Battle strategies

Hi folks!

Today, let's take a closer look at the core of Warlords - the battles, and how to win.

Winning battles gives you many essential items:

• units that fought gain XP (no matter if you won, or lost),
• gold
• weapons, armour and banners for heroes
• upgrade items
• regimental shards for hero level-ups

When your units take damage, it takes real-world time for them to recover. You can speed up that process by using diamonds, but these are rare, and the whole point of this blog is how to avoid spending outrageous amounts of real-world money, so let's look at alternatives.

Basically, we want to have a strategy for picking our battles in such a way that we can get a couple of victories in a row, before we have to let our troops rest.

Picking the right battle

Battle difficulty is marked with "skulls" on the world map. One-skull battles should be pretty easy to win without major casualties. Two-skull battles are somewhat harder, but well doable with the right strategy.

For three-skulls, you'll struggle to win at all, with major to almost complete casualties. Four-skull battles are really just there to tease you.

Crushing victory

There's a second aspect to picking your battles, besides difficulty - you'll get a limited amount of turns to win a "crushing" victory. This will give a substantial gold bonus (up to doubling your gold gain). And gold is always in short supply - higher-level upgrades are expensive, and while we could use diamonds to buy gold, the exchange rate is terrible, and, of course, diamonds are rare.

A good approach is to pick some easy one-skull battles in quick succession, and then going all-in for a two-skull one. This will leave your units depleted, but you can then put the game away, and pick up again with fresh units after a couple of hours.

Always try to get the "crushing" victory - you'll need the gold, and it makes the challenge more interesting as well.

The crucial first turn

The biggest advantage that you have on your side is the "first turn" - you get to deal damage first. And since most units deal damage according to their size, you can severely depleting the enemy forces in your first attack. One exception is the Guardian class, who can deal disproportionate damage with their "Retribution" perk.

Usually, you'll encounter two kinds of maps: Those where you want to attack in the first turn, and those where you want to evade.

It all comes down to range. Consider the Archer unit: she moves three tiles, has a range of three tiles, and can use the "Rain of Fire" perk to extend damage range to four tiles, so their range is six tiles, all in all. Next up are Cavalry (up to five tiles movement, one tile range) and Mages (three tiles move, two tiles range).

If you can deal some serious damage in the first turn, or have no way of a tactical retreat to get out of range, attacking forward is the only option. Otherwise, step back just out of enemy range, and do a full-impact attack next turn.

Examples

In the first map, all our units are in range of the enemy archers. This is a two-skull battle, the enemy heroes are mostly three-star, higher level ones, so we can't steamroll them.

But since there's nowhere for us to retreat, there's only one way, forward. Make use of the terrain (forest tiles reduce damage by 50%), and use the tactical capabilities of your units.

Most importantly, the Archers can use the "Rain of Fire" perk to deal damage and almost immobilise enemy units for three turns. In combination with the Guardian's blocking ability, we can focus down the front units, while delaying the ones further back.

Now, in the second map, we have a choke point with good defence in the centre, tempting to occupy directly, and then let them run into it.

Don't be fooled. The enemy has two ranged units, and especially the Mages are strong against our frontline units. They also have Pikes, who can remove our units from the forest defences and expose them before attacking. Lastly, the forest is lined by a ridge, which gives enemies attacking downhill a 50% attack bonus. 

A better strategy is to just move our archers one tile back, and let the enemy move first. This should at least bring their Mages into our range the next turn, allowing our Archers to take them out. We can then push into the forest ourselves, and pick up the enemies at the choke point.

We still won't get through without some damage, but we've got three ranged units, two Archers and the Mages, which are going to deal devastating damage, forest or not. The Guardians have high health, probably our Cavalry will take a decent beating, though.

Reserves

Which brings us to the last point for today - reserves. In the second scenario, I'd probably not be using the Cavalry in the next battle, since they're understrength. But I have a strong Pike unit in reserve, as well as a somewhat weaker second Cavalry unit.

So even after a damaging battle, I can still fight another full one (5v5 or 5v7) by using my reserves. Usually, I play three to five battles in a round, exhausting my units in the last one, then put the game aside and come back to it later, when they've recovered.







 

Warlords upgrade system

Hi folks!

After we've got an overview of the different unit types last time, let's take a closer look at the upgrade system today.

