I'm Unicarn, a person who plays, theorycrafts, and mods Wargroove. It is my most played game on Steam and is one of my all-time favorite games. I've been playing the game since it was in beta and have been modding the game for quite some time, which had helped me in gathering information and testing the game's mechanics. I've been in the official Wargroove Discord and Groove of War Discord theorycrafting and teaching the mechanics of the game and decided to create a guide on the mechanics of the game so I can refer people to it.


I got most of this information from a combination of the developers themselves, the game's code, testing the game, and just plain experience playing the game. Of course I am not perfect and I may get things wrong from time to time. Please tell me if you see anything incorrect or would like an explanation if you do not understand something. If you see me on Discord, feel free to ask me question or just say hello.

This guide is a work in progress (and will probably always be a WIP, knowing me) and I am very open to ideas or sections that you would like to be added.

Units come in many different types. These types determine what units can attack them, what transports they can get into, and more. Some units see in fog differently. Dogs and Turtles have unobstructed view and can see in terrain that hides units. Air units have unobstructed view but cannot see in terrain that hides in units.

The most most important qualities of a unit are:

• Land
  
  • Light Ground
    
  • Heavy Ground
    
  • Amphibious
    
  • Transport
    
  • Structure
• Air
  
  • Air
    
  • Transport
• Sea
  
  • Sea
    
  • Amphibious
    
  • Transport
    
  • Structure

While Commanders cannot attack air or sea units, their grooves can still affect them. This includes grooves that use the Commander's damage, such as Ryota's, Ragna's, and Koji's grooves.

These determine the types of attacks that the unit can be hit by. Amphibious units are a special case where they are land units when on land tiles, and sea units when on water tiles (excluding rivers, which count as land tiles). There are transport units in both land, air, and sea. Wagons can only load light ground units and amphibious units. Balloons and Barges can only load light ground units, heavy ground units, and amphibious units. There are sea and land structures, however they act like land units when being attacked regardless of whether they're a sea structure or not.

Here is a table of the unit types that each unit can attack:

Most units can attack and move at the same time, with the exception of Trebuchets and Ballistae. They cannot move and attack in the same turn. A sort of "hidden" trait of units that can't attack and move at the same time is they also cannot counter-attack. The ability to attack and move gives the unit the ability to counter-attack.

Units also have different movement types, including walking, wheel, riding, flying, hovering, amphibious, and sea.

Here are the units of each movement type:
Walking:

• Commander
  
• Swordsman
  
• Spearman
  
• Dog
  
• Mage
  
• Archer
  
• Giant

Wheel:

• Wagon
  
• Ballista
  
• Trebuchet

Riding:

• Cavalry

Flying:

• Balloon
  
• Aeronaut
  
• Sky Rider
  
• Dragon

Hovering:

• Sparrow Bomb

Amphibious:

• Amphibian

Sailing:

• Barge
  
• Turtle
  
• Harpoon Ship
  
• Warship

If a unit has no movement type, then the unit will default to the Walking type of movement.

Terrain is the biggest part in what makes a map. Terrain affect unit movement, unit defense, unit vision, and even unit traits.

Terrain can give terrain defense to ground and sea units. The more points, the higher the defense bonus. However, they can also give negative defense. The lower it is, the more damage they take. For more information on defense, look at the Damage Calculation section of the guide.

Terrain affects unit movement. Moving onto a tile costs a certain amount of movement points and it is different for each movement type. If a unit has no movement cost on a tile, then it cannot walk over the tile at all. Sailing units can pass underneath a bridge, but cannot stop on the tile. If the unit is ambushed while on top of a bridge, the unit is destroyed. It also affects where structures can be placed. There are land structures, indoor structures, and sea structures

Terrain also affects unit vision in Fog of War games. Some terrain you cannot see unless you have a Dog or Turtle nearby or a unit adjacent to it. Some terrain blocks vision of tiles behind it unless you have a Dog, Turtle, or air unit nearby. Mountains increase the vision range of units on top of it.

Here are all of the qualities of each terrain, including defense, movement cost, and vision:

Here are where structures can be placed:

Land Structures

• Plains
  
• Road

Indoor Structures

• Plains
  
• Road
  
• Flagstone
  
• Carpet

Sea Structures

• Sea
  
• Deep Sea

Damage in Wargroove is affected by several factors:

• RNG (Random Number Generator. This adds a random amount of damage)
  
• Base Damage
  
• Damage Multiplier (there are two types, but only one is used in Wargroove at the moment)
  
• Attacking Unit Health
  
• Defense
  
• Defending Unit Health
  
• Critical Hit Multiplier
  
• Weather Multiplier

This applies to all unit attacks, and grooves that use unit damage such as Ryota's, Ragna's and Koji's grooves. This does not apply to flat damage, such as Hex or Sedge's and Dark Mercia's grooves.

Here's a formula I created for it, excluding one of the types of damage multipliers, because it isn't used in the game at the moment and I'd rather keep the formula as brief as I can.

(RNG + (100 * (0.01 * Base Damage * ReceivedDamageMultiplier)) * (0.01 * AttackingUnitHP) * (1 - (Defense * 0.1 * (0.01 * DefendingUnitHP))) * CriticalMultiplier * WeatherMultiplier

Let's break this down:

The base damage is multiplied by the received damage multiplier, then RNG damage is added, then it multiplies the damage based off of the attacking unit's health, the defending unit's defense (which is multiplied by the defending unit's health), the critical multiplier, and the weather multiplier if the defending unit is an air unit. Damage can have decimals. It rounds down if the decimal is below .50 and rounds up if the decimal is above .50.

