Brawl Stars Tips and Tricks | 15 Beginner Tips for New Players

Supercell's Brawl Stars has been around for years, but it's still one of the most active mobile multiplayer games out there. Quick three-minute matches, a growing roster of over 80 brawlers, and modes that rotate daily. It's easy to pick up and genuinely tough to climb past the mid-ranks.

I've been playing since the global launch and I've coached a few friends through their first thousand trophies. The gap between "casual player who keeps losing" and "player who actually climbs" isn't about reflexes. It's about knowing what to do with your gems, which brawlers to level, and where to stand. Here's what I wish someone told me when I started.

General Brawl Stars Tips for Beginners

Don't Spend Gems on Anything Except the Brawl Pass

The game throws gems at you early, maybe 80 to 100 in the first week from trophy road and challenges. Don't spend them on mega boxes, skins, or coin packs. Save every gem until you hit 169 and buy the Brawl Pass.

Here's why: the Brawl Pass gives you a guaranteed brawler (usually chromatic rarity, which is strong and flexible), plus coins, power points, and a skin. The value from a single pass is roughly 5x what you'd get opening boxes with those same gems. Free-to-play players who skip the pass stay behind on brawler unlocks for months.

If you're under 169 gems when the season ends, keep saving into the next one. There's no rush. A bad gem decision at 200 trophies still stings at 10,000.

Pick Two or Three Brawlers and Stick to Them

The biggest mistake I see new Brawl Stars players make is trying to play every brawler they get. The game rewards focus. Pick one brawler per role: a tank, a damage dealer, and maybe a thrower. Push them to power 9 or above.

Here's what works for most beginners:

Shelly (free starter, shotgun burst, great up close)

Colt (free starter, high damage with good aim, teaches you positioning)

Barley (rare, area denial thrower, safe to learn on)

Stick with these until you've got at least one at power 9 with a gadget and a star power. You'll learn more about matchups and maps using three characters well than you would spreading upgrades across twelve.

Why this matters: matchmaking pools you against brawlers at similar power levels. A power 7 Shelly with no star power against a power 9 Shelly with both star powers? You're going to lose that fight almost every time. The win depends on the upgrade gap, not your skill.

Combat and Positioning Tips

Check Every Bush Before Walking Through It

It sounds obvious, but even experienced players forget this. Any bush can hide a Bull, a Shelly, or a buzz-saw-wielding Edgar waiting to delete you. Before you walk into a bush in Brawl Stars, fire a shot into it. If you see damage numbers pop up, someone's there. Walk the other way.

Throwers and ranged brawlers should do this from a distance. Tanks like Bull or El Primo can check bushes by face-tanking, but you'd better be at full health when you do it. Nothing's worse than walking through a bush with half HP and getting two-tapped by a camping Shelly with her super ready.

Trust me on this one, because bush-checking alone will save you two or three unnecessary deaths per match, and that alone is the difference between winning and losing close games at any trophy level.

Learn to Strafe, Not Just Auto-Aim

Auto-aim is fine for close-range brawlers like Primo or Jacky. For anyone with a ranged attack. Colt, Piper, Brock. you need to aim manually and strafe between shots. Hold the attack joystick, drag it toward your target, release, then immediately move sideways while the next shot reloads.

The rhythm is simple once you get used to it: aim, release, move sideways while the next shot reloads, then aim again. Players who stand still while shooting are free kills for any half-decent opponent. You'll see this constantly between 0 and 500 trophies: two Colt players standing perfectly still, trading shots until one dies. Don't be that player.

Practice this in the training cave if you need to. Muscle memory takes about 20 minutes to build.

Use Your Super to Control Space, Not Just to Kill

New players treat their super like a finish button. They hold it until someone's at 10% health, then blast them. That's one way to use it. But supers also win games by zoning the enemy team off objectives.

Shelly's super can destroy walls, opening angles for your ranged teammates. Barley's super can completely cut off a chokepoint for five seconds, which wins gem grab and hot zone matches on its own. Brock's super breaks open the enemy's cover, forcing them into the open.

Think about what the map looks like after you use your super. If firing it now makes the enemy team retreat from the center for the last 10 seconds of gem grab, that's a better use than one extra kill with 90 seconds left on the clock.

Don't Chase Kills in Objective Modes

Brawl Ball, Gem Grab, Hot Zone, Heist. These modes don't care about your kill count. They care about the objective. I've lost count of how many Brawl Ball games I've watched my team lose because two teammates chased a low-HP brawler into the enemy half while the ball sat unattended in midfield.

One enemy walks past while you're chasing and scores. Game over.

In Gem Grab, dying while holding gems is the single worst thing you can do. You drop all of them and the enemy team scoops them up. If you're holding five or more gems, your entire job is staying alive. Let your teammates be aggressive. You defend.

The basic rule: if the objective isn't being threatened, don't abandon it to chase a kill. That kill doesn't matter.

Brawler Progression and Resource Tips

Power Level Matters More Than Rarity

A legendary brawler at power 1 is worse than a rare brawler at power 9. Period. The game's matchmaking uses your brawler's trophy count first and power level loosely second, which means you'll eventually face maxed-out opponents no matter what rarity you're playing.