Battalion upgrades

In order to upgrade the battalions, we need the respective upgrade items, and cash. The items come from crates, the marketplace and, mostly, winning battles.

Levelling up the battalion via XP gained from battles opens up new upgrade paths.

There are three stats that can be upgraded:

• HP - amount of damage each unit can take before they are disabled
• Damage - amount of damage each unit dishes out
• number of soldiers in the battalion

Each upgrade level has four items, and once all four are purchased, you get a bonus, which is often considerable.

Upgrades cost cash, which is non-purchasable with real-world money, but has to be won in battles.

Upgrades take a while to complete - the higher the level, the longer the wait. Given that there are five classes, there's heaps of upgrading to do, and waits can be skipped using the secondary "diamonds" currency.

Avoiding spending real money on those (you won't really get many, unless you put some serious cash into them) is a matter of scheduling. Quickly check occasionally if an upgrade has finished, and start another one, even if you don't plan to battle. Only takes a second, and you'll be constantly upgrading, improving your units.

Upgrade priority

Upgrades are pretty balanced - you'll need all three (health, damage and soldier count). Personally, I put a slight priority on soldier count, but they're almost equally important.

A bigger factor is the bonus set. They're equal across units in terms of soldier count, but e.g. Guardians get better bonus HP, Archers get high damage output etc. - so keep the roles in mind, and go with your favourite units.

Hero upgrades

A secondary upgrade system is the hero level, counted in "stars". You collect "shards", via the premium crate, special battles or rare loot. Levelling up the hero increases offence/defence capabilities massively, and allows for better gear.

Gear levels follow the usual pattern (gray - common, green - uncommon, blue - rare, purple - epic, orange - legendary). Someone has clearly been playing "Need For Speed" :).

There are three types of gear:

• Weapons - these can have critical damage or magical damage, which can easily double a hit
• Armour - increases physical and magical resistance. I usually go with physical primarily, since mages are fairly easy to snipe, and they're the only unit dealing magical damage.
• Banner - increases offence, which is weighed against the enemy's defence stat, to determine how much damage is caused, with other factors. Can also give critical hit chance.

So higher level, higher gear. Gears themselves can be upgraded for gold - higher level gear can be upgraded higher as well.

Getting shards

You get shards from the premium chest, which shows up every two days for free. You can buy them for diamonds, which is a decent investment, since you'll get some other stuff (upgrades, gear) as well, but it's a game of chance.

You get shards from the battles in the "Brigand Island" - three shards for every level you win. I recommend saving these up for when you unlock the secondary units, and you're in the situation of having to quickly level up, say, another archer unit. Since you can chose which unit gets the shards, they come in rather handy.

You can get shards from the loot wagon in special "Brigand" battles - make sure to have the unit you want shards for the most collect the wagon. That can be a tactical challenge by itself occasionally, since you have to collect it before you kill the last enemy unit.

Very rarely, you get shards in regular battles. Lastly, you can buy them for diamonds in the marketplace - that's probably the best investment for your diamonds, since you can control what you want to buy. Look out for more than one on offer, since they're discounted.

That's it for today. Next time, we'll have a look at battle strategies.

Warlords - units

Hi folks!

Let's take a bit of a closer look at the unit classes in Warlords, after the general free-to-play overview the other day. I quite enjoy turn-based games, so I'm having some fun with this one.

Guardians

Slow, close combat class. High health and armour ratings. They get a damage bonus against Pikes and Archers. Move three fields, one field range. Their passive perk prevents any adjacent enemy unit from moving more than one field past them. The active perk is a "last stand" attack, that deals damage according to damage taken so far by the Guardians.

These folks are frontline fighters. Get them in range quickly, to create choke points, allowing your ranged units to rain down hell on the enemy. Weak against Cavalry and Mages. Good to position in a forest (-50% damage taken), or town (30% damage healed per round). 

In a desperate battle, try to get them into a town, especially if both enemy positional perks (Cavalry push and Pikes seize position) are exhausted. The town will continuously heal the Guardians, and you can deal huge damage once when they're low on health. This way, you can hold out against, and wear down a much larger enemy force, and eventually win, even with just this one unit.

When fighting Guardians, always make sure to kill them entirely in one turn, or you'll get the "last stand" damage next round, which is hugely annoying. Best way to deal with them is to pry them into the open via Cavalry or Pikes, and then hit them with everything else.

