Advance Wars: Dual Strike Time Survival Guide

Introduction

This guide is designed to help those who are stuck on Time Survival Mode and give those who have completed it a faster time or at least an S rank.

So to do that this guide focuses only on 'Basic' mode, there is little difference in 'Champion' mode as it is just the same the Basic, but it doesn't stop until the time runs out. This guide also does not take into account 'Skills' of any kind at any time, feel free to use them to your advantage however.

First up there will be some Basic Tips, which will be designed to help you cut down on general time in the way you play. Then Command Officers is where I will recommend some COs and warn against others, followed by the Stage-by-Stage Guide, and lastly the Challenge where you can check your top scores against others and me.

Thank-you for reading!

Basic Tips

Before even starting Time Survival make sure that you set the game to 'No Visual'. This can be done by at any point in game, by pressing 'A' to bring up the menu, going to 'Options' and then toggling through the Visual Modes. This will make all of your units move at the fastest speed they can and there will be no battle or capture animations. The seconds this saves builds up to a large amount by the end.
Make use of the 'L' button. That is the left shoulder pad button. Pressing this immediately takes you to a unit that is yet to be moved. This saves quite a bit of time in scrolling and selecting units.
Know what you can do to pause the game! Pressing 'A' and bringing up the menu does not stop the counter. However, pressing start does, it also lets you see a map of the level. Use this if your panicking about what to do next, or you have to interrupt your game for whatever reason.
It seems that your time counter starts again as the big red circle with Day 2 (or any number) comes up. This can be cancelled quicker by pressing 'A' letting you immediately start taking your turn. Unless I'm paranoid.
Using the stylus, at least in certain places, will speed you up. This does largely depend on what you are used to however and if you find using the stylus weird, then just stick to what you know, as it won't make much difference. But using the stylus on units that have to move their full distance is quicker, it is also particularly useful at building units from bases because you can immediately press the base then unit, rather than scrolling for miles first.
The counter is stopped during your opponents turn, this means that actions that would be stupid in other modes are better here. For instance, moving a neotank and doing a OHKO, ending the turn, then repeating the same thing again, can be quicker than attacking with your weaker units. Experiment, be original, trying a level again can result in you doing it quicker because you now know what orders you are going to give!

Commanding Officers

Suggested COs

Kanbei & Sonja

I very highly recommend that you consider using Kanbei. The majority of the stages are entirely pre-deployed, meaning that Kanbei's high costs do not affect him on all of those stages. His increased stats are useful time and time again, allowing you to destroy artillery in one hit with his bomber on stage 2 for example. Sonja always makes a good partner for him. This is a good pairing because Sonja can do the buying for normal costs when it is necessary. Also her CO bar is very short, compensating for Kanbei's longer bar. Finally they have a 3 star tag break that is absolutely devastating.

Andy

Why use Andy? For the same reasons that you always use Andy, admit it, you do. He doesn't have any weaknesses meaning that whomever you use him with he can cover for their weaker areas. His CO bar is fairly short and is very strong, especially in a tag break. I suggest that you use whoever you want with Andy! Just not one of the 'To be avoided COs'.

Grimm

Grimm is very useful in this mode because his bonuses are very apt to this game mode. On many stages the opponent does not really have a chance of fighting back, for instance missions 1, 2, 4, 7. On all of these, a units defence is entirely irrelevant, only attack is. This is when you consider that Grimm has the highest attack for all of his units, useful indeed. Units killed faster means a faster time. I suggest using nearly any CO with him, just make sure your happy using them because Grimm is equally poor on some missions. Andy's not a bad choice!

Zak (Koal) / Adder

These two obviously specialise in speed and they open up some interesting tactics. You could use Adder's COP a few times to chase down fleeing units quickly (e.g. Missions 3 and 10) and still get to use your tag break as many times as any other partnership. Or perhaps you could fit in an extra tag break! But they do lack a bit of oomph in the power department. Obviously Koal and Adder are a team and should go with each other.

Colin

Colin's game is based around speed. He is of most use on stages where you can deploy units to take advantage of his 80% costs. But his Power of Money can be strong with accumulated funds. Works well with Kanbei or any other "power" CO.

Nell

As Nell is all about luck she could either be a failure, or help you to your fastest time yet. Just bare this in mind when choosing her!

COs to Avoid

Drake, Sami, Eagle, Hawke, Von Bolt and Lash

All of these have very long CO bars meaning that you will get few tag breaks in. Also none of them have enough re-deeming qualities to make them brilliant at any of the stages. Sami would be good on 1 and 5, Eagle on 7 but otherwise they don't stand out anywhere and tag breaks are quite important.

Javier

I think there are only two towers in the whole of time survival mode and both of them are not even worth capturing. Similarly at precisely no point during time survival mode will you come under indirect fire, perhaps twice throughout the whole thing a damaged artillery might fire on your Neotank. You may as well choose a CO who can use their abilities in some way.

