Interview with Alarak -- "Tournaments are so much about mind games"

We've already had the honor of Alarak's presence on this blog a couple of months ago for a match analysis. Since then, Alarak has firmly established himself in the Rivals tournament scene as one of the top players. Time for an interview!

The most important things first: Alarak hails from Sweden and loves Tacos!

Before Rivals, Alarak had played both StarCraft:Broodwar and StarCraft 2, but says he wasn't very good at them. His specialization was rather to build custom maps / fun maps with the SC2 Galaxy Editor. In recent years, Alarak has been competing in a PvE mapmaking contest for Blizzard's RTS games. Last year, he came in 2nd place and will try again this year. You can watch a video of one of his sophisticated creations for SC2 here.


Q: Hey Alarak! On ladder, you’re known for your Fanatic Aggro deck with Phantom. Partly of course because you levelled your key Nod units higher, but probably also because overall, Nod is stronger than GDI right now. Which GDI decks do you like to play recently?

Alarak: First of all, I haven’t played a whole lot this season, but experimented with a few different decks. My current list is Riflemen, Missile Troopers - Slingshot, Predator Tank - Drone Swarm, Mohawk - Liang. Most of the season I played Riflemen, Missile Troopers - Predator Tank, APC - Talon, Mohawk, Liang. This deck lacked the anti-air but was great fun building a wall of APC and Predator Tanks. So I swapped APC for Slingshot to cover the air better and because Slingshot is so darn good, I could swap Talon for Drone Swarm for cheaper and more effective Anti Infantry. I use Liang because he’s extremely overpowered honestly. Heals for an insane amount, steal pads and only costs 50. It even flies and moves fast!

Q: Let's move to your performance in the Rivals tournament circuit. In the Rivals Team League, you're 9-2 after 3 weeks. How did that go, and how have your other recent tournaments been?

Alarak: I'm pretty happy with my games in RTL, lost 2 games to one of the Koreans from the Taste that Korean Nuclear team last week. One of the losses was due to the Mammoth Tank + Jackson freeze that happens quite often, and has a severely increased freeze duration on emulator, which is what I use almost all the time. The other loss was me playing bad honestly. So all in all pretty happy with the results.

That’s about where it ends though. Haven’t had much success in other tournaments. I was in the coliseum finals again last Friday where I came 5th, very unhappy with how I played but all of my opponents are very skilled, special shoutout to the winner, srpss. Such a beast at the game.


Q: Tournament play is very map dependent. In a recent analysis, I noticed that some specific maps are chosen more often than others, e.g. Rorschach and Open Water. What do you think makes people chose these particular maps?

Alarak: Both of those maps favour a lot of strategies. I think most people don’t really think about what their opponent will play or what to counter it with, they just want a good map for their deck. Both maps are good maps for ranged units, Fanatics and bombers for example. Open Water is also great for Jade and Rorschach is a good tech map.

Open Water and Rorschach were both also in the map pool we had during the entire summer, so people are well practiced on the maps. So I think Rorschach and Open Water are just what people choose if they don’t care about maps, which is a huge mistake.

Q: With your knowledge of what people might play on these maps, what would you play? Would that be based on your expectation of opponent decks, or just by what you feel comfortable with?

Alarak: As some may have seen in Coliseum finals, deck countering is more important than skill in some cases. As I said earlier, I played very badly during coliseum but I still got two wins out of knowing my opponents deck. In both games I knew my opponents plays a ton of air heavy decks so I brought a Sniper/Slingshot deck that I had 0 practice with and quite comfortably won both games. 

In tournaments, you have to scout your opponent to see what they are well practiced with. I usually play something that is semi-good on that map but still beats what I expect my opponent to play. My favorite thing to do personally is to play something completely different from my go-to decks, or play something that just makes some sense on the map, just to confuse the opponents that actually try to counter what they think I’ll play. Tournaments is so much about mind games and I really like that. 

Back to Rorschach and Open Water though, I know the most popular deck is Giga as so many find them oppressive. Good counters to Giga on both those maps are Fanatic Aggro, Artillery or Bomber decks. One would say Fanatic Aggro is bad vs 2-range decks but it’s effective because of how difficult it is to block double boosted Scorpion Tanks. 

Q: Now, let’s tap into your expertise even more systematically. I’m going to list some deck archetypes. Please tell me what you would think a good map for these decks would be – and how you would attempt to counter this map/deck combination.

Alarak: 

Deck Type: Artillery

• Maps you would expect: Artillery has 3 range so it’s always a tough one, it can be played on most maps, it’s only bad when the spawn point is easily accessible by enemy units. It’s exceptionally good on 2 pad maps and maps like Rorschach, Open Water or Tug of War. 
• How you'd try to counter it: High pressure decks with good anti air and usually some air myself. I also really like MLRS vs Artillery, when I have either Jackson or MSV with it.

Deck Type: Giga Cannon

• Maps you would expect: Any map where you can park your Giga Cannon at a spot where it can fire at 2 full pads means it’s a very good map for it.
• How you'd try to counter it: Giga Cannon is such a strong piece, but my ideal way is to play Bomber decks or some Air to Ground units, and try to make them overcommit on building ground forces that I then overrun with air spam. 

Deck Type: Jade Chem Warrior

• Maps you would expect: Chem Warriors with Jade is another deck that can appear on any map but I usually expect them on maps where pads are spread out because you usually need more than 1 unit to deal with them unless you got some very heavy anti infantry. Maps where it is easy to walk to the enemy base are also great Chem Warrior Jade maps. A second pathway like Open Water, Half and Half and Rush In are some very good Jade Chem maps, especially Rush In.
• How you'd try to counter it: Personally I have always had trouble dealing with this sort of decks but recently been trying heavy air decks to decrease the Chems usefulness. Running heavy air makes the Chems irrelevant unless you get them all the way to the enemy base and use Catalyst Missile. Quite an investment.

Deck Type: Suzaku APC (Rifle, Missile - Pitbull, APC - Drone, Orca - Strongarm)

• Maps you would expect: Suzaku APC relies on its air power a lot and APC holding pads in my opinion. Thus any map where there are a lot of choke points or rocks for air units to gain an advantage on are good maps for. Also great on spread out maps. 
• How you'd try to counter it: Borca kills Missile Troopers, Pitbulls and APCs. That’s all I have to say basically.

Deck Type: Marauder / Chuggy

• Maps you would expect: This deck is just all around good, but requires some practice. It works on most maps but usually you’d know if your opponent has any experience with this deck or not. 
• How you'd try to counter it: Fanatic Aggro destroys this deck. Fanatics murder Mutant Marauders and Boosted Tank makes short work of Chuggy.

Deck Type: Nod Aggro 2-2-2

• Maps you would expect: Same goes for this deck, but Seth is insane on spread out maps so that’s something to look out for. 
• How you'd try to counter it: Fanatic Aggro is weak early game vs this deck but quite good in the lategame vs it actually (Editor: e.g. thanks to Phantom). 2/2/2 is also very mediocre vs Arty and any Stealth Tank decks.

Deck Type: Orca Bomber

• Maps you would expect: Any map where it is easy to stall or hard to harass harvesters are good tech maps. Cracked Ice, Battlefield, Rorschach are some examples. 2 pad maps or grouped up pads are very good for Borca. Rorschach, Open Water, Down the River, Hot Zone are all extremely good for Borca.
• How you'd try to counter it: Air decks or Fanatic Aggro does quite well vs Borca. Don’t let the Borca get too much value and you are usually pretty set.

Deck Type: Missile/Sniper - Dogs/Pitbull - Talon/Mohawk

• Maps you would expect: As long as the pads aren’t too spread out, this deck works quite well in most other maps.
• How you'd try to counter it: On maps where the pads are grouped up, I usually overrun it with Fanatics and Tanks. Sniper/Slingshot/Predator works very well vs this deck too  

Q: Awesome, thanks! I bet a lot of players will find your thoughts on this very useful.  What’s the next tournaments you’ll play / look forward to?

Alarak: RIFLE 3 is going to be very fun I think so I’m very excited about that. The sponsor being Redwood Studios is really cool. Haven’t gotten much information about the Bandito Tournament yet but hopefully that one will be great as well. 

Q: Back from tournaments to the daily grind: If you had the levels, which deck would you like to try on ladder more?

Alarak: Oh good question! I think Bomber decks or Sniper decks. Maybe Chemical Warrior or Giga Cannon decks too. They all share that they include epics, so yeah. That’s the main problem with those decks. 

Q: Competing in so many tournaments, you know a ton of good players very well. What’s your favorite 3 opponents to play against and why?

A: Well 13lade is the only one I feel like we both have this sort of mindgame going on and that’s super fun. Srpss is just so insanely good at this game so it’s always great to see which way he stomps me this time, and feels amazing whenever I take games off him! I also like playing Nickcool because I have no clue whatsoever what he’ll bring.

Q: If you had one wish what the developers should do with Rivals?

Alarak: Rework Tech to make everything cheaper and reduce the paywall of 150 Tiberium. Make it a normal building that costs like 70 or something and just has strong units. Sandstorm could be like a tier 2 Pitbull for 90 Tiberium, Wolverine would be a better Rhino but slower that costs maybe 60-70. Centurion could be an alternative to Scorpion Tank. And so on. Would make so many more units playable. 

