Battle Strategies (Normal Single Player Stage Mode)

[June 24, 2014 Update: If you are looking for Team Battle Basics, please check this post. This post below is mostly for single player stage mode, though some concepts apply.]

LINE Rangers is a collection of short stages, and sure, it all seems simple enough. But some of the harder stages that repeatedly wipe out your team may require a little bit of strategy, and perhaps a little exploitation of the way the enemy units work, in order to succeed.

Three main things that you can do to plan out your strategy:

1. Select an Opener

2. Choose the right Team Composition

3. Determine which items and Friends you need to use

OPENERS

How you spend your first 3000 minerals, or "Opening strategy", can make or break your game very quickly.

Pay As You Go: 

This is how many of the earlier stages will go. You can deploy a health unit and some attacker units to hold up the enemies while casually upgrading your minerals until you hit the max. At that point you can produce your units much more quickly and eventually overwhelm the enemy line. This method works fine if the stage is not difficult or if your team is much stronger than your enemies.

Powerlevel Minerals:

Stages that start off slowly, have a very long pathway, or just start with a few enemies at a time offer you time at the start to do nothing but invest in upgrading your minerals. Simply do not spend any minerals on deploying units until you get to max level minerals. 

  - Levels with very few enemies at the start allow you to powerlevel minerals and then immediately start producing health units to block their access to the tower. 

  - Levels with many enemies at the start and a long pathway may require you to powerlevel your minerals -- even at the cost of allowing them to beat up your tower a little bit -- and accumulate the max amount of minerals before quickly deploying all of your units at the same time in order to kill them all at once. If you have a lot of enemies coming at your tower or already beating up your tower and you've spent all your initial mineral on upgrades, you should not deploy units one at a time as the enemies will all gang up on it and instantly kill it. If you wait until you have enough minerals to deploy your health unit and multiple attackers, you can effectively deal with the gang. 

Upgrade & Reset: 

Sort of a combination of the two openers above, this plan typically starts one of 2 ways:

  - You spend all of your minerals powerleveling minerals and there are so many enemies on your front doorstep that there's no way to deal with them. You use a tower repair to buy you time, and/or use a tornado to whisk all your enemies away so you can start producing a ton of units to meet up with them. 

  - You spend all your initial minerals producing rangers to tank the front line, dealing some damage and holding the enemy at bay as much as possible. When the numbers start to overwhelm you at your tower, you abandon all your units and spend money only upgrading minerals. When you reach max, you can use a tornado to knock them all back. Then you start deploying your own team to really beat them down. Make sure you save your Missile! You can maximize the damage it deals by using it right after a tornado so it hits everything. 

That's all for now on openers. Other opener thoughts/comments/additions - feel free to drop me a comment.

TEAM COMPOSITION

Most teams consist of a tanking health unit and some attacking units. Units that hit in melee range have the unique job of holding the front line against the enemy. Health, balance and speed units vary in cost so you will have to decide whether you can afford to include expensive melee units in your team for any particular stage. If the stage features ranged enemy units, you need to know that your front line is going to die and won't be dealing much damage. Ranged units are best for those situations. If the stage is packed with a lot of enemies coming at you all at once, splash damage units are enormously helpful. However, splash damage units have a longer cooldown (amount of time until you can deploy the same ranger again) so you have to pair them other units to help attack.

Scott costs 40 minerals while you upgrade 

Using Lowbies/Bait/Decoys/Fodder: 

This is a hugely popular strategy that many people use to help with difficult levels. The idea is to put one or more 1-star rangers that can move very fast and cost very little on your team (Bella, Scott and Glenn are good choices for this). This low-level unit is going to be your sacrificial ranger. You deploy the lowbie ranger over and over to keep the enemy front line busy hitting something and prevent them from getting closer to your tower. 

   Examples: Level 57-59 all feature a mini-boss enemy who heaves a trash can at your team. Level 60 features the bald elephant who slaps your team with steak and will just about instantly kill everything it hits. In these cases, since everything in the front is sure to die anyway, why bother spending precious minerals on expensive health rangers? Deploying a lot of lowbies will bait the enemy into stopping their procession and their big nasty attacks will just kill the throwaway rangers. You save your minerals and protect your real assets: your ranged attackers.

All your lowbies (Very Fast move speed recommended) should be the first to meet the enemy

Mini-boss wailing on Health unit (Frog Brown) and lowbie Scott while ranged attackers safely bring the pain.

ITEMS AND FRIENDS

Knowing when you need some outside assistance to get past a rough patch can also save you from a loss. 

Determine when you are the most vulnerable and can use some extra free rangers. (at the start while you powerlevel? Or maybe later when you have a lot of enemies to deal with?) 

Are you hitting a wall where a boss is almost dead but you don't quite make it before a new stream of enemies starts to come at you? You might be able to save yourself with meteor or ice. Thomas the ghost deals a bit of damage to all enemies on the screen and also slows them down for a little while.

Always use your Missile to produce the biggest damage. Make sure you have someone in the front to hold the enemies so they stop walking. If there are ranged enemy attackers (like blue mages, dragons, lizards, etc.) wait until they reach the furthest point and stop walking so the Missile will hit them too. If you are opening with an Upgrade & Reset, wait until the Missile is ready before you use tornado. Fire the Missile immediately after using tornado to hit everything. Missiles do not damage the enemy tower, so don't bother!

Timing of these things will greatly depend on your knowledge of how the level is supposed to go. If you are not sure or if the heat of battle makes you forget everything, try YouTube! Many others have done us the favor of recording every stage of the game. Look them up and study when things happen and plan out how you will deal with them.