Made by the same guys who brought you Clash of Clans and Clash Royale, Brawl Stars is Supercell’s latest multiplayer online battle arena designed for iOS and Android. The game sports a number of different game modes for players to choose from, and they each come with a unique set of objectives to accomplish. But to summarize, players will select and control one Brawler from a growing roster of characters to do battle. Each Brawler has a unique skill set that makes them ideal for certain situations, and any experienced player knows how to pick the right Brawler for the job. There are also customization features available for your Brawlers if you enjoy having a little pizzazz when it comes to cosmetics.
Long story short, if you enjoy gaming on your mobile device and are looking for a light and easy way to kill idle time, Brawl Stars might just be the solution you’re looking for. And to help you dominate the competition from day 1, our guide will show you the A to Z for Brawl Stars and what key aspects you should focus on as you progress with the game.
Where to Start Brawling
To start off, let’s talk about the different game modes you can join. Under your Brawl menu, you should be able to find the following:
- Showdown – A free-for-all, everything-goes mode where players aim to be the last man standing. Here, players will square off against 9 others within an arena surrounded by poisonous gas. Over time, the poison gas will close in towards the center of the arena, and the only way to achieve victory is by staying alive till the end, either by depleting your opponents’ HP or steering them into the poison gas, which can do huge damage over time as the match progresses. You also get increased rewards the longer you live, so perseverance is key here.
- Duo Showdown – Similar to the one-person Showdown mode, except players will be paired up and battle against four other teams. One notable feature here is that resources such as Power Cubes will be shared, and fallen players are able to respawn so long as their teammates are still on the battlefield.
- Gem Grab – In Gem Grab, 2 teams of 3 players will be competing against one another to get 10 gems as quickly as possible. These gems will spawn in set intervals at the center of the arena, and the first team to accumulate 10 gems will start a countdown timer. If they manage to hold onto their gems until the end, then victory goes to them. Defeating a player will force them to drop all the gems they have, and if that amount falls below 10, the countdown stops and resets.
- Brawl Ball – If you thought Brawl Ball sounds like a soccer game, that’s because it is. Like Gem Grab, players will be grouped in threes and fight against each other. To win, you will need to take the ball and score by putting it through the enemy team’s goal. First team to 2 points wins, and in the event of a tie, the match goes into overtime with all obstacles removed. A player will drop the ball if they’re defeated, knocked back or stunned, and shooting the ball can be done through the consumption of regular attack bars or your Supers.
- Bounty – Bounty pits two teams of three Brawlers against each other, and the objective here is to be the team with the most stars by the end of 2 minutes. Each Brawler will begin with 2 stars, and for each Brawler they defeat, their bounty (number of stars) will be increased by 1. Defeating a player adds their bounty to the team score of the player who defeated them and resets their bounty back to 2 stars. There will also be a blue star in the middle of the map which acts as a tiebreaker in the event of a draw. The player who obtains the blue star will not have their bounty increased, and their team will have the advantage if the score is tied. Defeating the player with the blue star allows you to take it away from them.
- Heist – Another team fight on this list, the objective for Heist is to destroy your opponents’ safe, at the same time protecting your own. If both safes are still surviving by the end of the match, then the win is decided based on which team’s safe has more HP remaining.
- Siege – Siege is a little similar to Heist, but instead of protecting a safe, you will be guarding a turret. Bolts will spawn around the center of the map, and you can use these to upgrade your turret into a siege robot at set intervals. The higher your robot’s level, the more DPS it does, and the quicker you can destroy your opponent’s robot. As with Heist, in the event of a tie, whichever team’s robot has more HP by the end of the match will take the win.
- Hot Zone – Taking a king-of-the-hill battle format, Hot Zone requires players to capture specific zones on the map by staying within them. The capture percentage for a zone fills up gradually with the presence of a Brawler on it, and there can be multiple zones distributed across a single map. Only Brawlers are able to contribute towards capturing a point, and the team which has the greater capture percentage overall by the end wins the match.
These Events contribute to your ranking, and outside of these, you will see Special Events running on the weekends as well. Unlike the regular Events, Special Events introduce new game modes that are more along the lines of a PvE format, and they don’t affect your ranking regardless if you win or lose.
