The Collectables Walkthrough

The Collectables is a real-time strategy/collectible card game from Crytek and Mobage. In this game, you lead a squad of soldiers through multiple scenarios, backed up by special action cards that can heal or damage units. Gamezebo’s walkthrough will provide you with some tips and hints that will help you get a good start on committing soothing acts of vandalism. 

The Collectables

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Game Introduction – The Collectables

The Collectables is a real-time strategy/collectible card game from Crytek and Mobage. In this game, you lead a squad of soldiers through multiple scenarios, backed up by special action cards that can heal or damage units. Gamezebo’s walkthrough will provide you with some tips and hints that will help you get a good start on committing soothing acts of vandalism.

Tips and Strategies

The Collectables

  • Isolate the Damage Dealers — Your units in The Collectables attack automatically, but it’s not impossible to target specific enemies. At times you’ll be faced with gun wielding and explosive attackers simultaneously. Enemies like Fragmasters are easily sidestepped, while standard opponents continuously fire. By moving your squad closer to the firing attackers you will focus them down first and waylay incoming damage while easily dodging grenades.
  • Cards for Cover — Generally, your squad should overwhelm just about any group of enemies they come across. However, when those enemies are behind cover the process takes much longer and puts you in danger of losing units to attrition. Cards like Double Agent, Firecracker and Knife will take obscured enemies out more quickly, and keep your units healthier, longer.
The Collectables
  • Lead with your Wounded — It might seem counterproductive, but it’s often better to send your wounded units into battle first. That’s because most arenas have limited cover and won’t fit your entire squad. Moving individual units takes precious extra seconds, so moving damaged units into cover first keeps them safer. Finally, use healthier soldiers to flank covered opponents and draw their fire.
  • Flank – When you’ve run out of cards to remove protected enemies, do things the old-fashioned way. Getting up behind enemies means leaving your own cover, but it forces them into the same situation. Oftentimes this is actually better than using cover because most areas won’t have enough space for your entire squad. The exception is, of course, when one or more of your soldiers are heavily wounded (as I mentioned previously), which leads me to my next tip…
The Collectables
  • Micromanagement – The best strategy is mixing the previous three tricks in this guide. This is especially useful in the weekly campaigns, where The Collectables throws many more units at you at once than usual. First, move your wounded units into cover first, and then bring up your healthier ones to flank. This forces the primary damage dealers to switch between multiple targets and leave cover, while protecting your wounded units (who continue to fire). The process can be confusing and if (like me) you’ve got big fingers it even requires a little timing and dexterity. However, this is the best strategy for clearing out bunkered enemies without relying on action cards. The faster you can do that, the faster you can expend all of your energy and maximize the efficiency of your play time.
  • Play the Campaigns — The standard campaign will always be there for you to play. The temporary missions, however, won’t be. The only way to earn more resources (like fuel and cards) without paying real money is by playing missions. If you miss out on these temporary missions, you’re effectively losing out on resources that let you play the game, rather than pay for it.
The Collectables
  • Spend your Resources — Once you’ve played a number of missions, you’ll likely have some fuel to spend. This is the resource for upgrading cards (both soldiers and actions). It’s best to upgrade your units first, as this pays greater dividends over time. However, don’t let fuel just sit around, passively, when it could be helping you, actively. If your heroes are already maxed out, use fuel on your more valuable action cards. A Firecracker is useful to begin with, but leveled up it takes down enemy health more quickly, which snowballs into keeping your units healthier for longer.
  • Pay Attention – If you’re playing The Collectables, you’re likely to play each level many times over to earn each new reward. If so, pay attention. Your first run on an early level might take a minute or two, but you can shave that down to just a few seconds if you memorize where enemies cluster together (to maximize your explosive card efficiency) and when you’re up against a single, high-value target (so you know to use Knives and other single-target cards). This also helps you remember any experience caches you might otherwise forget about, which not only raises the maximum number of cards you can fight with, but refills your energy gauge.

Congratulations!

You have completed Gamezebo’s quick start guide for The Collectables. Be sure to check back often for game updates, staff and user reviews, user tips, forums comments, and much more here at Gamezebo!

Steven "The Future of Games Journalism" Strom plays entirely too much Dota 2. He sometimes plays games when he's not too busy writing about them and their place in our culture, and thinks maybe they're not just a fad after all.