Alliance War Events - Mercs Mayhem | Marvel Church (2024)

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 over the last couple of years, 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 was called Secret Strike and it kept all the best changes from the last event and only added some new Room Bonuses, after that we had Superiority Complex and Temporal Turmoil.

Now it’s time for a new season – Mercs Mayhem. This new chapter starts on June 3rd. The cadence of War Chapters is around 3 Months, so around September 2024, we should expect to get Chapter 6.

Mercs Mayhem

The next War Chapter will start on June 3rd. The Trait that is getting the defensive boost this time is – Hero Spider-Verse. However, the Alpha Flight team also gains additional bonuses from the new War Chapter, and Room Bonuses will affect City Hero teams more. On the offensive side, Mercs For Money have an interesting buff where they will do a bonus attack on enemies who have Bleed applied to them. Mercs are already the strongest in War, and this will make them even better.

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

Mercs Mayhem chapter 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.

New Warriors will no longer be a viable defense, instead, Hero Spider-Verse characters will gain boosts, although not as impactful as New Warriors had.

Added to All Rooms

• +20% Primary Stats to Defending War Ready Hero Spider-Verse allies. If not Exhausted: spawn with 2 Safeguard, Offense Up, and Defense Up.
• On dealing piercing damage War Ready Attacking Allies apply Bleed.
• When attacking enemies with Bleed, War Ready Attacking Mercs for Money characters perform a second attack.
• On turn, War Ready Defending Alpha Flight characters with exactly 1 Exhaust gain Regen, and if 5 Alpha Flight characters are present gain +20% to primary stats.

Cargo Bay

• [Global] +10% to Primary Stats to all Defending War Ready Allies.
• Extra +20% to War Ready City Hero Allies.

Hangar

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

Med Bay

• [Global] Apply 2 Regeneration to Defending War Ready Allies
• On turn, Defending War Ready Allies with Regeneration clear Bleed and Heal 10% Max Health per Bleed removed this way.

Barracks

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

Armory

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

Best Rooms Position

The way you position your rooms can get you a small advantage in Wars, but that only works if you also place your strongest defenses in the correct rooms. Generally, it is best to protect the rooms that provide strong Global or Adjacent bonuses, Meaning you want to place them either on the bottom or surround them with rooms that provide Adjacent bonuses (Armory, Security, Engineering, Barracks, Hangar). Make sure that Armory is adjacent to rooms that have your strongest defenses and preferably, you want Armory to be adjacent to all 4 rooms. Cargo Bay remains a priority Room, so ensure that you protect it well. Medbay will be of higher importance in this Chapter because it will allow War Ready characters to clear Bleed on Turn and Heal by +10% for each Bleed cleared. That can ruin some counters, so protecting Medbay should also be a priority. This defense is somewhat standard nowadays because it provides balanced protection for your Carrier and important Rooms. 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:

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

The goal with any setup is to slow down your opponent and lure them into attacking the lane you want to be attacked and to buy as much time as you can. Med Bay and Cargo Bay provide the 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 might focus on them. That’s why these two rooms can serve as good traps early on. Even if your opponent decides to avoid these rooms at the start, your defenses there should be formidable anyway because it might slow them down enough at the end.

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 (Hero Spider-Verse, Hero City and Alpha Flight Characters this time)

Affected Teams:

• Spider-Society
• Tangled Web
• Alpha Flight
• Hive-Mind
• Infestation
• Web-Warriors
• Heroes For Hire
• Secret Defenders
• Shadowland
• Young Avengers
• New Warriors.

Affected teams is a list of teams that will gain the most benefits from the new rules, so make sure to be careful when attacking them during the new War Chapter. Teams that will gain the most bonuses from Global and Room rules are in Bold text, while the teams that are in plain text will only gain additional benefits from the Room rules.

The Spider-Society team will reap the biggest benefits this time, not only are they all Hero Spider-Verse, but all of them are also Hero City characters, so they can end up getting a total of +90% increase to their Primary Stats (if they are in rooms affected by Armory bonuses). This is why having your strongest Spider-Verse teams adjacent to or inside the Armory will be the best choice. Ideally, you want Armory to be adjacent to 4 other rooms, and you can fill those rooms with your Strongest Spider-Society teams.

On top of bonus stats, Spider-Society will also Spawn with Safeguard for 2 turns, and 1 turn of Offense and Defense Ups. This team already has a ton of positive effects on Spawn and if we add in Safeguard and the increase in stats, it will be much harder to defeat it with existing counters, especially since we will have to punch up every time. Exhausted will remove the Safeguard on Spawn, but nowadays you can’t lose too many points exhausting teams, because most Wars (at least in the endgame) are won on efficiency points.

That is it for the Hero Spider-Verse characters. Fortunately, they don’t get any Speed Bar on Spawn (like it was with New Warriors). This also means that you won’t have as much success with splitting them up and adding those characters to random teams to throw off the standard counters. While that can have an effect, keeping the Spider-Society team together will be more beneficial.

