Magic Chess Go Go Economy Guide: Gold, Levels & Board

Interest, and the 20-gold line

At the end of each round you earn 1 bonus gold for every full 10 you are holding, up to 5 at 50 gold. The Vault Upgrade+ card lifts that cap to 8, which is why it is one of the cards worth taking on a levelling plan.

Fifty is the ceiling, not the rule. While you are buying levels, the line that matters is 20: keep at least that much after every purchase so you still collect 2 interest and have a floor to roll from when the high-cost heroes finally show up. Dropping to zero to buy one more level usually costs you the round where you needed to roll.

If a shop offers a high-cost hero you want but buying it would take you under 20, lock the shop instead and buy it next round after the interest has paid out.

Levelling: the target is 9

Your Commander gains 2 EXP a round on its own, and gold buys the rest. Each level adds a board slot and moves the shop toward expensive heroes, and the price climbs steeply: the last three levels cost 168 gold between them.

Level 9 is the checkpoint the whole early game is aimed at. Gold and EXP rewards come first on the way there, and three active Scavengers get you there faster, because each one hands you a free shop hero every round and that saved gold goes straight into EXP. With three Scavengers running you rarely need to lock the shop at all; the free heroes cover the buys a lock would protect.

What to do at 9 depends on the board. If your key units are already 2-star and you are chasing a 3-star of a 5-cost hero, staying at 9 and rolling there is the more consistent line, and opponents looking for 5-cost threats tend to check the level 10 boards first. If you still need to find the 5-cost heroes at all, pushing to 10 improves the odds of seeing them. Get your key units to 2-star first either way, then decide.

• ScavengerSynergy

  A free shop hero per Scavenger, every round

Pick the plan before Stage II

There are three ways to spend a match's gold, and they want different levels. A 3-cost re-roll plan stops around level 7 and rolls for 3-star copies while the shop still shows plenty of 3-cost heroes. A 4-cost plan levels past that before it rolls. A legend rush skips most rolling and pushes levels, because 5-cost heroes are only 5% of the shop even at level 8.

Decide which one you are playing before the gold starts going out. Deciding late means gold goes into both levels and rolls, and neither plan gets enough of it.

The shared pool: scout, pivot, deny

Every hero has a fixed number of copies for the whole lobby, and a 5-cost hero has only 9. Before you roll for a 3-star, look at the other boards and count how many copies are already gone. Rolling into a hero two opponents are holding is the quickest way to burn a full bank for nothing.

When your carry is contested, pivot. If two players are fighting over the same 4-cost marksmen, an uncontested 5-cost carry is often easier to 3-star than the hero you started with. Buying a few of the contested units on the way out also keeps the other players' attention on them rather than on your real target.

Denial works the same way in reverse. A Cyclops or Aamon player needs Nana copies; buying the Nana in your shop, even to sit on the bench, slows their upgrade.

• Nana

  Worth buying to deny a Cyclops or Aamon player

Go Go Cards: take the gold

When a card offer arrives and you are short of gold to roll, take the gold card over a combat card. A stat boost wins one fight; the gold finds the heroes that win the rest. On a levelling plan, the economy cards pair with Scavenger to push you to level 8 by the mid game.

Payday pays 7 gold now and 7 in each of the next two rounds. Trust Fund pays 8, 16 and 25 gold as you reach levels 8, 9 and 10, so it is only worth taking on a plan that will actually get there. Vault Upgrade+ gives 18 gold on the spot as well as the higher interest cap.

Stages, crystals and the HP clock

A match runs through four stages, I to IV. Later stages pay bigger base rewards and deal more Commander damage, and each stage ends with a Go Go Box supply round. You get a Choice Magic Crystal on entering Stages II, III and IV: the first time you use one on a hero you choose from 3 Synergies, 2 from that hero and 1 random, and the hero joins the one you pick.

When you lose, the damage you take is a base value for the stage plus the total star levels of the enemy's surviving units. That is the clock on every greedy plan: a loss to a full 3-star board late in the match costs far more than an early loss, so the rounds you can afford to lose while banking are the early ones.

Board basics: where the carry stands

Front row for the heroes that should be hit first, back row for the carry. Beyond that, the placement that matters most in Season 7.1 is defending against the commanders that pull heroes out of position.

Franco's Plunderer's Claw hooks the enemy nearest its holder at the start of a fight. A marksman carry on the edge of the back row is the easy target, so keep it in the middle of the back row, where the hook lands on someone else. Ling's Dueling Ring does the opposite: it pulls the enemy hero standing farthest away, usually a back-corner carry, into a duel where both sides only use basic attacks. Against Ling, the back corner is the tile to leave empty or fill with a sturdy body.

In the last 10 seconds of every battle Acceleration raises damage and cuts healing and shields, so a fight that is still even at that point ends fast. A carry that survives three seconds longer in that window usually wins the round.

• Karrie

  Keep a marksman carry centred against Franco

• Franco

  His hook pulls a single enemy each battle