Kingdom Rush Alliance Impossible Hero Challenge - 20. Arborean Hamlet Iron

This iron mode is a tale of two maps, as occasionally is the case when I'm doing these challenges.  When I first started doing this map I struggled mightily, and for the longest time I could not get a win at all (although I was using the weakest hero pairs, like Grimson and Torres, since that's what I do my initial testing with), despite trying several different strategies.  I got really frustrated and put the game down for a couple of weeks as a result.  Then when I went back to it, for some reason everything just clicked and I was able to beat it fairly easily.  It's an important reminder that when you're really struggling with something - whether it's a video game, job task, or anything else - sometimes the best thing you can do is just walk away for a while.  When you've been beating your head against a wall and then give yourself some space, your brain often will silently level up during the break, so that when you return the problem magically goes away.

This is still a difficult map, make no mistake, although less so than heroic mode.  It's all about investing in the Arboreans to handle the Winged Croks, then doing everything you can to keep them alive so you're not wasting money repurchasing them.  Properly timing the Old Trees is a key part of the strategy, and it makes me miss maps from previous games where figuring out the precise timing of Rain of Fire / Thunderbolt was the key to winning.

Impressions

Grades are much better here than in heroic mode, with only Raelyn ending in the 'C' tier.  Sadly I was not able to give Broden his usual 'A+', as it just felt like he didn't bring the heat like normal.  Thus we have a rare instance where Kosmyr earns a better grade than him, as he definitely tore it up.  Other than that the heroes pretty much ordered themselves appropriately based on their GPAs so far.

Final Grades

• Vesper - B
• Raelyn - C+
• Nyru - B+
• Torres - B-
• Anya - A-
• Grimson - B+
• Broden - A
• Therien - B+
• Onagro - B
• Warhead - B-
• Lumenir - A
• Kosmyr - A+
• Stregi - B
• Bonehart - A+

Kingdom Rush Alliance Impossible Hero Challenge - 20. Arborean Hamlet Iron

Kingdom Rush Alliance Impossible Hero Challenge - 20. Arborean Hamlet Heroic

We have another two-hero map here, and I'm beginning to suspect that will probably be the case through the rest of this campaign, and probably all of the elite campaigns, unfortunately.  I certainly prefer to finish maps with a single hero when I can, not just for the flex but because it also makes the job of grading heroes so much more straightforward.

The only subtlety to this map is figuring out the tear-down build, which is an extreme rarity in Kingdom Rush games, surprisingly.  We have to build a couple of Royal Archers to handle the Winged Croks of the first two waves, but after surviving wave 2 they can then be torn down and we can go all-in on Tricanons.  Surviving wave 2 is largely the win condition here, although things can get a bit dicey at the very end of the final wave.

Impressions

Again the grading strategy is to assign a normal grade, then deduct accordingly based on how much the second hero had to carry the day.  The result is that while a lot of the wins look fairly easy the actual grades are pretty brutal, with half the heroes ending up in 'C' tier due to them relying strongly on the second hero, for which I would deduct up to one and a half letter grades.  Thus while Stregi's video, for example, felt like a 'B', I knocked her down to a 'C-' just because Grimson was so critical to her performance.

On the opposite end, the top tier heroes really don't need a second hero, although I keep using them to keep things consistent.  Broden, Kosmyr, and Bonehart all wreck this map pretty hard with their AoE ability, and so I didn't feel the need to dock anything from their grades.  This is definitely going to a lead to a "rich get richer" and "poor get poorer" dichotomy in the final GPAs, but I'm fine with there being a strong separation in the final analysis, as there's no question (as usual for KR games) of the giant gulf between the top and bottom heroes.

