Auto Chess Dragon Bomb Guide
by deeepblue
Looking for a reliable comp that will boost your win rate up into the 40’s and get you out of rook once and for all? Well then look away because you’ll find none of that here. Looking for a comp that will erase any opponent’s team from existence (if by some miracle you pull it off) and give your YouTube channel some great clickbait material? Well then get cozy because this is the place for you.
The Dragon Bomb comp is a strategy whose insane burst damage is surpassed only by how stupidly unrealistic it is to actually build. But when you finally pull it off, oh man does it feel good. Before we get into any of that, let’s take a look at what the comp actually comprises of:
6 dragons
Any egersis unit (preferably Evil Knight)
Siren 2
Venomancer 2
Devastator (preferably 2)
Can’t see how deadly this comp is? Well then it’s probably because you’ve been brainwashed by this meta into believing that mages and hunters are the only winning comps and you completely forgot how to use your imagination, so look again.
The idea here is that you erase the enemy team before they get a chance to fight back. How? Well right off the bat through synergies you have egersis level 1, which is -4 armor. And, thanks to your friendly bunch of winged, reptilian friends, you have 6 Dragons so the ults start going off right from the get-go. This is instantaneous so no Storm Shamans, Desperate Doctors, or any other cc can stop the pain train that is to come.
For the immediate ults you have ya boi Venomancer who puts out a puddle of acid more painful to walk on than Lego bricks, bringing up the total armor reduction to -11 (to those in range, who will be most of the enemy team). Next we have our favorite purple soul sister, Siren. Due to how long it usually takes her to cast, initiating ult right at the start makes her very powerful, and when placed toward the front turns the entire enemy team to stone. This also increases physical damage taken by yet another 20%. Is this calculated before or after armor reduction, you ask? Quite frankly I have no clue because Auto Chess mechanics are a black box but it’s 20% somewhere in there, quit complaining. And then the finale. The big kahuna. The alpha and the omega. The Thanos snap. The Devastator bomb. The enemy team can only sit in weakened, petrified horror as they watch the bomb’s wick slowly burn, right in front of their igneous eyes. And then… poof.
Should any poor souls actually withstand the initial blast, the few survivors emerging from the fallout will be easily picked off by your DK 2 or even more likely, a second devastator bomb. And thus, this process will repeat round after round until your opponent crumbles, most likely uninstalling the game and leaving their house to remind themselves what the sunlight is like.
The beauty of this comp isn’t even how unstoppable it is (or should I say, “inevitable”). The real power comes from how difficult it is to counter. Sure, if you knew someone was going to run this comp you could go 9 warrior or 6 knight with stacked armor items, but nobody ever sees this comp coming (plus how often do you see knights or warriors top 2 this meta?)
Mainly, this comp can only be built by doing a late (emphasis on late) game transition from mages. It can also be done from knights or hunters, but I wouldn’t recommend ever trying, mainly because they already deal physical damage so you don’t get the element of surprise. It shines when you’ve been bullying the lobby for most of the game, but you’re starting to notice the enemy win rounds here and there after putting in 4 marine or making some Claw Wands. By making this transition to Dragon Bomb, you rapidly switch from a magic-oriented team to physical in the blink of an eye. If anyone is actually capable of pivoting team counters against this strategy, then they’ve played too much Auto Chess.
But now it’s time to get to the juicy stuff. How the hell do you actually make this comp?
Figure 2. I have a good answer.
Building the comp requires 2 things, at least a few dragons and lots (and I mean LOTS) of gold. The trick is to either get stronger or minimize how much weaker you get with each swap you make. So let’s do an example. You’re at a standard 6 mage, 3 dragon comp. How original. You’re pretty healthy, have a decent amount of gold, and let’s say it looks something like this:
Figure 3. Never seen that one before.
But there’s a hunter in the lobby with 2 marine and an Abyssal Crawler on the bench. Uh oh. The panic is starting to set in. What can we do to avoid the saltwater shield of death? We pivot to our good friend, the Dragon Bomb!
The first unit you’ll want to keep your eye out for is Frostblaze, since it works well with dragon mage already. It can easily replace water spirit here, or DK if he’s 1*. From here, at 4/6 dragons, you’ll want to start leveling to 10, picking up any of the listed units for this comp, or legendaries you find along the way. The reason is to ease the pain during the next (and most brutal) part of the transition, selling mages.
Figure 4. Need gold? Just sell your core units!
