TMRG

TMRG is a troop combination that contains 4 boats of grenadiers, 2 boats of medics, 1 boat of tanks, and one boat of rifflemen. This is an endgame strategy that is particularly good for bases which contain a shield generator. Against center bases with a shield generator it is possible to defeat boosted, heavily iced bases without boosting yourself.

This time I am going to do something different. Rather than trying to describe everything about the strategy in words I am going to just show some videos with a description on why I did what I did.

### Center Middle Base with Shield Generator

This first one is the classic TMRG use case, a center base with the HQ in the middle and a shield generator in the rear. I believe this to type of base to be the reason this combo exists in the first place. This type of base is normally quite easy and as you can see I am able to destroy it with only casualties to rifflemen (you should expect most of your rifflemen to die in every attack). First I destroy the shock blaster. Shock blasters and doom cannon are the highest priority defenses. Normally you should destroy them before deploying. What we want to do with this type of base is build a path around one side. Destroy the shield generator then attack the HQ. Then I destroy the front left boom cannon as it will be in range of the landing. I am going to land far left where the closest defenses are a cannon and a sniper tower. When attack a cannon next to a sniper tower with TMG, you need to shock the group unless there is a long lived defense in front (the houses here do not qualify. Since I intend to shock the first defenses I drop the tanks, medics, and grenadiers at the same time. Once I have build a little pathway left, I flare and smoke. My next goal is to take out the boom cannons near the core. The smoke is not actually there to protect my troops in this case (though it helps). Its real purpose is to keep my troops from attacking anything, because I have also deployed my rifflemen and I need to give them time to get in front of my troops. Once the rifflemen are in front I head to the core and destroy the boom cannons. Once the boom cannons are gone I destroy the shield gen and kill the core.

Here is a second center base with a shield generator. Here there are two boom cannon near the center right on the beach. When this happens you will need to kill one of them with GBE. It is best to kill both if you can which is what I do here. I also kill the boom cannon on the side of the core that I am intending to flank on. I choose this side so that there is some extra time for the rifflemen to get in front of my other troops. Finally, since there is no second prototype I have some extra GBE so I use it to lower the health of the remaining boom cannons. Where I want to deploy there is a cannon right next to a sniper. This means I cannot do any tricks with deploying tanks or grenidiers first, so I deploy everything but rifflemen at once. Using shocks and critters I build a pathway that is free of defenses for my rifflemen to walk through. Then I flare and smoke to the left side of the base. The smoke here keeps my rifflemen from getting killed by the rocket. Then it looks like I attack the base, but really I am killing the boom cannons. Once the boom cannons are dead I attack the shield generator and finally the core.

### Center Base

This is a standard center base. The strategy for this base however is simpler because there is no shield generator. However, this base does illustrate some important points. First, you have to be careful when there are three rockets around a damage amplifier as these rocket can overwhelm your healers. In this case I did not have to take out a rocket directly, but it was important to get destroy one of the rockets before landing. Second note the front line that is all sniper. This is a good thing, but remember to deploy tanks and medics first and wait for them to get into position before deploying grenadiers. The reason this is a good thing is that it lets us wait a second before we shock.

There are three things to note from this next video. The first is since the first defense is a sniper tower we need to deploy tanks first. Grenadiers move much faster than tanks though. So, you have to wait quite a bit between deploying tanks and grenadiers when the defenses are not right on the beach. Second, grenadiers grenades will actually kill your critters. This makes some people reluctant to use critters, but this is a mistake. However, when ever possible throw the critters between your troops and the defenses you are trying to protect your troops from. Third, in this video I make a mistake and am too slow in deploying my rifflemen. This almost puts my expensive troops in danger. When this happens don't panic just flare back a little bit so the rifflemen can get in front. They are fast.