Final Grades

• Vesper - C+
• Raelyn - C-
• Nyru - C+
• Torres - C-
• Anya - C+
• Grimson - C+
• Broden - A+
• Therien - B+
• Onagro - B-
• Warhead - B+
• Lumenir - A-
• Kosmyr - A+
• Stregi - C-
• Bonehart - A+

Kingdom Rush Alliance Impossible Hero Challenge - 20. Arborean Hamlet Heroic

Kingdom Rush Alliance Impossible Hero Challenge - 20. Arborean Hamlet Campaign

After a long hiatus we're finally back to doing new maps.  We begin the Ancient Hunger campaign today, and crocodiles are on the menu.  Unfortunately I ended up not caring for this map all that much.  I don't hate it like I do Temple of the Fallen, but we have the same problem here where I feel like I'm pigeonholed into using towers I'd rather not.  Don't get me wrong, the Dwarven Flamethrower is brilliant, but I like the Tricannon (bonus points if you get the meme reference).  And then of course we have to fall back on the Royal Archers yet again to deal with the flying enemies.  At least the Winged Croks don't have any gimmick like other flying enemies.

However, I will say there is one thing I liked and that I expect to continue to like as the campaign progresses.  The enemies here have a couple of transformation tricks - Crokinders transform into Gators, and Gators can be transformed into Killertiles by Quickfeet.  Now normally in the Kingdom Rush series when this kind of thing happens you don't get the normal gold for killing a transformed mob but just the base value of the mob it transformed from.  However, that's not the case here, meaning a 3 gold Crokinder can transform into a 50 gold Killertile.  This gives you the option of pursuing a high risk / high reward playstyle by deliberately letting transformations happen.

Because of this the videos are somewhat of a story of two maps.  When I did the Dark Army heroes first, I played very conservatively, using Nyru's hero spell to kill Crokinders wherever possible to avoid getting overwhelmed.  Then as I continued through the Linerean heroes I realized the above fact and started playing far more aggressively, rarely trying to kill Crokinders before they hatched, and even letting them get turned into Killertiles for extra gold.

You'll notice that I ended up using both secondary heroes to their maximum potential this time around, unlike previous maps.  This map justified it with it's ridiculous enemy count.  While the upper end heroes could probably do it solo, there's just no way Raelyn has the tools to do so.

Impressions

Unfortunately using both heroes makes the grading extremely difficult, because you have to account for how much the secondary hero is contributing.  Both Nyru and Grimson did a lot of work as the secondaries, and Nyru in particular as her hero spell is clutch in taking out waves of Crokinder.  What I settled on was figuring out a grade the normal way based on how the map felt, then deducting up to a full letter grade based on how much I felt the hero needed to rely on the performance of the secondary hero.

Thus Raelyn takes a 'C' here, as Nyru performed a hard carry, both with her hero spell as well as taking down the Flying Croks.  On the flip side, I still awarded Broden and Bonehart 'A+'s here, deducting nothing.  While I did use the secondary hero, it was clear that I didn't have to, and couldn't have finished the map solo, and for that reason I felt they deserved to keep their 'A+'s.

The Linerean heroes we definitely worse off here, and the grades reflect it.  Nyru is just very well suited to this level as discussed.  But while Grimson certainly contributes a lot as well, it's nowhere near the same amount.  I considered bumping the Linerean heroes grades up one notch (like a 'C+' to a 'B-') to account for this, but ultimately decided the grades were muddled enough already and didn't need this extra layer of futzing.

Final Grades

• Vesper - C+
• Raelyn - C
• Nyru - B-
• Torres - C-
• Anya - C+
• Grimson - B-
• Broden - A+
• Therien - B+
• Onagro - B
• Warhead - B+
• Lumenir - A-
• Kosmyr - A
• Stregi - C+
• Bonehart - A+

Kingdom Rush Alliance Impossible Hero Challenge - 20. Arborean Hamlet Campaign

Kingdom Rush Alliance Impossible Hero Challenge - Mid-Term Report Card

As I mentioned in my update post a while back, I really should have done a report card after completing the main campaign.  My S.O.P. for these challenges has generally been to do a report card at that point, and then again after each bonus campaign.  And while I have the data to go back and present the grades as they were at the end of the campaign, at this point I think it's just better to give all the grades through the end of the first bonus campaign, Undying Fury.  A single three-map campaign generally doesn't shake things up too much anyway.

