Alliance War Events

Knowhere Siege

On May 22nd War Event called Knowhere Siege will start. It will be the Alliance War game mode – only the rules will be slightly different. During this War Event, players will begin War with 10 War Energy (Energy will not regenerate over time) and will be able to purchase 4 additional attacks.

There will not be a reduction in the stats of opposing attacking teams after the destruction of the Armory and Hangar. But only the stats of the opposing defending teams.

Attempt Bonus is something new in this Event. These are the extra points we are getting for clearing a room with the fewest possible attacks. Canceling combat during an attack will decrease our Attempt Bonus (and consume War Energy).

Simply put: the Alliance who eliminates the most squads wins. If two Alliances are tied on squad kills, the Alliance with the highest Attempt Bonus wins. If Alliances are still tied after using Attempt Bonus, the Alliance with the first full clears first wins.

Point system for attacks:

• Destroying Bridge: 20,000 Points
• Destroying Reactor: 10,000 Points
• Destroying All Other Rooms: 5,000 Points
• Eliminating a Single Enemy: 200 Points
• Eliminating Entire Squad in 1 Attempt: 10 Points
• Eliminating Entire Squad in 2 Attempts: 8 Points
• Eliminating Entire Squad in 3+ Attempts: 6 Points
• First Squad Elimination during a War: 1 Point

The Exhausted Effect is also a new feat in Alliance War and will be applied to defensive teams (logically). So, if the defensive team wins (manages to defend itself), it will have the negative Effect of being “Exhausted” for the next battle. The Effect will stack up to 4 times, each time reducing the stats (Damage, Armor, Resist, Focus, and Damage Reduction) by 20%. So if the defensive team manages to defend itself 4 times for the fifth battle, they will have 80% reduced stats mentioned earlier. This Effect cannot be cleared (currently).

Knowhere Siege will be subject to new rules during the War in the form of Room and Trait bonuses. Those special bonuses will be added to each room: Cargo Bay, Hangar, Medbay, Barracks, and Armory.

Added to All Rooms

• [ROOM] +100% Primary Stats to defending Thanos and Black Order allies. 
• [ROOM] Apply 3 Safeguard, Evade, Offense Up, and Speed Up to defend Thanos and Black Order allies that are not Exhausted.
• [ROOM] +10% Primary Stats to attacking War Ready allies
• Extra 10% for Knowhere allies.

Cargo Bay

• [Global] +10% to Primary Stats to all defending War Ready allies.
• Extra 10% bonus to War Ready Cosmic Villain allies.

Hangar

• [ADJACENT] +15% Barrier to all defending War Ready allies.
• Extra 15% bonus to War Ready Cosmic Villain allies.

Med Bay

• [Global] +20% Max Health to all defending War Ready allies.
• Extra 10% bonus to War Ready Cosmic Villain allies.

Barracks

• [Global] +20% to Resistance and Focus to all defending War Ready allies.
• Extra 10% bonus to War Ready Cosmic Villain allies.

Armory

• [Global] +20% Damage and Armor to all defending War Ready allies.
• Extra 10% bonus to War Ready Cosmic Villain allies.

Best Rooms Position

In Knowhere SIege, the Importance of rooms on Helicarrier will be different than usual so their placement on Helicarrier should be adjusted for this occasion. This is what I had in mind, considering my previous experience with different Alliance tactics and strategies:

• Deck 1 – Deck 2 – Deck 3
• Bridge – Reactor – Med Bay
• Security -Hangar – Engineering
• Cargo Bay – Barracks – Armory

You should not break your head too much about this, because there will always be a weakness in your Rooms formation no matter what you do. You just can’t protect all Rooms, in the way that they will be protected once an enemy penetrates any line they start attacking.

My idea was to maximally slow them down while putting the best protection to Hangar in the middle which will return the favor by giving a Barrier to rooms that offer protection to the most important rooms at the bottom.

If the enemy takes the middle line (as everyone usually does), they will go toward Barracks and be forced to clear 3 Rooms with no global Defending Bonuses before they clear the room that increases Focus and Resistance – I thought that those 2 stats are the least important because they affect controlling the battle and we all know, that AI in defense does everything but proper control of the battlefield.

If the enemy chose to avoid being stacked on Reactor and Bridge they will choose to go after Med Bay – now this is a thing of perspective. In my opinion, if you gonna chose what to sacrifice – +20% HP;+20% Damage;+20%Armor vs +10%all stats;+20% Resistance;+ Focus, this is my personal belief about priorities. If you think otherwise, you can just shuffle Med Bay, Armory, Barracks, and Cargo Bay in the way you like. However, whatever you do and try, you cannot protect more than 2 of these rooms at the same time. It is your decision.

It might be strange for you that I decided to put Reactor and Bridge as rooms that can be easily reached at the start when everyone has full rosters at their disposal, but I think that those rooms will fall anyway so it is best to buy time and prolong available protections because it is better that enemy is staying without options while Rooms keep their bonuses compared to the situation where Rooms become easier to clear as the battle closes to the end.

I hope that my reason is understandable to you because everyone will have all available attacks immediately and the course of battle will depend on several different aspects including luck.

