Beginner Opening Guide: Your First 10 Minutes

Welcome, Commander

Mini War drops you onto an empty plot of land with a starter farm, a tutorial nudge, and almost no context. Most new players spend their first three runs hoarding farmhouses, never building a Workshop, and getting wiped by the first Air Base in the lobby.

This guide breaks that loop. Follow the next ten minutes step by step and you will finish your first round with a stable economy, defended civilians, and a real shot at a top-three placement.

The Single Most Important Rule

Buy a Workshop before your second income building. Always. No exceptions.

Each Workshop adds a builder, which speeds up every other building you place — including military structures during wartime. Skipping the Workshop is the single most punishing beginner mistake in the game. Players who buy it first finish their economy noticeably faster than players who skip it — and in a game that compounds, that lead snowballs into the rest of the round.

If you take nothing else from this guide, take that.

The First 10 Minutes — Step by Step

Run this order. It is the opening from the Economy First strategy and it works in almost every lobby.

1. Place your starter Farmhouse. Sell the first wheat haul once the Market price isn't in a dip.
2. Buy a Workshop. Yes, before anything else. Tempo over income.
3. Add a second Wheat Farm. Just enough income to fund the next step.
4. Build a Clerk's Shop. This is your sell point. Watch the Market ticker.
5. Buy Houses. Civilians cap your factory throughput; without Houses you stall.
6. Replace Wheat Farms with Carrot Farms. The single biggest income upgrade of the early game.
7. Drop a Storage Center. Auto-collects from every factory in radius. Stops the click tax.
8. First Wood Plant. The transition out of crops and into industry.
9. Place a Worker Statue. Free speed buff for every nearby worker. Most beginners miss this.
10. One Border Tower. Visible deterrence. Place it on the most exposed approach.

By minute 10 you should have a Workshop, two industrial buildings, a Storage Center, a Worker Statue, and a Border Tower up. That is a healthy mid-game foundation — not flashy, but exactly the shape of every winning run.

The Three Habits That Carry Every Beginner

These habits matter more than any single building. Drill them every match until they become automatic.

1. Sell old buildings, never hoard

The textbook beginner trap is keeping every Farmhouse you ever placed. Each build slot is a finite resource. The moment a Carrot Farm is available, sell the Wheat Farm and rebuild on the slot. The moment a Wood Plant is available, sell the Carrot Farm. Slot value beats building stacking.

2. Time the Market — never panic-sell

The Clerk's Shop reprices crops, wood, and steel every couple of minutes. Selling on a -10% to -20% dip burns income invisibly. Hold inventory in your Storage Center, watch the price ticker, and sell on a +10% surge. This single skill is worth more than two extra factories at scale — the Market system page breaks down the cycle.

3. Hide your Houses

Civilians lost in an invasion stay lost for the rest of the round. Cluster your Houses in a residential zone tucked away from your factory cluster, behind cover. Top players literally place Houses inside corners of the map where invaders won't look first. Civilian retention is its own meta layer.

What to Avoid in Your First Hour

• Do not rush military. Building a Barracks before your economy is set is the second-biggest beginner mistake. Military with no income is a small army that loses.
• Do not hoard Border Towers. One per high-traffic approach is enough. Two towers covering one direction beats one tower per side.
• Do not invade in the first 15 minutes. You haven't fielded a real military yet, and the lobby's economy players will already have Reactors before you know it.

When You're Ready to Scale

After about 20 minutes, your Wheat Farms should be gone, your Carrot Farms paying, and you should have civilians sitting in factories. That's the cue to start the Economy First build order properly — Reactor → Data Center → defensive Air Base.

If you read the lobby and see an aggressive player rushing military fast, abort to the Air Rush playbook instead. Reading the lobby is its own skill — but it starts with knowing your defaults.

One Last Thing

Mini War rewards patience over aggression in the early game. The country that wins the late game is almost never the country that built first; it's the country that built the right things in the right order. Workshop, Storage Center, Carrot Farm, Worker Statue. That is your opening symphony — play it clean, and the rest of the round writes itself.

See you on the leaderboard, Commander.