(Also, I would like if they some reworked maps to not be so obviously good for one archetype). 

Q: And lastly, what would be one thing you wish the community would do with Rivals?

Alarak: Not quit the game, support it to the end. Maybe we can get this game back up and running. We just have to work as a community and continue to show our great support. Redwood sponsoring was a great sign it isn’t over, let us hope it’ll continue in this direction.


Q: Thank you so much, Alarak, for your time and your insights! Wish you much success and fun in your next tournaments.

Notes from the editor: 

1. If we all subscribe to Alarak's YouTube channel, maybe he produces some more content for it?
2. Humble Alarak didn't mention his games against srpss to qualify for the Coliseum finals, so recommend you watch them now, especially if you didn't obs Alarak's games so far:

Read more interviews with Command & Conquer Rivals players and personalities!

Power your own Ladder or Tournament with Google Spreadsheets

This article might be relevant for you, if you ...

• Organize Rivals tournaments (public or for your alliance)
• Want to run your own Custom Match (i.e. Equal Level) ladder within your alliance

In both cases, one of your challenges is to turn reported matches into new tournament or league standings easily. If you do a knock-out system, you can just use a tool like Challonge for this. But what if you have a more sophisticated tournament structure (e.g. group stages), or want to run a skill-based ladder (like the main ranked ladder in Rivals, but with equal levels)?

In these cases, Google Spreadsheets can be a powerful tool for you to save work, and create nicely layouted rankings.

Two case studies:

Rivals Team League (RTL) reporting and standings

RTL is a large team league with dozens of players and hundreds of matches played. It's a large effort for AwDaSea, who runs RTL, to track results and then update tables. To make his life easier, I created a way that he only needs to track the reported results in a spreadsheet, and it automatically updates into new standings and individual player stats.

• Here AwDaSea enters the results 
• The automatically updated group standings (also see image)
• The individual player stats tab, also automatically updated

We also tracked the chosen starting maps, and a simple additional pivot table allows us to check which map was chosen how often. Among the so far 105 picks that were actually played, the top maps were:

• 17% Rorschach 
• 15% Open Water
• 7% Three Lanes
• 6% Tug of War
• 6% Fighting Pit

Now you know which two maps you should be prepared for in tournaments! :)

Your own competitive ladder without levels

Custom Matches are great to train, and play without levels. One challenge about Custom Games is that not everybody is motivated, as you need to arrange them with your buddies, and clicking on the "Battle" buttom for the official ranked ladder is easier.

So, alliances think about how to make Custom Games more engaging and fun. Our first idea was our own league system, in which everyone plays a Best-of-5 against everyone else. This mostly went well, and this table could be used as a template if you want to run your own league. Congrats to Benedikt Ernst for winning season 1, btw!

But the downside of a league is that you have to chase down those that you didn't yet play against. And the most active custom game afficionados would like to play each other more often.

My new solution for this is to turn the league into a ladder. The differences:

1. Anybody can play anybody else how often they want. 0, 1 or 10 times in a week.
2. The spreadsheet automatically calculates a new rating based on the matches played
3. Reporting matches is easy, you just enter winner and loser names from a dropdown

What I use as a rating algorithm is ELO, which is also used in Chess. This ensures that the ratings (over time) are a reflection of player skill. And it ensures it doesn't matter whom you play. If you play the highly rated guy, you will risk less points but can gain many. If you play the lowly ranked guy, it's vice-versa.

Feel free to make copies of these spreadsheets if you want to look closer how they work (a part of the logic, especially in the RTL one, is in hidden tabs). If you need help to understand, reach out to me, you can find me at the offical Rivals discord and at our alliance discord under the nickname 'shuukit'.

Video of the day

Of course, it's gotta be a video from the Rivals Team League! This highly recommended matchup is:

Lopatka / CzechoSlovakia WolfDogs against Conrad / CrazyRussians.

67,500 Diamonds Prize Pool: RIFLE 3 starts on October 19

On October 19, the third RIFLE tournament will kick off with it's first qualifier. There are some awesome and unique things about this event.

1. There's 67,500 Diamonds in the prize pool. 
2. It's played at equal level, so the strongest players will prevail.
3. It's sponsored by Redwood Studios / EA, which shows that they care about community-run tournaments. Thanks Redwood / EA!

If you love Rivals, you will love RIFLE. Even if you don't play, please support it by following them on Twitch, YouTube and Twitter. Here's the key info:

• There will be two qualifiers, the first starting on October 19
• Both qualifiers will have 32 players, anyone can join (knock-out format with Best-of-3 / Best-of-5)
• In both qualifiers, the top 4 players qualify for the main event
• We all can donate to even further increase the prize pool with cash! I just did that to support this great initiative.