Archers

My favourite unit. They have the longest range in the game - three fields movement, three fields ranged attack, plus one field on the area-of-effect "rain of fire" perk. This means they can usually attack across almost the whole battlefield in the first, crucial turn. Their health and armour is decent, direct damage is huge, and they get the class bonus against the pesky Mages.

Generally, try to position them in a defended (forest) or high-ground (+50% damage output) position, such that they can't be reached by enemy close range units. Guardians are their natural pair, since they prevent breakthroughs with their passive perk.

The Archers' active perk allows to create a three-by-three area of fire for three turns, which deals 25% of base damage each turn, and slows all enemy units to one field per turn. Against lower-class enemies, this can wipe out their entire army in one turn, and with high enough archer damage, it even hits stronger ones pretty badly.

More importantly, you can effectively block off certain areas of the battlefield, again creating chokepoints, or allowing enemies to be dealt with piecemeal.

My usual tactics is to position them in a safe (unreachable or defended) location in the first attacking turn, and take out the enemy Archers, or Mages, if they're unusually strong. Guardians, Pikes and Cavalry hold the line, and in the subsequent turns, the Archers obliterate one enemy after the other.

Be careful if they get caught at close range, as they'll no longer be able to use ranged attacks, unless you can move them away.

Archers are definitely worth having a good second unit of, although it took me bloody ages to get there (and then I got two subsequently).

Pikes

Pikes are decent front-line fighters, with the same range/movement as Guardians. They get a class bonus against Cavalry, and a defence & damage bonus when operating in closed ranks (adjacent to friendly units).

Their most powerful weapon is their active perk, "seize position". This one-off attack allows them to swap positions with an enemy unit before attacking. This is hugely annoying, when employed against you - have a cavalry unit on a forested hilltop, giving them +50% on damage and defence? Pikes go to into the swamp next to it (+50% damage taken), swap out with your cavalry, and you're hit with double damage + class bonus - and they sit in your nice, defensible spot for the next turn. Urgh.

Of course, you can use it the same way yourself, prying enemy units out of their frontline positions, shoving them into range of your own line (or into a swamp) and having them obliterated.

Cavalry

Cavalry units are the fastest movers - they have a natural move range of four fields, and their passive perk allows them to move an additional field at the cost of 50% damage reduction that turn. Cavalry gets a class bonus against Guardians. Their active perk is somewhat similar to the Pikes', but less useful - where Pikes can swap positions pre-attack, Cavalry can push an enemy unit out of their position post-attack, but only if the field to push into is unoccupied.

Cavalry is very useful at pushing through enemy lines early on, and getting a first strike against soft targets. The downside is that they'll be pretty much unsupported the next turn, and have the rest of the enemy line crush them, so be careful with those rushes.

I usually use them to either get a good shot at Archers or Mages, if they're in reach, or to defend in front of my own Archers, allowing them to get as close as possible to the enemy lines, and take a shot at their ranged units.

Mages

Lastly, we have spellcasters. They naturally are the weakest in close quarters combat, and their range of only two fields means they've got to get dangerously close to enemy positions to take a shot. This often means holding them back in the first attack, if you can't position them in a way that they won't be wiped out the next.

Their natural friends are the Guardians, since their battlefield control allows them closer to enemy positions. But their main weapon is their active perk: An area-of-effect spell with a range of two fields around their current position. It charges up at 25% damage per turn, so usually not something you want to use in the first attack anyway - but once it's ready, powerful Mages can wipe out most parts of the enemy army in one go, or at least do some serious damage.

Which is why I usually target enemy Mages early on.


That's it for the unit overview. Next time, we'll have a look at the upgrade system, and some more strategies of how to have fun without spending much real-world money.
  

 

Warlords - nice little hex tactical

Hi folks!

I started with a new game a while ago: "Warlords", a nice little hex-field, turn-based, tactical fantasy game in the ever-fashionable "Orcs vs Humans" genre.

Forget about the minimal storyline. You're in control of a group of regiments, of five different classes (warriors, pikes, cavalry, archers and mages), each led by a different hero. Each class has different strengths and weaknesses, of the paper-rock-scissors - variety.

Heroes gain XP, level up, and can be equipped with personal and battalion-level upgrades. Battles usually involve between three and five of your own regiments, and three to seven enemy ones.

Battles are short, and the game is quite snappy, with relatively low battery impact. All in all, it's a fun, non-brain-dead way to spend some minutes.

