• This game has died for good! I am irrationally upset. You may be tempted to say that this guide is useless, but hold your horses! First off, you can still download (regular) Monday Night Combat and play it with your buddies, so the concepts from here will mostly carry straight over there, plus or minus a few characters. Secondly, you'll find that certain concepts can apply to other games in similar genres, notably MOBAs like Dota 2 and hero shooters like Paladins. You'll just have to convert some terminology over (Commandos = Flanks, Assassins, Junglers; Enforcers = Tanks, Front Lines; Sharpshooters & Strikers = Damage Carry & Mage-like classes; The Support & Combat Girl = Support; Leo = that useless out-of-meta character in every game; etc.).
  
  
• If any of the developers are reading this, I really, really enjoy this property and would legit attempt to continue the franchise instead of letting it die off. I can program stuff. I can find other people who can program stuff. I can run a Kickstarter and drum up financial support in other ways. Buy the rights off y'all for twenty bucks? Forty?
  
  
• The first real pointer: SMNC is not like Call of Duty, Halo, Team Fortress 2, or really any other shooter game out there, despite some apparent similarities. In this game, you live and you die as a team. There is very little room for glorious lone rangers. The closest comparison I can think of is that it’s a cross between a “hero shooter” and a MOBA (Overwatch and League of Legends had a baby).
  
  
• The last video on the store page (the blue one) is actually super helpful, and I’d highly recommend watching it. It’ll still leave you with plenty of questions, but it’ll give you enough information that at least you’ll be asking the smart questions. You can also find this video cycling through on the first page of the main menu.
  
  
• We have hats! Yes, those fabulous costume pieces that serve no real purpose but make you look like a boss! I estimate that if you’re reading this guide, there’s a 90% chance you’re in it for the Team Fortress 2 hats. And that’s totally fine; I don’t judge you for it. I simply ask that you stick with this game for a little while. Expect to spend a little more time than you might in other games earning these hats, but hang in there. You might even decide to come back for more once you’re done! Plus, I admit that the hats are awesome and I don’t even play Team Fortress 2. I’ll address some good strategies for getting these hats later.
  
  
• Yes, the player base is shrinking for this game. It’s a sad fact of life, and you will be looking at some longer wait times, but it’s worth it. The Turbocross game mode on the North American (sometimes EU) server is probably the only place you can just hop into a game most days, but you can often get other game modes going by sending and receiving invites.
  
  
• Look for the chat bars. You can find them in the lobby, character selection screen, and in the actual game. THEY ARE SUPER IMPORTANT. USE THEM. More on this later.
  
  
• And finally, PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT IS HOLY, DO NOT JUMP STRAIGHT INTO THIS GAME WITH THE ASSASSIN CHARACTER. You see that red bar completely filled up on her character selection screen? That means she is basically impossible to play. It can be done, and I know many players who are quite good at her, but I STRONGLY recommend you pick another character to start. In fact, I’d suggest you avoid all the commando class pros entirely until you reach AT LEAST level 10. I’ve spent over 100 hours on this game and even I only just passed the point where I don’t completely suck with them.

I know you want to just jump in and start wrecking noobs, but trust me, preparation is key. You can lose a match before it even begins just by making terrible preparations. Also, you may not know how to start a game. (No judging here! It can be legitimately hard to start a match sometimes.) If you already know all about endorsements, products, matchmaking, and the many interesting corners of all the game menus, feel free to skip ahead to the section where I break down pro classes and game strategies.
You probably know what the main menu looks like, but here’s a picture anyways. You can disregard almost everything in the middle of the screen; it’s all basically useless and you can access most of it from other parts of the menu. The player guide looks promising, and it is sort of helpful, so read it if you like, but it’s remarkably nonspecific and ambiguous.

The only things you really need to pay attention to on this screen are the top row of buttons and the tiny triangle in the bottom right corner. This triangle activates the chat board, where you can send messages and game invites to other players. Note that you don’t need to be friends on Steam or in the game to do this. Ignore the “603 players online” message in the bottom left; it’s lying to you.

Now let’s go over what all the buttons do. I’m going to cover them all in reverse order because I do what I want.

One of the first things I tend to do when firing up a new game is take a look at the options, and I recommend you start there. Adjust settings for a bit if you like, but be sure to hop on over to the mouse and keys menus. These will tell you what all the fabulous buttons on your keyboard do. It’s pretty standard for the most part, with WASD being movement and your mouse controlling the direction you’re facing and your firing. Take special note that keys u, y, and v (and even c to an extent) allow you to communicate with your team and with opponents during matches. USE THEM. You can do key rebinding or whatever you like here, but I’ve found that the default configuration works pretty well for me. I strongly recommend that you use a handheld mouse with a scroll wheel for this game; it’ll be loads easier to both aim and change weapons with one of those (you just have to scroll).

Apparently, this button allows you to watch saved games of SMNC? I’m not actually sure what it does; I’ve never actually gotten it to work right except for right now when I just tried it. If you click “Watch Games”, it might take you to a screen where you can see replays of recent matches, most of which might have you in it. Maybe you can use this to review your performance in a game and see how you could improve next time? In any case, you’ll probably find it a thousand times more fun to actually participate in games than to sit and be a spectator, so don’t pay it much mind.

Don’t panic! After clicking on this button, you’ll be brought to a screen with thousands more buttons and everything might look super complicated. It’s really not, don’t worry. The premise of this portion of the game is that you’re an agent, and the locker room is where you prepare your pros (game characters) for upcoming matches by giving them endorsement deals and products. When not in the play menu, you’ll probably spend most of your time here. I’ll go over what each separate screen does in the next section.

This screen is fairly simple. It simply shows you all the badges (protags) you’ve unlocked and other useful stats about your time in the game. The only interesting thing you can do here is set your protag to one of the tags you’ve unlocked by getting a certain number of kills with a character, winning a specified number of games, etc. Everyone starts with the default SuperMNC tag, but you can change it later once you earn more protags.

This is how you costume your pros in all that fancy gear you’ll be unlocking soon! You can create all sorts of costumes and uniforms that mash many different elements together here. You probably won’t have many uniform pieces to start, so maybe come back here once you’ve unlocked some.

The character icons on the left show all the characters you currently own. You’ll have the six pros available in the current free pro rotation. I have more in the screenshot (marked with green checkmarks), but those are simply additional characters I’ve bought. Don’t worry about your favorite character cycling out and being forced to play someone you’re not familiar with; the last update and pro rotation occurred over three years ago. To filter the pros by class, click the gray buttons to the left.

On the right you’ll see gray categories of the gear you can equip. All gear is purely cosmetic and doesn’t give any sort of stat boost. You can click on the gear beneath each category to try it on your character. Once you’ve found a look you like, be sure to add a new costume using the button in the top right, rename it to whatever you like, and save it with the button at the bottom. You’ll then be able to use this specific configuration of gear in combat!

Endorsements provide stat boosts to your pros. They can make you faster, increase skill and health recovery, and provide many other passive buffs to your characters. You may not have any endorsements at the start, so you’ll have to earn some.

Sadly, you can’t add endorsements individually once you get into a match. To use endorsements in battle, you’ll have to create an endorsements set. To do this, find the endorsements you want to use in all the categories to the left and drag them over to the boxes on the right. Note that most endorsements also come with negative side-effects, so don’t do something like load up exclusively on fire rate and mistakenly destroy your accuracy unless you have good reason to do so. You can buy endorsements here, too, by selecting an endorsement and using the buttons in the lower left corner. Make sure you use the drop-down menu to select/create an endorsement set and, as always, don’t forget to save.