Important links:

• Join the RIFLE Discord, especially if you want to play
• Follow RIFLE on YouTube
• Follow RIFLE on Twitch -- that's where tournaments are streamed
• Donations for RIFLE prize pools
• Commnity Page with Tournament Brackets

And if you want some immediate fun, here's my video recommnedation of the day: 13lade playing 10 games in an event with the handicap of having to play the deck that the last opponent used. Immense fun!

Everybody's got some Bomber -- The GDI Top 50 in September

Every month, I analyze the decks of the Top 50 Nod and GDI players in Rivals. This is the September 2019 issue for GDI. You can find the Nod edition here.

• Please find the raw data here, incl. a full list of the decks including nicknames
• Average deck level went up by +0.3 to 13.8
• Average deck composition is 2.1 infantry (+/-0), 1.0 vehicles (+/-0), 1.4 air (+0.1) and 0.6 (-0.1) tech units. In the chart below, you can see how often decks have which unit type in the deck. For example, you can see that a quarter of the decks don't play with Vehicles, and a quarter don't play Air.

Now to the main data, the unit frequency table. How to read the table below:

• "Frequency" is the share of Decks that run this unit or commander. First, the frequency in % over last months is shown. Then, a bar chart visualizes the June frequency, and a +/- number shows the change to the previous month. Lastly, there is a small line chart that shows the trend over the last 4 months.
• "Δ vs average winrate" is how the winrate decks utilizing this unit/commander deviates from the average (e.g. Inferno decks had a 6% higher winrate compared to the average)
• "Δ vs average levels" is how the levels of decks utilizing this unit/commander deviate from average (e.g. decks utilizing the Inferno are 0.3 levels higher than the average)

Observations:

• The Rifle / Missile duo has gained even further popularity. 30 of the 50 decks have both.
• As expected, Droneswarm usage is up +50% vs previous month due to the recent buff
• MLRS and APC have both gained in popularity and now stand at 16% / 24% usage respectively. Two decks field both.
• Strongarm is up in popularity, explained by (a) the drone swarm buff making the Suzaku APC deck (Rifle, Missle - Pitbull, APC - Drones, Orca) more viable again (which employs Strongarm). 7 Decks are that archetype, some of them using Talon and/or Mohawk as air options.
• Liang is down after the cost increase from 40 to 50, by more than what Strongarm gained. Jackson gained a couple of points instead. 6 of the 13 Jackson decks use the Tech lab.
• The moderate Mammoth nerf had some effect, but still every fifth deck fields it.
• Titan is used in 10% of the decks, some of them quite successful. Benven2 should be mentioned here, having 96% winrate (on 30 games) with Titan and Zone Troopers. taiga2 gets an hnorable mention for playing a low level (12.2 average) deck with Titan and Sandstorm in the Top 50.
• 72% of decks use one of the "Bombers", i.e. Mohawk, Orca or Orca Bomber. Unsurprisingly, no deck has more than one of these options.
• Comparing with Nod, some "underusage differences" by looking at which units get used by less than 10% of decks:
• Infantry: GDI 1 vs Nod 3 (Shocks vs Scavenger, Scarab, Flames)
• Vehicles: GDI 3 vs Nod 1 (Rhino, Shatterer, MSV vs Tick Tank)
• Air: GDI 1 vs Nod 1 (Hammerhead vs Inferno)
• Tech: GDI 4 vs Nod 9 (Wolverine, Disruptor, Juggernaut, Kodiak vs all)

Levels vs Winrate

Obviously, it's easier to get a high winrate with high levels. The below chart illustrates the two variables. The trend line shows the "average impact" of levels on winrate. The winrate is shown as "X games per 1 loss". Bikerush e.g. has 19 wins per loss. 

If we compare this data by faction (see Nod analysis), we get the following picture:

In the Top 50, GDI has an average winrate of 70%. Nod 75%. Only about 1 point of this win rate difference is explained by GDI decks having a bit lower levels on average (13.8 vs 14.0 for Nod). 

As expected, this data shows that Nod is stronger. What is maybe not as expected is the different shape of the trendlines. They imply that to get strong GDI winrates, Levels play a higher role. I.e. not just is Nod a stronger overall, but especially for players with lower level decks, this difference is more extreme at the top of Tiberium ladder.

