Star Wars has been everywhere for months now. From BB-8 droids that you can bring home, to snagging that sweet soundtrack. That train of content isn't gonna slow down anytime soon, and you only have to take a look at the Play Store to know that. Stars Wars Commander is the newest addition to all of those games, and it's a base building game that will probably remind you of Clash of Clans as soon as you see it.
You'll play as a band of mercenaries who ally with either the rebellion or the dark side, and whichever side you choose will change what units you'll get access to during the game. You'll need to acquire resources, build a base, upgrading buildings and training troops as you go. There are also squads that you can join to play with others, and a campaign to complete.
Let's take a look at strategy in the Star Wars Universe
Your Base
Your base is the first thing you'll see when you start playing this game, and it's easily one of the most important parts. This is where you'll collect and store your resources, set up defense turrets, house and train your troops. Your base will start off pretty small, but as you play it will quickly grow as you play adding new and better buildings in the process.
Your base is where everything you have is stored, so you want to make sure that its properly defended. Tatooine is a pretty dangerous place after all, with criminals like Jabba running amok. Walls protecting your base will help to make sure that enemies can't just go running through willy nilly, and placing turrets will provide cover fire. Whether you are placing walls, buildings, or turrets you need to make sure that you're doing it smart. Having resource collection buildings outside of the range of turrets will only end in tragedy.
Your base is also where you will train and house your troops. You'll need them for the various missions that you go on once you've chosen to work for either the rebellion or the dark side. Initially you'll only have access to the base storm trooper, but as you level up your barracks you'll open up better units to fight for you.
When you decide to upgrade a building, you'll want to do so strategically. Each upgrade requires a droid to attend to it, and you can only upgrade if you have a droid free. You'll start out with two, and you can buy more down the road but they get pricier every time. Consider what you need access to first, and how long it will take to build before committing to a building upgrade.
Resources
Resources are an integral function in how this game works. You'll need certain amount of resources to ever upgrade your buildings, or construct new ones. Your main resources come in form of Alloy and Credits, but you'll also need to keep an eye on your supply of crystals as well as how many droids you employ.
Alloy and Credits are the soft currency of Star Wars Commander. To get them you just need to purchase and place the appropriate buildings. You can collect the resources as they're gathered up and a running tally is kept on the upper right of your screen. Allow and credits are primarily used for upgrading buildings, including the buildings that collect and store the resources themselves.
Crystals are the hard currency though, and you can purchase more for cold hard cash. Crystals are used to speed up troop training and building construction. You'll also use crystals to purchase more droids to make building your base up faster a possibility. You could consider droids a resource, but they are more like your workers. You can construct one building per droid at a time, so how fast you can build up is directly related to how many droids you are employing.
In-app purchases do play a part in Star Wars Commander, but only in that they exist. So far, we haven't encountered a situation where you would need them in order to keep up, or succeed in your gameplay. You won't find pop up ads asking you to constantly buy bundles, and it's only when you go into your crystals menu that it'll ask if you want to make purchases.
Playing the Game
Once you've gotten some troops trained up, and your base has gotten started, it's time to play the rest of the game. You'll find two basic modes of play; a campaign of story missions, and a versus mode where you can challenge rivals. This is where you're going to end up expending most of those troops that you've trained up as well.
Campaign missions are where you're going to find the story of this game, and it will differ quite a bit depending on which faction you decided to give your allegiance to. The first set of missions are basic tutorial missions, making sure that your base is properly set up and that you understand the different types of missions and what they entail. These include figuring out strategies for sending troops in, as well as constructing your base in a way that allow it to repel attackers.
In the Versus mode, you'll attack the bases of other players. Activating this mode too quickly will dissolve your initial peace shield so be careful. It's can also be quite challenging. You'll be attacking the base of a player from the opposite faction, and likewise you yourself can be attacked. When you attack, you're dealing with only the base defenses that are constructed, like turrets.
One thing that you'll notice quite quickly is that you need to strategically use your troops, along with any faction units you bring into a mission. Your faction may gift you with AT-ST's or give you access to a ship for flyover strafing. However you'll need to manually send your guys in, and once you have tapped on the screen things have gotten started. Additionally, you'll want to remember that all troops sent on missions are expended. They won't return to your roster, even if they survive a mission.
Should you Play it?
Star Wars commander is a fun, and easy to pick up base defense and attack game. It's nice and simple without tons of adds, and like the Disney owned Star Wars universe, it's as kid friendly as Clash of Clans is. With a minimum reminder about in-app purchases, Star Wars Commander tries to stay out of your way and just let you enjoy the game.
If you're a fan of this style of game, then we definitely recommend checking out Star Wars Commander. Fun, easy to pick up, and a great Star Wars themed game to check out.
