DOTA AUTO CHESS
The joyful deck-based Dota 2 game. By Philippa Warr
EXTRA LIFE
NOW PLAYING I MOD SPOTLIGHT (^) I HOW TO I DIARY I REINSTALL I WHY I LOVE I M U S T P L A Y
Because nothing related to Dota is
ever simple, there are a lot of other
variables to keep track of along the
way. Managing your gold is vital –
you want to balance investing in
heroes and getting gold through
fighting, with keeping some in your
pocket to earn interest, spending to
level up your donkey (and thus
increase the number of heroes –
referred to as “chesses” – which you
can have on the board), and re-rolling
the hero selection.
STATS BOOST
Each hero is listed with a species and
class. If you have multiple heroes
from that species or class on the
board you can get boosts. The orc
species combo gets you higher
maximum HP for each orc, the
mage class combo reduces enemy
magic resistance.
As well as that interplay there’s a
spatial element. Do you bunch your
heroes up or spread them out? Do
you try to protect a vulnerable unit or
shove them to the front as a meat
shield? How can you keep important
combos in play by keeping the
relevant units alive? That’s one part
which felt like it was drawing on my
actual Dota knowledge.
Another part which taps into that
knowledge is the item system. Some
rounds have you facing off against
non-player units – the neutral creeps
from Dota’s jungles. If you beat them
they can drop little treasure chests
containing items which the donkey
can fetch and put in its little
B
elieve it or not,
learning Dota 2 is easy
nowadays. I don’t
mean easy in the sense
that it is
straightforward or comprehensible
or painless. I mean easy in the sense
that it is slightly less angry at you
for wanting to know what’s going
on. I mean easy in the sense that
people like me will tell you that
you’ve never had it so good. We had
to walk two miles in the Frostivus
snow to find a match, and whittle
our own Force Staff by hand and no
one had even heard of Purge and
his useful video tutorials.
Dota Auto Chess – a spectacularly
popular custom game mode by Drodo
Studio – is a return to that initial
bafflement. “You can pick dota heros
as your chesses,” says the blurb, “and
they will automatically fight for you
on a 8*8 chessboard.”
Now, I have 2,000+ hours of Dota
on my account. I beat my mum at
chess when I was in a hospital bed,
stuffed with morphine after a
life-saving operation. Neither of these
skillsets has proven particularly
useful in Dota Auto Chess.
The broad idea behind Dota Auto
Chess is closer to deck-building
games than to either chess or Dota.
The basic pattern of each round is:
earn money, choose whether to
spend that money on heroes, position
those heroes on the board, then let a
fight against the heroes of a randomly
chosen opponent (from the seven
others you’re grouped with)
auto-resolve. If you win, you get a bit
more gold and maintain your health
bar. If you lose, you’ll take a bit of
damage. A match lasts as many
rounds as it takes for only one player
to be left standing and you can keep
an eye on how everyone’s doing
via a leaderboard on the right hand
side of the screen.
RANK AMATEUR
So you’re “Pawn 9”. What
does that really mean?
IF YOU BEAT
THEM THEY
CAN DROP LITTLE
TREASURE CHESTS
CONTAINING ITEMS
KING
Are you okay? How do you
have this much free time?
ROOK
You might even be considered
“good” at this point!
BISHOP
Now you’re getting
somewhere.
KNIGHT
You are better than a beetle
crushed under a chessboard.
PAWN
Pawn is low. Pawn 1 is the
lowest of the low.
QUEEN
Congrats and all. But we’re
here to stage an intervention.