### Corner Bases

Here is an example where we drop rifflemen first. There are two reasons this makes sense. First the positioning of the rockets around a damage amplifier. Three rockets around a damage amp is nearly as dangerous as boom cannons are to this troop combination. The two boats of medics will not be able to tank the damage. The plus though when this happens is the rockets are so close that often times it is very cheap to take all three out. With all the rockets gone there is nothing on the base that is really going to kill our rifflemen fast with 2 boats of medics healing them. The second reason is of course that many of the boom cannons are near the front and the splash damage weapons are near the HQ. So the proper time to use the rifflemen as a shield is at the beginning for this base. The nice thing about using the rifflemen as a shield at the beginning is that you will have lots of cheap shocks left for the boom cannons near the HQ.

### Rear Bases

Rear center bases come in three varieties. This is the wide type. The wide type are very weak vs this combo. With a base like this there will always be a boom cannon or prototype that can be avoided. In this case we avoid the far right boom cannon and do not even need to deploy rifflemen to win. If you do not need the rifflemen to protect your tanks then don't deploy them.

This type of rear base is the type where the defenses are evenly distributed across the whole map. This is the hardest type of base for TMRG. It is not hard because you can lose a lot of troops, it is hard because it is difficult to defeat bases like this in the allotted time. This base is the perfect storm. It is moderately iced, with a shield generator. Since the shield generator is out right going left is off the table. There will not be time to make a path left and get all the way to the shield generator. On top of that since the defenses are spread out GBE is a problem. It will be difficult to shock more than two things on this base. When the boom cannons come in range we will not be able to kill more than one quickly. I will not lie this base took multiple attempts to beat with TMRG. It took finding the right balance between getting GBE and getting to the core through the shortest path. When I deploy grenadiers here I carefully place them so that they do not come in range of the cannons. When doing this never try to place more than 2 landing craft on a cannon otherwise one or two grenadiers will get crowded forward and killed by the cannon. Since I have to kill the right cannons to progress and I cannot use all of the grenadiers I have to do it, it is a no brainer to kill the left cannon as well to collect a few extra gbe. Once the right side of the front line is gone. It is a mad dash to get to the shield generator.

### Front Bases

Front bases can be difficult for TMRG. The reason is that front bases (quite by accident) lend themselves to layouts where the primary weakness of TMRG shows up. With TMRG you want to make sure that there are at most 2 rockets in range of where you deploy your rifflemen to act as a shield while you destroy the boom cannons. So bases where the rockets are just behind the boom cannons tend to be hard for TMRG. For this base I employ a trick that is not always possible (and takes good timing even when it is. I do not flare back when I deploy rifflemen. I let them head straight for the HQ. This puts my other troops closer too the left rocket while still putting my rifflemen closer to the boom cannons than my tanks.

This is a front base with shield generator. This type of base can be difficult and it is compounded by the fact that this player has boosted ice. For this after testing a few times I realized that I would have to boost to kill enough defenses to really get going on this base. So, I opted to smoke around back and hit it from the back side. This is a strategy that can work but I am not very good at it. These troops do not like to group like zookas or even hookas. In this attack I fat finger a flare and hit a building on accident, I am late on a smoke and run out of GBE. Since the medics stop right behind the grenadiers right next to the closest building, the grenadiers promptly kill half of my medics. As a testament to the power of this technique, even after all of that I still defeat this boosted ice base with less virtually no casualties that I did not cause myself (except rifflemen of course).

### Dr T

Using TMRG for Dr T creates a lot of interesting problems. A lot of which are not solvable. Here is a case where there are more boom cannons and rocket launchers than in a normal player base. With Dr T the first thing you need is a landing area. There has to be somewhere you can get too where you have a clean section to attack from. Often times like we do here you will need to use smoke to get too the clear spot. The main trick for Dr T that is illustrated here is all we do is lower the health of the boom cannons so that we can be sure that we will be able to destroy them before they come in range.

### NPC Levels

All NPC levels can be beaten with no casualties by just TMG with 7 boats. However, there is one interesting thing in the video below. When you approach a cannon, instead of shocking it a carefully placed smoke can cover your tanks and any in range grenadiers and allow the other grenadiers to destroy it. This takes some practice though to get right.