Beginner's Guide to Battlegrounds in Marvel's Contest of Champions

Marvel's Contest of Champions (MCOC) is a mobile app where you collect and do battle with characters from Marvel comics. Battlegrounds is the most recent major game mode added to the game, featuring a unique style of player vs. player focused play compared to other game modes. If you have recently unlocked Battlegrounds and are new to the game mode or have not had the chance to try it out yet, this guide will help you understand the essentials of Battlegrounds and offer some basic tips to help you achieve victory.

For those of you new to MCOC who may not be so familiar with the game's terminology but want to get a head start on preparing for Battlegrounds, some terms used in this guide will be underlined in their first appearance, and their meanings can be found at the glossary at the end of this guide.

A mobile device with the MCOC app and the Battlegrounds mode unlocked.

Before getting into a proper Battlegrounds match, you first need to set up deck of champions. The first step of this process is checking the currently active nodes that will apply to any champions you fight. You can check the currently active nodes by clicking on the circular node icon in the top right of the Battlegrounds home screen. Alternatively, you can see one of the node's name and icon in red above the "play now" button, which you can click to pull up the same node list. The current nodes are very important to keep in mind, as they will guide building your deck in the next step and how you approach battling in actual Battlegrounds matches.

Battlegrounds has month-long seasons with a "Victory Track" and a "Gladiator's Circuit". You always start each season in the Victory Track and must win matches to ascend to the Gladiator's Circuit. The important thing to know is that in Victory Track the nodes will stay the same for the whole season while in Gladiator's Circuit they alternate every week. If you manage to get into the Gladiator's circuit, you need to remember to check the nodes list and change strategy accordingly.

To play Battlegrounds, you need to construct your deck of champions you will use. To do this, click the "champion deck" section of the home screen. Here, you will see your full roster of champions and must select 30 champions for use in Battlegrounds, with the only rule being that you cannot have two of the same champion at different rarities. You can also save your currently active masteries as a mastery loadout, which will apply to your Battlegrounds deck even if you change them for use in other game modes.

The important consideration for your deck is maintaining a good balance of attackers (the champions you will use to fight) and defenders (the champions you assign for the opponent to fight). Champions that can perform well in both roles are useful to have, but otherwise you want to have options for both roles. Your champion choice should also consider the active nodes. Look for defenders that abuse the nodes and attackers that bypass the nodes and those defenders. You can check the current nodes in the deck builder by clicking the node icon in the upper right. As for mastery loadouts, the typical reason to want separate masteries in Battlegrounds is the "recoil", "double edge", and "liquid courage" masteries. These provide useful attack bonuses in other content but at the cost of your champions constantly losing health, a penalty often too great to bear in Battlegrounds. If you have those masteries active, you should consider turning them off and saving your mastery loadout without them.

Now that you have your deck, you can begin a match by clicking the "play now" button and selecting a method of entry, energy or "Elder's marks". The main difference between the two methods is that energy is used to progress in some other game modes, while Elder's marks are a limited form of currency that awards more points for rewards in events. The two methods offer no difference in actual Battlegrounds gameplay, so select whichever you have available. Once you find a match, just accept and the match will begin.

After seeing your opponent, the first part of a match is the banning phase. You will see your opponent's deck of champions and will have 30 seconds to ban three of them, preventing either player from using that champion in the match. CAUTION: a typical mistake new players make is forgetting that the bans you (and your opponent) pick apply to both players. If you ban your opponent's Quicksilver every time, you should not be surprised to see that you never get to use your own Quicksilver.

With that cautionary note in mind, a standard strategy here is to only ban champions your opponent has but you do not. This means your bans do not affect yourself. Another strategy to consider is banning problem matchups. If you find yourself unable to deal with an opposing Hulkling, you should consider banning him even if you have one of your own. Finally, you should aim for your opponent's weaknesses in their deck with your bans. If they have only a few good defenders, try banning them. If they only have one counter to your Bishop, try banning that counter.

The drafting phase involves both players "drafting" or picking champions to use in the current match. Players will alternate picking one or two champions from a randomly selected pool of three or five champions from their deck until both players have drafted seven champions.

