Champions League

## Overview

Any player who is at least level 400 can participate in the leagues of deck-based PvP. Players must build attacking and defensive decks, in order to participate. There are a total of 6 decks, each with 4 heroes. Victory goes to the player who wins more deck battles.

Each tournament lasts one week. At the end of the week, participating players receive rewards based on their final placements. At the beginning of the week, all players begin with 1000 points. Victories increase rating points, defeats decrease rating points, but in the case of a tie, the attacker loses nothing, while the defender gains 1 point. Attackers also get a small reward (1 draw from a shard pack) at the end of each successful attack.

*Added in v3.5.1 (2018 06 28), though the stats/skills to be used in the new mode were visible on heroes as early as v3.4.1 (2018 06 06).*

## Stats

The stats used in Champions League depend on the hero's base stats, which are then multiplied according to current rarity. There is no difference in stats in mid-tier rarity, for example, between Legendary (I) and Legendary X, but rather between Epic, Legendary, Mythic, etc. From this point, there are two types of enhancements that can further enhance these stats, equipment sets (★), and gild.

Each completed set of equipment (+1 ★) is worth +20%. This is a mostly permanent boost, as the only way to remove equipment sets is to Altar the hero without enough shards on hand.

As for gild, 1000 are worth +100% stats, so a hero with 1000gild will have *twice* the stats of the same hero with 0gild, if of the same rarity with the same number of ★'s. gild remain a transferable enhancement, and are limited in quantity not only by the total amount a player has, but also by any given hero's rarity. In this case, mid-tier may matter, as Legendary through Legendary V hold a maximum of 500gild, while Legendary X goes up to as many as 1,750gild. After that each increase of rarity will give you +75gild till you reach Galactic X with the max of 5500gild

## Rewards

* League 1
* League 2
* League 3
* League 4
* League 5

Bronze League

At the end of the week, the top 25 players are promoted, to the second league, Silver League.

Silver League

Only players promoted from Bronze League may take part in this league, for a total of 100 players.

At the end of the week, the top 25 players are promoted to the third league, Golden League, while the bottom 25 players are demoted to the first league, Bronze League.

Golden League

Only players promoted from Silver League may take part in this league, for a total of 100 players.

At the end of the week, the top 25 players are promoted to the fourth league, Major League, while the bottom 25 players are demoted to the second league, Silver League.

Major League

Only players promoted from Golden League may take part in this league, for a total of 100 players.

At the end of the week, the top 25 players are promoted to the fifth league, Legendary League, while the bottom 25 players are demoted to the third league, Golden League.

Legendary League

Only players promoted from Major League may take part in this league, for a total of 100 players.

At the end of the week, the bottom 25 players are demoted to the fourth league, Major League.

*The hero, which is the prize of the week, cycles each week, through the following 4 titans: Lucus, Magmatrax, Terberis, and Flo.*
## Champions League - Basic tips & strategy

### What you should know beforehand

* You can create two entirely different decks for defense and offense. Using identical decks for both is usually not ideal
* Heroes further down the hero list on the map usually have better base stats.
* Bonuses from hero rarity, gear stars (★) and gild are multiplicative. So using gild on a hero with low rarity is a waste of resources.
* Rarities and gild are essential to this part of the game. So avoid throwing rarities and gild into the altar from now on.
* ATK and AGI attacks are countered by DEF. WIS attacks are countered by WIS.

* Hero abilities are not used when attacked by a special attack. E.g. Prenax does not do a counter-attack when he is hit by a special attack.

### Team composition

Each team consists of 4 heroes. Here are some general rules of thumb on how to make the most of your heroes.

* A team should only have ONE hero with high stats, the other three slots are for buff/debuff heroes or simply fillers.
* This high-stat hero should be one that already has high base stats, high rarity and as many gear stars (★) as possible. On top of that, use your gild on this hero and this hero only.
	+ Reason 1: Dropping 1000gild on a hero that has e.g. 1000 DEF to begin with only increases its DEF to 2000. On the other hand, using 1000gild on a hero that starts with 2000 DEF, it ends up with 4000 DEF. A much more effective use of your gild.
	+ Reason 2: Imagine two teams facing each other with 4 identical heroes that each have 1000 points in each stat before gild are distributed. Player 1 distributes 4000gild between all of his 4 heroes, raising each stat to 2000. Player 2 concentrates all 4000gild on one hero, raising his stats to 5000. The heroes in player 1 team will do only 1 damage to the strong hero of player 2 because their 2000 point attack is too weak to break his 5000 point defense. So they will be taken out one after another, losing the fight 100% of the time.