Sensei

Perhaps I'm being harsh? Then again, perhaps not. You will never be given any pre-deployed battle copters and on half the missions you can build units…there are no airports and copters wouldn't have been that great anyhow. His CO powers are entirely useless, seeing as one, you will have no copters and two, you will have no cities in the majority of cases. Or if you do have cities then mechs won't be all that helpful, such an example of a mission that Sensei fails at is 4, where he cannot build copters or use his mechs to any great effect, despite it being one of the few levels you can deploy units and have cities.

Grit

Well, even the most deranged Grit fans can hardly claim that Grit likes to rush things. He specialises in indirect units and only indirect units, all his other units are very poor. As you know, indirect units are not the most mobile or aggressive units. Grit is in this category more as a warning than anything else, he can be used well on a number of stages, but he will fail miserably on the others, so make sure you put him with a good all-rounder or perhaps Max. You could look to use him on 2, 4 and 6 though he only excels in 4 and other COs can do just as well or better on the others. It is a well known fact that broken COs are bad for your health.

These are all just my opinion and suggestions, feel free to pick who you want. Any CO that hasn't been mentioned can be used perfectly fine and may open up new ideas that I haven't explored yet. Now you're ready, you've got an idea of what you're doing and who you're doing it with… onto the Stage by Stage Guide!

Stage by Stage Guide

Red Heart

Notice the shape the mechs are in, that's where the stage gets its name! Time to crush the evil influence in your heart then! The easiest and fastest way to complete this simple stage is to all out attack the neotank with all of the mechs within range. This is quicker than joining mechs together or repairing on cities. If you have attacked with all mechs within range and the neotank has survived then move all the remaining mechs as close together as possible, so whichever mech the neotank attacks all the others will be in range for next turn. The best CO for this is easily Kanbei though most COs do fine.

Time Taken: 0:16 - 0:40

Note: Aim for between these times, it is generally possible to go both quicker and slower than the times shown, as indeed I have. However, if you stay between these times you are very likely to pass Time Survival with a good rank.

Frozen Pipes

Another easy stage, there are a few ways of going about this. I have found the quickest way of completion is to move solely the bomber, quickly destroying all necessary pipes and then all the artillery, though this is probably only quickest if your CO is capable of OHKOs on the artillery and pipes (Grimm, Kanbei, Max etc.). Otherwise send the pipe runners around to the right, they can fire over onto the artillery and also help the neotank burst through the pipe seams. Pipe runners, bomber, neotank join together for victory!

Time Taken: 0:50 - 1:10

Cape Splinter

The first tricksy stage, do not move your tank or Md. Tank. Wait for a number of days, the idea being to draw all of Lash's units as far away from the crystal as they can go. However whilst this happens you should move your black bombs into position, I send two out into the safe sea below and one into the sea above. Lash's megatank leads the way; once this gets through the chokepoint and can attack your units next turn, it is the time to move. Have all your black bombs explode over her units, often there is one mountain space free from which your two bottom black bombs can explode dealing damage to nearly all Lash's units. The top black bomb should specifically target any units not reduced to 1HP. Now just chase after Lash's units destroying them as you go. It would be wise to let the tank be the furthest forward as its movement is higher than the mid tank. Expect around 3 of her units to make it to the crystal, have the mid tank deal with any larger units and the tank any smaller units.

Time Taken: 1:35 - 2:00

Lake Fever

There is absolutely no danger of death here, but there is a danger of Andy's boats frustrating you by dodging your indirects range. Two infantry are needed to fire the missile silos, this reduces Andy's units to low HP so indirect units can OHKO them. After this build rockets, alternating between which base you build them from. Congregate by the lake and try to position them so all the tiles are covered because the AI otherwise instantly recognises the spaces that it can escape to. So this is down to you organising your indirects.

Time Taken: 1:45 - 2:05

Open Road

A very straightforward and purely time based stage. On your first turn load up the infantry into the APC and move forward a few spaces. There is never any need to move any units other than said APC and infantry. From now on move the APC onto the space directly above your recons, this is the spot that the Battleships cannot fire on. Then just drop off the infantry and capture the HQ, hide the APC in the forest to be sure of it surviving.

Time Taken: 0:30 - 0:50

Middleman

By this sort of point you should have your Tag Break, depending on what COs you have chosen. Feel free to use it at any point, just make sure you have one charged up before you start Stage 11.

Have the Md. Tanks attack the first cannon they happen to select and move the artillery one space closer, they are out of range otherwise due to the sandstorm. You should build artillery from the bases, which can rush in and help deal with the neotanks a little later. Next day, have your artillery fire on those same cannons that the Md. Tanks attacked the previous day, this should destroy them. (Note: this was done with Kanbei, it is possible that a CO will need an offence boost of some sort to do this, I have not checked). Your Md . Tanks are then free to move in and attack, make sure to target the Neotanks first and as much as possible. Crowd up the area with the artillery you keep building to destroy all the units. It is done quickest by ignoring the crystal, although there is nothing wrong with destroying it if you wish.

