to come in soo handy. Flora, Igrene, it's Go time! I would have Dance Micaiah in (and i might swap her in to take over from Brave Lysithea) so i have a Thani per colour. I might swap in Hinoka for one of my colourless so i have a bow  armour effectiveness on blue + colourless. Palla takes care of red.  and then healers  but i can swap in somemore damage dealers instead. now i just have to actually playit and hope i do well. 

[Othin]

I've been using beasts and dragons to hit the full +28, since swords/lances/axes have no colorless counterpart.

Seems pretty easy to kill all the enemies in one turn each, I guess the harder part is keeping your HP high.

Would be nice to have some rewards for high individual run score, rather than just cumulative.

I've done two runs so far, gradually getting a better feel for the drafting dynamics.

[Alexmender]

Using only def hitting units makes my teams too weak to Gatrie, I'm going to include a few dragons to cover for that weakness. 

So far I reached 100k points, on average I get 8.5k per round but it can go up to 9.7k at best if there's no Gatrie. Using PP sweepers on the back and self-sustaining mixed phase units on the front seems like a reliable strategy. Smokes, Breath of Life and Savage Blow are pretty good skills for this mode.

[Fabulously Olivier]

So is that cumultative score something I have to reach every round, or is it for the entire duration of the event?

[Lemmy]

9 hours ago, Alexmender said:

 I got 25k points on thanks to the 3x points bonus

How do you get that bonus?

[LoneStar]

3 minutes ago, Lemmy said:

How do you get that bonus?

It’s the first run you do each day. Kind of like with Tempest Trials.

[Diovani Bressan]

46 minutes ago, Fabulously Olivier said:

So is that cumultative score something I have to reach every round, or is it for the entire duration of the event?

The cumulative score is not every round.

You have all 6 days of the event to reach the 200k score and get all cumulative rewards.

The Tier rewards, however, is in each round.

[Fabulously Olivier]

4 minutes ago, Diovani Bressan said:

The cumulative score is not every round.

You have all 6 days of the event to reach the 200k score and get all cumulative rewards.

The Tier rewards, however, is in each round.

What is the nature of the tier rewards. Is it my best run (like in Arena) or the cumulation of my total score (like a lot of the PvE modes).

[Diovani Bressan]

10 minutes ago, Fabulously Olivier said:

What is the nature of the tier rewards. Is it my best run (like in Arena) or the cumulation of my total score (like a lot of the PvE modes).

It's your best run in that round. Basically the High Score that appears in the main screen of the mode.

You can try as many times you want to improve it.

Edit: The multiplier we get once per day doesn't affect the High Score for the Tier ranks. That multiplier is just to help you to reach the cumulative score faster.

Edited November 12, 2020 by Diovani Bressan

[NSSKG151]

I have no idea if I have been playing this mode right. I played two rounds and have mostly been using speedy melee units and dragons and got around 9k points both times. Mostly I have been trying to kill everything before the enemy does anything and it seems to be working out so far.

[Roflolxp54]

I think I understand this gamemode more but there are some things I don't get like move order (several times, I've seen the AI units act first -- especially common if the AI has ranged units -- before the player units do without needing Vantage and such). Could the same rules be applied, just that it affects everybody and everybody is treated as if in the same phase together?