Tournament! 09/22/15 - Timbear

[HappyHeartBakery]

OK I just looked at your results of this tournament in this post: https://forums.storm8.com/showthread....=1#post1178398

From what I can tell you did choose your "elements" carefully and correctly. I see you like use the Strawbeary a lot, in that case indeed that may be a good one to raise to epic level. Same for the Caturn. You can also look a bit at which element(s) is/are strong against more than one opponent. If you then have that element, preferrably in combination with another versatile element, you have a bit less of a 'specialised' fighter that only takes one animal to raise and can yet fight multiple opponents. I think that for that reason e.g. the Sloth and the Vinotaur are particularly attractive, especially as they're cheap to raise too.

So then, what gives? I noticed you had 46 losses vs. 30 wins, whereas my Gold Lion suffered 44 losses vs. 30 wins. This is actually interesting to compare, as on about half (or more?) of the rounds that the Gold Lion fought, it had a "less than ideal" elemental composition against its opponent. The main difference I see then between your animals and mine is the level of the animals. I see you used quite a few animals of levels 12 and lower. That probably accounts for a good deal of your losses, although I must say that there are some losses that I can't directly explain, like the 5 losses of the epic Super Heron vs. the level 17 Vinotaur. The Super Heron SHOULD be double strong against that opponent! Same for several of your epic Swan Princess losses. That animal should also have more easily made its way past opponents. Odd.
Still, I think the above demonstrates the effects of having your animals at high levels well. My Gold Lion was level 15, but despite it being at elemental disadvantages on a lot of rounds, the end result was still somewhat better than yours was using the proper elemental combinations, but at (often) lower levels as trade-off.
It seems then that when you've raised these animals some more (preferably all the way to epic level), that your amount of losses might be cut in half.

Good luck on next tournament: I expect a flash tournament to start this Friday. With the new Prize Pony in your forest I can imagine that you give that one priority over others in therms of raising it. Apart from that, it's good to start working on leveling up your animals asap. Try to pick the "quick wins" (if any) first; meaning those that don't take humongous amounts of food and evolution times and that can fill some gaps in your line up.
Also.... DO make sure to add that Prize Pony to the line-up: let it do some work for you to compensate for the substantial gem cost.
A treasure animal is a REALLY good overall fighter; it's a particularly good Gem ****er too, so raising one asap to a high level is a good investment in your fighter force.
And... even though the Pony keeps your flower occupied for a long time, you can already raise selected animals to the point where they can evolve. That way, even without the evolution, you will already have raised them several levels and then you only need to take care of the evolutions later (at ease) to give them that final notch to "epicness". :P

Good luck and lemme know how you get on!

Thanks ogreve. I did just hatch & immediately put my prize pony into the flower.
I've been planting charm cherries & nexus nuts. I did spend more food during the last tournament to level up my Strawberry & Caturn as they seemed to be doing very well for me this last tournament. I do have the ancient sloth & super heron at epic. Working on getting the others there. I don't have a Vinotar. And still really want to expand to Treent, but with all this $ going out for food, I'm not keeping pace with that. And at some point I'm thinking I'll need to stockpile food back up for the next storybook. Always so much to do

[Hawksmoor]

Wifi issues prevented me from finishing this tournament. I only had 2 rounds left :-( This was the first tournament I wasn't able to complete. Oh well, maybe they'll offer the Timbear is a Spin To Win in the future.