Despite beating the entirety of Cup Battles – including the ‘Galactic Mode’ difficulty – on day one of the game’s release, I had to experiment with a number of different squads and gear builds until I was finally happy with my team.
But now I’ve found my favorite line-up…I rarely seem to lose.
To win more often at Mario Strikers, you’ll need a squad that’s well balanced, but one that also excels in all the right areas.
In this guide, I’m going to show you the best characters to use in your team on Mario Strikers: Battle League.
I’ll also show you the best gear to use on every character. Let’s get stuck in!
Team Composition
The first thing we need to cover here is team composition; the make-up of your team.
Did you know? The order in which you select your characters is really important.
The reason for this is simple: each character pick has a starting position on the pitch and, on average, they’ll be located closely to this location. This is despite the fact that all characters will run around during play and they can often end up a fair distance away from where they started.
Your first pick, your captain, will generally be located centrally on the pitch and in quite advanced, attacking areas. They’ll also be involved at every kick-off.
Your second pick will be on the right wing and the third pick will be on the left wing. The side they’re on doesn’t really matter – all you need to know is that these characters will typically be on the sides of the pitch.
Your fourth and final pick will be the furthest back on your team, positioning themselves in the heart of defense from every kick-off and hanging back to mop up opponent attacks whenever they can.
The Best Characters in Mario Strikers
This is the squad that I used to defeat Galactic Mode and have since continued to dominate online multiplayer matches with:
Captain: Roselina
Second pick: Toad (gear equipped)
Third pick: Waluigi (gear equipped)
Fourth pick: Donkey Kong (gear equipped)
All of the characters are customized with gear except for Rosalina. I really like the default Rosalina build as the captain of the team.
Rosalina
Rosalina has high strength, high shooting and high technique. This means she can win the ball from kick-off and can shoot with both power and accuracy.
She’s also not slow, nor bad at passing, making her a great all-round player that leans slightly more heavily towards the attributes that I find most valuable in that central attacking player.
I previously used Mario as my captain as he’s the most well-rounded character, but unfortunately he’s not strong enough when facing up against high-strength opponent captains.
Another good captain to consider is Bowser.
Toad
My 25-speed Toad gear build is totally busted, in my opinion.
Playing on the wing, this incredible amount of speed allows me to get down the flanks of the opponent and pass or cross the ball into the box for Rosalina or Waluigi to get on the end of. It’s also really useful for getting out of trouble, or time wasting if the opponent has just picked up a Strike Orb.
To copy this Toad gear, you’ll need the Turbo Helmet, Turbo Gloves, Muscle Chest and Bushido Sandals (you’ll need to unlock this gear within Mario Strikers).
Waluigi
In the world of Mario, Waluigi might be my least favorite character of all time. I’m probably not alone in that opinion. It therefore pains me to use him in my team, but I really like the gear build that I’m using on him as my third pick, on the wing.
I’m using the Trick Helmet and Turbo Gloves, with no gear on the body and legs.
He has much higher strength than Toad which really helps to balance the team out, and having 3 higher-strength players does seem to be optimal as strength is so important in this game, but Waluigi still has plenty of speed to create chances and get on the end of crosses or rebounds.
Despite having a low shooting stat, he has 16 technique which means he shoots extremely accurately. He scores lots of goals in my side – as does Toad, who probably scores the most goals for me – and neither have high shooting attributes.
Donkey Kong
My fourth pick, to play in defense, is DK. The best Donkey Kong gear in Mario Strikers, in my opinion, gives him 21/25 strength, 12/25 speed and 16/25 passing.
He can’t shoot well but that’s fine – his job in the side is to block shots, win the ball back, and distribute the ball onto the other three members of our squad that are all much better at attacking. We’ve intentionally pulled his shooting and technique stats back in order to maximize his defensive capabilities.
I use the Muscle Helmet, Chain Gauntlets, Bushido Armour and Bushido Sandals on this Donkey Kong build.
And that’s it!
For more information related to team builds you can check out our video below:
