Newbie? Just started playing Tyrant? Start here.

[Hunter Hogan]

If you recently started playing Tyrant, it is impossible for you to quickly learn all of the tools, tactics, tricks, and websites for the game. Our goal with this post (and thread) is to make it very simple for you: follow these rules and use these websites, and only these rules and websites until you understand why this is good advice. (Tyrant is made by Synapse Games or Synapticon, the relationships between different people and companies can be very complex. If you don't already understand the relationships, I explain them at the end of this post.)

The only websites, tools, tricks, and advice you need to know for now: (some posts in the thread explain these ideas in more detail)

1. Places to find information (there are other websites, but you don't need them yet):
1. Kongregate forums (but do not believe everything you read there)
2. Kongregate chat rooms (but do not believe everything you read there, especially in the rooms with low numbers, find a room you like)
3. Join a faction
1. Find a faction that appropriate for your level (if you cannot win battles, then you are missing valuable benefits)
2. Read the faction chat
3. Talk to your faction-mates (they will not lie to you, but they might be wrong sometimes, you know?) 
4. If you are not comfortable writing in English, then find a faction that speaks a language you are comfortable with--if you don't talk to other people, you will not learn the game very quickly.
4. The Fansite: designed by a fan, sss1, not Kongregate and not Synapticon.
5. The Wiki: maintained by multiple players, not Kongregate and not Synapticon.
6. The TyrantNotTrolls Google Group: maintained by multiple players, not Kongregate and not Synapticon. (Honestly, this website is probably not going to be that useful to you right now, but at least you can trust the content here.)
2. If you have limited money, then only spend War Bonds on one thing: Dracorex in the Card Vault. 
1. If you can afford a little more, and if managing your energy bar is difficult for you, then consider using War Bonds to purchase the Energy Bar Upgrade. Click on Store, click on Upgrade: the options to spend War Bonds and/or Gold to increase your maximum Energy Storage is here. (Some posts below discuss this in more detail.)
2. Do not spend any more War Bonds on anything until you understand why this rule exists. How will you know that you understand why this rule exists? When the list of cards of you want to buy with War Bonds suddenly shrinks to 10% of its original size.
3. If you have a lot of money, then spend War Bonds on anything you want: who cares, right? Buy Dracorex first, though.
3. As a general rule, your primary focus in the game should be to advance through the missions. 
1. Do the side missions when you are strong enough. (Look at the Fansite and the Wiki, if you do not have the cards necessary to beat a side mission, then don't try it.)
2. Gain a few Arena points so you can purchase Sawblade (and maybe Blood Wall, but I doubt it). 
3. Eventually, you will need to do some "Reputation Grinding" (probably Blood Shield to get Bolide Walker) and some raids (probably Siege on Kor to get Gatling Tower), but do not stray from the missions and side missions until you have a very good reason to stray from them. 
4. But here is one problem: the people who know enough about the game to give you good advice have been playing so long that it is hard for us to tell you exactly what order you should do things in. When we started playing, the game was much less complex. 
5. Nevertheless, stick to the missions unless you have a good reason to do something else and you have the cards to be successful.
4. If it looks like a cool card, then do not buy it. You don't know enough yet to know if it is a good card. Talk to people first.
5. If you can, save money to participate in sealed tournaments, but only if you pay to keep the cards. You will lose the tournaments, but you will learn more about the game.
6. When you reach the level that unlocks the Energy Upgrade, it is extremely valuable to use gold to purchase the Energy Upgrade for your level as soon as possible.  Click on Store, click on Upgrade, see what options are available.

 Summary

Do the missions, join a faction, stick to the missions, talk to people, do the missions, learn the game, do Gold sealed tournaments and keep the cards, do the missions, then start doing to the other crazy stuff.

Who's who? What's what?

1. War Metal: Tyrant is the full name of the game, but we usually just call it "Tyrant".
2. There is another game made by the same company that is just called War Metal. There is no overlap between the games except for artwork and names.
3. Tyrant is made by Synapse Games, but we usually call it Synapticon.
4. The game is published on Facebook and Kongregate.com. The two servers are separate and Kongregate.com is much larger.
5. Neither Facebook nor Kongregate own Synapticon: they have a contract with Synapticon to allow people to access Tyrant through their websites.
6. On Kongregate, there are forums dedicated to Tyrant. Kongregate runs the forums, not Synapticon, even though some Synapticon employees have moderator powers on Kongregate. (Confusing, I know.)

Questions? Comments? Suggestions? Agree? Disagree? 

