Some highlight quotes from the interview:
- “Don’t make two harvesters & don’t try too hard to preserve units”
- “Nod Artillery is absolutely terrifying right now”
- "I think I actually play better overall on my Phone than I do on PC"
- “The #1 issue with Rivals is that people simply don’t know it exists”
- “I stream pretty much every weekday from around 3pm my time (GMT or BST) to about 8pm and then again from 11pm on Friday”
13lade represented Europe at the Rivals Launch Celebration
Q: Hey 13lade! Thanks for doing this interview! Tell us a bit about your backgrund: What brought you to Rivals and YouTube?
13lade: Hi, thanks for having me here. I’m a huge fan of this blog and read everything you post! I especially like the season reports on unit usage. I’ve been playing games for almost my whole life, starting with Prince of Persia (the 1989 original) which me and my brother played on a black and white monitor, which was a nightmare as there were healing and poison potions in the game which could only be distinguished by colour.
I got into Rivals because my friend Dragoon, who I met through playing Company of Heroes, (one of the best RTS’ of all time), works on the game and got me into the beta. I kept playing because I think it’s a fantastic RTS that deconstructs the arduous macro usually required by real time strategy games, significantly reducing the barrier to entry and requirement for very high APM (actions per minute).
Q: Are there any multiplayer games that you played competitively before? Which ones?
13lade: My favourite genre is strategy and I mostly split my time between Rivals and Magic: The Gathering where I play for Team Axion Now, although I’m going to be streaming my new Battle Brothers campaign which is one of my favourite games of all time (check out the first episode here).
I also played Company of Heroes and Dawn of War 2 on a semi-serious level, although there wasn’t much of a tournament scene for them. I played Heroes of Newerth semi-competitively with my brother but we never made it out of the tier 2 teams.
13lade's 10-0 run through the latest event, along with insights on why he chose this deck
Q: You’re one of the most popular Rivals YouTubers, not just because you play very well, but because you also manage to give pretty good and insightful commentary whilst playing. Do you feel that commenting your game distracts you significantly?
13lade: I try to talk through my process as I’m playing and I’d say most of the time it doesn’t distract me too much, although those who watch me often will notice I do tend to get quieter as a game gets more intense. I’d say that all my backup processing power goes into the commentary so when I’m completely focused on the game there’s nothing left to provide comments!
Q: With Nod you currently mostly play the 2-3-1 Nod aggro deck in the Seth/Militant variant. It’s a very strong deck, and a very versatile one. With which decks (or maps) do you think this deck struggles the most with?
13lade: This is a great deck specifically because it has so few things it really struggles with. I’d say the Suzaku GDI (Strongarm – Rifle, Missile – Pitbull, APC – Drones, Orca)is actually one of the harder things to fight which is likely why that GDI deck has become popular. It’s very difficult to fight Drone Swarm and Orca at the same time unless you tech into Banshees which requires a large investment of resources.
Usually you can make good economic trades with Nod Aggro due to the use of multiple 10-20 cost units, but Drone Swarm and Orca don’t allow you to do this. Nod Aggro also used to suffer at the hands of Avatar and MG, but with all the avatar/MG nerfs they simply aren’t as scary as they used to be. I will also add that a new deck that is emerging (coined “Beefwall” by CopyCatTV) that uses Chem Warriors or Buggies combined with Mutant Marauders. This can be a very hard fight, as your low-cost units don’t have the DPS to remove Mutant Marauders or Chem Warriors in a reasonable time frame.
Nod Aggro profits heavily from maps with 3 pads that are spread out, since you have cheap highly mobile units and access to the Seth drill pod, which is much more powerful if you can deploy it shortly before a missile fires next to a far away ‘safe’ enemy pad to contest it. So I’d say any map that fits that description is best for Nod Aggro. Maps that are more enclosed and have touching pads are are less good for this deck.
Q: Since the buff, the Artillery has also become more popular. You played it in ladder against the Korean player with his 92% winrate Artillery deck, and you even played against it in RTL when you met Alarak. What’s your thoughts on the Artillery right now, and what are the decks in which it works well?
13lade: Nod Artillery, at a cost of 90 Tiberium, is absolutely terrifying right now. There are very few ground units that can approach it realistically. If it’s defended by Stealth Tanks, which one-shots most air units, it can be almost unbreakable. Artillery is actually another matchup Nod Aggro can really struggle with!
