This is a guest post by Vinayak Sathyamoorthy, Group Product Manager at Reddit, an ex-Zynga Product Manager and an avid mobile gamer.

Leave it another Finnish team to build some truly innovative gameplay mechanics in their action strategy title, Battle Legion. The game released worldwide just this past month (after spending well over two years in various stages of soft-launch) and is starting to rank in the Top 500 grossing charts on iPhone. It is early days for the game, but I think it makes for an interesting strategy case to examine whether a strong core loop and innovative gameplay is enough to sustain in an ultra-competitive mobile free-to-play market. 

I should pause and give some context about myself: I have written for DoF a couple of times in the past, but it has been two years since I left Zynga’s Social Casino division and continued product management in social platforms. I think this perspective is actually quite helpful in giving me a fresh pair of eyes over what has happened since 2018. 

The gaming industry has gone through a few interesting turns in that time, but by and large the biggest force in mobile free-to-play of late has been power User Acquisition teams. This has led to the rise of vertically integrated players like AppLovin, whose games now regularly rank in Top 200 Grossing charts. Save for a few unicorns (Fortnite, AFK Arena), the genres and game mechanics feel to me largely unevolved. Needless to say I’m also following with great interest how the depreciation of IDFA will start the next big shift in mobile games taking power away from User Acquisition teams (read: The Imminent Ragnarok of M&A in Mobile Gaming Space).

That’s why it was a breath of fresh air to pick up Battle Legion and feel like I was playing something new. In this deconstruction, I’ll go over: (1) Core Loop and Gameplay; (2) the Four Keys of Engagement; and (3) Monetization. In my conclusions, I’ll talk about industry forces that Battle Legion will need to contend with in order to win.

Please do subscribe to the Deconstructor of Fun newsletter. It’s 🔥🔥🔥

Core Loop and Gameplay

Core Loop

The core loop of Battle Legion should feel very familiar to players who enjoy action strategy, and I don’t believe this is a bad thing. Players build their army from a selection of troop types, and send them into battle. Players win resources from battles, which they use to upgrade troops. Like SuperCell’s Clash Royale, winning battles means winning Trophies, which move you up Levels and unlock new troop types.

There are a number of resources that you earn from battles, but essentially resources fall into one of five buckets: (1) Troop Upgrades; (2) Speed-Ups; (3) Cosmetics; (4) XP and (5) Auto-Spin. It’s novel that XP and Auto-Spin - generally system elements - are framed as currencies in Battle Legion.

Leveling up gives access to new Troop units, which remixes the meta and creates new strategies for players to further climbing up the ladder. Leveling up also increases the number of units you can place on the field. Early game battlefields look quite sparse compared to the mid-game battlefields.

Gameplay

Where the Core Loop is fairly standard, the Gameplay is where Battle Legion differentiates itself from other products. Battle Legion leads their marketing with calling itself a strategy game with “100 v 100” battles. You have the option of fitting your army with different troops and place them on the battlefield where you want them to be. All of your strategic decisions are made prior to the match beginning - you decide which troop units to deploy, and how they are deployed on the battlefield. The actual battle is entirely automated (an “auto battler” like C.A.T.S or AFK Arena) and the battles typically last less than 30 seconds. 

Battles finish when one side is defeated by seeing their entire troop population is decimated (it appears that later stage battles may be time capped to prevent long-drawn out matches). It’s worth noting that these matches are not real-time matches like Clash Royale; these are real configurations of other players, but you are simulating battles against them and there are no trophy consequences to the other player if they lose to you.

At Zynga, Mark Pincus had a framework he liked to call Proven-Better-New; “Proven” represents the elements that usually define a genre (for example, staples of battle-strategy are card collecting, troop upgrades, understanding troop strengths and counters); “Better” is how the new title improves on the foundation. “New” is where you convert users from whatever competitive products they currently use; it’s the “twist” that makes something fresh and worth checking out. 

In my mind, Battle Legion is a child of Clash Royale, first and foremost - it uses many of the same base elements in terms of card collecting, troop upgrade systems, meta framing (“rock, paper, scissors”) and even its cartoon aesthetic. It improves upon Clash Royale by paring down the battles by making them shorter and taking away decision-making here (more on this in “Five Keys of Engagement” below). As stated above, the “100 v 100” part is the “New” in the Proven-Better-New framework.