It’s going to feel wrong. Everything in your body will tell you not to, but you must ignore those voices. Those voices lose to 4 marine on the daily. You’re better than that. Once you reach a point where you have 6 dragons and an additional legendary or two, the reaping begins. You’ll need to sell your Source (you don’t need mana anymore), Thunder Spirit (low burst damage), and then possibly Flamming (unless you have a better legendary). Keep in mind, this will net you a quick 9-14 gold, so factor that in if you plan on leveling to 10 this turn as well. Your comp should be something like this, now:
Now, at first glance this may look awful. Unfortunately, first glance was correct. This comp is trash. But that’s okay. All it needs to do is kill a few units and slow the bleeding until you get the remaining units you’re looking for. All of them are 4/5 cost, so because you’re level 10, as long as you econ up and roll down to 50 each turn you have a good chance of getting them. You should have somewhere between 60-80 health when you start this process, so this should buy you some time. We’re not trying to get cute with it and save some health for when the comp is made. The idea is that you won’t actually be losing health at that point, so grow a pair and wait until the last possible turn to roll your gold down.
This is also a good time to start rearranging the items you got from the corpses of your sold mage units. Typically, you’ll want attack/health regen items on DK, armor items on Devastator, Refresher on Siren/Devastator, and Pulse Staff on Venom or Devastator (Venom for hyper carry teams, Devastator for more distributed teams).
Not confident you can roll down 60 gold, swap units, and reposition your whole team in one turn? To be honest I barely can either, but that doesn’t stop me from doing it every time because it feels that much more exciting, and that’s what this comp is all about. If you can get both Venomancer 2* and Siren 2* with a Devastator (or Devastator 2* with one of those 2) on your bench, you’re probably stronger at that point and can begin swapping your remaining mages/legendaries. I like to keep Storm Shaman until last because the instant storm cast is very helpful against other mage players or Sirens. From there, it’s just a matter of rolling until you get your remaining units, and kicking back while everyone else in the lobby questions how an off-meta comp could possibly be beating their precious team.
Figure 6. Despite popular belief, Cavill’s favorite unit is Stone Spirit, not Taboo Witcher.
Okay so maybe you can’t kick back entirely. Positioning still matters in this comp a great deal. Basically you want to make sure the Devastator and Venomancer are ulting into the largest grouping of enemy units, Siren is cc’ing as much of the enemy team as possible without turning her gaze from some, and using you Frostblaze to pull the rest of the enemy team closer to yours with wall. Beneath are some examples for positioning against different types of comps (i.e. positioned left/right and spread out). I’m sure you all have plenty of criticisms, but frankly I’m not going to listen to judgement from the uninitiated, not until you’ve successfully forced this ragtag comp over a dozen times like I have. If you have, then welcome to the club of people too bored with the meta in this game, but also unable to find a new game to relieve that unique little itch only ACM seems to reach.
Figure 7. Sliiide to the left.
Figure 8. Sliiide to the right.
Figure 9. Spreading out won’t save your families.
What’s that? Counters, you say? WHAT?!?! Counters? To this comp??? Blasphemy. Heresy of the most unholy level. How dare you. But fine, I’ll humor your faithless line of questioning. The only pieces that seem to withstand this team are extremely beefy hyper carry units. Mainly Dwarf Sniper. In my experience Shadowcrawlers just aren’t tanky enough, and always jump into the explosion anyways. Even against 3* Berserker/Hell Knight, the combination of Venom and DK with usually a second Devastator bomb handle the rest of their health no problem.
The only unit I’ve been unable to kill with this comp was Solduri’s (el Dios!) 3* Dwarf Sniper in the GLL weekly (the first time I actually stumbled into making this comp). This was mainly due to the fact that it was constantly split opposite the rest of his team, and had multiple legendary armor/health/regen items, which you usually never see. My trusty Dragon Bomb squad wiped his team most rounds on both our boards, but it was the occasional round where Venom didn’t ult his Sniper (courtesy of Drodo) and I was too slow to reposition the bomb to hit his Sniper in the back corner where his team would squeak out on top. This is mainly due to the fact that Sniper is the only hyper carry that can keep the maximum distance from your team. Most other 3* Snipers I’ve seen die in the initial blast, so this seems more situational based on item placement.
So there you have it. Dragon Bomb. Most will write this guide off as a meme. But if anyone out there gives it a shot and, through the monotonous crawl up the ranked ladder, actually manage to get themselves an enjoyable win out of it, I’ll consider this guide worth writing. Happy rolling, and as Auto Chess likes to say, “Flow like water as an ounce of wisdom among all this eight”… or some gibberish like that.
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