YMMV / Stick War

• Complacent Gaming Syndrome: Two words: Swordwrath Spam. Many players attempting to speedrun the games will often upgrade their Swordwraths early to make this strategy more effective, and to swarm the enemy with dozens of dozens of Swordwrath to secure victory. Swordwrath use was a lot less significant in the multiplayer games, though, mainly because they were balanced much better there.
  • In the multiplayer games, the go-to composition is, more often than not, Speartons and Archidons, with the Speartons forming a bulky frontline while Archidons provide long-range firepower. Because of the playing field being one-dimensional, flanking is not an option and thus a mass of Archidons with Spearton cover is nigh-unapproachable without getting your units shot to pieces. Given the tendency of Order mirror matches in Stick Empires to result in Archidon deadlocks while both sides repeatedly send in Spearton cannon fodder (because the side that stops training Speartons first gets overrun), it's probably not surprising that Stick War 3 introduced a spell that counters ranged units specifically.
• Even Better Sequel: The original Stick War, while already impressive for its time, had a simple campaign and nothing else, with fairly simplistic controls and mechanics. Stick War 2, on the other hand, introduced a much more sophisticated, RTS-style control scheme (including support for right clicks, a rarity in Flash games), more units, and multiplayer gameplay in the form of Stick Empires, making it a very worthy successor to the name.
• Game-Breaker:
  • Manual unit control in the first game and Legacy. In addition to letting you command a unit manually rather than leave it to the whim of the fairly rudimentary AI (allowing you to, say, dodge arrows from Archidons), this also gives that unit a bonus to its damage output, allowing them to fight much more effectively against enemies. This is partly why Swordwrath spam is the go-to strategy for those games, since user-controlled Swordwrath can reliably become killing machines in the hands of a skilled player, and an early rush can easily kill off the enemy's Miners and leave them crippled for the rest of the game. Swordwrath in Legacy are particularly abusable with their new leap attack, the ability to block while running, and high mobility, all of which can easily be exploited by a player to decimate enemies very early on in a game. An update to Legacy eventually put a 5-second cooldown on the Swordwrath's leap, making them far less overpowered.
  • Brilliance was, for the longest time, a meme Enchantment in Stick War 3; spending an entire army slot for a minor cost reduction and refund on Upgrades (which players rarely ran more than 1 of aside from Tower spawns) just wasn't worth it. Then it got buffed to halve the Gold cost of Upgrades and, more significantly, completely remove their Crystal costs while still giving the Crystal refund, turning it into one of the most broken things the series had ever seen. Suddenly players could rush out both Tower Spawn upgrades within about a minute by throwing a pittance of Gold at them and then rushing out early units to seize the Tower, snowballing into an insurmountable advantage very quickly. Upon the dev team realizing this, Brilliance was swiftly nerfed to only reduce Crystal costs by half, killing the build.
  • The Enchanted Pike upgrade had a certain amount of notoriety in earlier versions of Stick War 3. It replaces Speartons' spears with long pikes that dealt double damage at the tip, and most significantly works for Spearton Generals. With Enchanted Pike, Atreyos effectively hits for 90 damage per attack, increased to 135 with Control Whip's Back Stab effect - enough to one-shot most weaker units in the game, including Miners. As such, Enchanted Pike received an Obvious Rule Patch that changed it to +10 bonus damage at the tip of the pike, which keeps its old effect for regular Speartons but makes it much less broken on Generals.
  • In Legacy, the Voltaic skin is agreed upon to be the best skin in the game because every unit benefits from it one way or another: Miners, when user-controlled, can attack back with as much force against whatever was trying to kill them first, Archidons gain increased damage along with their range, user Swordwraths can take down prime targets much faster on top of spam, Speartons gain much needed damage increase on par with a user Swordwrath, on top of extra health, Magikills' Blast spell is effected by the lightning effect, and can allow it to kill units it otherwise would not, and Giants gain back their damage output as in the original Stick War when user-controlled, and their Earthquake attack has a massive area of effect damage output.
  • Bewitch was originally an overpowered ability exclusive to mission AIs in Stick War 3, but for a short time, it was added to multiplayer as an upgrade for the Meric... which quickly established why it was AI-exclusive. For context, Bewitch's effect is to have the caster channel on an enemy and permanently take control of it after the channeling finishes. Not only was this absurdly powerful if you had no way to interrupt it, but initially the upgrade cost almost nothing, and practically paid for itself considering that it also made Merics much cheaper. You could break the channel by running a targeted unit away, but if you didn't you'd lose a unit for free and the enemy would gain one for free, making it awful to play against. Bewitch was severely nerfed with a massive increase to research cost and time before being removed altogether in a matter of days.
• Good Bad Bugs: In Stick War Legacy, the Kai Statue not only doubles the summoning of Pouncer and Toxic Dead per use, but it also unintentionally works with Stone Giants! The Stone Giants are counted as deads along with the Pouncers and Toxics, which may be why the Kai Statue doubles the summoning of them.