People have different strategies for endorsements. I prefer to go for a wide spread, giving myself many small stat boosts and keeping my losses low. I like this method because I don’t like spending combat credits (in-game currency) on endorsements and like relying on what I unlock through normal playthroughs. However, some people like to focus on giving themselves significant stat boosts in one or two areas and simply accepting the losses in other areas. To give a counterexample to my early fire rate example, losing accuracy is negligible if you play as Veteran, who deals damage entirely through melee moves and homing missiles, so many Veteran players will stock up on as many fire rate endorsements as they can. If you go this route, it’s a good idea to create separate endorsement classes for each pro that you play so you can play to your strengths with each character. In the end, though, your endorsement set is up to you and how you like to play best. Experiment and find what works for you!

Unlike endorsements, in which you can theoretically have many, the max number of products you can equip at a time is three. These provide special passive abilities to your character, such as launching bombs once you die or teleporting your character to base to narrowly avoid death. Keep in mind that products in the Blitz category work ONLY in the Super Blitz game mode, so it’s a good idea to create a separate product set (or two or three) for use in Blitz.

Fortunately enough, Uber is kind enough to gift you with three products from the beginning of the game: Snappy Comeback, Over Armor, and Parting Gift. While these aren’t necessarily bad products, many people decide to move on from these once they earn more products. However, Snappy Comeback is widely considered to be a wise product choice, as it allows you to return to the point you died much faster. During annihilator fights, this can actually mean the difference between a loss and a win sometimes. I won’t cover what each product does here and how effective it is, but feel free to experiment around, and again, be sure to create and save product sets similar to how you create endorsement sets to use them in-game. I’ll discuss some ideas for product choices later when I cover the pro classes.

Here’s where you take your uniforms, endorsements, and products and put them all together to create an easy-to-access custom pro. This way, you won’t have to click through multiple screens to select endorsements, products, and gear each time you start a game and can instead finish your loadout with one click. Click on any pro in the list to start customizing them. Note that you can again filter by class using the gray side buttons. Pros with gold locks are ones you don’t own, and thus you can probably ignore them.

You’ll probably want to start by creating a new class. Click the button that says as much, then go through each category on this screen, selecting the uniforms, endorsement sets, and product sets you created earlier. You’ll also see a category for taunts, but, to my knowledge, you’ll be stuck with the default ones unless you shell out cash in the store for more. You can also select weapons if you’ve unlocked or purchased any. Remember that all weapon changes are purely skins with the exception of Blitz weapons marked in red font. These will provide you with larger magazines, faster fire rates, greater damage, and etc, but only when playing Blitz. You can buy Blitz weapons using combat credits in the store or you can spend countless hours playing Blitz and praying that you’ll randomly be gifted one of these. They’re rare drops, though, so I wouldn’t hold my breath if I were you.

Once you’ve added everything you want, feel free to rename your class and save it. You can check the box next to the class name back on your character class screen and make it the default class, thereby making it super easy to get exactly the right customization you want on your games. If you plan on playing much Blitz, I highly recommend you create a separate Blitz class to store all your Blitz-specific products and weapons.

There’s actually not much to say about this menu. It simply shows you all the random stuff you’ve earned and bought. One thing to note is the infamous Pallas Treasure Ball. You’ll get these “prizes” randomly after certain matches. They're useless. They're surprise boxes that will gift you a random fabulous item, but only if you shell out cash via purchasing keys in the store. I wouldn’t recommend it. If you really want something, just go to the store and purchase the thing. You know what you’re getting that way. I’ve accumulated quite the stockpile of these balls during my tenure on this game, and continue to collect them I shall.

Yes, I know I skipped the Store button, but I’m not going to insult your intelligence by explaining what that is for you all. You know what this is and how it works. You buy pros, weapons, uniforms, taunts, boosts, and other mostly cosmetic stuff here. I’d generally recommend spending money only on pros, endorsements, products, and perhaps Blitz tokens, which, coincidentally, you can get entirely for free by using in-game currency. If you don’t want to be targeted for looking like a noob, then uniforms can be a good idea, but I usually just wait for item drops or buy a pro not in the free rotation to solve this problem.

And now, the moment you’ve all been waiting for… the Play menu! Now that you’ve properly geared up, you’re ready to go and start thrashing giant robotic chickens and throwing banana peels at Uncle Sam look-a-likes. But hold on there, before you jump right into a Turbocross or a Super Crossfire or even a Super Blitz match, we need to take a quick stop at…

I do not care how many shooters you’ve played or how much of an expert you claim to be on videogames like this one, you NEED to visit the training area before you get in too deep with this game. I’d also STRONGLY recommend taking any pros you are unfamiliar with here for a while before dropping right into the middle of a match and accidentally blowing yourself up with that really cool special ability you didn’t quite understand. The only way you are going to have any form of success in this game is by learning what each character has to offer, and it’s a lot easier to get the basics down when you’re not fleeing in terror from all the other players who’ve been here since day one.

To start training, select the Training Camp button. If you have a bunch of friends with you or get particularly lucky with invites, you can also start a Practice Game, but I wouldn’t recommend it, as you’ll probably be waiting a couple dozen years to find enough players to actually start a match. Additionally, the training camp gives you free information, allows you to level up and down your pro at will, and provides several other features that Practice Games do not. As in all game modes, you can open up the chat box, right click on other players’ names, and invite them to join you, but there’s really no point in doing so if you’re just practicing. Click Find Game to start training, and you should get to the character selection screen within a moment or two.
Once here, you can select the custom pro you created earlier if you didn’t set it to default (or select alternate settings if you like) and click lock to start training. Note that all faded out pros are characters you don’t own, ones with gold borders are in the free rotation, and gray bordered pros are ones you’ve bought.

You should find yourself shortly in the Training Arena. Run around, fire weapons randomly, mash some buttons, and just generally goof off here as you learn the character. If this is your first time in training, be sure to listen to GT Stacks (the announcer) give you all sorts of advice by finding the floating sound symbols and pressing f once near them. This is also how you buy supplies and build turrets in game. Don’t leave before investigating what all the bots look like and how they act. Additionally, make sure you visit the giant robot chicken named Chickey Cantor, the colossal robot of doom known as the Jackbot, and the obnoxious breakdancing mascot that goes by Bullseye. Know how to grapple (right click with your secondary weapon equipped) each of these NPCs and get some ideas on how to engage them. Once you’re all trained out, hit escape and exit back to the main menu.

This is the next place I would go if you’re a new player for two reasons. One, you can always get a Blitz game going, even if you have to use less than the ideal five teammates, and two, you don’t have to worry about repeatedly dying at the hands of expert players who have devoted their entire lives to this game. Many people claim it’s less fun, which, I don’t know, could be true, but it’s still a great time. It’s also one of the fastest ways to level up to get those TF2 hats if you can’t consistently win at Turbocross. Note that you’ll almost always have to create a custom game of Blitz as no one ever sits around matchmaking for this game mode. As in all game modes, you can open up the chat box, right click on other players’ names, and invite them to join you.

