Alternate thread title: how to win Daimyo while spending under $50. The answer, of course, is Takeda Shingen of Kai, five water guns, and high rank lab and temple skills. I expected water guns to quickly become the universally used weapon in the tournament, as they're the strongest weapon in the game--even counting things on the Japanese wiki that aren't released here unless I'm misreading the awkward translations. They're also 2.4k cost tier for upgrades rather than 6.4k like most endgame weapons.

Just because I keep track of such things, I've spent exactly 4620 gold on the game thus far. That includes 3100 for koban before the monthly pass existed, three monthly passes, and 20 for the first round of the "step up summon" event that has run twice.

I've drawn 10 UR generals directly, as well as obtaining 7 UR EVO or universal EVO cards. I've also drawn 159 SSR generals, including SSR EVO cards but not universal EVO cards, as the latter really should be used to evolve UR generals even if the card is technically SSR. In all cases, the cards include event rewards, login rewards, and battle rewards, not just the gacha. Those counts are totals since the game went live about four months ago. That is, on average, about 1 UR per week and significantly over 1 SSR per day. If you disregard the recently concluded summer event that was technically two events but nearly identical to each other (about 20 soul tickets worth of medium soul cards and 12 SSR EVO cards), it's about one SSR general per day. SSR isn't really that rare in this game.

I don't have the exact numbers, but I'm guessing that about 20 of the SSR generals and I think only one of the UR came from summons paid for by koban, mostly but not entirely the platinum x11 summons--and that includes koban earned in-game. That's a small fraction of what I've gotten, and certainly less than I got from the recent summer events alone. The game does rely on being able to intermittently click to start another battle while doing something else for hours at a time, but it's not really pay to win. And it's certainly not as pay to win as some of the whale-bait events make it look to someone unfamiliar with the game, such as the current one of spend $250 to get 1 jade ticket, 9 soul tickets, 20 million copper, 3 UR EVO cards, 3 SSR EVO cards, and some other stuff. Thank you to the people who pay for that to keep the game running, but it won't help you as much as you think.

I had actually written off this tournament as a loss before being surprised to see that I won. Three of my five inherited generals on the winning team are only SR rarity, not even SSR. I have some others that I'm working on leveling, but got just after the summer event that was handing out so many experience cards ended. And then I can have the strongest possible general in the entire game: a Takeda Shingen of Kai, with an inherited Koyo Gunkan skill from another Takeda Shingen of Kai, plus a water gun. Stacking that sort of team-wide buffs is devastatingly powerful, even if that general won't actually kill much herself.

For those on my server who are wondering, I'm planning on daimyo world bosses at 1 pm EDT (server time) on Saturday and Sunday, and then 8:35 pm EDT for the weekdays. I'll edit the cabinet message to say so when I figure out how. I'm guessing that I won't have access until tomorrow, as Temp was the daimyo to pick the boss times this week.