Assassins are super fun to play (and watch), but they can be tricky to handle. Once you begin to see crits pop left and right while you melt the opponent’s team, you know you’ve hit the sweet spot. However, it can be difficult to get there with a build of mainly squishy heroes and little tanking potential.

In addition, Assassins are a synergy that prefers the mid-game over anything else. As we will see in a bit, these pieces tend to fall off quickly after turn 25, so it’s important to bank on your devastating DPS potential early on.  In short, that’s what we’ll teach you in this guide.

Know Your Core Units

Assassin pieces are glass cannons. At the beginning of a round, all Assassins that are not engaged by the enemy team jump to the back row and attack the first unit in their path once they land. They can deal incredible amounts of damage due to their frequent crits, but they are also significantly squishier than other units. In other words, they have to kill quickly enough to avoid getting killed. There are currently 8 Assassins in Auto Chess Mobile:

Phantom Queen

One of the strongest Assassins in ACM, PQ should be the centerpiece of your strat. Upgrade her as quickly as possible, itemize for mana, and position her just behind your tanks to prevent her from jumping to the backline. This way, her Scream of Devil will likely hit more enemy units.

Soul Breaker

Very powerful during the first 10 rounds of the game, but not too impressive later on, Soul Breaker is a great unit to start your Assassins synergy with a Mechs/Goblins bonus.

Shining Assassin

 Like PQ, Shining Assassin is a very powerful piece that deals tremendous damage and has decent survivability thanks to her T.A. Field. You can use her as a frontliner and strive to upgrade her to 3-stars, although the latter goal can be particularly challenging.

Shadowcrawler

A piece with high damage and high crit chance, Shadow crawler is a must for this start. She is more vulnerable than other Assassins, but a Feathered synergy can help her survivability by a lot.

Venom

 Not very impressive against other pieces, Venom is nevertheless one of your very few tankier Assassins, which means he can help you win those creep rounds you would otherwise likely lose. Worth buying.

Abyssal Crawler

This little fella doesn’t come with amazing stats or DPS, but he is a Marine piece, which means you might be able to use him during the late-game to counter enemy teams that are heavily focused on magical damage.

Water Spirit

Quite possibly one of the worst Assassins in the list, mainly because his attacks are very slow. Like the Abyssal Crawler, his main use is to contribute to a Spirit synergy if this becomes necessary during the late-game.

Lord of Sand

This one doesn’t do too much damage, but he is fairly tanky, so he can be used as a frontliner in your otherwise squishy team. He’s also your only Assassin with a CC and can be positioned to the side of the board to encourage diagonal Burrow Dashes.

How the Assassins Synergy Works

You get two things from an Assassins synergy:

• A 30% crit chance on all friendly Assassins (or 15% for 3 pieces).
• A 700% damage bonus on crits for all friendly Assassins (or 300% for 3 pieces).

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Overall, this translates into about 90% additional damage dished out by your team, which, of course, is a lot. In most cases, powerful 2- and 3-star Assassins simply execute squishy backliners, thus preventing them from casting their abilities even once per combat.

The problem is that most of the damage dealt by Assassins is physical. This means that as you advance in the game and enemy units gets tankier, your Assassins become less and less effective. Remember that your shock squad is made up of units with little survivability. Their only chance to stay alive is to kill the opponent fast enough and this can be difficult to do when the opponent has a massive health/armor pool.

As such, when you plan an Assassins strat, you have to focus on the mid-game. A powerful economy is important, as always, but you must roll more aggressively than you would with other builds because you need to crush in battles while you’re still ahead.

Always check what your opponents are building. If you notice that you’re up against powerful late-game comps like Knights, Warriors, or Glacier Clans, you might want to go all in once you hit level 8. Otherwise, if you do decide to wait for level 10 and play the super late-game, you might need to remove some of your Assassins to include better units and CCs.

Additional Synergies to Consider

Unlike with a Druid strategy, the protagonists of an Assassins synergy are actually the Assassins. You won’t need all 8 of them, but it might be a good idea to buy them when they appear in shop – at least for the first 15 turns of the match. Then, you can choose which 6 to use based on what you already have.

Thankfully, there are a few additional synergies you can use in an Assassins comp. The most useful of them include:

Mechs and Goblins

This strat can help you both in the early game, thanks to Soul Breaker being a Goblin (paired with Sky Breaker + Heaven Bomber/Ripper), and in the late-game, when you can include Helicopter and replace some of your Assassins with Goblins if they begin to lag behind.

Druids/Feathered

Assassins notoriously lack tanky pieces, which Druids have plenty of. This synergy is particularly useful during the early game, when your Assassins need some front liners to soak up the damage coming from the enemy team. Unfortunately, Druids also fall off half-way through the game, but you can still use either Wisper Seer or Warpwood Sage for the Feathered Bonus on Shining Assassin and Shadowcrawler.

Elementals

 A decent counter to a tanky Warrior comp, the Elementals synergy also lets you include a few pieces with late-game potential and CC capabilities. You can start with Stone Spirit and Water Spirit during the early-game and make your way towards a Thunder Spirit and a Dark Spirit after turns 20+.

Well, then, what are you waiting for? Fire up your Auto Chess Mobile on BlueStacks and try out this shock Assassins squad in a match. Remember, though, that it can be difficult to force a start when the shop draws are not in your favor. Always keep an open mind and be flexible with the pieces you buy during the first 10 rounds of the game.

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