Financial aspects

Warlords has the common system of dual currencies - gold and diamonds (which are rare, and can be bought for real world money). There are no ads, which is a nice touch for a free-to-play game.

The game also doesn't rub "SPEND $$$ NOW OR FACE MASSIVE PAIN" in your face. Cash is earned by winning battles, and used to buy upgrades.

The main "nagging" system is wait-based. When a battalion is damaged in battle, it takes some time for it to recover to full strength. This is actually a neat strategic aspect, and not annoying at all. Of course, you could spend diamonds to skip that wait.

The second wait aspect is upgrade time - the higher the upgrade level, the longer the wait. Again, you could use diamonds to skip that, but it's really not necessary.

Lastly, you can use diamonds to buy "regiment shards", either via the merchant or the premium crate system, to level-up for better weapons and armour.

Obtaining premium currency

The ingame store is rather pricey - you can't do much with the $8 minimum purchase. A better way is to get diamonds through the
game, and not waste them on impatience.

There's a chance for getting diamonds in the Raider missions, and you get some for ranking in the monthly leaderboard as well.

Of course, you get regimental shards (the only thing you'd really want to spend diamonds on) occasionally for winning battles, so it's really more of a booster effect to get ahead in the game quickly.

Conclusion

All in all, I really quite like the game. It's well-designed, the developers are responsive, it's easy on the battery and loading times, non-naggy in terms of real-world $$$ and ad-free. I can recommend anyone who's into fantasy / turn-based-tactical to give it a go.

CSR Classics - making money

Hi folks!

After spending a bit of time with CSR Classics, here are some tips on how to get a decent amount of fun out of it, while not spending much money.

As mentioned previously, the primary means of real-world monetary extraction is the "secondary currency" trope, here called "gold". But before we get to that, let's look into the primary currency, "cash".

Cash

With cash, we can buy a fairly large number of cars, we can fully restore them, and we can get some customisations as well. You get cash for winning drag races. The races themselves give some amount of reward, but the big item here are "decals".

Decals are more-or-less decorative stickers we can put on our cars, and for some reason, they trigger a bonus when winning the race, which can more than double the amount you make.

Now, there are decals you can get for cash, and then there are those you can get for gold. Obviously, the best ones cost gold.

Gold

Which brings us, really, to the one most legitimate use of the sparse "free gold" the game is giving you: get decent decals. The extra cash doesn't seem all that important at the beginning, but it is essential to get anywhere without spending gold on stuff (which the game obviously tries to make us do).

Cars are divided into five tiers, and there are five levels in the game, with their respective bosses along the storyline. Each level has a couple of story races, special races, and the most important one: "regulation" races, which are infinite, and that's where we do our farming.

Goals

Considering that the tier five cars can easily cost millions in total to upgrade, that extra cash is really essential. So here's what we want to do:

Get a tier five car with the best possible decal

That'll give you about 20k cash per regulation race. On a single tank load, that's 200k, which takes a couple of minutes to get. With that kind of income under our belt, we can unlock most of the cash-only contents in the lower tiers easily. 

Strategy 

The primary means of getting there as fast as possible is focus. The game tries its best to distract you, with seemingly "high prize money" special races, multiplayer races and so on. 

Don't fall for any of this. The brand-specific races, while giving relatively high cash rewards, actually require a far bigger investment into upgrading a particular car to the level required to win these. It's a net loss.

Multiplayer gives almost nothing in terms of cash rewards, compared to what you can make on regulation in stage 5, while trying hard to get you to spend gold.

So, here it is: Focus on the story mode races, maybe spend some of the gold from the initial level-ups on a good decal early on, but save as much gold as you can for the stage five car.

I've gone with the Ford GT 40, but just pick whatever you're most comfortable with.

Upgrades

There are six areas you can upgrade your car:

• body : this unlocks decals, get it up to stage 4 as a priority, otherwise you're just wasting money with each race
• wheels : better wheels stop spinning earlier, which means you can nitro earlier. This is the second upgrade, after body, that affects the looks
• engine : stage 4 is essential here, as it increases top speed
• gearbox : quicker shifts
• carburettor : more engine power (acceleration)
• exhaust : the same, really
• nitro : longer boost times

I'd recommend going with body upgrades first to get the decals in. Depending on the kind of car (there are lightweight ones which accelerate quickly, and heavyweight ones with higher top speed), I'd then focus on engine and nitro, with the rest to follow.