Some hypotheses on this:

• Especially players with lower levels usually play Aggro decks. The extra speed and DPS for Nod units (compared to GDI and on average) means that Aggro decks have an easier time to employ hard counters, compensating for level difference. 
• A typical example for this: Nod players have an easier time to keep their Scorpion away from it's counters and use it against opponent's light vehicles than GDI can do that with the Predator. Not just is the Scorpion a bit better than Predator overall, but it's particularly better if you're behind on levels.
• Nod being stronger means that it's preferred by many players. This means they used cloning vats for key Nod units like the Scorpion. You e.g. can see L12 decks with L14 Scorpions, or L13 decks with L15 Scorpions. Not only does this explain a bit the level advantage of Nod on average (in the Top50), but it also means that Nod decks that on average are still relatively low often have key units on higher level. A L13 average deck with a key unit on L15 outperforms an L13 deck with equally distributed levels usually.

Further reading:

• Nod variant of this analysis
• Beginner guide: Levelling up your units quickly
• Beginner guide: Deck construction principles for Rivals
• Tiberium income acceleration throughout the game -- how does it work?

Video recommendation

13 minutes of commented high-level play, Alarak against Srpss:

Fanatics Strength and Stealth Tank Comeback -- The Nod Top 50 in September

Every month, I analyze the decks of the Top 50 Nod and GDI players in Rivals. This is the September 2019 issue for Nod. Go here for the GDI version.

• Please find the raw data here, incl. a full list of the decks including nicknames
• Average deck level went up by +0.1 to 14.0
• Average deck composition is 2.1 infantry (+/-0), 2.5 vehicles (+0.4), 1.1 air (-0.3) and 0.2 (-0.2) tech units. In the chart below, you can see how often decks have which unit type in the deck. As you can see, the typical deck has 2 Infantry units, 3 vehicles and 1 Air unit.

Now to the main data, the unit frequency table. How to read the table below:

• "Frequency" is the share of Decks that run this unit or commander. First, the frequency in % over last months is shown. Then, a bar chart visualizes the June frequency, and a +/- number shows the change to the previous month. Lastly, there is a small line chart that shows the trend over the last 4 months.
• "Δ vs average winrate" is how the winrate decks utilizing this unit/commander deviates from the average (e.g. Inferno decks had a 6% higher winrate compared to the average)
• "Δ vs average levels" is how the levels of decks utilizing this unit/commander deviate from average (e.g. decks utilizing the Inferno are 0.3 levels higher than the average)

Observations

• Fanatic usage is up to 26ppt, and their winrate is 5 points above the average. Expect to see even more decks with Fanatics (usually built around Scorpion Tank or Giga).
• Laser Troopers usage is up +18ppt, and Scavengers down by -20ppt. A direct consequence of the recent Scavenger nerf.
• Stealth Tank is up +14ppr and Chem Buggy +8ppt
• The average deck cost decreased to an all-time low of 54 Tiberium per Unit, driven by lower popularity of tech (Avatar -4ppt) and gains from Militant, Laser, Wheel
• Seth usage increased by +10 ppt, taking 6ppt from Jade and 4ppt from Oxanna
• Venom and Banshee usage dropped after their nerf by -4ppt and -8ppt. Their winrates are a bit lower than the average, so we might see further reduction (players take time to adjust to balance and meta, partly because it takes time to level up other units)
• There's 2 Rock Worm decks, including a pretty strong one from Benven2, who plays Militant, Laser - Drones, Venom, Phantom - Rockworm - Oxanna with a 87% winrate and a L14.8 deck.

"Statistical Decks"

• If we take a deck that fields units with higher winrates, we get Fanatic, Scavenger - Wheels, Giga, Stealth Tank - Phantom (ignoring very low sample size Inferno and Kane). This is not far from what some strong players play, if we flip Stealth Tank for Bikes,
• High-level decks are more likely to contain Chem Troopers, Scorpion Tank, Giga Cannon, Venoms and Avatar.

Levels and Winrate

Obviously, it's easier to get a high winrate with high levels. The below chart illustrates the two variables. The trend line shows the "average impact" of levels on winrate. The winrate is shown as "X games per 1 loss". AliciaDestiny e.g. has 32 wins per loss. And Alarak has 5.3 wins per loss, which is impressive for L12.5.

Click here for the GDI version of this analysis.

Balance Patch September 2019

Hooray, EA is talking to us again, both on Reddit and in the App! And the came up with another Rivals Balance Patch.

Buffs:

• Drone Swarm speed increased from 6.9 to 8 (nearly as fast as it was some time ago)
• Grenadier projectile speed increased by 25%. This means that the first shot hits quicker (and so does the EMP slowdown effect), so that it's harder for vehicles to disengage and move away/escape.
• Kane Obelisk health increased by +25%. Good change.

