Formation Recipes

“They were finished for different work. Ask instead what Valerius asks the young flame — what were you finished for?” — The Seamkeeper’s Codex, The Ten

Combat Basics explains the engine and Combat Deep-Dive gives the formulas. This page assumes both and answers the only question left: for this errand, which five Guardians do I actually send?

Every march carries two Vanguard in front, three Mystic in the rear. Two levers decide the fight before it starts, and both are chosen at dispatch:

• Triangle — your troop element versus the snarl’s dominant element. ×1.30 into advantage, ×0.80 into disadvantage, ×1.00 neutral.
• Synergy — +8% to a troop stack per Guardian of that stack’s element in the formation, front and rear counted together.

The recipes below stack both levers on the same element, so your troops and your Guardians pull in one direction.

The method (build your own)

1. Read the snarl’s dominant element on the monster-node table and bring the troop that counters it: Water into Fire, Fire into Earth, Earth into Water.
2. Fill every slot you can with that same counter-element Guardian — they buff your troops (+8% each) and their own attacks land into the ×1.30.
3. Fill the leftover slots with the neutral element, never the disadvantaged one. A Guardian attacking into ×0.80 is a slot spent going backwards.

The Ten aren’t evenly spread across the elements, and that asymmetry is the whole game of formation-building: Earth has two Vanguard and two Mystics; Water has only one Vanguard. So your Earth-core armies reach deeper synergy than your Water-core ones. Plan around it.

The three counter-formations

Snarl dominance rotates Fire → Earth → Water, so these three recipes cover all seven tiers on a loop.

Versus Fire snarls (Tiers 1, 4, 7) — march Biolume Sprites

Water counters Fire. Your Water Guardians are Tidecaller, Nerida, and Maraval — three, so +24% synergy and all three attacking into ×1.30.

• Front: Tidecaller (Water) + Emberguard (Fire, neutral here — best Vanguard attack at 54).
• Rear: Nerida + Maraval (Water) + Kyra for a fast kill (attack 94) or Cinder for a long one (special 96).
• Why: three Water Guardians is the ceiling for this element; the two Fire fillers are neutral, not disadvantaged, so they cost nothing.
• Failure mode: subbing an Earth Guardian into a leftover slot — Earth attacks Fire into ×0.80. Never do it to save a walk.

Versus Earth snarls (Tiers 2, 5) — march Sylvan Stalkers

Fire counters Earth. Your Fire Guardians are Emberguard, Kyra, and Cinder — three, so +24% synergy.

• Front: Emberguard (Fire) + Valerius (Earth, neutral, balanced anchor).
• Rear: Kyra + Cinder (Fire) + Gaia (Earth, neutral, attack 86) or Oracle (Earth, neutral, special 92).
• Why: the two Earth fillers are neutral against an Earth snarl; they hold the line and land full-value specials without giving anything back.
• Failure mode: reaching for a Water Guardian to fill the rear — Water into Earth is ×0.80. Take the neutral Earth Mystic instead.

Versus Water snarls (Tiers 3, 6) — march Ancient Guardians

Earth counters Water, and this is your strongest recipe: Valerius, Boulderfast, Oracle, and Gaia are all Earth — four Guardians, +32% synergy, the deepest in the game.

• Front: Valerius + Boulderfast (both Earth — the purest wall in the roster).
• Rear: Oracle + Gaia (Earth) + Nerida (Water, neutral, fastest Mystic).
• Why: four matching Guardians is only possible on Earth; use it. The single Water filler is neutral and acts first (speed 92).
• Watch the champion. These snarls field Fire champions (Ember Wisp at T3, paired Ashfiends at T6). The triangle still resolves against the dominant Water, so you keep your ×1.30 — but the Fire champion hits your Earth troops into its advantage, so keep your Font ready for a few extra wounded.

The Devourer march

The world boss is the exception that proves the method: its force is so mixed that the triangle nets out nearly flat, so there is no counter-element to chase. Optimize the other lever instead.

• Bring your single deepest-synergy core — usually the Earth stack (Valerius, Boulderfast, Oracle, Gaia, +32%), because raw same-element synergy is the only multiplier left on the table.
• Load special-heavy Mystics. The boss fight always runs long — past rounds 3 and 6 — so Cinder (special 96), Maraval (90), and Oracle (92) fire their bursts, sometimes twice. In a snarl you overwhelm by round 2 those specials never land; here they’re a large slice of your damage.
• Size the march to your Font, not the boss. You cannot finish it in one hit; you’re farming your proportional share. The biggest engagement your Healing Font can absorb, repeated, is the correct contribution — see Alliance Strategy for running the week around it.

PvP stances

Player fights read the defender’s garrison as the dominant element, so the levers are the same — with one caveat: you often can’t see it before committing.

• Raiding: scout first, read the garrison’s core troop element, then send the counter-formation above as if it were a snarl.
• Defending: you don’t choose the attacker’s element, so stack your deepest synergy on your own core and lean on your Sanctuary Wall and Font depth. A raider who has to grind past round 5 is a raider bleeding wounded they didn’t budget for.

The one-line recipe

Counter the dominant element with your troop, pack that element’s Guardians until you run out, fill the rest with neutrals — and never spend a slot attacking into ×0.80.