I see Battle Legion remixing elements of Clash Royale, but also C.A.T.S and Dawn of Titans. I would go as far as to say that Battle Legion takes the aspiration of Natural Motion’s Dawn of Titans’ 100 v 100 battler and lives up to it. Dawn of Titans was ground-breaking in many ways, but ultimately it couldn’t build a mass market hit, which is why I categorize this mechanic as “New” with Battle Legion. 

Four Keys of Engagement

With Core Loop and Gameplay established, let’s jump to the things that make Battle Legion fun.

Key #1: Strategy Feels Good

More than anything, what makes Battle Legion feel fun is that you truly feel like a military commander with an eagle’s eye view of battle. As engaging as Clash Royale is, you are too much in the weeds of battle to really see how the match is developing - it’s something you only grasp when you watch replays. Because Battle Legion is an “auto battler”,  you can sit back and watch things unfold to see where you are strong and where you are weak.

You are responsible for doing two things before battle: (1) selecting your troops and (2) placing your troops on the battlefield. As I detailed in one of my prior deconstructions, control over these two elements fulfills the “Strategy-Team-Unit” framework that the best battle-strategy games have. 

To recap Strategy-Team-Unit: your Strategy should fulfill the ways you achieve your goal and the means you employ to do so. In my case, my strategy is a “double wave” attack that first targets my enemies’ strongest troops (first wave) and then sweeps any remaining troops with ranged troops (second wave). Your Team should be the right combination of Units that are able to fulfill your strategy. If you choose to employ a different strategy, you completely re-organize your team and your units.

Key #2: New Troop Types Keep Meta Fresh and Exciting

A battle-strategy game’s “meta” is the Strategy-Team-Unit puzzle: you attempt to master the game by building the best deck in service of your strategy. In games like Hearthstone and Clash Royale, the meta is kept fresh after years because new units are added, old units are buffed or nerfed, and sometimes they are removed altogether. Keeping the meta fresh is critical to retaining your user base and make them excited to progress in the game.

Battle Legion has done a good job of adding new troop types to keep users on their feet. Your meta, or Strategy-Team-Unit, will need to evolve as you level up because old strategies might get stagnant or require replacement of troops in order to continue to work. For instance, the addition of the “Mindshrooms” unit at Level 5 makes it dangerous to keep valuable troops at the front of the battlefield (if your troops come in contact with the Mindshrooms, your own troops will turn against you!). 

Your choice to position troops allows players to work on combinations of troops that will create advantages. The “Paladin” troop heals troops around an Area of Effect, so I choose to pair him with mid-range troops and put him close to some foot soldiers. An evolving meta makes me personally want to come back to the game and see if I can re-master what I think I have mastered.

Key #3: Large Battlefield Creates Many Different Possibilities

As mentioned before, troop placement is a major element of crafting strategy. One of the ways that Battle Legion differentiates itself from other battle-strategy games is that because its aspiration is 100 v 100 battles, troop formations are very important to your strategy. In the Strategy-Team-Unit framework, this fits into the “Team” element: you may have all the right units, but battle formations should reflect your strategy. 

What’s cool is that this creates a lot of different dynamics on the battlefield - you can have opponents you spread out troops all across the battlefield, or maybe just the top half or bottom half. This creates a lot of interesting dynamism in the game, even if you’ve seen all the troops and troop combinations before.

Finally, an auto battler’s success lies in the troop AI that allows players to sit back during the actual battle. Again, Clash Royale showed the way of how to build good troop AI for a battle with an ever-changing battlefield. Battle Legion’s AI feels consistently logical. Ranged troops move more slowly and are useful tools to use at the end of battles. Melee troops charge fast and make sense as part of your initial waves of attacks. 

Key #4: Quick Battles Build a Casino Slots-Like Dynamic

Battle Legion has optimized game play so that battles are short and sweet. Battles are 20-30 seconds long, so you can easily whip through 30 battles in 10 minutes. This is made possible by moving strategic decisions

Compare this to two other action strategy games with varying degrees of in-game management: Clash Royale and Command & Conquer: Rivals. In Clash Royale, you carry a “deck” into battle, but you decide in-game both: (1) what units to deploy, or troop deployment; and (2) where to deploy them, or troop positioning. 