Nerfs:

• Scavenger speed significantly decreased frm 6.9 to 5.4, which is now slower than Missiles and Lasers, which was their key advantage at least in Aggro decks that didn't need the Tiberium as much. I predict they will now just stick around in decks that want to get Tiberium, e.g. Artillery.
• Liang cost increaseI d from 40 to 50. Justified.
• Venom speed decreased from 9.2 to 8. I would have preferred a slight damage nerf.
• Banshee cost increased from 50 to 60, reverting a recent buff.
• Slingshot health decreased by 17%. This might be quite significant, as especially Mohawks might now have an easier time engaging with it. So blocking for your Slingshot (Liang drone anyone?) and having it in position in time becomes more important. Also might change the dynamics against Orca Bomber a bit.
• Chem Buggy damage reduced by 10%. As the chem clouds stay, this nerf is relatively small.
• Mammoth Tank decreased by 8%. I like this change. Mammoth might not have been technically overpowered, but Mammoth is just not a fun unit to play against, and lower level players struggled immensely against it.

Overall a reasonable patch, and I agree to 13lade that this might bring back the Suzaku APC deck built around strong Droneswarms, and make the Nod 2-2-2 around Venom-Banshee much less attractive. Recommend to watch 13lade's video on the balance patch as well:

Level up your Units quickly -- A Guide for new Rivals Players

A recurring question from new Rivals players is: "What should I do to maximize my progress in levelling up units?"

What you should do:

1. Log in daily. There is a daily reward for this, and you get get hundreds of free Diamonds each month if you don't break your streak of daily logins. 
2. Do your bounties every day. This gives you thousands of credits each day, and you can often get your bounties done within just 10 games. You can spend fuel (a free resource gained from playing) to "reroll" your bounties (small arrow next to the open bounties). This ensures that you can do the bounties while playing your favorite decks rather than being forced.
3. Use your daily free "Cloning Chambler". To ensure the Cloning Lab is maxed, you need to play 12 games per day (less than an hour) so that it's free again once the 24h-timer resets. Further down, some tipps on what units you should use your Cloning Lab for.
4. Join an alliance to request donations. You can request donations 3 times a day, and the donator gets credits and experience for donating cards. If you don't have an alliance, look for an active one on the Rivals Subreddit or on the official Rivals Discord.
5. Request your Crates and rush them with fuel. In theory, you can do this every 3 hours. But don't spend Diamonds to rush them faster.
6. Use your Diamonds wisely. You get hundreds of Diamonds for free each month. Ideally, spend your Diamonds only on Events if and when you reach a good result. More on this further down.

Click image to enlarge

What you should not do:

• Don't buy the promo offers. If you want to spend money, buy Diamonds at a the best rate in the shop, and spend them wisely on Events.
• Don't spend Diamonds to rush chests, open the vault, buy crates. Spend them efficiently for the right events.

How to best use the free daily Cloning Chamber:

• It's most efficient to use it on Common Cards
• So use it on core common cards you believe will play regularly in a number of different decks
• If you don't know what to use it on, I recommend Riflemen or Wardogs, Militants or Cyberwheel, Scorpion Tank. But ensure that you actually use the unit(s).
• It can be prudent to focus on one key unit. If you always play Scoprion Tank and Militants with Nod, you might want to focus on them a lot. If you play a lot of different units, maybe use the Cloning Lab to speed up levelling up the next unit you currently use.

How to spend your Diamonds:

• As mentioned above, spending Diamonds on Events is most efficient. 
• Your rewards will depend on the Event and on your Result. 
• Basically all Events will be better than spending your money on something else, even if you manage only a 5-5 or 6-4 score in the event. But of course, it might be worth to wait for a good score on a good event before you spend your Diamonds. Especially as you can spend your Diamonds multiple times on the same event. So if you get a great run at a great event, you can spend up to 6,000 Diamonds at once.
• Among the best events are the Resource Event premium track. Crate Event standard track (i.e. rerunning this event if/when you get a 10-0 run), Champions premium track and Showdown premium track. The latter has the upside that you can rerun the event for credits, so you can rerun often until you get a good result.
• The one arguable alternative to spending Diamonds on is Cloning Chambers in the shop. This can make sense if you cannot get decent results in Events
• If you're not sure if an event is good, just ask on the Rivals Subreddit or on the official Rivals Discord

Other recommendations for beginners:

• Basic deck construction principles
• How many credits & cards you need to upgrade your units
• How Tiberium income accelerates throughout a match
• The best Rivals YouTube channel to learn from

Player sentiment about playing against higher and lower levels

Some weeks ago, Alarak created a poll to quantify players' sentiment about levels. Because on the one hand, general wisdom would say that most players would prefer a game without levels. But on the other hand, levels give players an advantage, so some might actually prefer such a system.

A whopping 214 Rivals players participated in the poll. Alarak posted the results of this survey on Reddit. In collaboration with him, here's some upgraded visuals on the poll results that you might fight interesting.

In the first chart, we look at the answer to the question "How do you feel about playing against opponents with higher levels?"

• Each bar shows the share of respondents that voted for a certain sentiment
• Color indicates the answer to the question for a players' levels in comparison to their "standard league". Translating my categories to the exact answer options:
• Very low: Not enough for Challenge matches in my league. (4 under level cap). (This means less than 11 in tiberium league and less than 9 in Masters)
• Low: Barely enough for Challenge Matches (this would mean between 9-10 in Masters and 11-12 in Tiberium League)
• Middle: Middle of the league. (10-11 in Masters, 12-13 in Tiberium League).
• Top: Almost capped or fully capped. (12-13 in Masters League, 14-15 in Tiberium League)

Click the chart to enlarge

Unsurprisingly, the negative sentiment about playing against higher levels increases if players have lower levels, hence experience the situation more frequently.

In the next chart, we look at answers to the inverted question: "How do you feel about playing against opponents with lower levels?"

Here, players with low levels seem to be able to put themselves into the opponent's shoes more easily. But even among the players with low levels, there's still people who don't chose the clear "I don't like it" option.

Who responded to the poll? Alarak asked questions about the respondents' levels and their (typical) league:

Also, Alarak asked how often players have lower levels compared to their opponents. Below, I plotted this against the players' responses for their own levels compared to the league. One idea of this is to sense-check the responses. E.g. if someone answers "my levels are near the top for my league", e.g. L14-15 for high Tiberium, it would be strange if they responded that they "almost always" play against higher levels. And indeed, none of the respondents chose this combination.

You can read Alarak's thoughts on the answers here and the Reddit discussion here.


Video of the day

After thinking about how much you don't like to play against higher levels, let us look at tournament play, which happens at equal levels. Here's the finals of the weekly Coliseum tournament. You can find more about this weekly tournament series on 13lade's Twitch Channel.

StrikerVX against nickcool, who will prevail?

Sign up to the Rivals Team League with your alliance / friends

Rivals Team League season 1 was an amazingly well organized Rivals tournament for teams / alliances. One great quality of it was the flexibility it allowed for players to arrange their matches with their opponents freely within a week. That means that even people with a busy schedule could play, in contrast to traditional tournaments where you have to commit time on specific days and times. 29 teams participated in season 1.

Now, the next season is about to start, and I highly recommend to join this event if you have an alliance or a number of friends to play with.

Some key information:

• Sign up using this form until Monday, September 2, 9 pm EST (for Europe, that's past midnight)
• Your team should be at least 4 players, I recommend at least 5-6 so you have backup players (vacations, unavailability)
• Join this Discord to get all info and follow the tournament
• Prize pool right now is $300 for the top 3 placed teams
• Matches will consist of four (4) standard sets and one (1) ace set
• Each set will be a best of five (Bo5)
• Maps for standard sets will be determined during line up submission, each captain will select the starting map for two (2) of the sets
• Ace Set starting map will be pre-determined each week

Thank you, AwDaSea from Terminus Shores for organizing this amazing tournament!

The RTL playoff bracket from Season 1;  congratulations for Team Scrappy for the win

How to win with L11/L12 against a full L15 deck?

Facing decks with much higher levels can be frustrating. Yet, especially newer players will be in this situation quite frequently. Hence it's worth to think about: "How can I still win this game, even though my opponent has much higher levels?"

I came across a game that isn't just an example where a strong player beats a much higher-levelled deck, but that also contains some good examples for concepts you can apply. I hope this will be a useful learning moment especially for newer players.

I recorded the game and uploaded it on YouTube. Apologies for the mediocre sound quality, I'm not a YouTuber & used the first-best app to record video on my smartphone. Below the video, I will comment what I see as the key situations and decisions.