• Low-Tier Letdown:
  • While Magikill were perfectly serviceable in Stick War and Legacy, their viability plummeted off a cliff in the multiplayer instalments. They require a substantial amount of the games' secondary resource, which is collected at a far lower rate than gold and is also spent on spells and abilities, making Magikill extremely slow to train in these games while still being a slow, vulnerable target that can be easily picked off, thus sending your investment down the drain. Stick Empires saw Magikill gaining some viability due to their spells being devastating against massed units (ironically including Archidons, who were their biggest counter in the first game), Stick War 3 was their worst showing to date, where not only were they reverted to their Stick War 1 kit instead of the powerful spells they had in 2, but their blast spell and minions were also very weak compared to the various spells and Generals available (often for much less demanding costs) - granted, this was after a stint of them being spammed to aggravating effect before they were nerfed.
  • Bombers were a respectable part of Chaos's arsenal in Stick Empires for blowing clumps of light units to hell, but in Stick War 3 their viability fell off a cliff. They were clearly designed with Empires' traditional RTS controls in mind to detonate against key targets, and it shows, as 3 no longer gives you the means to issue precise orders to multiple units and thus leaves Bombers in the hands of the AI, which will gleefully make them Leeroy Jenkins themselves into the first unit that enters their line of sight. Furthermore, Bombers are a very situational counter unit (great at taking out clumps of weak units, very poor against heavily armored tanks), which does not play well with the army-building mechanics in 3 (where you choose up to a certain number of units, spells, or bonuses to field, so if you don't face Light unit spammers then Bombers are essentially a wasted slot) and often gets them shelved in favor of more versatile units.
  • Despite the Riprider getting community attention as the first new unit added to Stick War 3, their release version led to them instantly being derided as possibly the worst unit in the game. In theory, they're supposed to be bulky cavalry that specialize in cleaving through heavy units... but they also suffer from a glacially slow training time and massive resource and population costs while having less damage output than one Swordwrath despite costing several times as much. Ripriders were eventually heavily buffed, to the point where they became patently broken for a while before being gradually nerfed back down to a manageable state.
  • The Stick War 3 Marrowkai, on release, was quickly dismissed as a meme unit and a shadow of his Stick Empires incarnation. His Reaper spell now has severely limited range and auto-targets the closest enemy, turning it from one of the best single-target pick-off abilities in the game to one of the worst abilities in the game period, Hell Fists was hamstrung by a longer cooldown and lower damage, and his new General status means massing Marrowkai for splash damage is no longer an option. As such, the only thing he brings to the table is his new ability to summon Deads for harassing the enemy, which is a questionable payoff for his cost, and he doesn't offer any significant benefits compared to just using Magikill instead.
• Once Original, Now Common: The original Stick War was downright revolutionary at the time of its release, as it seriously pushed the limits of what Adobe Flash was capable of and was leaps and bounds above most other Flash games of its day. However, latecomers to the series might have a hard time appreciating how groundbreaking it was, as it comes off as rudimentary compared to its sequel and remake along with other, later Flash games.
• That One Level: Some of the missions in the Stick War III daily challenge rotation are infamous for how brutally unbalanced they are against the player:
  • Showdown Against the Voltaics pits you against an enemy with both Tesla Coil and Lightning Storm that also starts with three free Miner Walls, two of which are in front of the Tower, meaning they're immune to early pressure, own the Tower immediately, and will build up an army at their leisure to crush you. What's particularly disgusting is that at higher difficulties they also get cooldown reduction on spells and periodically spawn Magikill for free, not only making them snowball out of control even more easily but also letting them infinitely spam Tesla Coil to completely stop you from taking the tower. Things got even more out of hand when the Tower was given the ability to passively damage the enemy statue when held long enough, putting you on a timer to counterattack against an enemy with a nearly-uncapturable Tower that also applies unrelenting aggression.
  • Wrath Rebellion used to be one of the easiest missions in the roster; the enemy started with a very fragile army and the only trick they had was a wave of reinforcements when you start hitting their statue, which can easily be cleaned up by a decent army. To make it even more of a joke, the player starts with a powerful Hero Unit for free. However, it was reworked and promptly became one of the hardest; the enemy now spawns constant attack waves throughout the mission (each one about the size of the single wave they had before), the statue reinforcements are now much more powerful, and you only get your hero unit several minutes into the mission, at which point he'll likely just get melted by the enemy, assuming you haven't already been taken out.
  • Heart of the Jungle is also quite hated for having an AI that spams units and never stops. In this case, small bush is placed in front of your base which apparently conceals an endless number of Swordwrath that periodically jump out to attack your Miners and statue. There is no way to stop the Swordwrath from spawning and their attacks ramp up over time, making them a massive pain in the ass that you have to deal with every minute or so. This in turn cripples your economy as you have to either garrison or lose Miners whenever the Swordwrath attack, which puts you severely on the back foot against the actual enemy army. Even if you manage to stabilize, the enemy has Secret Tunnel to deploy units right to the front lines and spams Acid Rain and an exclusive spell that ties your units down and poisons them, making it an utter chore to make pushes against the Tower.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: The Juggerknight's redesign into a skeleton was widely scorned by the fanbase, many of whom find the new design too cartoony compared to the sleeker and simpler original look. The creator's bizarre explanation for the change^note essentially to differentiate the Juggerknight from the Spearton because "a Spearton can pick up an axe and become a Juggerknight", even though people being defined by their preferred weapons and fighting styles was the original premise of the series didn't help much, and only put more fuel on the fire.