If you’ve ever played a tower defense game, you’ll have a good idea of how Super Blitz works. Your team’s Moneyball sits in the center of the arena, surrounded by bot spawners and little bumps on the ground you can use to buy turrets. Your goal is to protect the Moneyball as long as possible while the announcer sends wave after wave of minions after you. Bots can’t hurt the Moneyball until they remove its shield first, usually by jumping on it once they get close enough. The ball can only withstand a certain amount of damage before it is destroyed and the game is over. Note that you cannot actually win in this game mode, so if winning is super important to you, then you should either reevaluate your life priorities or find another game mode. However, you can survive up until Wave 7 billion and then brag to everyone in chat about it if that makes you feel better.

I don’t plan on giving an in-depth strategy guide for Blitz here. Professional Spycraft Hunter has already created a fantastic guide, “How not to suck at Blitz,” and most of the advice I would give here would simply reiterate what he says in the guide. However, there are a few things I feel I must mention because they are so important:

• Unless you are legitimately awesome at these pros, and by legitimately awesome I mean really freaking awesome, do NOT play a commando character. Sure, some of them have pretty nice abilities, but all too often you’ll find yourself staring across the map wishing you had a more powerful distance weapon to take out that Jackbot currently destroying every last turret you built.

• Speaking of turrets, please, please, PLEASE avoid building the first two turret types, the Laser Blazer and the Long Shot. Whenever possible, build RockIt turrets instead. Yes, they’re much more expensive, but the blazers and long shots have virtually no armor and give virtually no damage. To make matters worse, Long Shot turrets will often fire missiles straight into the upper level, where they explode harmlessly. ShaveIce turrets work as a great damage sponge due to their amazing armor, but they only slow bots, not harm them, and therefore must be placed near RockIt turrets. You can survive on your wits alone for the first few rounds while you earn enough money to build those RockIts, trust me.

• When in a jam, don’t hesitate to throw your money at Shelly or the Annihilator, but only do so if you’re basically screwed otherwise. These stage hazards can salvage your game, but they’re expensive and usually require you to abandon your teammates for a few precious seconds. They also take a while to cool down before you can use them again.

• Blitz is a very different game mode from Turbocross and Super Crossfire. You have access to weapons and products that you can’t use anywhere else. Make sure you’re creating product sets and custom classes to use them.

• If you like playing as a defensive character, note that your number one priority is building and healing turrets! This is something you can’t do in Super Crossfire, and your healing rate is incredibly buffed from Turbocross, so make sure to abuse these privileges as much as possible here. If all your turrets are looking fresh and dandy, THEN you can work on attacking bots, healing teammates, playing the 10th round minigames, etc.

Welcome to the game mode where you can actually find a game through matchmaking! Note that during non-peak hours, you may have to wait a few minutes (sometimes up to ten or more) or get creative with your invites. As in all game modes, you can open up the chat box, right click on other players’ names, and invite them to join you, and this’ll usually speed up the waiting time significantly. If you ever find yourself staring at the character selection screen for extended periods of time, hit escape and go back to the main menu, invite a few people to join your game, and jump back into matchmaking. 98% of the time you’ll end up right back in the room you just left. Don’t be afraid to work straight down the list of names and invite random strangers; there are a good number of people who simply sit in the lobby and wait for invites.

Turbocross is quite similar to Super Crossfire, but, as its name implies, it’s faster. You have less health, but it regenerates faster. Turrets get destroyed easier, but you can heal and rebuild them. All movement speed is faster than usual, but your pro doesn’t automatically grow stronger when you level up (you have to specifically invest in skills to do this). It’s a fun, frenzied game mode that usually results in plenty of kills.

One of the best strategies for winning at this game mode is to HEAL AND BUILD TURRETS. A lot of people who have recently picked up the game and have only spent time in training and Super Crossfire don’t realize this, but mark my words: your turrets are really weak in this game. Protect them. Rebuild them. They will destroy bots, giving you money, and block lanes so the enemy team can’t sneak up on your moneyball when you’re not looking. Turrets won’t let you down, so don’t let them down. And again, please avoid buying Laser Blazers. They’re not as useful as you think they are. Even Long Shot turrets have their places on some maps, but the Blazers are almost never worth it. Save your cash.

This is the original game mode that, sadly, basically no one ever plays anymore. You’ll rarely ever luck out with matchmaking here, so I strongly recommend creating custom games to play in this game mode. Note that custom games level you up slower, so if you’re in it for the hats, consider sticking to Turbocross and Super Blitz.

Super Crossfire is similar to Turbocross but it has a few key differences. First off, your pro will passively get stronger as you level up during the game. You don’t even have to buy the passive skill buffs upon leveling to do this (but you should still buy them anyway). Second, your turrets are strong, but you only get one of each. If you lose one, you lose it for good. Don’t let the opposing team take them down without a fight. Additionally, you heal VERY slowly, so returning to spawn for a quick health boost or finding friendly healers is much more important. It’s a lot harder to come back from a losing Super Crossfire game, so make sure you start strong to avoid putting yourself in a bad situation late in the game.

As I’ve said earlier, Turbocross and Supercrossfire are quite similar as far as the basics go. Heck, even Super Blitz shares much in common with these modes. Therefore, I can discuss the basics of how to do stuff here and you’ll be able to apply it to any game mode you find yourself in.

The entire premise of the PVP game modes is that two teams of 3-5 players compete to take down each other’s moneyball first while protecting their own. Enemy players and bots can’t hurt the moneyball until the bots remove its shield first, usually by jumping on it once they get close enough. The ball can only withstand a certain amount of damage before it is destroyed and the game is over.

Despite the many, many different aspects of the game, there are really only a few steps to playing well. Below are all the things you need to keep in mind.

This object is the single most important thing in the game. The moneyball is love, the moneyball is life. Protect your team’s while simultaneously destroying your opponents’. Your moneyball can’t be healed by any means once damaged, so guard it with your life. Conversely, if you’re ever around an unshielded enemy moneyball, immediately launch all your most powerful weapons and skills at it to give it as much damage as possible. People may call you a “cheeser” for doing this. If this happens, simply direct them to the SMNC tutorial video I encouraged you to watch earlier. It explicitly encourages this kind of behavior.

Both teams will start the game with a few turrets. These turrets are shielded, like the moneyball, and thus are immune to player attacks until engaged by bots. Bots travel along lanes, those blue and orange lines composed of triangles, and will stop at the first turret they encounter. It’s important to take down these turrets so that the bots (and your pros) can pass by safely and continue marching towards your opponents’ moneyball. Destroying turrets and protecting your bots as they travel these lanes is called “pushing a lane.” Again, don’t let it bother you if people call you a cheeser for directly attacking their turrets yourself. You’re playing the game as the designers intended.

Every time you destroy a bot, kill an enemy pro, walk across coins, obliterate a turret, etc, you gain money. Any money you get is good money, so don’t be afraid to hang back and attack bots. The money you earn can be spent on numerous stage hazards, bot spawners, and vending machines, and it also serves as XP for leveling up your pro. In Turbocross and Blitz, you can even use money to build turrets.

Once you’ve collected enough money, you’ll level up and be able to upgrade your skills. You can tell you’ve got skill points available to spend when you see the blue arrow hovering in the bottom right of your screen display. Hit b and pick a skill to upgrade. You can increase passive attributes like damage, speed, and defense, or you can intensify the effects of active skills.

