Alliance War Events - Temporal Turmoil

Intro

Alliance War was introduced into the game on the MSF’s one-year anniversary, and since then it has seen only some incremental changes, improving the rewards a few times, adding practice mode, etc. But recently it started going through some bigger changes in an effort to make the mode more refreshing and enjoyable to all players.

The first big changes came with the introduction of the Knowhere Siege War Event. This event established a new Scoring System, Energy distribution mechanic, Exhausted Status Effects, and Room Bonuses. Knowhere Siege lasted from May 22 to August 27. The second War Event is called Secret Strike and it will keep all the best changes from the last event and only add some new Room Bonuses.

We had the Knowhere Siege War Event first, and a few months later we got the Secret Strike and Superiority Complex. Now it’s time for a new season – Temporal Turmoil. The cadence of War Events appears to be 3 Months, so in early-mid May 2024 we should get Chapter 5.

Temporal Turmoil

The next War Event will start on February 11th. Temporal Turmoil will offer New Warriors enough improvements to make them viable as a Defense team, while also granting slight boosts to Out Of Time and Cosmic Hero characters.

War Energy distribution remains the same – you get 10 Energy at the start of the War, with an option to buy 4 additional Energy at any point. And the same goes for Attempt Bonuses and Exhausted Mechanic.

[Attempt Bonus] Every Room has 10 Points as an Attempt Bonus. For every lost attack in that room, the attempt Bonus would drop by 2 Points, and the Attempt Bonus of a room can drop to 0 Points.

[Exhausted Effect] After each Defensive victory, that team will have Exhausted applied to them. 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, then by the fifth battle their Stats will be reduced by 80%. This Effect cannot be cleared.

Canceling combat during an attack will decrease the Attempt Bonus (and consume War Energy). That, in addition to the Exhausted effect not applying on canceled attacks, means that canceling combat is NOT recommended.

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 tied on Attempt Bonuses as well, the Alliance that full-cleared the opposing Helicarrier first Wins.

Point system for attacks:

Destroying Bridge: 40,000 Points
Destroying Reactor: 15,000 Points
Destroying Other Rooms: 5,000 Points
Eliminating a Single Enemy: 200 Points
Eliminating the Entire Squad: 1,000 Points + Attempt Bonus
If 1 Attempt: + 10 Points (-2 Points for each consecutive attempt)
First to full clear the Helicarier in War: 1 Point

Room Rules

Temporal Turmoil also refreshes the Room Bonuses. There are Global bonuses for each room and specific bonuses for the next rooms: Cargo Bay, Hangar, Medbay, Barracks, and Armory.

The refresh merely changes the Traits that benefit from room bonuses and sets a new marquee defensive team that gains the big Defensive Boost. Out are Rebirth, in are New Warriors.

Added to All Rooms

+20% Primary Stats to Defending War Ready New Warrior Allies.
If not Exhausted: New Warriors spawn with 2 Safeguard, Offense Up, Defense Up, and 50% turn meter.
+20% Primary Stats to War Ready Attacking Allies
Extra +10% to War Ready Attacking Out Of Time Allies

Cargo Bay

[Global] +10% to Primary Stats to all Defending War Ready Allies
Extra 20% bonus to War Ready Cosmic Hero Allies

Hangar

[Adjacent] +15% Barrier to all Defending War Ready Allies.
Extra 15% bonus to War Ready Cosmic Hero Allies

Med Bay

[Global] Apply 2 Regeneration to Defending War Ready Allies
War Ready Cosmic Hero Allies get an additional 2 Regeneration.

Barracks

[Adjacent] Apply Offense Up to all Defending War Ready Allies
War Ready Cosmic Hero Allies get an additional Offense Up.

Armory

[Adjacent] +20% Primary Stats to all Defending War Ready Allies
Extra 20% bonus to War Ready Cosmic Hero Allies

Best Rooms Position

Since Temporal Turmoil doesn’t change what Bonuses the room provides, we can keep using the carrier setup from the last season, but generally, it is best to change it up from time to time, you could mirror it, or move Bridge lower, and Med Bay higher, etc. Keep protecting Cargo and make sure that Armory is adjacent to rooms that have your strongest defenses:

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

This is only one of the potential Placements you could come up with, but none of them will be perfect, so you needn’t waste too much time on it.

The goal with this setup is to slow your opponent down in the beginning and lure them into attacking the middle lane. The strongest defense should be placed in Reactor, Security, and Engineering. If the enemy takes the middle lane, they will have to fight through Reactor, which has all the Buffs from the Adjacent Rooms (Stat Boost from Armory, Defense Up and Defense Down on enemies from Security and Engineering)

Med Bay and Cargo Bay provide Global Buffs, so the longer they are functioning the better. That’s why they are at the bottom.

If the enemy avoids going through the middle lane, they will have to fight through the Flight Decks that will have Buffs from either Security or Engineering that should hamper their progress slightly.

While Reactor and Bridge are awarding the most Points for clearing them, it’s not uncommon nowadays to have your Helicarrier full-cleared anyway, so placing them closer to the Flight Decks will mean that your enemy will likely focus on them. That’s why these two rooms can serve as good traps early on, so your defenses there should be formidable.

