#Snatch: Getting grabby

My previous post gave you an idea about how to look after your stash. This one will focus on a recipe for more aggressive growth.

Now, before you even think about who to snatch from, it is essential to think about WHEN to snatch.

First of all, there’s no point snatching what you can’t defend, so don’t snatch before bed or before driving to work. The current radius for snatching is 1,500 metres, so if you’re stuck in traffic, you’re a sitting duck (I’m assuming here that you’re a law-abiding citizen who doesn’t play with their phone while driving).

Second, most collectors, even the early-birds, aren’t going to start collecting before 6AM. Sure, there are shift-workers and insomniacs out there, but we’re talking the Joe Normals here. In other words, if you start snatching on your way to the office, you’ll probably have to sit on the bulk of those parcels for a few hours. Personally, I’d wait till late morning before logging in.

As for whether there's a better time to play in order to find the prizes - no. They're distributed according to a random algorithm. That said, if a major prize is about to be dropped - such as a £1000 parcel - then this will be announced on Twitter.

Next, you have to decide WHO to snatch from. There’s an icon in the bottom left-hand corner that turns green when there are potential targets in the environs. Tap that, and the app will bring up a list of all the snatchers in the area.

Bring up a list of local players and choose whose parcel to snatch 

This is when the game starts getting really devious, because it provides intel on everyone in that list - just click on each player’s avatar to learn about them. Crucially, this isn’t personal information; rather, it just tells you about how they play - how many parcels they’ve found, how many they’ve snatched, and how many they’ve lost.

Sample profile info

What follows is my theory rather than game science, but I’ll share it anyway:

• Providers are players who have lost almost as many parcels as they have obtained and are the least likely to put up a fight. In the first instance, therefore, I aim to snatch from these guys.
• Collectors are players who have collected significantly more parcels than they have snatched. I suspect these guys are more frugal with their coins, so I target them if no providers are available.
• Snatchers are players who have snatched significantly more parcels than they have collected. These are the most aggressive players. You can, of course, snatch from a snatcher, but for my money, it’s more of a gamble whether they’ll defend and the coins you spent to snatch will be lost for nothing.

It is currently possible to shakedown a single target for everything they’ve got - a process I call mugging, because it’s more aggressive than plain old snatching. It isn’t a particularly friendly behaviour, but if your mark turns out to be holding parcels with only an hour to mature, well, there’s an obvious incentive to keep snatching.

There are also tools for collecting - a radar to extend your collecting radius (200 coins), and black holes and tornadoes to automatically snatch parcels from anyone in range. I've not yet used any of these, however, so I can’t really comment on their effectiveness, other than to say the snatching tools need to be deployed in areas dense with players or you're wasting your money.

If you’re unable to snatch because you’re running out of coins, there are two options: get your friends to play so you can claim referral bonuses, or just collect boxes and be patient!

So, that’s defending and snatching covered. That just leaves revealing what’s in the parcels and redeeming your prizes, and I’m not going to say anything about that because it’s so easy!

Good hunting!

If you haven't yet installed the app, get yourself over to the App Store or Google Play. If you follow my referral link and add “95J73U” as a referral code (on the 500 Free Coins tab) then I get an in-game reward (thanks!).

If you have any more tips, please share them in the comments below.