Shaman has death and souls.
It is probably the trickiest one to work with, at least it was for me, because the combos are quite small in scale compared to most other classes.
Curses is usually the most straight-forward , you pile up increasingly large stacks of curse on enemies and it kills them over time.
You "only" have to use all possible ways to apply curses, along with a few boosts from buildings.

Souls are death-based thing are usually cards that get an increasingly large stack when they are in your hand and unit die, greatly boosting the effects of the next time you play the card (it keeps its stacks if discarded, a bit similar to stocks for the navigator but used all in one go).
The soul reaper for example gets a bonus attack for the next time you use it based on the souls, starting at a relatively low 4 attack but potentially getting enough power to one-shot even bosses, with a decent amount of health (36) to help it survive.
There are also buildings that have their effect based on souls rather than a timer like most buildings with an active effect.

Souls might not look all that impressive at first glance since it requires your units and/or enemies to die in large amounts to be worth it, but the shaman also has units that are relatively cheap with a timer, or a summoner that periodically spawns weak skeletons with a timer.
All of these timed units also produce souls when they die, and each soul is given to all buildings/cards that can receive them.
You need a bit of luck to get the ball rolling but if you manage to start it then it can snowball to incredible proportions and it includes a card that gives you gold based on the amount of souls on the card as well.
The release skill card allows you to deal damage based on the amount of souls in an area, which can quickly delete a whole group of enemies in a single cast and produce plenty of souls for the other cards/buildings.


Scientist can be a bit weird at first since the other commanders are mostly about "passive" defenses (units, turrets and such) when the scientist is mostly about using active skills.
It houses some of the most broken mechanics in the form of "re-use".
That card plays the next skill card 2 (3 if upgraded) times, which can already be fairly stong in itself but it can be chained with other re-use cards, with a multiplicative effect.
For example, playing 3 upgraded re-use cards in a row means that the next skill card would be played a total of 27 times (3x3x3).
Even seemingly basic skills like shock can absolutely melt anything near where you cast it with this.
You also have a "military" unit that should be kept away from combat and that boosts damage from skill cards.

While usually not a main way to play, the scientist also has robotic units that are usually not that great (with a few exception like the one that stuns enemies when it dies for example).
Those fill your deck with one-time use scrap cards that are initially pretty bad since it dilutes your deck.
But you can make use of the scrap as well to get plenty of gold to sustain sumoning more of those robots for example.
I haven't found any completely broken combos through this but I did win a few times.


The navigator has too many things, which can make playing with it a bit confusing at first.
Stocks is the mechanics you see right away since it is on a card you get right away.
It is mostly a counter on how many times you can play it, but a few cards have an effect based on the stock like the handgunner that gets a noticeable attack speed based on stock (it can be a machine-gun with a lot of stocks, making it quite deadly).

There are also some cards that increase in cost each time they are played (notoriety), with relatively few ways to decrease that cost.
They are typically very cheap at first but useless after a while unless you manage to get something to reduce the cost.
The mortar is an example of such units and it is plenty powerful, with great range, just not quite accurate.
Already deployed black beard units get extra health each time a notoriety card is played, making them potentially very tanky if you have cards like orange to heal them every now and then as well.

Then come the quests, which are special cards with conditions you need to fill while the card is in your hand (not necessarily all at once, they keep track of how far you went if they get discarded and sent to your deck again).
The reward is different for each quest but the initial quests reward you with a special card that gives you bonuses when it is in your hand.
After the normal quests, you will get quests that reward you with a "boss" treasure chest, the same ones you get after clearing a boss wave.
It goes without saying that being able to farm those chests can bring you quite potent rewards, like legendary cards and advisors in relatively large quantities.

The black market allows you to get cards from other commanders.
The random nature of markets combined with the large amount of cards it can draw from makes it very unreliable, but it means that you can potentially get your hand on some even more broken combos by getting some of the best cards from others.

Last but not least are the ships.
Each ship has a different function, with the basic ones being about sacrificing a card to get a random card from other leaders (better rarity when the ship is upgraded).
There is one of such ship for each category of cards.
There is also a treasure ship that gives you a normal chest (the one you get after clearing a non-boss wave) after 120 seconds (80 if upgraded).