As a reminder, we use a scale of 'A' = 4, 'B' = 3, etc.  Of course new to this challenge is that I started adding pluses and minuses to the grades.  I decided that pluses and minuses would be worth 0.25 in terms of adjusting the base grade.  This allows them to have a measurable impact on the grade, while still maintaining a solid separation between the grade tiers (e.g., there's still a difference of 0.5 between an 'A-' at 3.75 and a 'B+' at 3.25).

Without further ado then, here are the GPAs in descending order:

• Bonehart - 4.21
• Broden - 4.20
• Kosmyr - 4.04
• Lumenir - 3.85
• Therien - 3.44
• Warhead - 3.41
• Anya - 3.23
• Nyru - 3.21
• Onagro - 3.21
• Stregi - 3.20
• Vesper - 3.02
• Torres - 2.88
• Grimson - 2.88
• Raelyn - 2.42

Surprising no one, Bonehart and Broden stand head and shoulders above the competition, with Bonehart edging Broden out by a mere 0.01 and Kosmyr as the only other hero to finish in 'A' territory.  I like how these grades delineate the heroes into three distinct tiers.  You have the top performers in Bonehart through Lumenir, then a distinct drop before getting to a well-defined middle tier in Therien through Stregi, and finally a bottom tier from Vesper on down.

It also shouldn't be a surprise that Raelyn takes the bottom spot by a wide margin.  She is the epitome of a one-trick pony, and as the trick is just tanking, it's not a very good trick.  There's just not a lot you can do with a hero with horrible DPS and no other tools.

Originally when I started this series I though that Torres would be the bottom hero - or at least compete with Raelyn for that dubious distinction.  However, he got a pretty decent buff in an update fairly early in the series.  While his grades in videos prior to the buff technically could have been a little higher with his improved kit, I lack the motivation to go back and do them over again.  After all, it only affected maps in the first half of the series which are pretty easy to begin with.  He might tack on a few hundredths of a point to his GPA, but I highly doubt it would be anywhere near enough to leapfrog Vesper above him.

As for our new heroes, they ended up pretty much where I though they would when I started using them.  Bonehart rocketed to the top with his insane AoE DPS, and Stregi is clinging to the bottom of the mid tier.

Now that we're into the bonus campaigns and the difficulty has gone up, GPAs really have nowhere to go but down.  The story will be all about who runs into a rough patch and plummets faster than everyone else.  If I had to make a guess as to the hero most likely to do so, my money would be on Warhead.  I can just see him really struggling more as the difficulty ratchets up, and while he has a decent lead on Anya at the moment, it's not out of the question that he could drop below her if he starts racking up 'C's with regularity.  But that's why we do these challenges, so I hope you'll stay with me for the rest of Alliance.

Kingdom Rush Alliance Impossible Hero Challenge - Update

So if you've been following my channel you know that after completing the Undying Fury elite campaign I've gone back and started working on getting Stregi and Bonehart caught up in the series.  I've decided this is how I'm going to handle bonus content going forward - after completing a bonus campaign that introduces one or more new heroes, I'm going to go back and do all the previous levels with them so that they're up to speed going into the next bonus campaign.

I originally did this just because I felt like I needed a break after finishing the Undying Fury bonus campaign.  Life has been exceptionally busy lately - as you've no doubt noticed by my haphazard upload schedule - and I just wanted some easy, mindless content to do before diving into the next bonus campaign.  And nothing says easy and mindless like replaying the first half of the main campaign - especially with new heroes who are at least mid-tier or better.

I really like Stregi and Bonehart.  So far both of them are coming out about where I initially predicted them to grade-wise - Stregi is a pretty middle-of-the-road hero, while Bonehart is the Dark Army answer to Broden - an AoE powerhouse who trivializes maps (sorry Kosmyr, you're awesome, but you just can't quite hang with Broden).

