🎯Strategy Guide

Warigami rewards the classic RTS virtues — keep the economy growing, keep the army producing, scout, and fight where the ground favours you — and adds three of its own: a supply line that can be cut, a province you chose, and weather you can read a minute ahead. This guide covers the fundamentals for new and experienced players alike. For exact numbers, every unit and building page carries live stats from the game.

The first five minutes

Your Prime is your first and fastest folder. Nothing is queued at the Palace; you fold with the Prime and later with Pupils.

1. Fold Pickers first — select the Prime, Fold ▸ Workers, and put three or four Pickers on the nearest Paper Pylon. Fresh workers head for the nearest resource on their own.
2. Two Prospectors on a Pencilcore pit. Prospectors mine pits and pools; Pickers never do. Pencilcore is what your Patternworks and its patterns eat.
3. Fold two Pupils — they are your builders, and pressing 2 selects every Pupil you have.
4. Raise the Paper Press the moment you can afford it. It presses raw Paper into Parchment and opens the build tree.
5. Fold two Pushers. Materials live in real buildings, and someone has to carry them to every site and every fold. An unfed site simply waits. A ⭐ Pantry near your resource nodes shortens every trip.
6. A Pavilion before you hit the population cap, and the Patternworks as soon as the Press stands.

Three openings

• Standard — 4 Pickers, 2 Prospectors, 2 Pupils, Press, 2 Pushers, Pavilion, Patternworks. Balanced, and what the AI expects.
• Rush — 3 Pickers, Press, Patternworks, then pen one cheap pattern (Pikeman or Piercer) and fold six of them with the Prime and two Pupils while a Pusher feeds the mat. Attack-move (T) into the enemy’s workers before their walls go up. It loses to a Parapet or a Poison Projector, so scout first.
• Boom — 6 Pickers, 3 Prospectors, two Presses, Pavilions, and a Parapet (Pious) or Poison Projector (Profane) at the approach instead of an army. Study Parallel Presses and Practiced Pickers early. Win the long game.

Patterns and the mid game

Fighting units need their pattern penned at the Patternworks before any folder can make them — once per match, then forever. Pen the two you will actually use, not all of them. The Printworks (Pious) and Pitch Priory (Profane) open the advanced tier, and the Prototype Plant and Port open the specialists.

Pious compositions (⛩)

• The line: Pikemen in front, Pelters behind, a Patcher or two mending. Cheap, honest, and it holds chokes.
• The advance: add a Paladin and raise the Aegis as you cross open ground — the ring soaks everything thrown from outside it — then lower it to strike. Pyros burn a blob that tries to swarm the line.
• The air: a Port gives Planes for harassment, Pelicans to ferry, and Paratroopers to drop behind a wall. Prop Poppers and the Plasma Pulse Projector answer enemy fliers.

Profane compositions (冥)

• The raid: Prowlers early and often. They are fast, cheap, and the best scouts in the game; a pack on the enemy’s Pickers pays for itself.
• The line: Piercers hold, Plaguebearers spread bleed through a crowd, Poachers pick off Pelters and Patchers from range.
• The bomb: Proxies are walking charges — Q to detonate. Two into a wall, or into a Pantry, changes a game. Study Pitch-Soaked Proxies when Pitch allows.
• The trap: a Python Pit on a flank the enemy must pass, and a Poison Projector over the approach.

Whichever province, keep Pushers with the army when it stands still for long; a fold that runs out of materials at the front is a fold that stops.

Play the weather

Every map has an Ink Storm on a forecast track — a dashed line on the ground and on the minimap. Paper melts in the rain.

• Read it before every push. An army in the open when the plume arrives is an army half gone. Move it, or wait it out indoors; the Aegis is not shelter from rain.
• Turn it. A Prism with Prophets worshipping at it can Stop, Hurry, Point or Grow the plume. Pointing a storm at the enemy’s base while their army is out is the best trade in the game.
• Use the wake. The storm puts out fires under it, fattens Paper Pylons, and leaves a fertile wake where resources regrow — expand into it.

Walls, gates and towers

Drag a Palasade and the whole run rises along the line. Put a Portcullis where your own army marches through; on Auto it opens for friends and shuts on enemies by itself. Cover the gate with a Parapet or Poison Projector, because the gate is where the enemy will come. Walls buy time and sell it dear; they do not fight, and fliers ignore them.

The late game

• Study up. The Playbook Projector’s tier-2 and tier-3 studies — Pressed Creases, Plume Proofing, Paper Prowess — are army-wide power spikes. Buy them before the enemy does.
• Polish what you field. Building upgrades like Plated Parapet and Rapid Refold are cheap and permanent.
• Un-fold the idle. An old Parapet on a flank nobody attacks any more is half its Paper waiting to be reclaimed (U).
• Cut the supply. Kill Pushers on the road and the enemy’s folds stop; raze the ⭐ Pantry and their whole economy stalls.
• Decapitate. A player is out the moment they lose either their Palace or their Prime. A Prowler pack or a paradrop on a Prime folding alone at the mat can end a game that the front line never would.

Habits that win

• Always be folding. An idle Prime or Pupil is a wasted minute.
• Attack-move, never walk. Right-click walks past enemies; T fights them.
• Groups: 1 is always your Prime, 2 every Pupil; bind the army to 3 and Pushers to 4.
• Scout constantly. Prowlers, Parrots, or a spare Pupil on a hill.
• Don’t overcommit. Retreat, mend at a Patcher, and come back with the storm at your back.
• Never stop making workers. The player with more Paper wins a long game.