• The game starts with wheel scout before harvester against harvester into Missile Squads.
• Benedikt sees two Missile Squads, and knows that his L11.0 Cyber Wheels cannot really deal with the L15.3 Missile Troopers, so he knows he has to go into Flames to be able to compete for the first Missile. 
• Just for context: A L15.3 unit has 37% more hitpoints 
• 37% more damage compared to a L11.0 unit
• Critical moment #1 in the game at 0:35 seconds: Benedikt moves his wheels to the bottom for a scout and the option to block the harvester. He might know Gizarius likes to play tech (hence likes dual harvester), or he might just want to get information and option value. Critical concept #1: Get information. To beat higher levels, you need to have the right unit composition. This needs either luck, anticipation, or good scouting.
• Either way, it allows him to delay the 2nd harvester while engaging the Missiles with his Flame Squad, thus creating two parallel challenges for the opponent. This is a critical concept, as to beat higher-level decks, you need to bank on making better decisions and force the opponent into mistakes. and multiple parallel challenges are a great way to allow the opponent to react sub-optimally.
• Gizarius follows up with Snipers, which is a right decision in my view. He prioritizes further delaying or even winning the first nuke, which gives him more time for his deck that, not just for levels, will be far superior in the late game.
• Benedikt simultaneously plays bikes to go after the harvesters. This is an interesting choice. as he cannot expect to kill Harvesters that have so many hitpoints (level difference!) and can be healed by Liang. But there's a lot of value in the bikes:
• Further aggression that can keep the opponent occupied and/or spend money (delaying the tech)
• Bikes are generally useful against Liang when the Nuke goes off soon, as the Liang player will often try to get pad control with the Liang drone
• Bikes also have the option value of being the anticipatory counter for potential Talons or Drones, which are the likely alternatives to Snipers
• Even if Benedikt would know that Snipers come, it seems likely that another wheels Wheels would not have been enough to win the first Nuke, as he wouöd have no unit to bear the Liang drone hovering over a bad, and 3 underlevelled Wheel squads would likely not have beaten the Missile/Sniper and possible follow-up unit from Gizarius quick enough to win first Nuke
• A rule of thumb is also that you don't want to overbuild one type of unit except there's a clear reason. The first bike gives you more options than the third wheel. 
• There's a tiny mistake from Benedikt at 0:50, who could have moved his Flames up to the opponent Lasers a bit earlier (also good to engage the Sniper and get a bit more damage on it) earlier, and move the Wheels to the hex where it can engage Snipers but not be shot by Wheels. I mention this to show that there's always room for improvement in Rivals.
• The second bike is more interesting from Benedikt. Gizarius, as expected, plays another Missile, as he can be happy with pad control and saving money whilst cheaply defending the bike. But soon we'll see what a good player can do with these bikes!
• The bikes can be seen as a diversion to pull units and focus away from the pads shortly before the nuke. It made Gizarius move his new Missiles down instead of up to the pads, so shortly before the Nuke goes off. At 1:06, Benedikt swings both of his bikes up to take pads, being able to sneak between the Missiles as a consequence of the aforementioned "luring the Missiles down to defend". 
• The right bikes quickly deal with the Liang drone. Gizarius slightly late reaction to make his Snipers attack the new Flamers instead of the Bikes means that the 11.0 Flamers get to the centre pad and contest it just long enough for the nuke to go off.
• Note the pattern: Controlling one Nuke, and contesting the other two. Especially against higher-level decks, this is often a much more realistic way to win a Nuke compared to controlling two pads, which ususally needs winning a fight. When you feel you're behind, keep this pattern in mind: Which is the one pad you can control, and how can you contest the other two just in time for the nuke?
• Directly after the Nuke, Benedikt adds some chipping damage to the Snipers with his bikes rather than go for the harvesters. This seems pointless at first, but consider this:
• First, he needs to quickly abandon the pad with the bikes anyways. Time is still on Gizarius' side, and so Benedikt correctly decides to let the opponent charge the pads
• Second, good players have the habit to take small edges. Shortly stopping bikes for one volley before moving on to the harvesters does not cost much time.
• Third, he might hope he is able to bring down the snipers to a single unit in the squad in the coming phase of the game. This might make it potentially much easier for him to take the second nuke, as a single-unit Sniper doesn't kill his Flamers as quickly, and, when the time is right, can be taken out much faster.
• This shows us a second small potential mistake from Benedikt: He forgets about his single Wheel near Gizarius' base, which pop caps him and has little value outside of scouting. On the other hand, the scouting info is invaluable, and currently the pads are charging. So Benedikt might actually prefer to have more information right now than more units, to create the plan on how to steal the second nuke. Whether intentional or not, this play of thought shows that there's often a trade-off between getting more information vs. having more control of the battlefield. Control of the battlefield is often temporary, especially if you're so behind in levels. But information might help you come up with the one sneaky plan to be ahead just when the time is right.
• In the next phase, Gizarius has the upper hand. This is pretty natural, consdering his unit level advantage, dual harvester income, and the sacrifices Benedikt had to make to steal the first nuke. In this phase, Benedikt's key achievement are ..
•  to prevent his harvester being killed, which could be the nail in his coffin against a tech deck.
• to ensure someone charges the pads at all times
• The final phase for the second nuke then shows good decision making and timing, and illustrates the power of Cyber Wheels: As a squad unit, the Predator needs four shots, no matter many levels it's higher.

Good game, Gizarius & Benedikt! And thanks to the devs for one of the best features of Rivals: The good replay functionality that allows us all to learn from each other, and be entertained by each other.

Liked this post? Check out this game analysis of Alarak beating a deck that has much higher levels.

If you're a newer player, maybe you also want to check out my basic guide for Rivals deck construction