[Maik50]

Few notes I'd like to mention to make playing of Tyrant easier for Newbies

* The links Hunterhogan provided above are just superb, and I'd like to emphatize their usefulness;
- Whatever mission, raid or quest you're about to initiate, PLEASE, check ideal deck compositions for you to and you'll spare yourself from excessive frustation. I'd say Tyrant Fansite does the job best (Following with WarMetal wiki). If you, however, feel compelled not to use tips or walkthroughs of constructing an ideal deck for event X, at least check what you're going to encounter so you could plan your deck in advance before wasting your energy on reckons and experimenting

* Tyrant is highly schedule dependent CCG, due energy and stamina limitations; Try to schedule your usage of time to spent your bar of energy. It shouldn't take more than 5-10 minutes. You can boost your progress by doing battles with autopilot and multitabbing (there's also couple of questionable methods but I'm not revealing them. They can be found from thesr forums, however)
- If you constantly find yourself struggling with your schedules, buy energy updates to make your login schedule more flexible (VERY highly recommended!). Don't hesitate to buy energy updates with Warbonds as they never devalue themselves and will point out to be useful in daily basis

* If you're just a newbie, remember this: Do NOT apply in high ranked factions as it is 99.99% chance that you're disqualified and thereforr wasting faction leaders/officers time. Instead, try to seek into a low level faction that has a seat for your level
- Use chats and forums to seek faction, do not spam, try to give a good profile and statistics of yourself and you'll give a good image of yourself. Higher level factions often personally interview with applicant they'd want to join their ranks. Be prepared

* Quests are HARD! Don't try them unless you got a deck that can provide at least 50% winrate, otherwise you're just wasting your energy
- I must say the same about latter raids

* When joining a raid, make sure to check following things:
1) You have proper deck (again, use fansite/wiki to find out recipy for a working deck)
2) Is your raid pronounced - Raids that are not actively promoted in chats, tyrant fansite or active raid link thread are often doomed to fail
3) Avoid "blind raids" - If raid initiator/advertiser does not provide any or enough necessary info about a raid (s)he'd like you to join, then don't join at all. The raid might be already doomed to fail and blind raids have tendency to not to attract people to join in them
- Avoid Standard tournaments until you're a veteran. Only strongest and most experienced people strive there. You're fighting on an unfair battleground if you're leaping into Standard tournaments inexperienced and with a poor deck

* Please, don't waste your gold (And Warbonds!!!) into deck upgrades. They just add another deck slot available you're likely to need when you can efficently grind quests/various raids

- Don't make a notorious/troll out of yourself and you'll get peoples acceptance :)

Well, I'm all out of ideas ATM. I'll be sure to contribute some more if I come up with some more useful information

Cheers! :)
Don't let Tyrant trolls bite you

[Hunter Hogan]

I agree with every Maik50 said (except maybe one thing--I'll explain). His post has a lot more details about some topics than my post has, and all of the details are excellent advice. Especially when it comes to joining factions, he recommends finding a faction at your level and that is a fantastic recommendation. You want to be in a faction where you can win faction battles. You only gain benefits (gold, XP, and Loyalty Points) if you win, so there is no point joining the top ranked faction if you lose every battle. I am going to incorporate some of his advice into the first post of the thread.

His advice is actually a good illustration of why you should join a faction: every decent faction has multiple players like Maik50 who are knowledgeable and helpful. Finding a faction that is helpful and fun for you is extremely important.

Do I disagree with one thing? He wrote, "buy energy updates". If he means to click on Store, then Upgrades, and purchase those Upgrades to your maximum energy storage, then I agree that this is likely an excellent investment, especially for a player that is below level 100. If he is recommending purchasing Energy Refills, then I neither agree nor disagree because I have not evaluated the mathematics of purchasing Energy Refills.

[Maik50]

Mission Reward cards you should get, no matter what
http://www.kongregate.com/forums/65-tyrant/topics/296068-which-gold-reputation-reward-card-is-the-most-useful?page=1#posts-6317986

Some useful info about Tyrant:
http://www.kongregate.com/forums/65-tyrant/topics/225222-guides-and-useful-links

(Needs updating, I'm planning to reconctruct that thread)

On a side note, I am also planning to create and publish a list of most revolutionizing cards any player should get in order to prevail and make fast progress, as well as keeping up with competitive play
(More links to be added in future, mostly about Cards you should buy in a first place. I'm not particularly interested in posting info about currently present meta game which changes anyway after next patch (like decks you should play in Tournaments/Faction wars. I'll leave that for other threads that are in TnT)

[Maik50]