Sometimes cheaper upgrades give you better results, so it's always a good idea to see if you can throw in an exhaust upgrade or similar.

That's it, really. Once you've got the cash income, you can collect, start making a bit of gold in multiplayer, finish up the remaining race types and so on.

I honestly got a bit bored with the lack of gameplay in the end, but it's a fun and pretty little game to kill some time occasionally.

CSR Classics

Hi folks!

Today, I'm going to talk about a different game I've been spending some time on the past days - CSR Classics. Basically, after the somewhat exhausting NFS Lunar New Year event, I wanted have a bit of a break. So let's take a look around in this "free to play" game, and see how we can have fun with it without spending much real world money.

Gameplay

Even for a mobile game, the gameplay is dead simple. My kid is playing "Lego City", which has a section of motorbike drag racing. You press a button to start, and then again to "gear up" when a light goes on. Press the buttons at the right time wins you the game.

This, if we're honest, is exactly how CSR Classics work. Rev the engine so the light goes green. Press "gear up" when the light goes green. Press "nitro" at your leisure. Done. Toddler-grade.

So if it's not the challenging / skilful gameplay, what is interesting about this?

The Good Parts

First thing to note, the graphics. This is, hands down, one of the most beautiful mobile games I've seen. Consistent 50's styling, HD graphics, everything shines and blings. No blocky graphics like we're seeing in NFS these days. Everything is absolutely smooth. Did I mention that the theme is stunning?

The UI integrates well with Android, and doesn't feel like a generic port. Controls are working the usual ways, including the back button. This "native" feel also shows up in resource usage - even on extended play sessions, this game doesn't seem to stress hardware much at all, and in return, doesn't burn much battery or create "the hottest phone on the market", literally.

Loading times between main menu and race are minimal, which is refreshing, especially coming from NFS' minute-long loading screens. Given, the race is extremely simplistic, so there may not be that much to load, but it still feels very quick, compared. Races themselves are usually done in 15s once started, so you can do farming without losing too much time.

Cars

As the name suggests, this is about "classic" cars, and boy are there plenty of them! Collecting and "restoring" is actually the main pull in the game for me.

You can buy cars in two states - "unloved" (rusty and barebones) and "loved" (with nice paint job and some upgrades). Cars also come in different stages / levels, and there's a story mode with some boss characters and a thin narrative - standard stuff. Although I got to say, nicely done to add to the 50's atmosphere.

To give you a bit of an impression, here are the cars I've got so far, after about four days of playing (no real money spent so far). All bought "unloved" (rusty).

The first car, a Chevy Impala. Body fully restored, engine etc. enough to make it to tier 2.

Next up, an old Mercedes. You need a "tiered" car, so once you make it to the next tier, you start with a new one.

For tier 3, which I just started, I chose to go with "The King" - a Plymouth Superbird. It's still pretty rusty, although some body work has been done already.

I got sidetracked by a special event - pickups - so the cash went there for now.

Money Traps

Given the theme of this blog, and the fact that we're talking about free-to-play games here, of course there's the "meta-game" of the developers trying everything in their might to part us from some real-world cash.

For the basics, we've got the "dual currency" trope - we've got cash, which you earn by racing or buy directly, and we've got "gold", which is much harder to come by "naturally". As usual, there are many silly ways how you can spend gold, and only very few that make sense.

There's quite a range of cars that can only be bought with gold. All "loved" cars require gold expense. But there's a decent range of cars through all tiers that can be bought for cash - and we're not talking "two-weeks-of-severe-farming" kind of cash, but very reasonable.

On the high-pressure / psy-ops front, there is a whole range of things I've seen so far.

• "once-in-a-lifetime-offer" : the "agent" character (who we appear to be romantically involved with) regularly pops up with these, giving gold discounts of about 75% on certain cars
• "miss-out" button : The cancel button on all special offers is lovingly called "miss out". Hint, hint.
• "you-need-superpowers-to-get-the-prize" : after you've made it through a free section of a certain race type, you need to start investing gold towards an often vaguely-defined "big prize". Or "miss out".
• "wait-time corruption" : you can speed up delivery of stuff by paying gold.

And a range more. All in all, it's pretty unsubtle, in-your-face-give-me-money. But somehow endearing in its directness, and fair in its limitations so far.

