The Mud Golem is a highly offensive unit. Because of it’s lack of armor and inability to block, combined with it’s exceptional ability to infiltrate and damage enemy’s units makes it almost a kamikaze attacking unit, which does not have to be true.

Please Note: The Mud Golem is a unit that only Gold Account member have access to. Free(Grey) accounts do not have access to Mud Golems as stalk units or as drops. If you do not have a Gold account and are not considering purchasing one, I recommend you stop reading now.

In this guide we will cover the different uses of the unit, both offensively and defensibly. In multiple formations, and situations. We will discuss why it is such a good unit and where you might place it in different scenarios. Some of you may be reading this guide to simply find out how the Mud Golem’s special, or alternate attack works. I am deliberately not putting that information near the top of this guide to encourage you to read on and hopefully take something away from this.

Lets start by listing a few of the points that make the Mud so very strong, weak, and overall well balanced.

Pros:

• Teleportation movement.
• Can move very far.
• Has a special ability.
• Very high hit points.
• 2 turn recovery

Balances:

• Decent attack damage

Cons:

• No armor points
• No blocking
• Can only attack one space

If you are not familiar with the general statistics of the Mud Golem please click here.

The Mud Golem is one of the four Golems in the Golem race. They all have common traits of high HP, no blocking, and no armor. Try to play on these strengths and weakness for both your Mud and your opponents.

These above points are based on the standard Mud Golem with it’s primary attack. Since the Mud Golem has had the privilege of having a special alternate attack, it has become a tectonic piece in the game of Tactics Arena Online and how it is played. Few units have truly changed the way the entire game is played, and few are well rounded enough to have a place in almost every formation style the game has to offer. The Mud Golem could be disputed, as being one of the best rounded and useful units gold accounts have access to. It wasn’t so at first, it’s only a moderately useful unit with its primary attack, but it’s extremely good movement combined with it’s massively useful secondary attack (which has ironically become much more commonly used, than its primary attack) makes this little hunk of mud a force to be reckoned with.

Even though the Mud is not quite as much of a complicated unit with out it’s alternate attack, doesn’t mean it’s simple either. Placement and timing when using your Mud is very complicated. Because it has the ability to move so well, it leaves you open to many different possibilities for where to move your mud and when. The Mud Golem’s movement is one of the things that make it as good, and as useful as it can be. It can move 5 spaces, 2nd only to the wisp, which can move 6. Like the Poison Wisp, it’s movement is called teleportation, which means it’s movement is unaffected by enemy or stationary units. In other words, obstacles wont slow it down. The other major contributing factor to the Mud Golem's success is it’s alternate attack, which has affectionately been named “Mud Quake”. This gives the Mud Golem the ability to damage multiple units at once, over a distance of 3 spaces in all directions.



In the above image you will notice the damage the Mud Golem deals decreases progressively over the distance of these three spaces. Please keep in mind that units with out armor were used for the above demonstration. Armor points and percentages are applied to Mud Quake, however blocking does not.

Mud Quake is an amazingly useful and powerful attack by it’s self, but combined with other units it can be devastating. Placed on the front row with a Golem Ambusher makes for an opponent’s Cleric’s worst nightmare. The two Golems are almost like a special Cleric assassinating covert ops team.



The Poison Wisp has a unique characteristic made obvious only by the Mud’s Mud Quake, because it hovers in place it is unaffected by a Mud Quake from either an enemy’s Mud of your own. You can play this to your advantage by sending your Wisp to an appropriate place in an opponent’s formation, so that it is safe for even just a turn and that it may build damage on opponents units. You may move your Mud into block or stop an enemy unit from reaching/striking your Wisp and destroying it or it’s focus (use the mud as a wall). If you are confident your Wisp will remain safe for another turn or two, you can still send in your Mud Golem to finish off any weak units by using Mud Quake. This is a very affective strategy, the Poison Wisp cannot destroy units that are weak, it can only reduce them to 1 HP. The Mud Quake will finish off any of these weaker units and not brake the Wisp’s focus, as it is unaffected by the Mud Golems alternate attack.



Please note in the above images, that after the Mud Quake has occurred, all damaged units have been killed, and that the Poison Wisp is still in focus.

This tactic is made affective by the movement range and capabilities of the two units. Both are able to move tremendous distances and are not affected by immovable units, they both have teleportation movement.

Now that we have discussed the topic of focus, I would like to point out how affective Mud Quake is for destroying the focus of any unit except the Wisp. If one for you Scouts or Beast Riders have ventured too far into enemy territory and been caught in a Frost Golems focus, do you know what to do? Simple, if you have a neighborly Mud that can move to be within three spaces of the opponents frost golem then you’re good to go. The up side to this is would the enemy be in a defensive formation at the time (turtle) you may also be given to destroy the focus of any other unit that is wit in range. Other unit that you can and will be wanted to destroy the focus of include: The Frost Golem, Enchantress, Stone Golem, and Barrier Ward. Because the Mud is so useful I this way also means that your opponent will most likely also be using these tactics.

