True to its name, Toy Army Men Defense: Merge puts us in command of our very own army of plastic toy soldiers, like the ones many of us had when we were growing up. However, not limited to simply commanding your troops, this tower defense title also lets us recruit a wide variety of units, as well as combine identical pieces to create stronger troops of higher categories, all in the name of protecting your territory and preventing enemies from making it past your fortifications.

Toy Army Men Defense: Merge Tips and Tricks For Starting on the Right Foot

In other words, this is a tower defense game with plastic army men as the characters. If you’re into that style of aesthetic, and enjoy games of this genre, then this one is definitely for you. However, while the tower defense gameplay is present throughout the entire experience, Toy Army Men Defense also incorporates merge elements into the loop, allowing players to recruit troops of many different levels, and then combining identical units to create stronger troops, simply by merging them together.

With that being said, there’s quite a lot to learn about Toy Army Men Defense: Merge, at least if you’re serious about getting into the game. For this reason, we decided to create a guide with the best beginner tips and tricks for this tower defense merge game.

Play on BlueStacks to Get a Better View

Despite being quite easy and comfortable to play on your phone, Toy Army Men Defense can actually be enjoyed much more if you play it on your computer. This is mostly because the game has very small text and dialog boxes, as well as tiny visual elements, which can make it very hard to make out at a glance what’s happening on the screen. If you add to this the fact that you’re playing it on an equally small smartphone touchscreen, then you have a recipe for disaster.

Toy Army Men Defense: Merge Tips and Tricks For Starting on the Right Foot

Instead of subjecting your eyes to such strain, you could Play Toy Army Men Defense on PC with BlueStacks, and enjoy this tower defense title on your large computer monitor, which will give you a much, much better view of the game at all times. Heck, you can even set it to fullscreen and forget about the complications that come from playing on your mobile.

Merge Units as Much as You Can

This game doesn’t hold your hand very much, in the sense that, as soon as you start, you’re basically immediately left to your own devices after a short explanation. Nevertheless, the first few stages are quite straightforward, and you can defend yourself from the onslaught of enemies with a few basic units manning the trenches. Nevertheless, a good habit to pick up early on is to combine your units as much as possible.

Toy Army Men Defense: Merge Tips and Tricks For Starting on the Right Foot

Combining troops in this game is easy, and only requires you to take two identical units and drag and drop one on top of the other. This will merge the troops into another of the same category, but one tier higher, making it much stronger than its lower-level counterparts. 

Merging is the basis of your defenses in Toy Army Men Defense, and you should always try to combine your troops whenever you get the chance. Remember that you can always purchase new units by clicking on the corresponding button in the middle of the Merging Center. You’ll need lots of gold to sustain your production, however, so make sure to farm quests and missions as often as you can.

Work on Side Missions and Daily Quests

As we mentioned at the beginning, Toy Army Men Defense doesn’t have much in the way of guidance, which can complicate matters for new players. However, one of the best ways to proceed, especially in the beginning when you’re starved for resources, is to work on completing your chapter quests and daily quests.

Toy Army Men Defense: Merge Tips and Tricks For Starting on the Right Foot

You can find these tasks by clicking on the envelope icon on the top left, just under your profile picture. In this menu, you’ll find a list of quests that you can complete in order to earn useful rewards including paint, plastic, training speedups, training dummies, and more. The daily quests, in particular, while they don’t give rewards directly, they give you activity points. And for every 20 points, you can claim a chest that can give you a variety of different items such as the aforementioned speedups and resources, but also recruitment tokens, material selection chests, and much more.

If you have limited time to play and need to choose what to do for the day, you should definitely consider prioritizing the daily quests. Getting all 140 activity points can give you massive rewards, which will help you to progress as fast as possible.

Upgrade Your Base

While Toy Army Men Defense is mostly a tower defense game, it also has a base building aspect in which you must manage and upgrade a variety of buildings. Working on these buildings increases your overall power, but also grants specific bonuses. For instance, by working on your Firepower Center, you can upgrade the base level of your units, letting you purchase troops of higher base levels directly, instead of having to merge soldiers for them.

Toy Army Men Defense: Merge Tips and Tricks For Starting on the Right Foot

And just like with the Firepower Center, there are other buildings that you can upgrade in order to maximize your power in this game. Keep in mind, however, that your buildings can never be of a higher level than your HQ, so try to focus on this one first whenever you get the chance.

Use The Auto-Merge Feature to Speed Up Merging

As we’ve said multiple times already, the main way of upgrading your units in this game is by merging them with other identical units. This is fine at the beginning, when you’re doing most of your early combining, but can get quickly tedious as you progress. Luckily, the developers implemented an auto-merge feature that you can use once per day to make the CPU merge all your units for you for a limited period.

Toy Army Men Defense: Merge Tips and Tricks For Starting on the Right Foot

Due to the limited availability of this feature, you should only activate auto-merge when you’re actively playing, in order to get the most out of it. Keep in mind, however, that you can get more allowances either by increasing your VIP rank or by paying for it with gold. Regardless, whenever auto-merge is active, you can go absolutely crazy with buying as many defenses as you can and having the computer combine them for you. This is a great way to grow your power in a very short period.