Conclusion

It's a fun little game, with not much of a skill challenge, but very beautiful retro style. Doesn't take much of your time, and has a nice collector trigger. I'll be playing this one for a bit more, and add some strategies etc.

Lunar New Year Event - Aftermath

Hi folks!

The Lunar New Year event has ended. I've been playing quite diligently, making as much use as possible of the free tickets, just to see how far that would get me, and what would be required to complete it.

In the end, I made it quite far, but didn't complete the final run. Here's where I left off.

The Car

From all "red envelopes", I ended up getting blueprints once (that's where the 2 extra come from). Still, I'm 8 short of six stars, and probably another 25 short of a full upgrade.

Since they sell in packs of five, I'd need 35 or seven packs, at a price of 250 gold each, leading to an all-in-all investment of 1750 gold for the blueprints alone (that's more than a monthly gold card would yield).

The remaining races

I actually came pretty close, but would have needed 11 PR points more to even fulfill the requirements for the final race. That's probably 15 tickets worth of farm racing, at 80 gold per 5, adding another 240 gold to the tally of almost 2000 gold. 

The more expensive option would have been to buy out the remaining races, which would have probably cost more than 500 gold in total (guessing here).

All that for a car that is probably at par with the Mercedes AMG, I don't think that's worth it for me at this stage. Note that they're selling the themed AMG for 50 USD real world money at the store, which I think is absolutely outlandish - you can buy whole games for that price.

Anyway, it was a fun event, with challenging races (bloody aura gates, I'm telling ya), but in the end, not worth investing huge amounts of gold in.

I'm back to maxing out my in-game Mercedes AMG, then aiming for the hyper cars in story mode next.

Lunar New Year Event

Hi folks!

A new event started yesterday, in time for the Chinese / Lunar New Year (of the Monkey). I can't quite make out what it's called, but here's what I've seen so far on the event structure.

Prize

The event car we're racing for here is a Jaguar F-Type. It started out as a three-star with uncommon parts and a PR of around 570, if I remember correctly. I'd say that classifies it as a "sports class", around the BMW M4, but below the Nissan GT-R, for example.

Event currencies

Usually, events have their own special currency and "prototype" parts, which convert into regular items afterwards. In this one, the system is a bit more complicated.

While we have an event currency, you don't actually earn it directly from racing. Instead, racing yields "aura", which can be traded for a "red pack" at the price of 60000 aura points. The red pack contains materials, event cash, and (allegedly) blueprints.

The "aura" points accumulate a lot faster than regular cash rewards (I'd say at a 10x rate), so this isn't actually bad value.

There is, of course, the regular event market, where items can be bought for event cash and gold.

Races

The races are surprisingly difficult - I had to re-run some on the first day. This is mainly due to the colour scheme - we've got night races with a dark-red scheme overlayed, so visibility is absolutely minimal. 

In addition to that, there's a new special "obstacle" element - "aura gates". A small section of the track is "open" (about one third), the rest is blocked by a red screen. Hitting the gate gives a nitro refill, hitting the red block screen causes car damage and significant slowdown (similar to a collision).

This makes drifting almost impossible when it occurs, since the gates are on the "ideal" track, so the inner lines in curves, and drifting doesn't give you enough control to keep it tight.

Also, the AI players are obviously on that lane as well, so it gets very crowded very quickly, even on tracks that would normally classify as easy.

Money traps

Here we've got the usual suspects. Car parts and blueprints in the market cost gold, with blueprints trading at a fair 50G per piece (250G for 5). Race skip prices are fair as well so far, but expect them to increase sharply in later levels.

You can get the "red packs" for gold, if you're lacking the aura points, as well.

Strategy

All in all, I'm not overly excited about the Jaguar. There are better cars in the regular game that can be built up without too much effort, like the BMW M4. 

The difficulty seems steep, encouraging buy-outs. As for blueprints, the race series yield 10 (15 for the last). With a requirement of 15 to get to stage 4, I think we'll be ending up at stage 6, short 25 for the full upgrade. I haven't seen any so far in the "red packs", so I wouldn't bet on gold-buying those. If you're after this car, and have the gold stashed, best value is going to be buying in the event market.

Repeat races can give event cash directly, which is valuable, and the aura points add up quickly, so I can definitely recommend doing as many repeats as you can. Tickets have a 30m refill rate, so there should be a fair bit of space, especially in the beginning.