The Annihilator (or Annie, as some like to call her) is a stage hazard in the center of every arena that can be activated once you fork over enough cash. The Annihilator only becomes ready for activation once every ten minutes, so it’s important to be prepared when this happens. Often, teams will wage fierce battles over which side gets to activate it, completely ignoring everything else that is happening on the field. But why would they do such a thing?
The Annihilator simultaneously destroys every single enemy bot, combat kitty, and fire turret on the field. From the smallest slim to the largest jackbot, everything goes in a flash of lightning. It also holds the potential to wipe out the enemy team, as it deals a substantial amount of damage to every player on the opposing force. It costs $1,000 and five precious seconds to activate, so be sure that you are planning ahead for when it comes online. Bring teammates to defend you while you activate it.

Other stage hazards do exist on most stages, and they, too, can be bought and unleashed upon the other team. Ejector pads blast robots and players away from a small area, Shelly rains fiery missile death upon one bot lane, and the Fuzz sends a devastating wave of a million tiny robots along a path. None of these are quite as terrifying as the Annihilator, but all are useful and must be treated with care.

Tell your teammates what’s happening! If you’re outgunned 10 to 1, use the quick chat button to send out a distress call (hit v and then 1). If the left lane looks relatively clear, ask your teammates to help you storm it. As fun as it can be running after the other team trying to score as many kills as possible, kills do not win a SMNC game. Teamwork does. And good teamwork is not possible without communication.

If you run out all by yourself, you’re probably going to die. Enemy teammates can outflank you, set up chain grapples (alternating grapples on you until you die), and generally wreck your face if they work together. Don’t feed them money by letting them get easy kills on you. Hang out near friendly turrets, bots, and especially teammates as much as possible.

Believe me when I tell you that Jackbots are the most terrifying things in this game. Forget the people who have logged 1,000 hours and/or use aimbots and other dastardly cheats; you need to fear the Jackbots. They can easily ring you out with their shockwave attack and they eat turrets like yours for breakfast. Grappling these mechanical mammoths will temporarily freeze them in place, giving your turrets, bots, and teammates time to pick away at their ridiculously large health bar. Also, they can’t attack when being grappled, so it gives your teammates and bots a moment or two to breathe. Your actual grapple by itself won’t give much damage, so make sure you grapple it in a place where it will sustain a lot of damage from other sources. Jackbots can be bought, but most often they’ll just naturally start to show up about twenty minutes into a Turbocross match.

This section is going to cover "advanced" techniques. I put this is quotes because most are quite simple and everyone should know how about these. You can be successful pulling off most of these even as a beginner. If you have any suggestions I don't have here, or even if you have some truly advanced techniques, please leave a comment with your ideas! I'll try to update this section as I learn more.

• If you’re ever in a situation where you’re about to get grappled, spam the jump button. Enemies can’t grapple you if you’re in the air. Bonus points if you can fly. You can also try to grapple them first, but if you’re in a bad grapple situation, you probably need to stay in motion/start a retreat anyway. Finally, if you have a full load of juice, activate it while you’re being grappled to break free.
  
  
• There are a few secret passageways that few people use on some of the maps (Gun Mountain comes to mind). Find these and use them. Many players won’t even follow you through them.
  
  
• Whenever possible, lure enemies to an area of concentrated fire (right in front of a turret is a great spot) and then grapple them. Not only will you be giving them a moderate amount of damage, you’ll also be pinning them in place for turrets and teammates to take them out. Just make sure you don’t grapple enemies in front of THEIR teammates or turrets.
  
  
• There are some hiding places and perches on certain maps where enemies can camp out and hit your turrets, bots, and moneyball from a safe distance. Be sure to wander off the beaten path fairly frequently to beat these campers back.
  
  
• Spawn campers are the worst. They can quickly turn a fun game into a horrible one. However, you have two tricks up your sleeve that they do not. First, you can call for backup in your team chat and distract them until help arrives. This is your best bet, especially if you’re dealing with more than one spawn camper. Second, the spawn room heals you insanely quickly if you step back into it. When dealing with these clowns, step just outside the room, fire a couple shots and launch a few special abilities, then step right back inside for some fast health regen. If you vary your exit points (each spawn room has three), you might even be able to catch the camper off-guard. The good news is that once spawn campers die they have to travel all the way back across the map in order to frustrate you again. Use that time to fortify defenses around spawn to lock them out of the area in the future.

One of the most common mistakes I see new players make is playing pros wrong. Sure, they’re walking around and shooting people and using their abilities frequently, but they’re not actually contributing to their team’s shot at winning the game. Each pro can only do a few things well. If you’re using a defensive character as a tank, you’re going to have a bad time. The pros can step outside their specializations for a few moments and do just fine, but they’re most effective when you play to their strengths. Since I personally am not an expert on all the characters in the game, I’m going to offer advice and strategies on each class and how to get the most out of the characters there. Each following section will deal specifically with one class. Obviously, this isn’t going to be the end-all, be-all guide, so if you have any ideas or suggestions, leave a comment below! I’ll try to incorporate them in the future.

If you like to hide and take potshots at people, you’ll enjoy playing as these combatants. This class consists of Artemis, the Gunslinger, and the Sniper. You give excellent damage and have a decent movement speed, but your fire rate is slow and your armor leaves much to be desired. Also, you’ll need great aim to be effective with these pros, so if you’re new to third-person shooters (or even just SMNC), you’ll want to avoid playing them for a bit. However, they can be incredibly useful assets for a team.

Your objective as a sharpshooter is to kill anything that moves. Make sure you don’t completely abandon your bot lanes, but you work best as a stealthy killing machine. Your priority target should be enemy players, as only two or three headshots will take them out of the game for a few moments and give your teammates the opportunity to press lanes better. That said, don’t ignore bots. If no enemy pros are visible from your perch, fire away at enemy bots. If you want to risk raising the wrath of the other team, you can snipe their turrets from quite a distance and still deal enough damage to finish them off pretty quickly. But know that this will likely enrage the other team and encourage them to target you for “cheesing the turrets”. I wouldn’t recommend this strategy for this reason.

When it comes to the annihilator, Sharpshooters can either be a big help or almost completely useless. On certain stages, you’ll find that you have a clear shot to the annihilator from a safe distance away. Be sure to head to this spot once the annihilator is ready and quickly take out enemy teammates who try to activate it with virtually no threat of deadly retaliation. However, on other stages, the annihilator will be hidden away in a mostly enclosed space. You are pretty much useless here with your terrible capacity for taking damage, so while the other team is distracted by the annihilator, use this time to snipe their turrets from a distance and guard your bots. If you’re playing Sniper, you can throw traps and stuff and take cover repeatedly, but you’re still most likely more helpful taking advantage of the lack of enemy pros on the field.

• Go for headshots all day, every day. Though you may lose a few precious seconds setting up the enemy perfectly in your crosshairs, you’ll give a thousand times more damage once you actually make the shot. And you can even headshot bots for some reason.
  
• Check your back often. Commandos are great at sneaking up on you for a quick kill.
  
• Prioritize enemy pros over bots and turrets. Headshots allow you to deal much more damage and kill them faster than almost any other pro.
  
• Use your skills often. Yes, your weapons are awesome, but your skills can slow enemies/increase your fire rate just enough to fully utilize them and get in two or more headshots where you’d only get one otherwise.
  
