Universal Minos Strategos (By Brett Lowey)

Thank you! As the case may be, I look forward to it.

 

Excellent strategy game. Rules are simple to understand, but creating and combining formations is the tricky part.

My only bit of feedback is that it would be nice if when placing a card, the rotate and 'Cast' buttons appeared in a fixed spot somewhere on the UI, instead of floating next to where you have the formation placed. As a player, usually I'll eye the board and figure out what rotation I want to use before I move the formation into place. The rotation arrows and 'Cast' text can also be hard to see when they're overlapping the board, especially at higher levels.

 

Actually, a couple questions:

1) What does the wing colour on cards signify? I've seen tan, red and blue.

2) Is there a way to look at a library of all the cards you've unlocked? It seems like there are a lot. It would help to be able to examine unlocked cards from the main menu, since then you can sort of form strategies of which cards to take together in the same deck.

 

Thanks man, I appreciate it!

If you can take a screenshot of them at a time when they seem hard to see, that would be awesome.

Wing color signifies card class. Yellow are basic cards (always included), Red are advanced cards (random ones included) and Blue is ultimate cards (picked when you reach the end of your draw deck)

It doesn't have a gameplay effect though once the cards are in your hand. Draft mode also uses the card colors to draft with though .

 

Great game so far but I'm still learning the ropes. What is the difference between the red and green stones on cards? Does the archer shoot an arrow across the whole length of the board? I'm only level 3. :/

 

There are four different symbols you'll see on a card:

Green circle: Part of the formation you need to make to play the card
Red scratch marks: Will attack any unit on that grid space, including your own
Red circle: Will attack any unit on that grid space and then spawn your own unit on it
Red arrow: Will attack all enemies in a straight line from that space to the edge of the board

In order to even play a card, you need to line up the green circles (the formation) with units you've already played on the board. Keep in mind you can also rotate any card to line up the formation.

Aside from that, many cards grant additional spawns, moves, or attack-moves. It will list those actions either on the top of the card or the bottom.

E.g. If a card says "Move 1" at the top and then shows a formation. It means you can move one extra unit and then match the formation. Since it shows up at the top of the card, it means you can use that extra move to complete the formation before you match it.

If it says "Spawn 1" at the bottom of the card, it means you must match the formation first, AND THEN the card lets you spawn one unit.

 

Great. Thanks that helps.

 

iPad/Universal Update is Live!

The game now has full universal/iPad support. I also added a little card collection counter so you can keep track of how many cards you have left to unlock

 

Working fine on Ipad, thanks for the update

 

Good to hear! Thanks for letting me know

 

Minos is probably my favorite game from BrainGoodGames (although Solar Settlers puts up a fierce fight!) and it’s a perfect fit for mobile. I’ve been super stoked to play through it again. I’m currently sitting at rank 30 on PC, and rank 24 on my phone. Here are some tips:

- Early on, defense is more important than offense. As you rank up, you need to score a lot of points to win (60+!), while the Minotaurs always only need 42 for you to lose. As a result, preventing a point from the minotaurs is much better than scoring a point.

- Shrines are a vital part of the game and you want to pick it up every round if at all possible. Blue shrines are fairly weak early, but you need to pick them up anyway (or at least make sure they are destroyed) so that you can cycle into the more powerful ones. The yellow shrine (draw and play another card) is by far the strongest and represents a massive tempo swing.

- Because shrines are so important, cards that let you move pieces tend to be much stronger than cards with static effects. You should be quick to discard “Spawn 2” or “Cavalry”, as they’re poor for shrine collection. On the other hand, “Move 3” is very powerful. I also sometimes save my Orange shrine (lets you move 3) for next turn, to give me more flexibility in picking up the next shrine.

- The Ultimate card (you start with Cannon and gradually unlock more) that you get when your deck is reshuffled is the key to a good score at the highest ranks. It’s usually a crazy powerful effect, but has a complicated formation requirement to cast. It’s usually good to save your Growth shrine (and sometimes your Move shrine) for it, so you can fill in missing pieces.

- It’s currently possible to preview the Ultimate you’re going to get - tap on the icon in the lower right corner. This is useful for planning ahead.

- It’s very easy to underrate cards that create 2s (the circles with the 2 in them). At first, these don’t look that great. I score an extra point every turn in one of my Temples, big deal! But the key is that they also get 2 points when you move them into a new temple. Most tight games are eked out by the “2 dance”: moving a 2-piece back and forth between multiple temples to rack up a lot of points in the last few rounds. For instance, if you use Move 3 + Orange shrine + your attack move to flip your 2-piece between 2 temples 7 times, you’ll score 14 points in a single turn. That’s a lot!

That’s it for now. Have fun!

 

Great advice!!! Thanks a lot! I am somewhere between rank 10 and 11 but not seeing myself putting down this game anytime soon. So your tips will come in handy!

 

I've found it's also good to take out plague minotaurs as fast as possible, before they can stack. When they stack with regular minotaurs, it doesn't just make the stack act like a plague minotaur -- it actually converts all other minotaurs into plagued ones so once you kill the stack, it will spawn that many plague minotaurs instead.

 

Cool - I hadn't realized this and will take note.

One thing I've noticed that I should have mentioned in the post above also has to do with spawning. If you have a piece on the edge of the board, a minotaur can't spawn there. This can let you strategically block inconvenient spots. You prefer that Minotaurs spawn a long distance from a temple, so that you can safely ignore it for a long time. As a result, if you see a Minotaur that spawn just 2 spaces away from a temple (the minimum distance), it can be good to just immediately kill it and leave a piece sitting there.

 

The game is freezes when loading and crashing (starting a new game or tutorial). Granted, I run it on a iPad mini 1, but the description doesn't say anything on compatibility, or is it just my device?

 

Hey douggie, sorry you're having trouble. I don't have that particular device, so I unfortunately haven't tested on it. It's possible that that is what the problem is, but I'm not exactly sure. I checked into the backend of iTunes connect and it's not showing any crashes in the Analytics tab. Do you have another device you could try on?

 

I picked up solar settlers recently and am looking forward to buying it again on iPad. So good!

And Minos now has landscape, so PURCHASED!

I'd swear when the universal update for this went up that it still didn't have landscape, but I just noticed it does. Not sure if this was in the new update or maybe the screenshots hadn't been updated before.

Annnd in game it is portrait only. What's going on here?

 

I’ve not seen mention of landscape? Where was that from? It went universal, but not landscape ... I’d love it if it got added though!

 

Look at the screenshots on the App Store

 

Weird.. says 1.05 in screenshot. I’m on latest beta (same version as live it seems) and no landscape - wonder if they are desktop screen grabs?