Having said that, Artillery is still locked behind the 120 Tiberium ‘Tech’ paywall and therefore forces you to play with one less unit for a large portion of the game. If the Artillery doesn’t have a big impact as soon as you make it, then you usually can’t catch back up.
So my thoughts on Artillery are that the unit itself is very scary and probably too strong but the inherent weaknesses of tech units leave it as not a desirable ladder option, if you make an Artillery and it turns out your opponent has an Orca Bomber, you’re going to be very sad a lot of the time. In fact that’s exactly what happened when I played Alarak. I was expecting him to make Artillery, so i brought an Orca Bomber deck and easily destroyed his Artillery as soon as he made it.
I think the optimal Artillery deck must include Stealth Tank and probably uses Oxanna. As with most decks that have a single very powerful unit, I actually like the Nukin Artillery deck the most (Oxanna – Militant or Flames, Laser – Wheels, Bikes, Stealth Tank – Artillery).
Q: With GDI, you currently play the meta APC deck (Strongarm – Rifle, Missile – Pitbull, APC – Drones, Orca). What do you think is it’s key weakness?
13lade: The APC meta deck’s key weakness is probably it’s inability to aggressively pressure double harvester builds. Orca is really the only unit you have that is good for harvester pressure and it comes out quite late after a Barracks opening. The deck is also reasonably weak to Pitbulls that are micro’d well as Orcas struggle to chase them down. I think the deck is riding the power of drones (especially against Nod who really struggle to remove a Drone Swarm) and the resilience of APC to be successful. Also when Strongarm is good, she’s easily the best commander in the game and most meta decks at the moment make strongarm good.
Q: Which deck (or unit) would you love to play, but don’t because it’s not viable at the moment?
13lade: The answer to this question has been Stealth Tank for almost all of rival’s history, but Stealth Tank is great right now so I can’t really say that. I guess I’d have to say Snipers. The health nerf and the introduction of Cyber Wheels have really put a damper on Sniper play.
After we talked so much about deck, this video just fits: 13lade runs 10 very different decks in a single event, and explains what their idea is
13lade: I’m a big fan of Lone Spire, Fighting Pit and The Cauldron, and I hate Half and Half, Canal Row and Hidden Gems. I’m quite a defensive player, so I like maps where the fighting is congregated in a central location and micro plays a big role. And I hate maps that have a separate path to the Harvester as those regularly favour higher levels since you can just bully and win 1v1s in two separate lanes.
I’d like to see some more maps that are simply interesting and unique. I really like the new map Castaway for this reason and actually quite like Blindspot as well because it provides a totally different assessment of units, you can’t just play your cookie-cutter ladder build and expect to do well. Having said that, I strongly dislike those types of maps for ranked because you don’t know you’ll be playing on them before you pick your deck.
13lade’s favorite maps
Maps 13lade dislikes
Q: Thanks for giving your next tournament opponents some ideas for map picks … just kidding.
AliciaDestiny recently posted on Reddit with a couple of suggestions to the devs, and a sense of urgency, as she’s concerned about the future of the game, sustainability of player numbers etc. What’s your take on this? What could EA (or the community) do to make Rivals more popular?
13lade: I think people do love to say ‘the end is nigh’ or ‘the game is dead’. I’m not sure why this is so popular but it does seem that naysaying is a favourite pastime. Having said that, it is clear that Rivals didn’t take off the way we all would’ve liked. I think the #1 issue with Rivals is that people simply don’t know it exists.
There are many popular YouTubers who were clearly paid to make one video for Rivals but their lack of passion for, or knowledge about, the game is obvious when you watch and it does not come across well. For many of these popular YouTubers, their random Rivals video is their least watched video.
EA simply needs to give some advertising for Rivals and let people know how great the game can be. What Alicia suggested (having two players who are actually very good at the game face off in a publicised event) I think would be great, but really just any kind of exposure is what the game needs, be that simply advertising or pushing more content. Rivals has progressed a lot since release and people need to know that the game is really good!
As a community I think one of the biggest issues is the lukewarm response community tournaments get. People claim they want a thriving tournament scene but then don’t bother to even sign up the tournaments we do have!