The crucial thing to remember is that drafting is not blind and occurs in parts. You should largely draft champions reactively. When your opponent drafts a champion, you should always draft your own with their champions in mind. For example, if your opponent picks Gorr, you should look for defenders like Rintrah that stop him or an attacker like Longshot that can easily defeat him. Otherwise, pick champions that you feel comfortable with and think will give you the edge in battle, and make sure you draft a good mix of both attackers and defenders. CAUTION: remember that the draft is random, so you should never rely on a single champion appearing. Have backup options whenever you can, because that one champion you need will typically never show up.

The assignment phase starts with the player who drafted the first champion in the previous phase. Each player will assign one of their drafted champions as the defender for this round, then each player will pick an attacker to fight against their opponent's defender. The assigned attacker and defender will be unusable in the rest of the rounds.

When choosing defenders, look for champions your opponent lacks counters for. Otherwise, simply place the defender you think will give the opponent the most difficulty. While you should pick attackers that are most capable of defeating your opponent's defender, also keep in mind if you need that attacker for a later round. Your Nimrod may be your best option against the opponent's Apocalypse, but if your opponent has a Domino they can assign as a defender in the next round, you might want to consider a suboptimal attacker for Apocalypse and save Nimrod for a fight against Domino, who is much tougher to face without a proper counter like Nimrod.

Once the defenders and attackers are locked in, you will be taken to a pre-fight screen where you will get to review the fight details before clicking the button to begin the fight. If your attacker has any pre-fight abilities, you may activate them here by clicking the "abilities" button below their profile. You will then have to fight the defender. The fight itself is the same as any other game mode, but with a two-minute time limit. Once the fight has concluded, whether by knockout or timeout, you will be taken to a screen where you can see the score breakdown. Once both players have completed their fights, you will see the opponent's score as well as your own and the winner of the round will be decided.

The scoring is as follows: up to 15000 points based on the how much health the attacker has left, up to 30000 points based on how much health the defender lost, and up to 15000 points based on how fast the defender was knocked out. No time points are given if the attacker was knocked out or if the fight ended in a timeout. The scoring system heavily favors defeating the opponent over staying alive since the defender's health counts twice as much in the score as the attacker's and a successful knockout awards additional points through the time score. As such, you should prioritize being aggressive and defeating the opponent over staying safe and preserving your attacker's health. Of course, you should still aim for high scores in all categories if possible; the attackers' remaining health will still decide many rounds.

Once the winner of the first round is decided, a new round will start, which entails repeating steps 6 and 7. Battlegrounds is a best of three format, so there will be up to three rounds total in a match, but the match can be decided early if a player wins both of the first two rounds. As mentioned earlier, defenders and attackers used in previous rounds are unusable, so each player will only have five champions to work with in the second round and three champions in the final round.

Having less champions to work with often means being stuck with less options. You will frequently be stuck against a defender without a good counter unless you were both well prepared and lucky in the drafting phase. An important skill in Battlegrounds is thus being able to handle fights without proper counters, so be familiar with how to handle any champion beyond picking ideal matchups. Use the fact that champions become unusable to your advantage by narrowing your opponent's options. If your opponent has a Human Torch that counters multiple of your defenders, try getting your opponent to use him in the first round so that they will have no options in the later rounds.

Once a player has won two rounds, the match will end. The game will declare a victor and show the results. You can review each round's scores by clicking the "round x" buttons at the top of the screen. You have now finished a Battlegrounds match!

• Champions: The in-game term for the Marvel characters you collect and fight with.
• Nodes: Buffs that apply to the champion you are facing. Can range from simple attack and health increases to far more complicated additional abilities.
• Rarities: Champions in MCOC can be collected in 6 (soon 7) different star rarities. You can have the same champion in different rarities, with higher rarity champions offering higher stats and minor bonus abilities.
• Masteries: Different bonuses and abilities that can be unlocked in the form of three different skill trees. These apply to all of your champions.
• Events: Objectives you can complete by doing certain tasks in order to earn rewards.
• Pre-fight Ability: Optional abilities that some champions have, which are triggered before the fight begins.