I'm going back and forth between Outlaw 4/5 just trying shit out to see what works and what doesn't. I mean I know what are the popular strats and easy win teams, obviously, but there has to be a way to bypass this, no way is the balance so skewed that nothing else can win. So far:
-Scrappy/Inventor cannot work for shit despite Techies and Gyromaster.
-Anything Scaled+Warlock is gamebreakingly stupid.
-Knigjts only work now if you a melee support, like Trolls/Brawny/Warrior, anything else and you can lose real fast.
Actually, Axe *does* have appearance changes between all three levels. As does Doom. It seems like they're going to be adding them to the game as soon as they get the designs finished. I definitely agree though, and am excited for when all heroes are finished.
The amount of polish in Chess Rush, the customization options for characters and boards, and how they make the game actually feel like a multiplayer game, has me pretty hooked on it. There are a lot of aspects of the game that I'd like to see implemented in Underlords.
And yeah, the skill of players seems to be higher in Underlords for sure. Higher than both Auto Chess and Chess Rush.
DAC and DU have somewhat similar metas with a lot of crossover, so high skill players translated their knowledge to DU with minimal effort and easy. Chess Rush is based off the same things, bit its meta is stupidly more complex.
-Oceanborn(scaled) are easier to obtain and use in battle, but have a lower life expectancy on the board so you would want to actually focus on them instead of having it as a support bonus or -role.
-Same thing with demons and punishers(Demon Hunters). You want that 50% Damage Bonus per demon? You gotta have the 1 Punisher that isn't a Demon, and then the Punisher Demon and 3 other Demons. So that's 5 units to cover a Demon strat, which leaves you room for little else. Its like strange bedfellows and the alliance bonus had a baby.
-Riders(Knights)give the bonus independent of positioning, which is nice. What's not so nice is that a Rider Strat would cripple you from anything else, cause it covers anything from Goblins(Trolls) to Elves(Elusives). Like there is a rider for almost anything. Which then leads to Dragons hilariously enough being useless.
-This also applies some what to Furries, which are basically Brawnies. There are like what, 5/6 brawnies and they all fall near the other melee types, right? Well here they also gain an assasin, and as ridiculous as it sounds Brawny/Assassin is a totally viable strat.
Chess Rush deserves a chance for this alone. Its metas balance is off the charts in how well anything can work, and its Turbo mode is Auto Chess on steroids. I'm talking about 3 stars by like round 6.