* Match the remaining heroes to the main hero: having one that resurrects undead heroes when your main hero is not undead makes no sense.
* A hero that provides a buff like e.g. Garick is much more valuable than a filler hero with medium stats that has no chance of defeating the strongest hero of the opposing team. So first use all heroes that provide a buff/debuff, then fill up the remaining empty slots with cannon fodder.

### Team balancing

Captain Obvious says: you need to win only 4 out of 6 battles to win a fight.

* For offense this means: have 4 strong teams (not 6) and pit them against the weakest teams of your opponent.

**!!!DISCLAIMER!!!** The following part might be controversial. It works for me, PriateSnowbalL, but I know that there are players who would strongly disagree with the approach.

* For defense this means: You need more than 4 strong teams. Otherwise the opponent can do 2 weak teams that just barely beat your two weaker teams and then focus the rest of his forces onto two other strong teams. Of course this is difficult to achieve. If you focused your gild on 4 heroes to have a good offensive deck your defense will also have 4 strong and two weak teams. The easiest way to mitigate this are buff/debuff heroes. For offense, use your best buff/debuff heroes on your 4 strongest teams. For defense, shift some of them towards the weaker teams. Heroes with a strong special attack (e.g. targeting a single enemy for 450% damage) can also be used in the weaker teams. Even without many gild, they still have a chance to take out a much stronger enemy hero.

* When deciding which opponent to attack, do not simply judge his strength by his total deck score. There are players with very high deck scores that are very easy to beat even if you have less than half of their total score. So look at the actual team composition.
* When arranging the order of your teams to match the opponent, do not simply go by the total score of the teams. The enemy might have done a team with a very high score, but used 4 heroes that are about equally strong. And you know that such a team can be easily beaten by a single hero that has lower overall stats.
* Watch out for special heroes. E.g. sending a team of heroes that only have WIS attacks against a team that has Justice (Defender, 100% WIS resistance) would be a bad idea. Sending an ATK only team against an enemy team that has Tin Knight (50% Damage reduction against ATK and AGI) and Frozen Elga (50% more DEF for all allies) would be just as bad. Only two of many examples to watch out for.

### Timing is everything

The event is decided within the last 30 minutes. This is not 30 minutes before the actual end of the event, but 4h30 minutes earlier. You need to use the shield for the last 4h of the event, otherwise you will be beaten constantly during the last 4h losing a lot of points.
Around 30 minutes before the shield phase, it is time to use the 10 attacks you should have stacked until that moment. Attacking as late as possible is necessary due to the way scoring works in this event.
To put it simply: if you are not able to play during the last 30 minutes of the event and put up your shield afterwards, forget about scoring a high rank. Don't look at me, I did not make the rules. If you don't like this, I encourage you to participate in the discussion on the Kongregate forum.

### The long run

How do you get better in this game mode?

* Experience. Use the strategies outlined here and refine them with whatever works for you / against your opponents.
* Hero rarities. Pick heroes with good base stats and useful special abilities and get their rarity up to galactic (not galaxtic x, it is useless for this game mode). Do not put rarities on low heroes like Ena Hawkeye. Even at Galactic, they will be significantly weaker than heroes further down the list. Mid-term, heroes with a high number of special attacks like Kerthroraaz are useful. In later stages of the game when players have 15kgild and more, these special attacks with less than 100% strength can easily be eaten up by a hero that has high enough DEF. Avoid Heroes with specials that deal "damage to all enemies 1 times" like Mecharion. They get more and more useless the fewer heroes the enemy team has left. Instead, opt for heroes with a special attack that deals "damage to X random enemies". It will still attack X times even if there is only one enemy left.
* Last, but not least: gild. Participate in the weekly events to get more of them. And use the recipe here to craft as many as you can.

I hope you found this helpful. It is a work in progress, so I, PriateSnowbalL, will edit this guide and add to it from time to time. Of course there are exceptions to these guidelines, but working out every nuance of the game mode would be beyond the scope of a basic strategy guide. And finding out what works best for you is part of the game.