Infestation team can also become stronger this season, mainly because Spider-Man (Big Time) is a Hero Spider-Verse and will Spawn with Safeguard and Defense/Offense Up. Some of the budget counters might no longer be effective this season, or at the very least won’t punch up as high.

Some other Hero Spider-Verse characters/teams you might consider using on defense in this Chapter include:
Tangled Web – Weaver with her Charged mechanic is always a menace and her Spawning with Safeguard and Defense Up will improve her survivability and the likelihood that she will take her first turn. While Noir is going to be busy with the Society team, you can fill the other spots on this team with some Web-Warriors (all are Hero Spider-Verse) or with any other strong characters. Web-Warriors are an old team at this point they won’t be as good on defense in high-end Wars.

Gwenom and Void Knight are also Hero Spider-Verse, so their stats will be affected too and they will also gain Safeguard on Spawn. Gwenom is also City Hero, so her stats can increase even more (Void is Cosmic).

Alpha Flight will also receive an interesting bonus – if there are 5 Alpha Flight characters and they have exactly 1 Exhausted on them, they all gain +20% Primary Stats and Regeneration. This won’t matter as much, because Alpha Flight will lose some of their effectiveness once they gain Exhausted since parts of their kit will no longer function, but their stats won’t fall after the first win.

City Hero characters also gain additional primary stats from Cargo and Armory, as well as some bonus Barrier from Hangar, so teams like Heroes For Hire and Secret Defenders will be slightly more effective.

Young Avengers, Shadowland, and New Warriors will also be better and can be good for mid-game Alliances/Players, but they won’t perform well in endgame Alliances.

Attacking teams will also gain a new mechanic – characters that deal piercing damage will now also apply Bleed. This can end up being a disadvantage because if your enemies don’t have Trauma, they will cleanse the Bleed and will heal for 10% per each Bleed cleansed this way, all thanks to the new Medbay rules.

Optimal Defensive Setup

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

• Spider-Society
• Alpha Flight
• Infestation
• Hive-Mind
• Spider-Weaver, Spider 2099, +3
• Heroes for Hire

These teams will get the most benefit from the Room rules. To fill the last 5 (Alpha Flight isn’t fully out yet) spots of your War Defense you can use any of the alternatives listed below.

Infestation and Alpha Flight are best left as they are, without replacing anyone. While the other teams can perform better if one member is replaced with a strong plug-and-play character. Characters like – Quicksilver, Kang, Apocalypse, Super Skrull, Mephisto, Dormammu, Doctor Doom, America Chavez (Passive needs to be maxed), etc. You can even replace the weak links on each team with any strong characters that you have left and don’t end up using often, this can introduce some variety and get you a win occasionally.

The replaceable characters on each team – Hive-Mind (Venom), Spider-Society (Noir), Heroes For Hire (Iron Fist)

These teams will get the most benefit from the Room rules. To fill the last 5 (Alpha Flight isn’t fully out yet) spots of your War Defense you can use any of the alternatives listed below.

Here are some good alternatives, with characters who you can replace in brackets:

• Out Of Time (Starbrand)
• New Avengers (The Thing)
• X-Treme X-Men (Cyclops, Sunspot)
• P.E.G.A.S.U.S. (Darkhawk)
• Infinity Watch (Phyla-Vell or Moondragon)
• Vahl, Beta Ray BIll with Valkyrie and Dormammu +1 Hero Asgardian
• Darkhold (Scarlet Witch)
• Black Order (Corvus Glaive or Cull Obsidian)
• New Warriors (Deathpool)
• Young Avengers
• Marauders
• Web-Warriors

The last 3 teams are fairly old and can only be decent in lower War Leagues, if you don’t have those teams there’s no need to work on them.

Teams like Out Of Time, Darkhold, and P.E.G.A.S.U.S. (even X-Treme X-Men to some extent) will be able to fully exploit the Hangar bonuses, so it will be good to place them in Hangar, or adjacent to it.

Counters

Let’s bring back the Affected Teams Lists and take another look at it:

Affected Teams:

• Spider-Society
• Tangled Web
• Alpha Flight
• Hive-Mind
• Infestation
• Web-Warriors
• Heroes For Hire
• Secret Defenders
• Shadowland
• Young Avengers
• New Warriors.

Teams that are in Bold text will be affected the most so counters for them will change a lot, some teams will only work with a lesser punch-up potential, and some teams won’t work at all.

Teams that are in plain text will only gain slight stat boosts from the new room rules, so counters to them won’t change as much, but punch-up/punch-down amounts may be adjusted.

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

Conclusion

Mercs Mayhem chapter is bringing yet another slight change to the War routine, the marquee defensive team this time – Spider-Society, isn’t getting as many bonuses as the last team did, but they are also very new, and even without bonuses can be troublesome, so we should be wary of that. Another team that might change the flow of War is Alpha Flight, a new war Defensive team. They started the roll-out of the team as the season began, so the full effect of the team on War will only be felt about a month into Mercs Mayhem. Both, Alpha Flight and Spider-Society can pose a challenge and may require the use of Meta War attacking teams, thankfully we have enough of those and we will also be searching for more counters, as usual.

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