Here's the upgrade priority that works:

Get your main 2-3 brawlers to power 7 (unlocks gadget slot)
Push them to power 9 (unlocks star power slot)
Only then consider powers 10 and 11

Every brawler past power 9 gets exponentially more expensive. Rushing a single brawler to power 11 while your other brawlers sit at power 5 means you'll win on one character and lose on every other, which completely tanks your trophy progress across the board. Matchmaking in Power League specifically punishes shallow rosters.

Gadgets and Star Powers Change How You Play

A lot of players read the gadget description once and forget about it. Don't do that. Shelly's fast-forward dash gadget turns her from a bush-camper into an engaged monster. Colt's reload gadget makes him a sustained damage machine. Barley's healing potion gives him survivability he simply doesn't have base-kit.

Gadgets in Brawl Stars are limited to three uses per match. Don't waste them at the start. Save them for key moments. That dash Shelly gadget at the 30-second mark in gem grab when the enemy gem carrier is retreating? Match-winning. The same gadget at 2:15 chasing a random kill? Wasted.

Star powers are even bigger. They're always active and often define a brawler's optimal playstyle. When you get a star power, read it again, play three matches actively using it, and adjust your game plan. A Colt with the speed-boost star power plays nothing like a Colt with the extra-range star power.

Don't Push Every Brawler Evenly

The trophy road looks inviting: you get a new brawler, you want to push them to rank 10 immediately. But the trophy reset at the end of each season means you lose trophies above certain thresholds. Spreading your play across all brawlers means you reset less, sure, but it also means you never build the deep matchup knowledge that wins games at higher ranks.

Pick five or six brawlers you genuinely enjoy and focus on getting them to rank 20 or above. Leave the rest at rank 10 for season-end star points rewards. By the time you circle back to other brawlers, you'll understand the maps and matchups well enough to climb fast on those characters too.

What to expect: the jump from 500 to 750 trophies on a single brawler teaches you more about Brawl Stars than playing 30 different brawlers to 300 each.

Game Mode Specific Tips

Know Which Brawlers Excel in Each Mode

A brawler that dominates in Brawl Ball might be useless in Heist. Here's what works where, generally speaking:

Gem Grab: control brawlers (Gene, Sandy), gem carriers (Pam, 8-BIT), area denial (Barley, Tick)
Brawl Ball: fast brawlers (Max, Mortis), tanks that can push through (Bull, Darryl), wall-breakers (Brock, Colt with silver bullet)
Heist: high DPS on the safe (Colt, Rico, Brock, Colette), brawlers that ignore tanks and hit the objective directly
Hot Zone: tanks (Rosa, Frank), area control (Barley, Emz), healers (Poco, Byron)
Knockout/Bounty: long-range damage (Piper, Nani, Brock), assassins that can pick off one target (Edgar, Leon)

Don't play Mortis in Heist. He does almost no damage to the safe. Don't play Piper in Hot Zone. She can't hold a point. This sounds basic, but I see people doing it constantly at 400-600 trophies.

Learn Map Rotations and Plan Around Them

Every season, maps rotate. The current gem grab map might be wide open (favors ranged) or tight with lots of walls (favors throwers and tanks). Before you queue, look at the map for the mode you're about to play. Pick a brawler that fits the terrain, not just your favorite one.

Double Swoosh in gem grab is heavy on grass and walls. Pick a close-range brawler or a thrower. Crystal Arcade is open and long. Pick a sniper. You don't need to memorize every map, but knowing knowing if you're walking into an open field or a wall maze, that changes which brawler you should lock in.

This is one of those things that separates casual Brawl Stars players from the ones who climb consistently.

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Staying Alive and Tilting Less

If You Lose Three in a Row, Stop Playing That Brawler

Tilting is real in Brawl Stars. You lose a close match, you queue again faster, you play worse, you lose again. Eight matches later, you've dropped 60 trophies and you're angry at a mobile game about cartoon characters shooting each other.

Take a break, switch brawlers, play a few matches of a different mode, and then come back fresh when you're in a better headspace to focus on the actual game. The matchmaking doesn't get easier after losses, and playing frustrated makes your decision-making worse in ways you won't notice until you watch the replay.

Best habit: after any loss where you're not sure what happened, watch the replay. You did something wrong on at least two occasions per match. Find one of them and fix it next time.

Join an Active Club

Clubs aren't just for social chat. The club league gives you club coins every week, and club coins buy you power points and coins in the shop. An active club that plays club league consistently is worth roughly an extra brawler upgrade every two weeks compared to playing solo, and over the course of a season, that adds up to a real power advantage you'll feel in matches.

You don't need to be in a top-ranked club. Just find one where most members play their club league matches. Even a mid-tier club with 25 active members will get you solid weekly rewards. Prioritize ones with a Discord or active in-game chat. Coordination in club league means more wins, which means more coins, which means faster progression for your Brawl Stars account.

Final Tips

You can download Brawl Stars on APKPure if you haven't installed it yet. The latest version is usually available the same day updates drop, and you'll get straight into the action without waiting on regional store delays.

Stick with two or three brawlers, check your bushes, save your gems for the Brawl Pass, and don't chase kills in objective modes. Do those four things and you'll already be better than most players in your trophy range. The rest is just putting in matches and learning from your losses.