First run: the first five years
Almost every "this game is unfair" complaint is an opening problem: the run dies before any multiplier compounds. This page is the tempo, the three checkpoints and the tests that say "restart".
Evidence boundary. The year-5 test comes from Crut's 2025-06 guide (patch #7 era); the mechanic is still the same, but numbers have been rebalanced 24 patches since. Treat it as a tempo benchmark, not a measured threshold. Everything else on this page is either extracted from local client fields or marked as community consensus.
The short answer
Spend the first five years buying levels and adjacency, not variety. A level-3 unit standing next to two support buildings beats five level-1 units every time, because unit count and growth multiply while a new card only adds one more body.
Three checkpoints
| When | You should have | If not |
|---|---|---|
| Year 1 |
| If wave one costs a life, add a body or swap in a cheap troop; do not buy buildings yet. |
| Year 3 |
| Still on level-1 troops by year 3? Stop rolling new cards and fix levels and placement first. |
| Year 5 |
| No level 3 by year 5: either buy levels now, or accept the run is lost and restart by the failure tests. |
Year-by-year tempo
- Y1Survive first: cheap troops plus one damage unit. Do not open with buildings.
- Y2Push the carry to level 2; place support buildings adjacent so compounding starts this year.
- Y3Pick a lane: swarm, towers, summons or economy. Spreading across three is the most common way to lose.
- Y4Take your first multiplicative policy (Catharsis / Transmutation / Engineering / Futurism), not another flat-percentage card.
- Y5Audit: level-3 carry plus two multiplier zones. If not, read the failure tests instead of dragging on.
Failure tests
Any two of these means the run is not going to recover by itself:
- The main carry is not level 3 by year 5 (S10 test).
- Gold stays near zero without buying any multiplier — it went into rerolls or low-value cards.
- No adjacent support building on the board: multiplier zone 3 is still 1.
- Every policy taken is flat stats, none multiplicative: zone 4 contributes nothing.
- Perks are placed at random, or no rainbow perk was taken: zone 5 contributes nothing.
- Losing a life every wave while repeating the same comp instead of countering the enemy structure.
Where the gold goes
| Spend | Rule |
|---|---|
| Rerolls | Start at 10 gold and rise by 10; the community T0 standard starts with "do not reroll the opening". |
| Vault | Costs 30 and gives +3 gold/year per level: 10-year payback. Do not buy early without Overwork or a discount. |
| Shrine | A random level-up for 9/6/3 gold; when gold overflows, levels beat another card. |
Pieces this page assumes
Cheap multiplier carriers
Low cost, many units: they benefit most from unit-count and level multipliers.
Adjacency pieces
Their value is decided by where you put them, not by which card you picked.
First multiplicative policies
CatharsisTransmutationEngineeringFreshmen
Take these before another flat-percentage card.