Both types of treasure chests being obtainable in relatively large quantities is something as broken as you might think.
In the desert map for example, the normal chests allow you to get extra armor for all of your deployed units, directly lowering the damage done by enemies, potentially completely negating it.
The blessing from the coast is less potent since it "only" temporarily upgrades all of your cards.
The forest "only" gives you the ability to upgrade buildings already placed but it means that you don't have to upgrade the card before placing it or place it twice to upgrade the building.

There is also a unit called "treasure hunter" that gets a permanent attack increase every time a treasure is opened (for all deployed units of it, not the card itself), which can combo ridiculously well with those two.
It is in fact one of the very few units that can increase attack power to ridiculous amounts, being able to one-shot anything even beyond wave 30 (one of the ways to aim at wave 120, usually in the desert to couple it with the armor increase and re-use to make the armor increase even more broken).
The only other units with the potential to raise the attack to ridiculous amounts are the "service" units (no ratizen cost but on a timer) from the merchants, when coupled with plenty of ways to increase their timer and the "merc leader" advisor (gives them +1 attack every time their timer gets increased).
4+ upgraded caravan leaders on each side and that leader makes them permanent and constantly increasing their attack power.
Golden archers being those that benefit the most from this since they are ranged units with long range (a bit bad at aiming but enough of them makes it a non-issue since they only cost gold and no ratizens to deploy anyway).



Anyway, all leaders have fairly powerful combos, some are more reliant on specific cards than others and the 3 of the second row are a bit harder to play with.
It is completely possible to not be able to win sometimes when RNG is against you of course.
When you level up the leaders to unlock cards, they usually give you major hints on the various strategies of the leader though what gets unlocked by reinforcing said strategies.
It is a good idea to pay attention to the cards themselves but also what they combo with or what "kind" of cards they are.

I realize that this is a really long post, and not everything might make sense to you right away, but I hope it helps since those three leaders can be quite fun to play as well.

Originally posted by Fel:

Shaman has death and souls.
It is probably the trickiest one to work with, at least it was for me, because the combos are quite small in scale compared to most other classes.
Curses is usually the most straight-forward , you pile up increasingly large stacks of curse on enemies and it kills them over time.
You "only" have to use all possible ways to apply curses, along with a few boosts from buildings.

Souls are death-based thing are usually cards that get an increasingly large stack when they are in your hand and unit die, greatly boosting the effects of the next time you play the card (it keeps its stacks if discarded, a bit similar to stocks for the navigator but used all in one go).
The soul reaper for example gets a bonus attack for the next time you use it based on the souls, starting at a relatively low 4 attack but potentially getting enough power to one-shot even bosses, with a decent amount of health (36) to help it survive.
There are also buildings that have their effect based on souls rather than a timer like most buildings with an active effect.

Souls might not look all that impressive at first glance since it requires your units and/or enemies to die in large amounts to be worth it, but the shaman also has units that are relatively cheap with a timer, or a summoner that periodically spawns weak skeletons with a timer.
All of these timed units also produce souls when they die, and each soul is given to all buildings/cards that can receive them.
You need a bit of luck to get the ball rolling but if you manage to start it then it can snowball to incredible proportions and it includes a card that gives you gold based on the amount of souls on the card as well.
The release skill card allows you to deal damage based on the amount of souls in an area, which can quickly delete a whole group of enemies in a single cast and produce plenty of souls for the other cards/buildings.


Scientist can be a bit weird at first since the other commanders are mostly about "passive" defenses (units, turrets and such) when the scientist is mostly about using active skills.
It houses some of the most broken mechanics in the form of "re-use".
That card plays the next skill card 2 (3 if upgraded) times, which can already be fairly stong in itself but it can be chained with other re-use cards, with a multiplicative effect.
For example, playing 3 upgraded re-use cards in a row means that the next skill card would be played a total of 27 times (3x3x3).
Even seemingly basic skills like shock can absolutely melt anything near where you cast it with this.
You also have a "military" unit that should be kept away from combat and that boosts damage from skill cards.

While usually not a main way to play, the scientist also has robotic units that are usually not that great (with a few exception like the one that stuns enemies when it dies for example).
Those fill your deck with one-time use scrap cards that are initially pretty bad since it dilutes your deck.
But you can make use of the scrap as well to get plenty of gold to sustain sumoning more of those robots for example.
I haven't found any completely broken combos through this but I did win a few times.