• Assist teammates when they ask for help. Though your health is limited, it usually only takes one headshot to scare off attackers.
  
• Find semi-secluded perches to snipe from, especially if they’re located near friendly turrets, Regenitol vendors, etc.
  
• Look for people taunting! They can do absolutely nothing but watch as you headshot them to death except resolve not to be so cocky next time.

• Go lone wolf. All it takes is one person of virtually any pro type sneaking up on you to finish you. Keep your friends nearby.
  
• Charge straight into combat. You work better from a distance and you’ll die less often.
  
• Camp one spot for more than a few dozen seconds. Enemies will seek you out and destroy you once they know where you are. Be sure to look around often and leave for another perch BEFORE the first sign of danger.

• Death Dodger: when things go south, they’ll go south quick. With Death Dodger, you don’t need to flee to safety; you only survive for three seconds.
  
• Over Armor: you need all the protection you can get. This will build armor around your pro over time once you reach level 10.
  
• Any “Kill” product: theoretically, you should be getting a fair number of kills, so these should be helpful for extending solitary kills into streaks.
  
• Massive Air: this helps you get to perches much easier without having to pay for jump pads.
  
• Accuracy and fire rate endorsements: though these nerf each other, they’re both critical to increasing your ability to get in as many headshots as possible. Invest in one, the other, or both depending on your playstyle.

Like being in the heat of battle? These pros are for you. This class consists of Cheston, Gunner, Tank, and Robo Hobo. (Theoretically, Veteran is also an Enforcer, but he actually plays like an Enforcer-Commando mix, so I recommend also reading the commando section if you want to play as him.) These characters are the tanks of the bunch (heck, one has “tank” as his name!). They deal pretty high damage, can absorb massive amounts of hurt, and live to kill stuff. Remember how I said that sharpshooters exist to kill anything that moves? I lied. Enforcers are even better than sharpshooters at killing massive amounts of things.

Though you can be effective almost anywhere, the main thing you’ll want to do is stick around the lanes. With your incredible firepower, you can easily wipe out incoming bot waves to make it nice and easy for your own bots to waltz right up to your opponents’ moneyball. Also, enemy pros will also generally hang around the lanes, and as an enforcer, you’re excellent at killing them/scaring them off. Additionally, when your bots reach a turret, run up behind them and give the turret everything you’ve got. Turrets will target bots over pros if the bots reach it first, so keep firing at it until your bot cover is gone.

As an enforcer, you are your team’s single greatest asset in fights for Annie. As soon as you hear the fifteen second warning, or even the thirty second warning, head straight to the annihilator and wreck any scrub you see. Be careful on your approach, as smart defenders might have littered the area with turrets, but if you can get there first, you can usually do a decent job of holding the area by yourself. That said, be sure to call for backup, anyway. You’ll need at least one more teammate to actually activate the annihilator. You’re also great at activating it, since you can absorb tons of damage while doing so, but your skills might better be put to use beating back the angry mob trying to swarm the area. You might even need to act as a meat shield for another character. Use your best judgement on this.

• Go charging into battle. Obviously, don’t be stupid about it, but jumping right in the middle of an active war zone is what your pro is designed for. Many enforcers have jetpack abilities, so if you find yourself in a jam, it’s usually not too hard to escape.
  
• Speaking of flying abilities, spam these when you fear being grappled. You can’t get grappled while flying.
  
• Now speaking of grapples, avoid using them as much as possible. Your other weapons are much better at giving damage. Let other teammates grapple enemies while you stand back and shoot their faces off. None of this applies if you’re playing as Veteran, though, as his grapples are ridiculously strong and you have many of them.
  
• Help your teammates. All those puny Sharpshooters, Defenders, and Commandos might call for assistance often. Don’t leave them to die because a) that’s kinda a jerk move and b) each time they die they feed the other team more money and leave your team at a member disadvantage for several seconds. Your presence alone can end up saving their lives. The bot lanes can survive without you for a few moments.

• Be careless. You’re damage-resistant, not indestructible. Don’t face any more than two other pros (or one if there’s another enforcer in the mix) without backup.
  
• Chase enemy pros for the kill. While this is more of a guideline than a hard-and-fast rule, it’s a good thing to keep in mind. Each time you leave the lane to finish off an enemy, it allows the opposing team to push the lane much easier than if you were there. If said fleeing pro only has 5 health left and has an insane kill streak, then you might be justified in chasing after them. But, generally, stick near your bots and your teammates. They need you.
  
• Abuse the game maps to Ka-Claw people to death as Veteran. I know you think you’re clever, flying over to that tiny ledge the game developers never thought you’d be able to reach and spamming your claw move to throw people to their deaths. Well, I have news for you: you’re the only one who thinks you’re clever. The entire opposing team, and possibly a good part of your own team, thinks you’re disgusting. Your little exploit would have been patched a long time ago if the game actually got updated anymore. Don’t do it. Feel free to Ka-Claw people off cliffs from places where people are actually supposed to stand instead.

• Over Armor: The only thing better than an enforcer with full health is an enforcer with full health AND a metric ton of armor to boot.
  
• Snappy Comeback: You know what’s terrifying? An enforcer moving at over twice his usual speed. THAT’S terrifying.
  
• Health Inverter: Find yourself dying a lot? Wish that your weapons had a vampire effect? Well, now they do once you find yourself in a crisis.
  
• Hot Hands (Veteran only): Since you’re spamming those grappling abilities so much, you should also light your opponents on fire while you do so.
  
• Any kill product: Theoretically, you should be getting lots of kills, so any product that takes advantage of that is a good choice.
  
• Loads of fire rate endorsements (Veteran only): Your only projectiles are homing missiles. They don’t have to be accurate at all to find their target. So, you can increase your fire rate to insane levels with essentially no drawbacks.
  
• Skill recovery endorsements: Your special abilities can be terrifying to behold. This will help you spam them even faster.
  
• Both critical shot endorsements: These will help you give even more damage than you already do.

For the people who love explosions or have terrible aim, Strikers are a good choice. Assault, Karl, and Megabeth are the three strikers you’ll find in this game, and while they all vary quite a bit from each other, they all have one thing in common: splash damage. Each Striker has a strong explosive weapon that is very effective at wiping out clumps of bots, hitting enemy pros hiding just behind a corner, and quickly vaporizing turrets. Though you don’t have as much health as enforcers, you give debatably more damage and at a longer distance. You’re also quite agile and mobile, with all characters having speed boosts, jump abilities, or both. Finally, your grapples have the added bonus of throwing people at the end, which makes it easier for you to literally toss enemies off cliffs for a quick kill. All-in-all, Strikers are a force to be reckoned with, and a smart Striker can mean the difference between a win and a loss.

For all your glorious killing options, though, you should divert your attention away from enemy pros most of the time. Your splash damage fire is easy for relatively experienced players to dodge and your secondary weapon doesn’t really give all that much damage. So, since it can be hard to hit randomly moving targets, you should aim for the predictable/stationary targets. This means you are on bot duty most of the time. However, as soon as an enemy turret loses its shield, sneak on over there as quickly as possible. You don’t have a lot of health, so you’ll have to space yourself properly and be wary of being spotted by an enforcer or sharpshooter, but with only a few hits, you can annihilate that defenseless turret. Because, as a Striker, that is what you do best.

