User blog:Bibimbap0920/Changes in En Garde Events and why it's better

I was originally going to write this immediately after 30 AS limit thing was confirmed, but I was too busy managing my (highly successful) EG group, so it was slightly delayed. The purpose of the following read is to help explain and identify the differences between the past and the current optimal strategies used in EG event, from the perspective of a free player. It is written on an assumption that the reader is familiar with both 6 minute Kotetsu Strategy and 5 Max Wind Weasel Strategy.

To people who are unfamiliar with the change, Zynga has recently implemented a restriction for battling for higher level players: you must have at least 30 AS in order to attack. This is different from having requirement of 30 AS to attack - for example, your attack will succeed if you attack with 5 Kaedes (3 Spirit Cost, 15 in total) when you have 30 AS or more. However, your attack will fail if you try to attack with 5 Kaedes when you have less than 30 AS, say 18, despite having more than the stated Spirit Cost. It should also be noted that a minimum of 30 AS will be expended, no matter how low your total Spirit Cost is.

This change meant that the previous optimal strategy of using a single Max Kotetsu every 6 minute would not work, due to minimum AS limit. This is reflected from the fact that the fastest rate of vp gained changed from 280 vp/hour to 150 vp/hour, almost twice as inefficient. While this seems to significantly impede the progress of a free player, this is not the case.

It is true that it will take longer for a free player to obtain a five star. But conversely, this means that the stock of the said five star running out will also take longer. While the event time has not been extended to reflect this (Still 5 days for battling), it is still enough for a free player to obtain a five star Daemon (9000 vps) with 3 of his/her mags (1500 vps), and more. My personal result from EG6 event reflects this - my group this time around consisted of 10 people, all 81+, one more than last EG group. A private Facebook group page was used for communication, which greatly improved the communication between members.

Bendita (9000): 10 obtained

Bendita's Mag (1500): 27 obtained

Toad (4000): 1 obtained

Toad Mag (1000): 4 obtained

Slug (1000): 4 obtained

Slug Mag (200): 9 obtained

Average VP per player: 14510

As it can be seen above, every single one of us obtained Bendita, and almost everyone got 3 of her magatamas. This is a vastly better result than last EG, especially since all of us obtained Bendita at around 1000 mark. Having said that, the conditions for this EG was vastly superior to last one. On Zynga's end, there were no crashes, and there were two other, vastly superior 5 Star Daemons to funnel out the Cash Players. On my group's end, communication were carried out smoothly, and round robin system was carried out.

Getting back on topic, another thing that changed was the attack interval. Kotetsu method required the participants to attack every 6 minutes, with 2 minutes of grace period. On the other hand, the 5 Wind Weasel method requires participants to attack every 30 minutes, but with grace period as much as his/her total Attack Spirit. This allows much more leeway and completely eliminates any accidental attack, which Kotetsu method was prone to.

Here is a table summarizing the above ideas: So, with everything bared on the table, is the new method better? Hell yes. This was definitely one of the few correct decisions made by Zynga, as it makes EG much less stressful while keeping the competition just as fierce. Kudos Zynga, you get a thumbs up from yours truly.