For alliances that are in lower leagues and don’t full-clear Helicarriers often if at all, it might make sense to move Reactor and Bridge down, and do something like this

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

But then again, Room Placement is not the most important part of it all, so you can experiment with it and even change it for each new War. The most important is having proper Defensive and Offensive teams.

Best War Defenses

in terms of Room Defenses, there are 2 important things to keep in mind:

Placing teams that have callouts to War Defense in their kits (Infestation, Heroes for Hire, Hero Asgardians, etc.)
Making use of the War Event and Room Bonuses (New Warrior & Cosmic Hero this time)

New Warriors will be the defensive team that gets the most benefits for this season, namely: They will have a healthy 20% Stat Boost, which isn’t a lot so they shouldn’t transform entirely but it will help them. The main danger with this team will be the damage output and the barrage of Negative effects. Deathpool is also a Cosmic Hero so she will gain an additional 10% Stat Boost. New Warriors will also Spawn with Safeguard for 2 Turns, 1 Turn of Offense Up and Defense Up, and +50% Speed Bar. This should allow Gwenpool to take her first turn promptly and apply Taunt to herself. Since she will still have Safeguard her Taunt will be hard to remove but once she falls below 50% Max Health she will slip into Stealth.

Since New Warriors are used in Crucible often we will end up seeing a lot of big New Warrior teams on defense but we will have a lot of options for safely dismantling them.

Cosmic Heroes will also gain a small bonus to their Stats. Teams that would benefit from that would be Infinity Watch, Hero Asgardians, and Knowhere. Infinity Watch will be great on defense as long as you have them built up well enough, but if you don’t and your resources are limited you can avoid them.

A mix of Hero Asgardians consisting of Vahl, Beta Ray Bill, Valkyrie, Thor, and Dormammu is a strong defensive team already and with the boosts, it will be even better, so keeping them on Defense is a given.

Knowhere can also benefit from the Room Rules and they can be hard to counter, but they can be also countered with Knowhere so depending on your preferences you can use them on either Offence or Defense. (With the new Out Of Time team coming out soon Knowhere will be an even better weapon on Offense since when paired up with Apocalypse they should be able to counter Out Of Time, so the advice is to leave Knowhere for Offense, or use them on defense temporarily)

Some individual characters will also gain bonus Stats from Room rules, like the Eternals, Kestrel, Photon, Captain Marvel, Void Knight, etc.

Kestrel with her P.E.G.A.S.U.S. team can be decent on defense. Eternals don’t have a permanent team and they can be used to similar success for Offense and Defense alike, while Photon and Captain Marvel are best left for Offense with their A-Force team.

Optimal Defensive Setup

Taking everything into account, here are the core teams to be used for Temporal Turmoil War Defensive setup:

New Warriors
Vahl/Beta Ray/Valkyrie/Thor/Dormammu
Infinity Watch
P.E.G.A.S.U.S.
Infestation
Heroes for Hire

The first 4 teams are the ones that will get the most benefit from the Room rules, while the other 2 are the War Defense-centric teams that are great. To fill the last 4 spots of your War Defense you can use any of the teams listed below.

Here are the alternatives:

Darkhold
New Avengers
X-Treme X-Men
Rebirth
Masters Of Evil
Hive-Mind
Black Order
Invaders
Young Avengers
Marauders

Plug-n-Play characters – Quicksilver, Doctor Doom, and especially Apocalypse and Super Skrull may be slotted in some of these teams to increase their defensive capabilities. But only if you are focused on Defense.

The full list of Defensive teams can be found HERE

Counters

New Warriors will see the most changes to the counters available for them, previously you could beat them with a lot of teams, including older ones like Astonishing X-Men or Shadowland, albeit on a punch-down. Black Order will no longer work as well and neither will a mirror match or Eternals.

Now that Gwen will also have Safeguard the big hurdle will be getting through her Taunt fast enough to stop Cloak&Dagger Ultimate combo or Firestar’s Ultimate. Deathpool will also gain 10% more Bonus Stats from the Cosmic Hero part of the rules so her damage will be a threat.

If a team can withstand their initial barrage they will have a good chance of winning. Infinity Watch won’t be affected by all the Negative effects but you will need to punch down or across with them since their Health might not be enough for big punch-ups. If Gwenpool isn’t too big, War Dogs should also be able to win this. They will steal the Safeguard, drop Gwen to 50% Max Health, after which she will Stealth, this will allow War Dogs to target Dagger and Firestar or Deathpool and eliminate them.

Most of the Meta War Offensive teams should still handle them fairly easily, Gamma, Knowhere, New Avengers, Superior Six, A-Force, etc. The real goal will be finding a mid-range team that is up for the task and that will be our goal.

Once the Temporal Turmoil event starts our AW Counters page will be updated to reflect all the changes. And you can find it HERE

Conclusion

Temporal Turmoil changes the War slightly, but it will still freshen up the mode and a lot of players will be glad that Rebirth will no longer be boosted. That said, the biggest change in war will come from the Out Of Time team which is going to create more shockwaves than Knowhere did when they released. It will be an extremely tough team to beat in one attempt and players will often place them on defense because of that. Seemingly, the real counter to this team will come later in the form of the Dark Dimension’s new addition – Mephisto. There is no word yet on his arrival but it is expected to be sooner rather than later.

Until then, we will persevere! And will find as many great counters as we can!

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