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 MUS T P L A Y
interest, spending to level up your
donkey (and 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
backpack. You can then ask the
donkey to deliver the items to a
specific unit, thus bestowing its
benefits to that hero. Essentially it’s
the courier function the donkey
traditionally fulfils in Dota 2.
Knowing the types of items which
benefit particular heroes in the main
game will give you a headstart here.
If you don’t know Dota you might not
realize you need to deliver the items
B
elieve it or not,
learning Dota 2 is easy.
Not in the sense that
it is straightforward,
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 either chess or Dota. The
basic pattern of each round is: Earn
money, choose whether to spend it
on heroes, position those heroes on
the board, then let a fight against the
heroes of a randomly chosen
opponent 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.
Because nothing related to Dota is
simple, there are a lot of other
variables to keep track of. 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
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.