A Guide to Snow Wars II

The basics of the game are simple. Your mission is to save the snowmen from invading Lupes and snow flinging Snowbeasts. And for your army is an arsenal of Catapult carrying Grundos that are all too ready to taste some snow.

Now for the battlefield. On your side of the battlefield, several (about 4) snowmen shall be placed in random order among invisible grids. Your territory takes up most of the left side of the battlefield. The on charging Lupes and Snowbeasts are on the right side, eagerly running toward you. They are on the right side, and their area is much smaller than yours. An icy line separates the two important areas so that you can tell them apart.

Due to the fact that this game is somewhat similar to Grundo Snowthrow, the point of the game is obviously for you to launch snowballs at the enemy. How ever, the enemies in this game are not only Snowbeasts, but Lupes as well. The Snowbeasts carry giant snow Flinging Catapults that can destroy a block of ice in one hit and can move it around at its will. However, they cannot cross the Icy Borderline. The Lupes simply charge forward, past the border and into your territory in an attempt to run into the snowmen to knock them down. If all the snowmen are knocked down, then it’s undoubtedly game over for you. It’s a ingenious partnership: The snowbeasts shoot down the walls, and then the Lupes charge in.

Well how do you protect the snowmen? Simple: By building blocks of ice around them. At the beginning of the game you will be shown a number of square blocks of snow, bundled to together in a shape. You control the shape with your mouse and can move it around. To place the block(s) of snow on a chosen area, click the left mouse button. Now that you know this, anyone could figure out that you must surround the snowmen by placing the icy blocks around them. The next block(s) that come up are in a completely random order, number, and shape. If you are not interesting in using the next block you see, you have the ability to turn the block of ice by 90 degrees by a simple nudge of the spacebar. However, if you also find that that piece does not meet your expectations, you can press the spacebar again, but I’ll have to warn you that if you keep on pressing the spacebar, you are simply turning the blocks by 90 degrees and not changing the shape. In my opinion, it doesn’t matter what shape the blocks are in. Also, on a side note, you are not allowed to place Snowblocks on the big icy border line or on the enemy’s territory. This can be extremely annoying at times, but they are the rules of war.

But leave room for your offense and don’t get too carried away with surrounding the snowmen. You must leave room for your Grundos. You may only place your armed Grundos enclosed around the blocks of ice as well as the snowmen are. So if I were you I would make the barrier between the snowmen and the enemy as wide as possible so that the Grundos can fit in without a problem. Without your offense, you're doomed, as you’ll just have to watch the enemy tear down your defensive walls and pound the Snowmen into a pile of smooshed snow without doing anything about it.

But you can stop them, of course. It would be an impossibly difficult game if you couldn’t. You have Catapult bearing Grundos at your command, all of them as willing to save the snowmen, as the Snowbeasts and Lupes are willing to destroy them. To defend the snowmen, you must, first of all, place the Grundos wisely and start clicking on the Lupes and Snowbeasts. The Grundo(s) will hurl Snowballs at the area you clicked, hopefully the same area an invading Neopet was standing on.

The game is made up of three stages. I shall go through all of these stages in extreme detail. On stage one, you must protect the snowmen on your field with blocks of ice. On stage two, you must cleverly place your Grundo army inside your territory. And finally, on stage three, the Grundos must fling snowballs at the invaders. And then the stages repeat themselves over and over again.

Now for stage one. The first time you’re on Stage one, you have thirty seconds to surround your snowmen. On all the other times, you have fifteen seconds to do the job, half of your original time. But that’s still fair, since on those times you already have ice blocks around your Snowmen.