I do realize that this strategy has become somewhat infamous in the SMNC community, with many cries of “cheesing” ringing loudly. However, in the official gameplay video on both the store page and the main menu of the game, the developers EXPLICITLY ENCOURAGE this kind of play. You could make the argument that standing 5 billion yards away from a turret to annihilate with no personal risk it is not fair play, and I would likely agree with you on that point. But I believe that as long as you are putting yourself at some amount of risk while taking out turrets, there is nothing wrong with this strategy. You may not like it, and that’s fine. But don’t be a jerk to others who employ it unless they really are abusing the map design. Just catch them while they’re doing it and destroy them mercilessly in-game.

One final note about Strikers: they’re pretty dang good generalists. Out of all the classes in the game, they can be the most flexible in which roles they take on in a team. Your medium-to-long-range explosives can be used as a snipe on careless enemies, your damage capabilities give you pseudo-enforcer options, your speed lets you pretend to be a commando at times, etc. If you like to be a little flexible with your tasks, this class is great. Just make sure you’re not trying to do everything. Have some faith in your team.

Strikers are excellent at defending the annihilator. They can get there easily and quickly most of the time and their weapons are excellent at destroying careless enemy pros. However, bear in mind that Strikers can die pretty easily, especially if they accidentally blow themselves up while firing at the enemy. Make sure to keep tabs on where enemies, cover, and health vendors are as you blast everything to kingdom come. Once you clear out the enemy pros a bit, head straight for the activation switch, especially if you have an enforcer nearby. You can use your mobility to quickly reach it and escape once you’ve finished, and your health, while not excellent, will allow you to take a few hits while you activate it. The enforcer can take a few bullets for you and will likely be able to hold off your enemies well enough.

• Head straight for the Jackbots, especially if you’re Megabeth or Karl. These two pros have stun moves that will temporarily halt the mechanical menace, allowing them to use their ridiculous firepower on it safely. Strikers are probably the single best character at eliminating Jackbots (with the possible exception of Sharpshooters who are really good at headshots), as they can give insane damage from a safe distance away.
  
• Spend some time in the jungle, but only if you can simultaneously keep an eye on the bot lanes. The jungle is the area typically around the annihilator that spawns unfriendly gray bots that will attack either side. There are a few maps on which it’s really easy to jump up to the jungle and continue firing down upon the lanes once in a while. Killing the gray jungle bots is very lucrative in terms of cash, and staying in the jungle gives you the high ground on which to fire upon opponents from an unusual angle. It’s harder to see incoming missiles and grenades from above than from in front.
  
• Learn to rocket-jump with Megabeth. It’s really simple and can save you money from activating jump pads. It can also allow you to get out of a jam easier. Simply aim straight downwards and fire a rocket at your feet. The force of the explosion will blast you up into the air. You can even do this after you jump, granting you even more height. You can use explosions with the other Strikers to jump higher as well, but it is much more difficult to consistently do so.
  
• Respond to calls for help. A well-placed explosion or two should incinerate or frighten off any aggressors.
  
• Blast the heck out of the moneyball once it’s down. Your ridicuous damage capabilities could push your team to victory.

• Launch yourself off cliffs. With some abilities, it’s easy to blast yourself off an edge or run out of jetpack fuel while hanging over the void. Take care that this doesn’t happen to you. In fact, if you ever find yourself falling to your death due to an ejector pad or other shockwave effect, you might be able to use these abilities to launch yourself back onto the arena if you angle yourself just right.
  
• Get right in the thick of things. That’s the Enforcer’s job. You work best at a moderate distance, dashing in only to grapple-throw opponents off cliffs when it’s safe.
  
• Destroy turrets from an impossible distance away. You may win the game, but trust me, you’re losing at life. If you happen to find yourself standing right by enemy spawn and there are no pros around, go ahead and take out those turrets. But don’t destroy them from the safety of your perch in the middle of the map.
  
• Get into fights with people who call you a cheeser. Tell them to watch the introduction video.

• Over Armor: With the proper amount of armor built up over time, you can actually take on more of an Enforcer role than usual. Still, be careful if you go this route.
  
• Snappy Comeback: Race right back to where you died even faster than usual to make sure your teammates won’t have to make do without you for long.
  
• Fire rate endorsements: Since your more powerful weapon fires pretty slowly, these endorsements will help turn you into an explosive-launching machine gun.
  
• Speed endorsements: so that you can rush up and fill your opponents full of lead/blast them off a cliff even faster than usual.

Leo is truly an oddball. While most of what I'll say below also applies to Leo, he doesn’t have a traditional heal/hurt gun like Combat Girl or Support. Instead, each time you fire your Mona Laser, you’ll charge an ability called “Global Heal.” You’ll know you have it once the circle around your crosshairs is complete and your weapon starts glowing. Hit your secondary fire button (right mouse) to instantly heal a good amount of damage of everyone (bots, players, turrets, and all) on your team. However, the downside is that the Mona Laser is, without a doubt, the worst weapon in the game. You have basically no effective range and it takes ages to build up enough power for the Global Heal (you can heal preemptively, but it’s much worse and only heals yourself, I believe, which usually isn’t worth it). To make matters worse, your crossbow is almost as bad, with such a large spread of your three arrows that it’s hard to make them all sink into the same target unless you’re right in your enemy’s face. His “nuke” possesses an enemy bot temporarily before exploding with relatively weak damage given, his turret fires slowly, and your bot ability simply gives a very slight buff to nearby bots and you. Leo is likely the worst-balanced character in the game, but he can still be used quite well if you’re patient enough to learn him. My advice for anyone brave enough to try Leo is to focus almost entirely on guarding your own and taking out enemy bots. Most of your abilities are only really useful around these guys, and enemy bots make it easy to charge up your heal, so avoid combat and stick to the bots as much as possible. Trust me.

For those who make love, not war, there are the Defenders: Support, Combat Girl, and Leo. These guys make up my personal favorite class, as I’m not particularly fond of aggressively shooting enemies in the face. They’ll likely be your favorite, too, if you aim leaves a little to be desired and you like hanging back in safer areas more than dashing gloriously into battle. These helpful little medics can heal basically anything (except turrets in Crossfire mode), and they should absolutely be SPAMMING this ability. Your healing weapon is your primary weapon instead of your secondary weapon to remind you of this. Your actual secondary weapon lacks in power and/or range, but can still be used quite effectively to get some kills if you know what you’re doing. Your grapples are somewhat weak and you don’t have much health, but each support character has a “nuke” ability that gives insane amounts of damage over a specified area after a short delay. You’ll also have a mini-turret (or two or four) which you can deploy to help beat back enemy bots and pros from a certain area. There’s a reason why the game describes these guys as “buffing and position holding pros.”

With defenders, it’s always a good idea to stick around turrets or even other friendly pros due to the aforementioned problems with your secondary weapon. I spent entire matches back when I was new at this game just following enforcers around and healing them. (NOTE: not a great strategy, but hey, it’s not a terrible one, especially when you’re just learning the game). Additionally, if you every find that you can put one of your mini-turrets out on the field and you haven’t done so already, you’re doing it wrong. These things were also meant to be spammed, especially if you’re Combat Girl. Spend most of your time hitting bots and defending your turrets, only occasionally venturing out to toss a nuke on a pro or advance your position in the lane a little bit. Though you have the ability to heal yourself with your primary weapon’s vampire effect, you’ll find that, in practice, this extra health won’t buy you more than a few fractions of a second in battle, so make sure not to spend too much time in the open as an easy target.

