Top 10 Tips for Skulls of the Shogun
- Send in the cavalry: Like most strategy games, Skulls of the Shogun puts a lot of weight on controlling resources. Send out your mounted units as soon as possible to haunt rice paddies and shrines before the enemy can claim them. Securing these spots is vital for your success, but be careful as a unit will be vulnerable to attacks for a turn while they’re claiming them.
- Focus your fire: Concentrate on defeating units one at a time rather than spreading your attacks around multiple units. Each one you pick off is one that can’t hit you on the next turn. Ganging up on someone may not be honorable, but General Akamoto is way past that at this point!
- Scope out the field ahead of time: Whenever you start a new stage, check around the map and look for points of interest. Enemy units, special terrain, resources, and useful choke points are all things to keep an eye out for. Most generals would kill to have intel like that ahead of time, but you get it for free.
- Look at where your foes can go: Selecting a unit will let you see its movement range. This applies to enemies and allies alike, so make use of it to see which areas are safe to leave your units. Be careful when it comes to archers, however. Their attack range is a lot bigger than their movement range, after all.
- Plan ahead! Think about all of your moves on each turn before you actually make any. You’ll always know how many orders you have available to issue on any given turn. Don’t think in terms of individual units when you’ve got an army at your disposal! Plan what you’re going to do with each of your orders ahead of time and coordinate for maximum success.
- Be aware of your surroundings: Cliffs and water spell instant death for any units pushed into them, bramble patches deal damage, and bamboo thickets offer a lot of cover. Use these special terrain types to your advantage wherever possible, and make sure you aren’t leaving openings for your opponents to do the same to you!
- Guard your General: It’s typically a good idea to keep General Akamoto away from the frontlines wherever possible. If he falls, you’re finished. But you’ll also want to feed him skulls, which means keeping spares for him whenever possible. As tempting as it is to beef up your units on the frontlines, sacrificing a skull now and then is worth it to get Akamoto into his demon state.
- Take advantage of the spirit wall: Position weak units together to create a strong wall that enemies can’t breach. As a bonus, the units that make up a spirit wall can’t be pushed back. It’s absolutely essential to take advantage of this when the terrain gets treacherous.
- Prevent your enemies from powering up: Given how powerful demon units are, it’s critical that you do anything in your power to avoid letting opposing units eat a third skull. Sometimes that means killing them, while other times it means moving your weak units away so that there won’t be any skulls to eat. If you allow the enemy to get a leg up in its demon unit numbers, you’re going to be in big trouble.
- Kill the general for an immediate win: Remember that if you can take down the enemy general, you’ll win the battle immediately. Your opponent knows this very well and won’t make it easy for you to target their most important unit, but always watch for opportunities to bring things to a swift close.