The first stage can be difficult for beginners. The first time I tried, I did you very slowly. I barely had time to enclose one snowman in a tiny square. Sometimes I wouldn’t even have time to do that and immediately lose the game, then and there. But on the good side, I learned my obvious lesson: Work as fast as you can. It doesn’t matter how pretty or neat the formation the blocks of snow are, it just matters if you enclose your snowmen and leave room for the Grundos So later I worked faster, clicking and pressing the space bar somewhat rapidly. But this was also quite slow. It was possible to enclose one snowman within the time limit like this, but wouldn’t it be better to enclose two so that the Grundos have more room to stay? So I decided to just click like I was crazy. It turned out to be the best choice I made in this game. Move the mouse in a square around a Snowman of your choice. While doing this, click the left mouse button as fast as you can. Be sure to make the square big! If you do this, you won’t even need to click the space bar. When you’re done, fill in any gaps that you’ve missed. Pressing the space bar is helpful here and can save time.

After the first Snowman is safe, don’t waste any time in admiring your work. Move onto the next snowman and do the same thing! With this strategy I have enclosed three snowmen on the first round. But be careful. Sometimes the Snowmen are placed right next to the border, and since you can’t put any blocks on the border, you could waste a lot of time trying to fit the blocks in perfectly between the snowman and the borderline. I choose to ignore those Snowmen and aim at surrounding the ones in the center. The ones at the far left aren’t exactly great places to surround your snowmen at the beginning of the game, since the Catapults have to be shot at a farther distance after you place the Grundos there. It’s better to surround them in the middle of war.

Now for stage II: Placing those good old Grundos onto the battlefield. As I told you earlier, you can only place those Grundos in an enclosed Space. I would place them as far right as possible so that the snowballs they throw will have to travel a short distance. So don’t place your precious main offense anywhere, because there is a dead end to how many Grundos you can put on the battlefield. If you had enclosed one snowman in the first stage, then you may only place two catapults in that enclosed space (if there’s room. If there’s no room, then no Grundos) If you had enclosed 2, then you may place 3 Grundos into the battle, and then 4, 5, 6, and so on. There’s no actual time limit for placing the catapults, but sometimes when in the heat of battle, a couple of Lupes that you didn’t hit on Stage three might walk along and smash a few Snowmen if you don’t hurry up and place your Grundo Comrades quickly.

The more Grundos on the field, the more efficient, convenient, and easier it is for you to conquer the entire battle field. If you have 4 Grundos on the first time you get to Stage three, you find that it is extremely easy to wipe out all the Snowbeasts and charging Lupes with a few simple clicks of the mouse. So you better enclose those Snowmen in snow quick, because the more barriers mean more Grundos, and more Grundos means quicker success.

And the finally, Stage Three, the moment we’ve all been waiting for! What do we do on Stage Three, you ask? Well if you were successful in placing the Grundos in there places you can now hurl snowballs at the oncoming Lupes and Snowbeasts. I like to wipe out the Snowbeasts before the Lupes. First, click directly on the Snowbeast you’re aiming for. Sometimes they move out of the way, but constant movement of the Snowbeasts is somewhat rare. So after they move, simply click them again after they stop as fast as you can.

After eliminating the enemy's Catapults, now you’ll have to eliminate the Lupes. You can try clicking on the Lupes, but they’ll most likely move forward after you click, so I like to click on the space right in front of them. Sometimes, I just as fast as I can the areas around them. But the Snowbeasts are the real threat, as they are the ones that bring down your walls. If there were no Snowbeasts, then the Lupes couldn’t do anything. But if there were no Lupes and only Snowbeasts, they could do your walls so much damage that you wouldn’t be able to fix them within the time limit.

It's really hard to get far into the game, yet it's so easy to lose. So be careful! The quickest way to lose is to simply not have any Snowmen surrounded by blocks of snow on Stage One. This was how I lost every single time I played. The other way to lose is when the Lupes have destroyed every single Snowman in your territory. But it should take a long time for that to happen, anyways.

Well then, I guess I’ve covered all the basic strategy in Snow Wars II, and I hope that this guide helped you a lot. But, then again, knowing some strategy isn’t going to get you a Snow Wars II trophy. You’ll have to practice, practice, and practice some more. What makes Snow Wars II really unique and separate itself from other games is that it’s actually fun to play it every day, no matter how many times. I even play it for fun after sending my score three times. So then, good luck, and have fun!