Know your formations
Playing minis is fun, but don’t just play a mini every time you have the gold to do so! A combination of minis is stronger than the sum of the individuals. For example, General Drakkisath has an aura that increases elemental damage taken by 50% - much more useful with a Pyromancer to back him up. Tirion gets full value from his heals when there’s allied minis fighting alongside him.
The basic formation of every push in Rumble involves placing melee in front and ranged or flying behind them. Other maps may offer the ability to have ranged minis on a high ground, blasting minis from below. Try to time your deployments accordingly, as tanks are usually much slower than the damage dealers they protect!
Don’t stand in front of the boss
Anyone coming to Rumble from WoW will remember how important it is to avoid standing in front of most dungeon bosses. The same applies here! Many, many bosses have cleave and aoe attacks, or simply have a slow turning circle. Try to keep your tank positioning the front of a boss at an angle away from your less bulky minions. In most maps, this can be achieved by either:
- Use Unbounds! Earth Elemental and Quilboar are excellent for their ability to immediately turn a boss around and tank him from another direction. Likewise, Worgen or S.A.F.E. Pilot can be positioned safely around the boss and away from danger.
- Attack from multiple directions. If you have two towers or spawn points near the boss, send your tanks from one and your damage from the other.
Health is a Resource
It’s tempting when you see a mini march up to your tower or barracks to rush in and protect it. But the only health point that matters in the end is the last one.
When defending a building with fragile minis, let the attackers target the building first, acting as a tank for them. More generally, overcommitting gold on a response to protect a building can sacrifice valuable opportunities to control the map and the resulting gold mines/chests, as that gold could be spent on making your push harder to counter, or dropping an AOE effect on the defenders. Spend the health of your buildings instead!
Defensive Positions
Missions are unfair. The opponent starts off with more minis in play, can summon extras, has a more powerful base, and is in control of the map (and therefore the resources). If you can only trade your minis one-to-one, you will lose, as they have the resource advantage.
Thankfully, reacting is much easier than acting in Rumble, thanks to the counter trifecta of melee - ranged - flying. This means it will generally be easier to defend against a push than make one, and leveraging that is key to victory in many campaign stages. When you’re unable to collect more gold than the opponent, try and get a gold advantage on the battlefield by watching the opponent and deploying the counter minis carefully.
Who’s the Beatdown?
But equally important is knowing when to push forward. If you never push, you turn your victory into a slow loss.
If you have recently killed a large amount of gold’s worth of minis, now is the time to attack and take bases, or get damage in on the boss. If you have recently killed all their flying minis, now is the time to deploy powerful melee minis.
Even if you can see a massive army heading for your barracks, ask yourself - can I get to their base first? Do I have time to defend and make another push before the timer runs out? If you’re in a position to win the race, go for their face!
Avoid Hard Fights
Last but not least, Rumble offers the ability to outlevel missions for a reason. As frustrating as it might feel, coming back with more levels is often the play, rather than beating your head in frustration against the wall. Do a dungeon, do some PvP, clear a quest!
Likewise, for the quest and surge modes, Rumble has a hidden scaling system attached to each leader that increases the level of enemy minis the more you win, and decreases them the more you lose. If you suddenly find yourself facing minis with a +1/+2 level advantage over yours, it can be opportune to switch to another leader to reduce the difficulity.