Defenders are the best characters in the game BEFORE annihilator fights. By before, I really do mean a significant amount of time beforehand. Oftentimes, thirty or fifteen seconds, as GT Stacks will announce, won’t be enough time. Remember to check in on Annie every now and then, and when the timer is almost down to zero, hide as many mini-turrets as you can in the area. You can also stick one right by launchpads if you’re relatively certain which ones enemies will be using. If you’re Combat Girl or Support, stick relatively close by as you wait for the clock to count down and the carnage to begin. Your nukes will be great at knocking enemies away from the switch, and if you’ve got a good defense/no one immediately shows up, you can even try to activate it. You can also hide behind nearby walls and heal your friends when they need to take cover. Finally, if you’re feeling extra aggressive, you can run out and grapple enemies as they stand in front of your turret(s). If you’re Leo, I’m not quite sure how to say this, but you’re basically 100% useless. Use this time to go kill bots or deal with enemy turrets. Your nuke isn’t that great without a bot to corrupt. Keep an eye on your teammates’ health bars at the top of the screen and global heal them with necessary, but overall, just stay out of it. You’re almost certain to repeatedly die horrible and painful deaths if you try to engage.

• Engage the jackbots. You have a lot of tools for dealing with these menaces, including nukes, mini-turrets, and, in the case of Leo, the longest grapple animation in the game (Yay! He’s good at something!). Don’t get too cocky, because if you’re not careful, the jackbot will still get you and your little turret, too. Definitely still call for help to handle these blokes.
  
• Find creative ways to use airstrikes as Support. The loveable engineer’s airstrikes can be used in a sneak-attack fashion by attaching the beacon to the underside of a platform. Enemies won’t see the signal, but they’ll still get blasted to kingdom come. Additionally, you can actually plant the beacon directly on an enemy for a little extra damage and almost guaranteed ground-zero hit on an opponent.
  
• Heal ALL the things. Standing around and uncertain of what to do? Find the nearest turret, bot cluster, or friendly pro and heal the crap out of it. Healing teammates when they’re already at full health will give them armor on top, allowing them to take even more damage than usual before dying.
  
• Respond to calls for help. You’re the medic, after all. It’s what you do. (Yes, even if you’re Leo.)
  
• Create turret traps! If you’re okay with playing bait, this is probably one of the best strategies to use as a Defender. Simply hide a turret (or four) behind a wall, take a few potshots at bots or enemies until someone runs after you, lead them into your trap, and then grapple them, trapping them right in the firing zone. Support and Combat Girl have special abilities that temporarily buff their turrets, so use those as well. If everything goes well, you can actually obliterate enforcers from full health with this method using Combat Girl or put enemies into retreat mode using any other character. Note that teammates can use your traps as well.
  
• Blast the heck out of the moneyball once it’s down. Your nukes are great here, and even though Leo’ nuke is weak, he can still give good damage with his crossbow if he gets up right against the moneyball. Also use this strategy on turrets with disabled shields.

• Blow yourself up. Both Support and Leo will take some damage from their nukes. Unless you’re grappling a jackbot to keep it in range of the explosion or are trying to frighten a pesky foe off your tail, it’s better to keep yourself nice and damage-free.
  
• Go anywhere near battle. This is a slight exaggeration, as you may find it necessary to jump into a skirmish every now and then to defend a point, advance the line, or finish someone off. But with your low health and terrible mobility, it’s really easy to stick yourself in a bad situation from which there is no escape. Stick by turrets and friends away from battle as much as possible.
  
• Pick Leo until you have some serious experience with this game or are a masochist. Seriously. He’s hard to use. Rewarding once you get the hang of him, but hard to use and feel like you’re doing well.
  
• Get careless with Combat Girl’s mega laser. You have to stand completely still for a second or two to use it, during which you can get grappled, blown up, sniped, or otherwise brutally murdered. Also, anything that pushes your character away from where you were standing before you fire will cancel the laser. But you’ll still have to wait for it to recharge again.

• Over Armor: The only person you can’t give armor to is yourself. Unless you have this product, that is.
  
• Snappy Comeback: Race right back to where you died even faster than usual to heal your dying teammates.
  
• Spunky products: Find yourself in a terrible, terrible situation? Spunky products give you access to an “oops” button when you make a mistake and find yourself cornered or outgunned and you have juice.
  
• Speed endorsements: Now you can properly flee from Enforcers much easier.
  
• Skill regen endorsements: Get those nukes loaded up much faster and start terrifying those Enforcers for a change.
  
• Basically anything: Defender characters won’t suffer too much from most negative effects on endorsements and can be adapted pretty well to most products. Avoid kill products, though.

If you like annoying the heck out of everyone, choose a Commando. Captain Spark, Wascot, and the infamous Assassin are all Commando character that specialize in being sneaky little sneaks and tricky little tricksters. Veteran I consider an Honorary Commando, even though he’s officially listed as an Enforcer. Again, I don’t recommend these pros to the unfamiliar, as it’s ridiculously easy to die with these characters with their absurdly low health, but they give the best close-range damage in the game (with the exception of Cheston’s staff weapon for some reason). They are also highly mobile, with fast movement speeds, rolls, and super jump/grappling hook options. Commandos are the mosquitoes of SMNC. Most of the time, they’re harmless, buzzing around and stinging people every now and again. However, sometimes they carry malaria and sneak up on you and beat you to a pulp. (I need to practice metaphors; how was this one?)

The entire point of commandos is to harass and kill enemies. Bots are a decent use of time, too, but your skills are much better suited to distracting the enemy and picking off wounded members of the herd. Hitting opponents with a few of your long distance weapons or even just running up behind them and wailing away on their backs before darting off again are perfectly valid strategies. There really is no honor when it comes to Commandos. You stab people in the back all the time.

Notice how I’ve mentioned being behind your enemies a few times now. NEVER APPROACH ANYONE FROM THE FRONT. They will see you coming and blast your head off. You need to learn the maps well so that you can sneak around behind enemy lines to get the drop on your enemies. Find the secret passages and unused paths I was talking about. They exist just for you. You can use your great mobility to get into a lot of areas without even using jump pads. Additionally, once you’re behind the front lines, take out any undefended turrets you see. Brace yourself for the all-too-familiar calls of “Cheeser!”, then fire back a “git gud” in the chat to ignite a flame war. Or, you know, don’t. Just play the game as it was intended, with sneaky turret kills and all.

Sorry to break it to you, but you’re really not cut out for much with the annihilator. You can hang back and try to hit people with your distance weapons, which may be completely useless depending on the skill of the other team, or you can hide by entryways to surprise attack approaching foes if you have enough backup in case more than one comes through at once. However, I would recommend just leaving it alone most of the time. Use the abandoned playing field to your advantage by taking out defenseless bots and turrets.

• Equip your melee weapon and press r. Wow! What was that? Didn’t it look cool? That, my friend, is a roll, and all Commandos (and Cheston and Veteran) have these. Use them to quickly approach an enemy while simultaneously making yourself a smaller target. Spam these whenever they’re available and you’re walking somewhere. Just be careful not to roll off a cliff. (Quit laughing; it happens).
  