EA’s Command & Conquer: Rivals goes further than that by adding another layer of in-game action to the mix: troop movement. You must decide where to move your troops on the board as the action unfolds. Rivals sees this as a feature, but it adds to the mental load of the battle and makes battles longer. Battle Legion is reductionist in its approach and chooses to remove any of these decisions from battle in favor of speed.

read: 5 Reasons Why Command & Conquer Didn’t Become a Rival on Mobile

In this way, battles feel like spins of a slots machine - sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, and the adrenaline of testing your luck keeps you going. Battle Legion explicitly plays into these slots mechanics; it has an “auto-spin” feature, battles start with a spin of a reel, and you “pay” for auto-spins via an auto-spin token system. 

Monetization

Battle Legion’s monetization strategy has a few levers: (1) Targeted Offers; (2) Watch-to-Earn; (3) Resource Purchases and (4) Battle Pass. I’ll get into each with some depth, but my main focus will be on the Battle Pass implementation.

Targeted Offers 

Battle Legion is fairly aggressive with its offers - in my first four days of playing, I was met with at least ten different “special offers”. There is one innovative mechanic, called “Royal Shipment” in the game: this particular offer comes as you’re spinning to start a battle. Instead of being met with another army, you see an enormous “chest” that looks like you won a lottery but instead turns out to be an offer. It’s actually a fairly clever mechanic as it makes me feel lucky for finding this “jackpot” deal (and another sly tip of the hat to Casino Slots).

Battle Legion does an admirable job of creating “level up” moments with offers, by pairing the high of leveling up with an offer that will make you competitive in the new tier. The pictured “Royal Encampment” leveling offer is something I ultimately converted on for my first purchase (in order to get the guaranteed new troop type). Kabam’s Contest of Champions was quite masterful with these types of Sales systems, and Battle Legion has clearly borrowed from that winning playbook. 

read: How Kabam's Contest of Champions Made $100 Million in Seven Months

Well Integrated Watch-to-Earn

Watch-to-Earn has become a fairly standard mechanic for games to monetize non-payers, and has now become a supplemental monetization mechanism even for payers. Because Battle Legion has so many different vectors of rewards (cosmetics, troop upgrades, speed-ups, etc.) it can make W2E feel very rewarding. 

In this game’s implementation, you can watch 3 ads every 6 or so hours and earn hard currency, soft currency and troop cards. It also has prime real-estate in the UI right next to the other currencies you collect regularly.

Micro-transactions vs Battle Pass

The philosophical monetization question that free-to-play games have been grappling with for some time has been this: micro-transactions or subscriptions? Can games support both? Fortnite’s clever contribution to free-to-play has been the “Battle Pass”, which connects the ideas of subscriptions and increased engagement. Fortnite found a way to create an economy that supports both micro-transactions and Battle Pass, without each system cannibalizing the other.

Battle Legion takes on this challenge by offering “Season Passes” as well as micro-transactions. The issue is that there isn’t a clear separation between what you get in the Battle Pass (a little bit of everything: troop upgrades, hard currency, cosmetics) versus micro transactions. Is a $2.99 starter pack better than the $4.99 season pass? Or is the $6.99 “level up” offer better than the $4.99 season pass (as mentioned earlier, I ultimately went with the level up offer)? 

While clarity of Battle Pass versus micro-transactions is an important issue, the greater issue is that Battle Pass was originally designed for a pure cosmetics-based economy. Fortnite’s monetization has never been about making characters more powerful, it has been vanity driven. The vanity items do symbolize “achievement” in the sense of how much time you’ve put into the game. 

I contend that Battle Pass works excellently in games that are built around “true social” - where you are playing with dozens, if not hundreds, of other players and getting to know them in a real-time, synchronous virtual environment. In these environments, your cosmetic items act as your digital clothing, and can convey self-expression as well as status. Games like Fortnite and League of Legends (sometimes called “free-to-win”) are built for cosmetics based economies, and therefore Battle Passes.

I see the allure of Battle Pass significantly diminished in games that don’t have true social; games like Madden Mobile, C.A.T.S, and even classic Clash of Clans do not create “virtual places” where skins matter. The same is true of Battle Legion - how much do I care about playing virtual dress-up when there isn’t a real player on the other side of the battlefield? Who am I “showing off” to? 