Brawlers – Movement and Attack
On the subject of the Brawlers themselves, there are 2 aspects you can control: movement, and attack. With movement, you can tap on a location on the map, and your Brawler will automatically move towards it. Alternatively, you can manually control their every step by holding down and dragging the left joystick. Attacking can be done through the right joystick, which you can also drag to aim, and release to fire. Tapping it will cause your Brawler to fire at the closest viable target it can find. Each Brawler also has a unique Super ability, which is charged through damaging other Brawlers. You can control this in a similar fashion as you would your normal attacks. Aside from Supers, each Brawler also has a set of unique limited-use active skills called Gadgets, as well as passive abilities known as Star Powers.
In battle, your Brawler will have 2 status bars over their head; one to indicate how much health they have, and the other shows how many actions/attacks they can make. Your Brawler’s health will regenerate slowly after not sustaining any damage for some time, and your attack bar automatically fills up automatically without requiring any direct intervention.
The Elements of Progression
To segue from combat for a little bit, let’s talk about an equally important aspect of the game, and that is progression. In your Brawl Stars app, you will find Brawl Boxes – which serve as your primary method for obtaining new Brawlers, as well as other goodies. Each time you open a Brawl Box, you get the chance to win rare Brawlers, Power Points, Star Powers and Gadgets for your existing Brawlers, and Coins. There’s also the chance for you to win the Token Doubler item, which increases the next 200 tokens you earn from matches. Tokens are used to unlock tiers in Brawl Pass, which comes with its own bountiful set of rewards.
Coins are the main currency in Brawl Stars, and they can be used in several different ways, the most notable of which is upgrading your Brawlers. Each Brawler can go up to level 9 with enough Power Points and Coins, with the final level 10 requiring you to have obtained at least one of the Brawler’s Star Powers. Coins can also be used to buy Gadgets, Star Powers, and if it tickles your fancy, skins. You can earn Coins through Brawl Boxes, Trophy Road, as a Brawl Pass reward, and naturally, the Shop. Occasionally, you will see them being given to you for free under the Daily Deals section.
Outside of your Brawler level, you will also see progression in the form of Trophy Road and Brawl Pass. Trophies measure an individual Brawler’s progress in terms of matches; the more matches you win with a specific Brawler, the more trophies will be given to them. Likewise, losing matches will cost you trophies. By reaching certain trophy milestones, you will be able to earn different rewards such as new Brawlers, Events, Brawl Boxes, and Power Points. Trophy Road runs in seasons and each season generally spans 4 weeks. Towards the end, the total amount of trophies you have across all your Brawlers will be tallied and you will be awarded Star Points based on that, so it pays to work on mastering your Brawling skills.
Moving on, Brawl Pass is a separate progression system in the game. As mentioned previously, you will need Tokens to advance your Brawl Pass, which will subsequently reward you with Gems, Power Points, Pin Packs and even Brawl Boxes. The Brawl Pass comes with various quests as well to help you earn some additional Tokens, and you can also get the paid version of the Brawl Pass for increased rewards, and sometimes exclusive skins.
Although this doesn’t directly affect progression, in your Brawl Stars app, you will also find the Club menu, for when you want to chat and form groups with other people. Having someone to consistently group up and play with may be good, especially if you have a lot of team strategies you’d like to try out and need some coordination to make it happen. It also makes things slightly less monotonous.
Know Your Roles
While it is true that every Brawler is unique in their own sense, some of them do share certain traits which we can use to classify which areas of a team composition they excel at. Generally, a Brawler will fill one to two roles, which is normally composed of a primary role and a secondary role. The primary role represents a Brawler’s key features; it is the role they are best suited to playing and where their greatest strengths lie. The secondary role on the other hand, is defined by the player and can vary depending on the situation, such as different team comps, strategies, and maps. Familiarize yourself with a Brawler’s primary role first, then assimilate a secondary role as you see fit. Over time, this will become easier and your strategic thinking should become more refined.
Without further ado, let’s start looking at some Brawler roles:
- Tanks – Tanks are fairly straightforward to use and very beginner-friendly. They sport a huge amount of HP and their attacks can do massive damage, in exchange for having a short range of fire. Tanks perform their best by taking the brunt of enemy fire and making space for their other teammates to do their jobs. It’s less about just soaking damage blindly, and more about keeping pressure on the enemy team by shielding your supports and damage dealers from harm. Tanks thrive in maps where they have cover to back into and get some breathing space, but will have a hard time fighting it out in open space where they can be easily targeted. Examples of Tanks include: Frank and El Primo.