Best War Defense per Room Effects

Basically, when we speak about Room Defenses there are 2 important things you must do:

• Every player must put Black Order (if they have them) in their Defense
• Players assigned to Rooms adjacent to Hangar should try using teams with Barraier as their main Defensive options (along with Black Order). Those are Darkhold, Unlimited X-Men, Bionic Avengers, X-Factor (War Offense team but they can be used in Defense successfully, especially if they are underestimated), and Darkhunters (they are crippled in Defense and justified counter to H4H, so this may be not the happiest decision even though they do have Barrier)

Since we still cannot see Room Effect descriptions in the game and the descriptions that we have on Blog are not precise it is not clear if bonuses for War Ready Cosmic Villains apply to both Attackers and Defenders or just for Defenders.

Anyway, Cosmic Villains are:

• Black Order (the first mandatory Defensive rule is already set)
• Dormammu (this basically means that he has to be in Defense if this bonus applies only to Defenders)
• Ravagers – they are the War specialized team with bonuses for both Offense and Defense so you should put them in Defense as well
• Hela + Loki (I am against using both of them in defense regardless of the Defensive effect)
• Kang – one more reason to put MoE in Defense (there are several reasons for that regardless of this War event)
• Nebula – she is the only member of 8W with this trait, but in my opinion, that is enough for deciding to put 8W in Defense considering the alternatives and possible counters (it is not yet tested but from what I can see 8W cannot counter Black Order in this War Event, therefore, they could be put as a viable defensive option)
• Mordo – He is part of Dark Hunters who can benefit from Hangar’s barrier boost but yet, but I am not sure that is justified to put them in Defense considering their disadvantage without War Offense bonuses
• Strange [Heartless] – in short, Darkhold should be in Defense, with an improved Barrier or without it.
• Kree Villains – what can I say, they will have bonuses but that will change nothing about their efficiency to cause trouble to attackers (which is none). If they are not your best option in the roster, just avoid putting them there.

Keep in mind if Villain Cosmic bonus is applied to both Attackers and Defenders then all those teams except Black Order will have a greater use for Offensive purposes, even though they will be excellent defenders.

Optimal Defensive Setup and possible Replacements

So according to all those information and new effects, the optimal War Defensive setup should contain those teams:

• Black Order
• Darkhold (+Dormammu)
• Heroes for Hire (+Dormammu)
• Young Avengers (+Dormammu)
• Hero Asgardian
• Emarauders
• Infinity Watch
• Unlimited X-men
• Masters of Evil
• Bionic Avengers
• Ravagers

If any of those teams are not strong enough in your roster to be considered as viable Defense, those are possible replacements:

• Dormammu combinations
• Rebirth
• Spiders (any premade synergy)
• Darkhuntrs (only in rooms with Barrier Boost and if you have an alternative for countering H4h)
• X-Factor+1(only in rooms with Barrier Boost)
• Invaders (I would avoid leaving Nick Fury in Defense, but it is your decision)
• New Warriors (they could be tricky if there is no Darkhold to counter them)

Counters

It is still early to set accurate and tested counters, but it is instantly obvious that almost all counters will be the same except for Black Order. Also, available possible punch-ups against other Cosmic Villain teams should be slightly reduced considering their bonus (counters are the same though).

So the only question is who will counter Black Order and how to use Nova (considering we will not have a full team during “Knowhere Siege”).

I cannot give you an accurate answer about Black Order considering that they will have 3 (??!!) Safeguards, Evade, Offense Up, and Speed Up on spawn along with their existing stats doubled while in defense (for example, 1 mil Black Order will now be 2 mil Black order just because of Stat increase), but 1 thing I know for sure – Apocalypse is natural counter to them because he negates Safeguard. Also, Black Panther (1mm) when using ultimate on targets with Safeguard in War, grants Safeguard to all War Dogs, making them lethal for this new BO.

Thanos will definitely play first and with his opening he will punish 2-3 members of your squad before he flips effects on both Black Order and attackers. Due to the granted Speed on start, he may play even 3 times now, before you can play.

There are several possibilities to counter them:

• War Dogs (obviously)
• Gamma+Apoc (obviously)
• Eternals+Apoc+Undying (be careful about Thanos special)
• Apoc+TW+Nick Fury+Quicksilver
• Deathseed + Apoc
• Underworld + Apoc
• Nova+Korg+3
• Darkhold

Having this in mind you will have a dilemma where to use War Dogs – against BO or against Unlimited X-Men. Whatever you decide there is Apoc to clean the rest!

As I said this is all just theory craft and my thinking out loud – nothing is tested nor confirmed!

As for Nova, it is best to use him as a Plug’n’Play character – I can’t tell you exactly what you can expect before I test him in a harsh environment but I will asap. What I can tell you is that I will try to use him in some combinations against Gamma. He is without the rest of the team so this is on a long leash especially since you will need Apoc for Black Order, but I will try all combinations like I always do.

Conclusion

This is a setup built on Theory Craft, and I can’t guarantee full success. The page will remain for the upcoming War events (as they were announced for 2023) and it will be updated with new information or conclusions.

As for WAR Counters – I already told you what is my conclusion about Knowhere Siege but that doesn’t necessarily mean that I am right and that will be the case for the next War Events. That is why we will probably create a separate War Event Counters article that will be updated with all new important counters depending on the Event and Effects.

However, in order to do so, we need confirmed data that can only be gathered by playing and experience. Visit our Discord where you will find all news and be informed about all updates. If you have anything to add that would help the community in general please do, because our only goal is to have the most accurate data available to everyone who plays MSF. It is not important to us who is responsible for the data and who found out counters and solutions.

Our goal is to offer the best possible service and help to the MSF Community and that is all which is important to us.

Cheers 🙂