Early Game Character Synergies

Hi folks, and welcome! My name is Sterling Monroe. You may already have read my Spring Championship tournament report. This article will focus on levels 2 and 3, and how to set yourself up for success during those turns.

Storybook Brawl is a game with countless choices to make. Hero powers, treasures, and characters all work together to propel you to victory, but as a new player, the combinations can be overwhelming. In this guide I will talk about common synergies among level 2 and 3 characters, the ones you will be running into during Storybook Brawl's early game. By purchasing and placing characters that synergize together, you will be able to build strong boards that can win through level 3, keeping you healthy and strong going into the midgame.

As treasures and Hero powers add a good deal of complexity to talking about the game, today I will stick with discussing character synergies.

What is synergy?

Synergy is when two or more things are more effective when working together. One of the easiest to understand synergies in Storybook Brawl is between Black Cat and Queen of Hearts. By itself, Black Cat represents only two 1/1s (or 2/2 in total) and Queen of Hearts is only a 1/1. However, with Cat on the front row and Queen on the back row, the two cats usually die before she attacks, turning Queen into a 5/5.

Common synergies in the early game

While purchasing the strongest individual characters in your early shops might help you win or at least tie your first couple of fights, without synergy between those characters, you will quickly find yourself behind. Becoming familiar with the following synergies will help you think ahead towards what characters you should be keeping an eye out for.

Queen of Hearts + Evil characters

Like I mentioned above, this synergy is pretty self-explanatory. The Queen is placed in the backrow, usually position 7 (see PVDDR on Positioning for an intro to positioning), so that every character dies before her to provide extra attack and health. Something of note is that Evil Supports with Ranged like Sporko, or that have 0 attack like Mad Mim, don't attack and die during combat, so can not be relied to buff Queen of Hearts before she attacks.

Attack-Support characters + summon characters/Mummy

I use "summon character" to mean any character with Last Breath: summon a character. An attack-Support in the back row supporting a summon character in the front row basically doubles the amount of attack power the position represents, since the summoned character also benefits from the attack buff from the Support. Health-Support characters like Baby Root are less useful on summon characters because without extra attack, you aren't getting any value added if an opposing character is large enough to kill your character in one hit.

Wretched Mummy functions in a similar manner when supported, since it will deal damage in combat as well as from its Last Breath ability.

Early game attack supports:

Early game summon characters:

Attack-Support characters + Ranged characters

This strategy works the best with supported Ranged characters in positions 1 and sometimes 2, since they will usually get an attack off before being attacked into, which basically doubles the damage their position deals (or more if they have the health to survive an attack).

Early game Ranged characters:

Wraith + summon characters

Water Wraith gains attack and health as characters in the positions to the left and right of it die, so playing summon characters in those positions allows Wraith the opportunity to get multiple triggers every combat. Water Wraith enthusiasts debate whether position 2 (with summons in 1 and 3) or 3 (with summons in 2 and 4) is optimal. Position 2 increases the odds of your Wraith getting several ability procs, while position 3 increases the amount of time for procs before your Wraith attacks (and most likely dies), but also slightly increases the odds your Wraith is attacked into before growing at all. In my experience, smaller, more fragile Wraiths should be started in position 2, and once they are large enough to survive a hit, they can be swapped to position 3 (moving the summons with them, of course).

Stag + Ranged characters

All characters get better when buffed by Stag, but buffs on Ranged characters are much better than on regular characters. Whenever a regular character attacks, it takes damage, which limits the number of characters it can attack. A Ranged character, only taking damage when it itself is attacked, can attack many times as long as it has health.

You can find optimal Stag positioning advice in PVDDR's article I linked above (and as a bonus, some of my games are used as examples!).

Stag + Supports

Sometimes your Stag gets attacked into and dies before it gets a chance to attack and buff your back row. In addition, a 3/3 is smaller than most level 3 characters, so Stags often are only worth the stats that they add to the characters behind them. By supporting your Stags, you can ensure they survive long enough to attack, and can also make them big enough to kill enemy characters.

Early game Stag Supports

In Conclusion

There are other synergies between early game characters, but these are the ones that have the most impact on your power level, before considering Hero powers and treasures. As always, think about how the synergies in this guide might be more or less effective on different heroes. Don't just try to jam Queen of Hearts into a Snow Angel board! I hope these examples help you in your brawling. Until we brawl again,

-Ssilver