[Note: If you want to play tournaments, join these discords:
- CNC Battles (also has a website, but it's currently down)
- Rivals Team League (currently first season is running)]
Q: One of the things that could help is tournaments that get exposure beyond the core community of players who are active on YouTube and Discord. As a player and a YouTuber, what type of tournaments or show matches do you think would work both for players, and to reach as many people as possible on YouTube? (e.g. the devs sending an ingame message with links to YouTube videos of tournament finals / show matches etc.)
13lade: Going back to my previous comment, I think one of the bigger issues is that people often don’t even sign up to the tournaments that do exist. Having said that any kind of support from the developers could go a long way to improving the competitive scene. Even something as simple as what you suggest – an in-game message advertising the community tournaments and perhaps linking some streamers and/or YouTubers who will be hosting the event could do a lot to alleviate the feeling that rivals esports is dead and will never rise from the grave. I actually think Redwood could run some in-game tournaments using the champions system. The 15 games events are nice but they’re not a real tournament.
Q: Another concern of many players is that it’s getting ever harder for new players to “catch up”, even if they spend a bit of money. Do you think this is an issue? What could be a tweak that allows especially new players to catch up in unit levels, without reducing the game’s overall monetization potential?
13lade: I think they’ve already done many, many things to push the game in this direction. Back when the infamous Derek arrived on the scene and was the first to run L15 units, he had to spend thousands to get units to 15. And they were often not even very playable units due to the way colossal crates leveled up epics. These days you can spend a few hundred on labs and get a competitive deck quite quickly.
I do believe a better way to gain Diamonds in game for free would be great though, there’s a lot of ways to spend diamonds now but no way to get them outside of spending which adds to the feelings of a paywall. Although honestly I do think it’s a little unrealistic to pick up a game of this nature months after release and expect to ‘catch up’ without significant time or money, games with progression require progression.
13lade playing an infantry only deck with Nod
Q: What would be one thing you’d like to change in the game or app outside of unit balance (e.g. layout, quality of life)?
13lade: A way to always skip crate contents, and a way to turn off the vault animation. Permanent emote muting should also be available. In terms of new features I’d love to see alliance wars and 2v2!
Q: Good ideas! I recently pondered how the devs could implement a Rivals 2v2 mode without huge reworks. Other question: Do you play on PC, on Mobile, or both? Do you think playing on PC is a relevant advantage, or doesn’t it matter much?
13lade: I play on both, I use to use my phone to stream but it was very taxing for my eyes to play long periods of time using the tiny phone screen, also it’s significantly easier to stream from PC so usually I now use PC for streaming. I use the Bluestacks emulator for anyone wondering. In terms of advantage, I think I actually play better overall on my Phone than I do on PC. The game is very, very well designed for touch screen and touch screen wins out over mouse in my opinion. The only tangible advantage emulator gives in my opinion is hotkeys, which is similar to simply using both hands on mobile device.
Q: Last question on Rivals: What is your #1 tipp for newer players who want to improve at Rivals?
13lade: If you’re coming from a strategy background: Don’t try too hard to preserve units! Normally in RTS unit preservation is extremely important but in Rivals, pop cap (the limit the number of units you can build) is a real cost so you need to know when to throw away a unit that isn’t useful anymore (especially cheap ones). For anyone simply new to rivals I’d advise don’t make two harvesters, it’s usually a mistake and it’s a bad habit to get into.
Q: What plans do you have for your streaming and YouTube? E.g. do you have a fixed schedule for streaming? New video formats planned?
13lade: I stream pretty much every weekday from around 3pm my time (GMT or BST) to about 8pm and then again from 11pm on Friday for the Coliseum event which is a lot of fun. As I mentioned earlier I’m planning to stream my new Battle Brothers campaign which I will also be uploading to YouTube. I’m still trying out new video formats but at the moment the event runs are in my opinion the most interesting as those are usually played at equal levels which makes for proper gameplay. I’m also planning some more comedy videos soon and potentially a collaboration with Excoundrel!
13lade also uploads some other videos to his YouTube channel – here's episode 1 of the Battle Brothers campaign he talked about in the interview
Q: Thanks for taking the time for this interview, 13lade! Any other messages you want to get out to readers?
13lade: Come join our discord communities (13lade Discord, Official Rivals Discord & our Alliance Discord) and keep practicing that micro!
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