RNG: Contrary to popular belief, RNG is purely positive and does not subtract damage. RNG adds from 0.00 damage to 10.00 damage. There are decimals, meaning you're less likely to roll +0 damage or +10 damage compared to the other values due to rounding. It also means that if you're attacking a unit with a 2x multiplier, you can roll +1.50 damage and get +3 damage in the final calculation.

Received Damage Multiplier: All units have a received damage multiplier of 1.0 except for Gates, Sparrow Bombs, and Strongholds. Gates and Strongholds are treated as structures for base damage, but it is halved because of their 0.50 received damage multiplier. No unit has a base damage towards Sparrow Bombs, so it goes to the default 100 damage. Sparrow Bombs have a 8.0 received damage multiplier however, so it is multiplied to 800 damage.

Base Damage: This is the base/minimum damage a unit does to another unit. Note that if a unit does not have a base damage towards a unit, it will have an effective base damage of 100 towards it.

Attacking Unit Health: The effectiveness of a unit's attack is directly correlated with that unit's health. A unit at 100 health will deal 100% damage. A unit at 50 health will deal 50% damage.

Defense: Each point of defense grants 10% damage reduction. Each point of negative defense increases damage by 10%. Defense is stacked additively. Structure defense is always set to 0. Air units use sky defense instead of terrain defense. Sky defense is 0 on all terrain except Emeric's crystal increases the terrain defense and sky defense of all nearby tiles by 3, providing the only way to increase air unit defense.

However, the effectiveness of positive defense is directly correlated with the unit's health. So a unit with 100 health on a plains tile will take 10% less damage. A unit with 50 health on a plains tile will take 5% less damage. This is not the case with negative defense. A unit with 100 health on a beach will take 10% more damage. A unit with 50 health on a beach will take 10% more damage.

Critical Hit: Every unit can critical hit, with the exception of commanders and structures. Each unit has a different critical hit multiplier, ranging from 1.25 to 2.50. Most units have a critical hit multiplier of 1.50, meaning they deal 50% more damage if they score a critical hit.

Weather: Contrary to what the in-game codex tells you, weather does not affect the damage that air units deal. Weather affects the damage air units take. In severe weather, air units take 20% less damage. In windy weather, air units take 20% more damage.

Damage Multiplier: All units have a 1.0 damage multiplier so I didn't bother putting it in the formula. What this does is multiply the base damage that the unit deals. I'm still putting this in the guide though because it could become useful in case a mod makes use of it or a future update in the game makes use of it.

Commanders are your most important unit. They are both your strongest unit, but if they fall then you lose the game. Thus, it is important that you understand exactly how they work and how to optimize your usage of them.

All Commanders have the same stats as every other Commander. One exception is that their footsteps do sound different from each other, which matters in fog of war matches. I will talk about unit world movement in a later section.

Commanders heal 5 health per turn at the start of their owner's turn. It is important to keep this in mind for calculating damage.

Commanders have a special ability called a groove that they charge at different rates from each other. The game only tells you whether they're "Fast" or "Slow" or some other speed and the game shows them getting different % groove from certain actions, but what the game does not tell you is that they get the same amount of groove points as each other, but require a different amount of groove points to use their groove.

Here's a table of the groove points needed to charge the groove for each charge rate:


Here's the amount of groove points that certain actions give:


To clear up a misconception: When a Commander attacks a unit and kills it, it will gain 20 points from attacking and 30 points from killing. If a Commander counter-attacks a unit and kills it in the process, it will gain 10 points from attacking and 30 from killing.

By default, the game goes through several states of weather. Sunny, Severe, and Windy.

When the weather is set to random, Severe weather has a 20% chance of occurring, Windy has a 20% chance of occurring, and Sunny has a 60% chance of occurring.

Weather has several effects on different types of units. It affects the damage air units take, the attack range of ranged land units, and movement of sea units. One strange case is the Amphibian, which counts as neither a land unit or a sea unit when it comes to weather. They are not affected by weather at all.

Severe Weather:

• Reduces damage air units take by 20%
  
• Reduces the range of ranged land units by 1
  
• Reduces the movement of sea units by 2

Windy Weather:

• Increases damage air units take by 20%
  
• Increases the range of ranged land units by 1
  
• Increases the movement of sea units by 2

Sunny weather does not affect the units at all.

Fog of War is puts the battlefield under fog and gives each unit and structure a vision range, meaning that you cannot see or attack any units outside of your units’ vision range.

If you try to walk through or onto a tile that is occupied by an enemy unit, your unit gets “ambushed”, where they stop on the tile where they were ambushed. If the unit is ambushed while on top of a unit or a tile that it cannot stand on (such as a Warship on a bridge or a Commander on a neutral village), the ambushed unit will be killed immediately.

Abilities that create or move units cannot be used onto tiles that are under the fog of war. For example, you cannot unload a unit onto a tile covered by fog, you cannot use Greenfinger's groove to plant vines in the fog, and Ragna cannot jump into the fog.

While you cannot see who owns structures in the fog, your units’ movement is still restricted by the structure when you view their movement range. So it is impossible to be ambushed by an enemy structure.

Tiles affect your vision in multiple ways. I covered this in the Terrain section of the guide.

Tiles that block vision do not block the vision of air units. Tiles that grant vision do not grant vision to air units. Tiles that hide units are only revealed by having a unit that can Scout (Dogs, Turtles) or by having a unit adjacent to it.

Gates block vision much like how a wall/forest/mountain would.

The AI ignores some of the rules of fog of war, but also follow some of the rules. While the AI can “see” and attack your units through fog, they can still be ambushed because they don’t look at what tiles your units are occupying when they are moving.

Fun fact: If you set up your units in a particular way, you can potentially kill their entire army or most of their army by ambushing them while they’re on top of a neutral village.