Something I've been neglecting so far in this challenge is report cards.  I really should have done one after finishing the main campaign, but life was just a little crazy around that time and I just didn't get to it.  However, I promise that once I get Bonehart and Stregi caught up through the Undying Fury campaign I'll do a mid-term report card so we can see where everyone stands.

As for the rest of the channel content, I promise I will get back to my Skyrim series soon.  I've just been devoting the remainder of my time recently to some works in progress that I needed to do just for a change of pace.

Kingdom Rush Alliance Impossible Hero Challenge - 19. Temple of the Fallen Iron

To finish up this elite campaign we bounce back yet again from a pretty easy heroic mode to a decently challenging iron mode.  This is one of those maps where I have a sneaking suspicion that there is an easier way to do it that I'm not quite seeing, but I did try several different possibilities and didn't find anything that worked more reliably than what I show in the videos.  The main challenge of course is that the two towers you're given don't have any blocking ability.  The Twilight Longbows do, of course, but as I said, I tried using them in various ways and didn't feel like they gave a better solution.

I do really like the Twilight Longbows as a new tower, and I feel I'll be using them going forward since they are free on mobile, but they're just not the right choice here.  They just can't get enough work done against the high armor Animated Armors and Deathwoods, and Thrill of the Hunt just can't scale them up quick enough to make up for it.  So while the Harassers are good blockers, having to fully upgrade the towers to get them feels like a waste.  Thus we go for dual Tricannons supported by an Arborean Emissary to do all the work here.

Impressions

This was one of those maps where the grades don't adequately reflect the difficulty.  Therien stands out here as the lone 'C' - a rarity for her - while everyone else does pretty well.  However, what you don't really see is how much practice was required to hone the micro for this map.

Therien scores so low because when teaming her up with Nyru there is zero blocking ability, which is really needed to some extent from heroes here.  She would have done a lot better using Vesper as the free Linerean hero, but Nyru is the better choice all around for Dark Army heroes due to her magic damage, and I always like comparing apples to apples as much as possible when doing these videos.

As usual Onagro suffers from the same difficulty, but his long range ability to attack multiple lanes coupled with a solid AoE hero spell helps move him up to a 'B-', the next lowest grade.  And of course all the flying heroes are more than powerful enough to make up for their lack of blocking.  Once again Lumenir edges out Kosmyr for a better grade, which is a pretty rare occurrence, but her hero spell is rather ideal for Animated Armors and Deathwoods, stunning and doing a great deal of damage to them.

Final Grades

• Vesper - B+
• Raelyn - B
• Nyru - B
• Torres - B+
• Anya - A
• Grimson - B
• Broden - A+
• Therien - C
• Onagro - B-
• Warhead - A-
• Lumenir - A+
• Kosmyr - A

Kingdom Rush Alliance Impossible Hero Challenge - 19. Temple of the Fallen Iron

Kingdom Rush Alliance Impossible Hero Challenge - 19. Temple of the Fallen Heroic

After a dreadful and difficult campaign mode we come back to a rather straightforward heroic mode, continuing the trend of the difficulty of this elite campaign bouncing around all over the place.

The Cryptid presence here is minimal and manageable without having to contort our build to accommodate it.  We go with the centralized strategy from campaign mode again, where our DPS towers do double duty on choke points on either side of them.  Other than that there's nothing particularly remarkable here.

Impressions

Grades are all around good, with Raelyn and Grimson filling out the bottom tier with 'B-'s.  Other than that nothing is surprising other than Lumenir leapfrogging Kosmyr to take an 'A+' to his 'A'.  Lumenir rarely scores better than her dragon compatriot, but this is one of those maps where it really felt like she tore it up.

Final Grades

• Vesper - B+
• Raelyn - B-
• Nyru - B+
• Torres - B
• Anya - A-
• Grimson - B-
• Broden - A+
• Therien - B+
• Onagro - B
• Warhead - A-
• Lumenir - A+
• Kosmyr - A

Kingdom Rush Alliance Impossible Hero Challenge - 19. Temple of the Fallen Heroic