And worse still, the heroes you're getting? They come from the same pool of heroes that the other seven teams are purchasing from. You aren't guaranteed any one particular hero. The heroes you select for your team are offered to you largely at random. There's a fly in the ointment, however, and it's critical to what makes an Auto Battler interesting. There are seven other players in the game, and each of them has their own heroes, game boards and health totals. If you win your battle, you get a bit of extra gold and everything is cool. The basics are simple - at the start of your game, you select a hero, you place the hero on the game board, and then it battles on your behalf. Once the battle phase begins, the fighting is automatic - hence Auto Battler. The Auto Battler name comes from what happens next - your heroes duke it out against another team, and the results are determined without any input from you.

The Dota 2 custom map is called Auto Chess largely for the board the game takes place on - an eight-by-eight battlefield upon which you place your team of heroes during a preparation phase.

What am I playing?Īuto Battlers, or Auto Chesses - as they would be known if we stuck with calling it Auto Chess as a genre - are relatively new in the gaming world, entering the scene this year by way of Drodo's custom map on the Dota 2 Arcade, where it single-handedly reminded non-Dota players that Dota 2 exists.Īs a concept it's quite a bit older, however, hearkening back to Warcraft 3 custom maps like Pokemon Defense, which took Tower Defense and turned it into a hero-based team management game. Maybe that fad will return, but it's not coming this year, because in 2019 we've got Auto Battlers like Dota Underlords, Teamfight Tactics and Auto Chess.

Auto chess unit list