Ward guide: gravity tower defense strategy

Ward is tower defense with no towers that shoot. You move gravity wells and let the sun, the wells and the edge of the field do the work. This guide covers the rules, the perks, the Warden and the habits that carry a run past wave 10.

Enemies fall toward your core from every direction. You never fire a shot. Instead, you drag gravity wells around the board to bend each attacker's path. There are three ways to remove an enemy: steer it into the sun, crush it by pulling it into a well, or fling it off the field entirely.

Faint dotted lines show where every enemy is headed with your wells where they are now. Red means it will hit your core, gold means the sun will take it, and violet means a well will crush it. Drag a well and the lines redraw. That prediction is the whole game: your job is to turn red lines into gold and violet ones.

• 01
  Feed the sun first, crush second.Every regular enemy pays more scrap in the sun than in a well: a drone pays 3 against 2, a heavy 5 against 2 and a corrector 6 against 2. Use wells to slingshot attackers into the sun, and let crushes catch whatever slips past.
• 02
  Keep moving wells during the wave.The place phase sets up your layout, but the fight is not locked in. Wells can still be dragged while a wave is running, and each enemy's line redraws as you move them. Fix a red path before it lands rather than waiting for the next break.
• 03
  Spend scrap on wells early.During the place phase, a +WELL button appears when you have 18 scrap and fewer than six wells. An extra well in wave 4 is worth far more than the same well in wave 9.
• 04
  Build in layers.Enemies come from every side, so one well cannot cover the board. Use your outer wells to bend attackers toward the sun, and keep one well closer to the core to crush whatever slips past. As the well count grows, spread them so no approach is left open.
• 05
  Plan for heavies and correctors.Heavies can appear from wave 3. They carry more mass, so gravity bends them less and they hit the core harder. Correctors can appear from wave 6 and re-aim at your core mid-flight, so a line that looks safe can turn red. Leave slack in your layout for both.
• 06
  Take integrity when the core is low.Core Plating heals as well as raising the cap. Siphon heals on every sun kill. On a board that is already feeding the sun well, Siphon keeps the core topped up for the rest of the run.

A Warden boss arrives every fifth wave, entering from below the core. It is heavy, so your wells barely move it, and it survives several crushes. Each later Warden has more health than the one before.

The Warden alternates between two phases. While it stalks, it drifts slowly toward the core and can be crushed. Then it lunges: a short, fast charge at the core during which wells cannot crush it. When it slams into the core it recoils and comes back for another lunge.

The sun is the answer. The sun removes anything that touches it, the Warden included, so one clean slingshot into the sun ends the fight however much health it has left. If you cannot line that up, grind it down with crushes during the stalk windows and keep the core's integrity high enough to absorb a slam.

The Daily Challenge is one shared board a day. Every player gets the same wave sequence, and everyone plays it on the free Warden's Oath doctrine, so unlocked Doctrines give no edge. The board is ranked by the wave you reach, with cores as the tiebreak.

Your first run of the day is the one that ranks: it counts from the moment its first wave begins. You can play again, but later runs are practice and only move your local best. A new board starts at 00:00 UTC. The ranked run saves when you pause or leave, and the Daily tab resumes it, but a run still unfinished at the reset closes unranked, so start it when you have time to finish.

Free play covers the complete loop through wave 10: every well, every perk draft and a Warden boss. The ranked Daily Challenge and its leaderboard are free in full, every day. There are no ads.

Pro removes the wave-10 wall for the endless climb, lets you equip Warden skins and board themes, and adds 2× wave speed, which changes pacing only and gives no edge on the Daily. Choose a one-time Ward unlock or a StackForge Play Pass, which covers Pro across StackForge games. If a free run reaches the wall and you unlock later, you can continue it from its checkpoint.