Time Taken: 1:30 - 1:50

Stealth Fight

All of your stealth planes will have to go hide mode to avoid the cruisers and carriers fire. It will be necessary to use the APC to restore their fuel at some point. It is on this stage that I use my first Tag Break, but not immediately. I arrange all four stealth's in a square with a gap in the centre, into which the APC can come and re-fuel them, thus they can set out completely full. The transport copter and infantry can be used to operate the missile silo and do damage to the tough sea units. Once all the stealth's are in attack range I use the tag break, try to maximise the damage. Destroy the Battleship quickly because then your APC can come as close to the sea as it can get, be sure to send the units back for fuel before going on to finish the stage, they run out of fuel very quickly. Another option is to use your Tag Break or otherwise, to go for an HQ capture by moving the transport twice in a row and thus save some time fighting all the annoying naval units.

Time Taken: 2:10 - 2:30

Tactical Decoy

Exactly what the name says, you must use decoys to prevent your attacking force from being destroyed by the missiles. The silos target the area where they can do the most expensive amount of damage, so Megatanks first. I use the four tanks to actually charge down and destroy Javier's units and the rest as decoys. Pairing units up works well, 2 groups of 2 Rockets and Md. Tanks and the 2 Megatanks. As these units become injured move some of them closer together to form larger groups, this way despite being injured the area is still more expensive than your tanks. In this way every missile is fired and not a single one hits any of your tanks. These four tanks will meet with little resistance, gang up on his two tanks and then slaughter the infantry.

Time Taken: 2:25 - 2:45

Last Stand

Let all of Colin's units come to you, just stay on your cities. Retreat the rockets to the top left city, with the Megatank to it's right with the neotank below that. The mech can stand on the mountain and the APCs do what they want, one perhaps on the spare city. Wait like this for Colin's army to arrive. Any unit that places itself next to your Mega/Neotank you can destroy using those units. The rockets should fire on the artillery, your two beasty tanks can destroy everything else so long as those artillery don't whittle away their HP. The mech should fight for as long as it can before retreating to a city, the APCs will get slaughtered, oh well. Just stay on those cities and only come off once you've definitely won. Your Megatank has very little ammo so make sure it doesn't get cut off from the cities or have more than 3 units to kill!

Time Taken: 2:05 - 2:25

Pursuit Plains

This is the hardest stage in Time Survival, so be prepared! I initially destroy the AA and Battle Copter with the starting infantry, and then build a recon and three infantry, the recon on the bottom but one base. Then next turn you can destroy a unit with your recon and with your top infantry. The other infantry should capture, build infantry until you have enough to capture all the starting properties, focus on the bases and airports first before the cities. Move forward with the units you have and as soon as you can build a fighter. Then as soon as you can another one. These two fighters have the job of destroying Lash's fighter, Stealth, Bomber and Transport Copter. To tempt the Stealth into view keep moving some infantry forward, if you don't run into it with a unit by accident then it will often attack an infantry and so reveal its location. The only other units you then need to build after those two fighters are bombers, which are excellent at ridding you of Lash's larger tanks, though a tank of your own can help mop up any straggling units.

Time Taken: 3:00 - 4:00

Fog Hunter

Remember how I said you have to have a tag break saved up for this stage? I hope you do because you need one! The trick here is to capture Grimm's HQ using your Tag Break. Send the recon round to the right and up towards the HQ that way, load your two mechs into the Black Boat as quickly as possible. Build a new infantry to operate the missile silo. Now it is just a case of timing, as long as you saved before the start of this stage there will be no problem. With some COs you can capture his HQ almost immediately. I will give the example with Kanbei and Sonja, on day 2 use your Tag Break, move and drop off the two mechs by Grimm's HQ, fire the silo to hit one of this infantry. Now 'Change', kill the infantry that is on full HP with one of you mechs and start capturing the HQ with your other. Grimm can do nothing about this; his attacking infantry will suicide doing no damage to your capturing mech leaving you free to finish capturing next day. Other CO tag combinations will be able to do a similar thing. For those of you without the sheer power to do this, then the same effect can be achieved by waiting the correct number of days, just keep experimenting until you find the day when Grimm cannot stop your capturing party.

Time Taken: 0:55 - 2:00

Congratulations, you have beaten Time Survival! Now you can see how quickly you can complete it or how many stages you can complete in Champion Mode. Or, take the Challenge!

Challenge

This is where you can view the fastest times and send your own in. If there are attempts we could show the fastest 5 times and so on. Bear in mind that these are the rules:

A single completion of Time Survival Basic Mode;
No Skills allowed;
Some evidence and say which COs you used.

That's it! When you have something that you think is good enough to appear on this page, send an e-mail to survivalchallenge@advancewars.net, and if accepted, expect to appear on the wall of fame!

Well, here is an initial time for you all to try and beat:

Bronze - Time Used: 11:50