- DPS – Your primary damage dealers in a team fight. DPS Brawlers may not be as sturdy as Tank Brawlers, but they have a high kill potential and are mostly geared towards it. Their difficulty varies between Brawlers, and some provide a utility that helps them thrive in certain scenarios. They don’t always have to play with the team, and they don’t always have to prioritize the match objective over kills. If you fancy yourself a relatively aggressive type of player, DPS Brawlers are a good starting point for learning offensive plays and honing your game sense. Examples include: Colt and Spike.
- Support – Support Brawlers do as their name implies; they don’t take part in the heat of battle, but play a vital role in helping their DPS and Tank teammates sustain their damage potentials. This can come in the form of heals, as is the case with Poco, or it can take the shape of deployable turrets to help boost damage. As with DPS Brawlers, Support Brawlers have varying degrees of difficulty and utility, and will require players to extensively practice, and in some cases, come up with strategies in order to utilize them fully.
Brawl Mentality
This probably goes without saying, but practice makes perfect. Each Brawler is unique in their own way, and you will need to do some ‘breaking in’ to become more proficient with your Brawler. You can’t just pick one up and expect to become a master in just a couple plays. That is why we highly recommend you check out Bot Brawl and Co-Op Brawl extensively whenever you receive a new Brawler.
Bot Brawl places you in a team with 2 other bots, facing off against another team that’s also composed of bots. This is a practice mode for you to both test out a Brawler’s abilities, as well as run any solo tactics you have in mind. There won’t be consequences on anyone else regardless of how you perform, so feel free to go ham here. In Co-Op Brawl, you will still be battling against bots, but your teammates this time will be human players. This is a good option for practicing certain plays or combinations that require you to work with other people. Learning how to communicate effectively with other players is also a great skill to have, no matter what game you’re playing. And who knows? You may glean a thing or two about a certain Brawler from other players too!
Now you might think, sure practice sounds good and all, but what specific aspects should you actually focus on? Well first things first, your Brawler’s attack range and speed. Every Brawler has a certain range they’re more comfortable with than others. For example, Shelly shoots in a short, but wide arc in front of her, while Cole’s attacks travel farther, but narrower. Getting a good grasp of the length of their attack animations will be useful too. Aside from that, you want to calculate the time it takes between your pulling the trigger and your shots landing on your target. More often than not, aiming directly at another player will have your bullets stopping just short of them. This is because by the time your attacks reach the other person, they would have already moved out of the way. That’s why you should get used to leading your shots, targeting the path just in front of the opponent so that your attacks will land directly on them.
Beyond that, it helps if you read up and try to understand a Brawler’s strengths and weaknesses. Familiarizing yourself with a Brawler’s mechanics, even ones you don’t own, will help keep you from getting blindsided in the event you face off against them. Not to mention, this will help you make better decisions in selecting the best Brawler for the job when it comes to the different game modes, as well as understanding which Brawlers synergize well together as a team.
Tips and Tricks
Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee
As important as it is to land hits on your opponents, learning how to dodge their hits will help shift the battle in your favor as well. To that end, we strongly recommend you practice how to strafe and how to predict the trajectory for different Brawlers’ attacks. With close-range attacks, this evidently becomes much more difficult to pull off. Instead, try to zone in on your opponents and move away as soon as you see the start of their attack animations. Players will be likely to aim ahead of your projected path, so breaking away from that should allow you to dodge their hits with relative ease. With enough practice, you can turn this into reflex. But for starters, just try to be more conscious of how you move and try to adapt a little bit of strafing into your movements.
Understand the importance of a strategic retreat
This won’t always come immediately to you, but a lot more goes on in a battle than just spamming attacks until one person falls. Realizing the amount of resources you have and how much of them you can commit to a fight will help you make snap decisions when things don’t go your way. Backing off at the right time will allow you to regroup with teammates, regenerate health and ammo, and formulate a new attack plan. Aggression is best tempered with proper discretion, and it is up to you to make a call on whether or not you should back off to give yourself a quick breather. But be wary, as non-aggression will take the pressure off your opponents, allowing them to recuperate as well.
Learn to love other Brawlers too
It may be tempting to just use one Brawler if you’ve grown really attached to them, but we strongly suggest you try out other Brawlers as well. As we mentioned, you want to have a wide breadth of knowledge of different Brawlers’ traits so that you can use them to your advantage. This will help you greatly whenever you’re fighting with them, as them or against them. Not to mention, you never know if you’ll be good at a character if you never use them.