The navigator has too many things, which can make playing with it a bit confusing at first.
Stocks is the mechanics you see right away since it is on a card you get right away.
It is mostly a counter on how many times you can play it, but a few cards have an effect based on the stock like the handgunner that gets a noticeable attack speed based on stock (it can be a machine-gun with a lot of stocks, making it quite deadly).

There are also some cards that increase in cost each time they are played (notoriety), with relatively few ways to decrease that cost.
They are typically very cheap at first but useless after a while unless you manage to get something to reduce the cost.
The mortar is an example of such units and it is plenty powerful, with great range, just not quite accurate.
Already deployed black beard units get extra health each time a notoriety card is played, making them potentially very tanky if you have cards like orange to heal them every now and then as well.

Then come the quests, which are special cards with conditions you need to fill while the card is in your hand (not necessarily all at once, they keep track of how far you went if they get discarded and sent to your deck again).
The reward is different for each quest but the initial quests reward you with a special card that gives you bonuses when it is in your hand.
After the normal quests, you will get quests that reward you with a "boss" treasure chest, the same ones you get after clearing a boss wave.
It goes without saying that being able to farm those chests can bring you quite potent rewards, like legendary cards and advisors in relatively large quantities.

The black market allows you to get cards from other commanders.
The random nature of markets combined with the large amount of cards it can draw from makes it very unreliable, but it means that you can potentially get your hand on some even more broken combos by getting some of the best cards from others.

Last but not least are the ships.
Each ship has a different function, with the basic ones being about sacrificing a card to get a random card from other leaders (better rarity when the ship is upgraded).
There is one of such ship for each category of cards.
There is also a treasure ship that gives you a normal chest (the one you get after clearing a non-boss wave) after 120 seconds (80 if upgraded).

Both types of treasure chests being obtainable in relatively large quantities is something as broken as you might think.
In the desert map for example, the normal chests allow you to get extra armor for all of your deployed units, directly lowering the damage done by enemies, potentially completely negating it.
The blessing from the coast is less potent since it "only" temporarily upgrades all of your cards.
The forest "only" gives you the ability to upgrade buildings already placed but it means that you don't have to upgrade the card before placing it or place it twice to upgrade the building.

There is also a unit called "treasure hunter" that gets a permanent attack increase every time a treasure is opened (for all deployed units of it, not the card itself), which can combo ridiculously well with those two.
It is in fact one of the very few units that can increase attack power to ridiculous amounts, being able to one-shot anything even beyond wave 30 (one of the ways to aim at wave 120, usually in the desert to couple it with the armor increase and re-use to make the armor increase even more broken).
The only other units with the potential to raise the attack to ridiculous amounts are the "service" units (no ratizen cost but on a timer) from the merchants, when coupled with plenty of ways to increase their timer and the "merc leader" advisor (gives them +1 attack every time their timer gets increased).
4+ upgraded caravan leaders on each side and that leader makes them permanent and constantly increasing their attack power.
Golden archers being those that benefit the most from this since they are ranged units with long range (a bit bad at aiming but enough of them makes it a non-issue since they only cost gold and no ratizens to deploy anyway).



Anyway, all leaders have fairly powerful combos, some are more reliant on specific cards than others and the 3 of the second row are a bit harder to play with.
It is completely possible to not be able to win sometimes when RNG is against you of course.
When you level up the leaders to unlock cards, they usually give you major hints on the various strategies of the leader though what gets unlocked by reinforcing said strategies.
It is a good idea to pay attention to the cards themselves but also what they combo with or what "kind" of cards they are.

I realize that this is a really long post, and not everything might make sense to you right away, but I hope it helps since those three leaders can be quite fun to play as well.

thanks for the tips

if you're struggling on Navigator - pick up Treasure Hunter, deploy a few before wave 15 and keep them alive. if you get them before wave 10, it's basically an auto win. I could go into great detail about how to play Navigator, but that's the most basic thing.

Scientist is so so so easy. I just have female scientist copy an upgraded house card so I get a high max population/good taxes. Then later I copy the egg monster. Sometimes I'll copy lab rats, or crossbow mice, or hyper beams.

Theres a structure that refreshes your leader ability as science rat and then your so busted.