If you ever wondered what a mashup of Tetris, Candy Crush and Despot’s Game would be like, look no further than Merge & Blade, a quirky puzzle game with roguelike characteristics. It might sound far-fetched, but between the army building, mid-battle strategizing and combo chains, there’s plenty to do as you grind your way through a sometimes-brutal campaign.
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Don’t be spooked by the weird combination of mechanics. It all adds up to a balanced experience with enough moving parts to give enthusiasts of multiple genres a taste of what they’re looking for. Whether you’re a puzzle pro or you’re just getting started with Merge & Blade, take a beat to get a head start on this category-stomping mashup.
10 Plan Multiple Rounds Ahead
Making your way into the deeper levels of Merge & Blade means putting more planning into your team layouts. Despite not being able to predict which units you’ll have the opportunity to merge or which units will get killed in battle, you can still take some steps to maximize your team’s predictability.
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Take some time to understand each available unit’s strengths, weaknesses, and ideal positioning within the grid, and you’ll be able to start positioning them in ways that maximizes their longevity through battles and gives you the most opportunity to continue merging them as you unlock new, more powerful units.
9 Swaps Are As Good As Gold
Is now the best time to use a swap? That’s one question you’ll ask yourself again and again during your time playing Merge & Blade. Swaps, though simple, are limited throughout a given level, so you’ll have to put a lot of thought into the best time and place to use them.
Maybe you want to save an injured unit from dying by moving them out of the line of fire. Maybe you’re waiting for the last moment of the battle to swap a unit into a position that sets them up for a quick merge in the next round. Whatever you decide to use your swaps for, be frugal and strategic.
8 Use Previews To See The Future
If the swap is your most important in-battle strategic tool, then the preview is your most important pre-battle strategic tool. Similarly limited in quantity per level, previews enable you to see which units you’ll have to work with in the upcoming turn.
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Having this info allows you to plan your current unit placement to maximize their merging potential. Be careful, though, if you use all your previews too early in the round you might miss out on nailing those final, important placements that set you up for higher level merges.
7 Try Four-Unit Combos
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Yeah, three-unit merges are cool, but have you tried it with four? While it could be argued that adding the extra unit to the merge wastes their potential to be used in a future merge, you get a whole extra turn in exchange.
And in a game that creates its toughest challenges out of limitations, any extras you can milk from the system are highly valuable. Look for four-unit combos wherever you can find them, you gain so much more than you lose.
6 Don’t Skimp On Recon
It might seem like a waste of 100 coins when you first try buying it, but recon can be a sneakily powerful tool that justifies its recurring cost, especially as you start moving into the more challenging rounds of Merge & Blade.
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Recon allows you to see the type and number of enemies you’ll be facing in the next battle, and you have to spend 100 coins for this information each round. Buy it before you start merging you units, so you can decide whether you want to merge all the way to ranged units, for example, or stick with melee.
5 Combo Merges Award Bonuses
If you were getting Tetris vibes when you started dropping units into the grid from above, then you’ll start getting Candy Crush vibes as soon as you start seeing them fall and combine in chains.
Hitting a merge with units on top sends those units falling down the grid to merge with their matches below, and if you can put together at least one of these combos, you’ll be awarded with an extra swap. Swaps are super handy for in-battle adjustments and can be used as a tool to plan ahead for the next round.
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4 Use Siege Mode To Practice
Although Merge & Blade doesn't have a creative mode, after you beat level three of the campaign, you will unlock Challenge mode. It contains two games: Retake the Town and Siege; the latter of which lets you merge and battle for as long as you can stay alive.
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This is a great low-stakes game mode where you can practice your merge strategy and upgrade order without having to worry about messing up your progress in the campaign. Try out different approaches to setting up your front lines and when to use your swaps to their maximum potential, then hop back into campaign and cruise through that level you were stuck on.
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3 Be Careful About Backing Out
Impatient players beware: all games in Challenge mode last only as long as you’re playing them. There’s no way to save your progress, so any progress you make in Siege or Retake the town is just for that session.
If you’re more into playing Merge & Blade for the progression, stick to the campaign, which will save your progress up to the level within each stage. This mostly works well, as Siege and Retake the Town make for great ways to brush up your game and don’t really need to be saved anyway.
2 It’s Okay To Sacrifice Units
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Be prepared for a lot of missed merges and full grids in your early Merge & Blade games. There will be plenty of levels where you just can’t get a lineup to save your life, and that’s okay.
If you can afford to use in-battle swaps, you have a chance to redeem yourself by moving a few of those mistakes into the line of fire to take the heat and open up much-needed space for the next round. Sacrificing that cannon fodder also has the added advantage of preserving the health of your more valuable units, so they can live to fight another round.
1 Spend Your Coins Wisely
Only a tab separates them, but unit and base upgrades are far from the same. While unit upgrades improve the base stats of your units, base upgrades give you extra perks like increasing your total number of skips and unlocking the ability to create a new, more powerful unit.
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Deciding which of these sets on which to spend your hard-earned coins will be a major part of your strategizing process, and you’ll want to try out different combinations of unit and base upgrades that both give you strategically-valuable units and maximize your chances of merging your way to them at all.
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