Good Start With a Long Road Ahead…

I have really enjoyed the time I have spent with Battle Legion, so much so that it sparked an interest to try my hand at deconstructions again. I’ll bookend this deconstruction with the question I originally raised in the introduction: this product clearly has novel gameplay mechanics and is extremely polished. But is that enough to win in today’s market? 

Success in free-to-play has come to be defined by doing three things well: user acquisition, core gameplay and live services. Broadly speaking, here is how I think about these three elements:

• User Acquisition: What channels and marketing you use to get people into your game (Primary Metrics: Installs, CPIs)

• Core Game: Core Loop and Gameplay that makes the foundation of your game (Primary Metrics: D0 - D3 Retention)

• Live Services: The elements that give free-to-play games longevity beyond the Core Game. I personally believe Live Services are defined by three elements: Social, Live Events and Content. (Primary Metrics: D7 / D30 / D90 Retention)

Even with a strong Core Game, Battle Legion still needs to win in User Acquisition and Live Services, otherwise it will get “squeezed from the sides”. At its heart, Battle Legion is a collections game: you are collecting and curating units, which you then send into battle in order to collect even more (examples of collections games include Summoner’s War, Contest of Champions and CSR Racing). I believe this influences how it can approach both User Acquisition and Live Services.

Winning in User Acquisition

For collections games, there are three main strategies I have seen work well in building strength in user acquisition:

• Support from Industry-Class UA Teams: This is where the industry has pointed over the last 2-3 years; AppLovin has become a dominant force with titles like Wordscapes, Matchington Mansion and Cooking Madness. These teams have access to mountains of traffic and know how to optimize CPI / LTV math. 

• Network Plays / Cross Promotion: When you have the ability to cross-promote across multiple titles, you can monetize games quickly and move users to the next game. This is the playbook that Storm8 used around 2013 / 2014, and Zynga was very effective with in the Facebook gaming days.

• IP Partnerships: Product with strong core gameplay can be aided by strong IP that draws an audience. The classic example of this is Kim Kardashian: Hollywood, which originated as an IP-less fashion game. Glu Mobile smartly skinned this title with Reality IP and built a hit game, leveraging the Kardashians’ massive social followings.

Winning in Live Services

As mentioned above, I believe great Live Services comes down to doing three things well: Social, Live Events and Content. For a masterclass in Live Services, I think Marvel Contest of Champions (CoC) is worth examining:

• Social: Contest features deep guild systems, with “Alliance Wars” and “Alliance Quests” requiring the coordination of 10-people alliances to win. As I discussed in my Contest of Champions deconstruction, such coordination requires high levels of social interaction, usually through group messaging services (Slack, Discord, WhatsApp) to keep up. 

• Live Events: Tied to the Alliance events described above, CoC always has new events popping up that tie to getting new characters or upgrading existing ones. In addition to the Allianced-based events, there are solo events that you can participate in and win rare characters if you rank high enough.

• Content: Tied to both Social and Live Events, CoC incentivizes you to participate in events by continuously pumping the game with great new characters from Marvel’s deep content catalog. 

Contest of Champions started with great IP and built fantastic Live Services features. This allows for great longer term retention (think D30 to D365) when the game always feels “alive” with friends, new events and new content. The winning edge with having Marvel IP is that the Marvel Cinematic Universe is consistently giving the game great new content to tap into - you can release Spider-Man: Far From Home themed characters Spider-Man and Mysterio, or Black Widow themed characters Black Widow and Taskmaster. By creating events and new characters themed to MCU events, it boosts both new users and resurrected users.

Final, truly Final, thoughts

It’s again worth mentioning that Battle Legion is fresh out the gate - they have only been out for a month, and will undoubtedly begin releasing features that cater to later stage users. I expect Social, Live Events and Content to be focus areas for the game. When it comes to Social, Battle Legion should study Contest of Champions, which does a tremendous job in design to force inter-dependency among alliance mates and therefore cultivate social. CoC also has a very deep resourcing system (like Battle Legion) that allows them to offer a variety of rewards without damaging the game’s economy.

To prevent being “squeezed from both sides”, Battle Legion will need to figure out its strategy for User Acquisition. I will be watching with great interest to see how the team figures it out.