• Spend some time in the jungle. You may find that, at the moment, the other team is actually looking out for each other well and there’s no way you’ll be able to finish any of them off without being blasted to bits. Don’t just sit around, kill some jungle bots around the annihilator for some quick cash! Be sure to keep an eye on the battlefield to know when to jump back in, though.
  
• Grapple the jackbots. All commandos have multiple grapples. Spamming them repeatedly will allow you to peg these robot behemoths in place for extended periods of time. Just make sure you won’t get fired upon while doing this.
  
• Speaking of getting fired upon while grappling, be very careful where you choose to grapple someone. Careless commandos make easy targets for astute teammates or even snappy turrets.
  
• Come to the rescue when someone asks for help. Again, you’ll want to approach from behind, but once you get that first quick grapple in, you might be able to chain-grapple the fiend between you and your teammates.
  
• Spam grapple in general whenever it’s safe to do so. You give loads of damage as a Commando with this, and you might even get bonuses for grappling from behind foes.

• Engage more than one pro simultaneously. You are not Agent 47/Ezio/insert-famous-assassin-name-here. You can realistically only finish off one person at a time, and that’s only with a fair amount of luck or skill.
  
• Go into a firefight. Your firing weapon is slow and greatly outmatched by most other weapons in the game. You want to use your melee weapon as much as possible.
  
• Spawn kill enemy players. For one, that is bad and you should feel bad. For two, all it takes is one enemy sneaking up on you for a grapple and you’re pretty much finished.
  
• Pick Commandos for a Blitz match. Just don’t. Pick someone more useful, like a Striker or a Defender instead.

• Hot Hands: You’re spamming your grapples, right? RIGHT? Good. Then add this to your product set to cause even more devastation.
  
• Death Dodger: There’s no point in you trying to hold a position. This product will help get you out of a jam.
  
• Speed endorsements: Just in case you want to challenge Sonic the Hedgehog to a footrace.
  
• Health endorsements: Since you’re so shrimpy, you might want to consider building up your health a bit to last longer when you get caught in a cross-fire.
  
• Other stuff??: To be honest, I don’t play commandos very frequently. If you have any suggestions, please be sure to let me know and I’ll add them in later.

So, you really fancy those hats, do you? Well, it might take a bit to get to them, but here are some tips for you to get to them as quickly as possible:

• Understand the unlock requirements. You unlock hats at agent levels 5 and 20, if my memory serves me right. Note that Agent Leveling is different from Pro Leveling. Pros will level from 1 up to 15 each match you play. You, as an agent, earn totally different xp from winning matches, playing games, etc. So, be prepared to play this game for a minimum of 5 hours in order to earn enough agent xp to level up enough for the last, admittedly totally BA, hat.
  
• Play Blitz. Granted, you don’t get to actually fight against other players, but getting to wave 30 or so in Blitz is worth roughly the amount of xp as a good win in Turbocross. Since Turbocross wins are not guaranteed but it’s relatively easy to get to wave 30 in Blitz once you’ve done it once or twice, you should be able to level up faster to level 20, where the last hat awaits you.
  
• Find the boost codes! There are a few of these still lying around the internet that will give you xp multipliers for a set duration of time and etc. A few guides on Steam are devoted exclusively to dishing out these codes or you can find them on Google.
  
• If you are setting up for a Turbocross match and find that there are multiple known cheaters on the other team, I can almost guarantee you that you will lose and it won’t be fun. As much as it pains me to encourage you to abandon a match, leave and find another game mode to play instead for a bit. Just please leave before the game actually starts so that someone else who doesn’t mind getting thrashed can jump in (me, for example) before you leave your team at a disadvantage.
  
• Find a pro you really like and is easy to use and stick with him/her. You don’t want to die a bunch of times simply because you’re relearning characters every match. You might have to pick a secondary character so that when someone beats you to the punch you’re not completely useless in battle, but generally stick to one, maybe two pros. I personally recommend Cheston due to his good health and self-heal, Support due to his role towards the back where risk of dying frequently is lower, Megabeth due to her good escape options and splash damage, and LITERALLY ANYONE IN THE ROTATION BUT ASSASSIN PLEASE DON’T START WITH HER THANK YOU.

Before I go, I thought I’d throw in a tier list of all the pros here at the end. Note that this is 100% based on my experience at this point and it could very well be 100% wrong. However, this is where I believe each character sits when ranked from worst to best. Feel free to have heated discussions in the comments about how accurate this list is once you get some time in; I’ll try and read everything to update it semi-regularly when people raise good points or come up with a scientific way to test this. In any case, if I rank your favorite low, don’t take it personally. This list is just for fun, anyway. SMNC is by no means a competitive game right now and likely never will be at the rate things are going. Have a gander, folks!

1. Tank – he can take waaay too much punishment and his weapons are frightful and he can fly
   
2. Gunner – has waaaay too much armor and firepower as well
   
3. Combat Girl – kitties, multiheal/hurt, and combat laser are incredibly useful tools
   
4. Karl – excellent at killing turrets from a safe distance and has sacred death combo
   
5. Sniper – has many great tools and can give great damage
   
6. Assault – relatively strong weapons and can fly
   
7. Gunslinger – trigger happy allows for a ridiculous number of headshots in seconds
   
8. Assassin – great at getting kills and eliminating turrets with her cloak ability
   
9. Captain Spark – insane close-range damage and excellent teleport
   
10. Cheston – no glaring strengths nor outlandish weaknesses
    
11. Veteran – slow but absolutely devastating with grapples and the clawshot
    
12. Megabeth – great at taking out bots, not great at damaging enemy players
    
13. Wascot – difficult to use well but incredibly annoying
    
14. Support – nuke and shotgun are great but weapons have terrible range
    
15. Robo Hobo – slow but somewhat powerful at a distance
    
16. Artemis – extremely high skill floor and useless unless at range
    
17. Leo – sorry, buddy, but you need buffs to basically everything

Super Monday Night Combat is a great and rewarding game. It is honestly one of the funniest games out there if you pay attention to what’s going on. The commentators are genuinely funny, character quips are outlandish, and some of the pro bios should be win the Pulitzer Prize for Humor, if such a thing exists. Additionally, the amount of depth that exists for you to explore to this game is insane. Again, after spending over 100 hours in this game, I still find myself learning new things almost every time I boot it up. And to top it all off, I can’t find any other game like this out there. I should know, I’ve tried. If I’d been successful, I be out there playing THAT game right now instead of this one that threatens to die on me sometime in the relatively near future. Sure, now I play Paladins, but it's really not as fun and I hope every day that this game makes a comeback.

(actual picture of me trying to find people to play SMNC with)

That’s why I encourage you to stick around. Find all the fun quirks and strategies that make this game a joy for those of us who remain. Heck, if you have the cash for it, spend some actual money in the store to show the developers that, though they might have abandoned it, the players haven’t, and they’re willing to prove it can still earn a profit. Don’t get discouraged by all the experienced players. Ask some of them for help, and you might be pleasantly surprised.

If you have any further questions or are still confused about something, feel free to shoot me a message, leave me a comment, or even find me in the game. I’m more than happy to take the time to show new players the ropes in training, custom matches, or even regular games. Because this game isn’t about winning, it’s about fun.

Well, enough of that romanticism. Get in there and lead your team to victory!