One other use for the Mud Golem and it’s spectacular alternate attack is to aggravate oncoming units. If you play a defensive style formation like a Turtle or some kind of Anti/Turtle hybrid that more or less waits for your opponent to come to it. You want to damage any unit that is starting to move toward you, and then as they get closer larger more powerful units –generally the Dragon Tyrant- will jump out of formation and finish off the newly weakened unit.



You will see in the above images that you should always have an eye on any scout that wonders into range of your Dragon. A Mud Quake triggered next to a Scout will put it in perfect HP for the Dragon to finish it off.

Another one of the many uses of Mud Quake is to remove any aggravating or nuisance shrubs. Yes, that’s right the Mud Golem comes fully equipped with a powerful bushwhacker.



Keep in mind this may be more for pleasure then strategy, as the Furgon can create shrubs faster then your Mud Golem can mow them down, due to it’s much speeder one turn recovery. I wouldn’t recommend wasting a Mud Quake unless the situation demands it.

Because the Mud Golem does not have blocking or armor, it depend on other units to hide behind until the time is right for it to use it’s amazing movement to jump out of formation and strike. Lets review a few key points when placing your Mud Golem.

Obviously you do not want to have your Mud sitting stranded in the open with no defense. Keep in mind it has great range and can easily get out of formation with it’s teleportation, this means you shouldn’t be afraid to clump it in the middle of a group of units or even very close to the back. When it is behind units such as a Knight, it’s lack of blocking is not such a large issue. You don’t have to worry about getting hit with a cheep shot at the start by an enemy’s Knight, or on the 2nd turn by a scout with clear shot. Here is an clear example of a poorly placed Mud Golems in turtle formation and why:



You see how the opponent has taken advantage of the your Mud being left out in the open.

A better placement is behind your front line near the middle or almost back of your formation. I say near the back because if you had it in the very back row you will not be able to move as far into an opponent’s formation to better place a Mud Quake. Even though this may be a turtle doesn’t mean you don’t want to get up in the face of the opponent from time to time. Another advantage to placing your Mud in the middle of your formation is that every good true turtle uses a Stone Golem. If you place your Stone properly you can fortify weaker units such as the Mud Golem by adding an additional 30 armor. This is great news for your mud golem who has absolutely none to begin with.



Now that your Mud has some armor of it’s own, you can feel safer sending it on solo missions into your opponents side of the board. You may even be able to get more then one good Quake in with out dieing, but keep in mind healing would be required if you are near a Dragon or Lightning Ward.

When placing your Mud in a formation I recommend keeping your Golem Ambusher in mind. By placing your Mud next to an Ambusher that has the ability to reach the nearest corner, you set yourself up for a very early Cleric kill. If your opponent no longer has their ability to heal you are put at a great advantage. Try playing around with the placement of the Golem Ambusher on the forth, second, and third spaces from the edge to adjust for attacking the Cleric in different formations. After you think you have found a happy place for your GA, sit your Mud next to, or near it so he can finish off the Clerics the GA so happily pick off.
See above image for reference **

Now that we know how great the Mud Golem can be, your probably going to try extra hard to get as many Mud Golem unit drops as possible. That’s fine by me, the only problem is that Muds are naturally a territorial creature. They don’t like to share setups. When you have more then one Mud Golem on your side of the field neither are capable of using Mud Quake until the other has died. This was a great move on Seeds behalf because had multiple Mud Golems been able to Quake, a 9 Mud 1 Cleric set up would be much too common of a winner.

As a basic rule of thumb I’m going to suggest that you not only utilize any of the above strategies but assume that you opponent does as well. A good player shouldn’t just watch his/her own units but keep an eye out for any future smart plays their opponent may possibly make as well. If you see them soon enough you can even try to prevent it from ever happening. This being said we can now cover some basic “defending against mud golem”.

When defending against your opponents mud golem, always try to be aware of it’s next capable move (how many more turns until recovery). Like I have suggested above the Mud Golem is good for aggravating stray or oncoming enemy units. Therefore you should assume your opponent will do the same with theirs. Should their Mud wonder too far into the back of your formation and you are using any focus paralyzing units I recommend that you try to slow it down so that you many have the chance to prevent it from further damaging your vital units. Likewise, should they be aggressing your outer or stray units try to repeatedly build damage on it with a Scout or two. Most opponents will try to get the most “bang for their buck” so to speak, when using a Quake. So they are going to try and place near your main bulk of units, which a good percentage of the time will consist of Knights. Knights love to eat mud golems for breakfast, although they are not an easy kill for a Knight because of the Mud’s high HP. With the assistance of a Dragon you may be able to get that nasty Mud Golem out of you way for good.

Changing to a slightly more advanced gear, good turtles and even some antis include a Furgon in their setup. Surrounding a Mud Golem with shrubs is clearly useless, however if you have any open spaces in your turtle where the Mud may move into and break your Stone Golem’s focus. The Furgon can easily fill any space that would place your opponents Mud within three spaces of your vital back row units. So in my opinion: prevention is better then reaction. You have to learn to “look ahead”:
What all the unit’s current waits are?
Where they mat be by next turn?
What units can gain or lose HP in that time?

Created by: Necross

Thanks to: Sangro, Speaker4TheDead, Matt 34.5, and GANNDALZ for all the help.