Editing Strike (section)

== Strike Pieces, Piece Mechanics, and Sets ==
Most of the mechanics are explained by the in-game glossary. To access this glossary, enter a Strike match and then push “Options” to enter the pause menu. There should be a glossary option that you can select to read about all of the Strike mechanics.

However, there are a few very powerful mechanics that are used heavily in the Strike speedrun that are worth delving into. In general, pieces with high movement and attack ranges as well as a decent damage stat are good. Health is not super important for speedruns of Strike, as most of the time games are won in only one turn. Another often overlooked piece attribute is flight. The Swoop class of pieces can ignore the usual terrain limitations imposed by Marsh and Chasm terrain tiles, allowing for more versatility and mobility with how it can move. One rarely used but occasionally useful ability is the Pull mechanic. This is only useful on a couple of boards where a piece needs to be either pulled into range of a piece with the Sweep skill or off of some high terrain.

Besides the stats of a piece, the skill of a piece is also important. Two piece skills in particular, the aforementioned Sweep skill and the Empower skill, can decimate enemy pieces. The Sweep skill allows one piece to attack up to three enemy pieces at once, which means that you can kill most or all of the opponent’s pieces in one turn depending on how they are set up. Empower allows your pieces to increase the attack power of all friendly pieces within attack range by one. This means that we can choose pieces with less damage and more mobility and add a damage buff afterwards. Because of the attack range limitation on the Empower skill, pieces with a higher attack range (like the Longleg) are usually more useful than a piece with a very short attack range (like the Leaplasher). This sounds powerful enough on its own, but there is one insanely powerful phrase nestled into the description of the Empower skill; the effects of Empower skill can be stacked. Usually, one Empower piece is enough to defeat the board in one turn. However, there are a handful of boards where two or even more of these pieces can be useful. With present strategies, the most Empower pieces used in one set is five.

Taking all of the above into considerations, a few pieces stand out. The Stormbird is an obvious choice to be a main damage dealer. It has high mobility and flight, a pretty good starting damage, and the overpowered Sweep ability. The Glinthawk is another good selection, as it is basically a Stormbird without the Sweep skill. For the Empower piece, either the Longleg or Leaplasher–and sometimes both–are used depending on the circumstances. Although a Pull piece is rarely used, the Snapmaw’s fairly low cost and decent range make it a good choice for the rare occasions that it is needed.