If you don’t know her, yet, you might want to start with our previous interview with AliciaDestiny. Please also make sure to follow her on YouTube and Twitch to watch her awesome Rivals content.
And now, let’s dive into our new questions for her:
Q: Alicia, thanks for taking the time again! Much has happened in Rivals recently, and it’s great to catch up about it with you. Let’s start with your recent tournament wins. Recently, you won the Rivals World Cup for $650 and didn’t lose a single map in your run. How did that happen?
AliciaDestiny: I took a different approach to this tournament than I usually do with all the other tournaments. When tournaments come, I typically do no practicing, no preparation and I just bring in both my ranked decks. That approach has won me several tournaments in the past, but there was one tournament where I started thinking differently: Rival’s Olympics #1 hosted by Nukin.
In that tournament, I felt like my semi-finals opponent was straight up abusing the “armies” tab in my profile. He would wait until I joined the lobby first, see what my rank was because that correlated to what faction I was playing and then go to the armies tab in my profile to see what I had selected. Obviously I don’t have any proof that he did that, but he was taking over 10 minutes to join the lobby and had one instance where he joined first, I joined, and then he left the lobby and rejoined a minute later. As you may have expected, I lost that series and it enraged the hell out of me as every match felt like I was playing a total exact counter to the deck I was playing. I still came in 3rd for that tournament but that’s besides the point. Ever since that day, I started taking tournaments way more seriously and started actually preparing for them & theory-crafting brand new decks to play.
I am aware that a lot of people most likely go to my profile just to see what I’m playing and expect those decks to be played in the tournaments. It explains why some people just seem substantially harder than others. My new approach is simple, create a bunch of brand new decks that have never been seen before and I’ve never played once and bring them to the tournaments. Therefore, no one can practice against me since they have no idea what I’m bringing. Also, there will be many decks prepared for specific map types so I have the best deck to play for the appropriate map.
The very first tournament that I tried out this brand new approach was the RIFLE #2 tournament. I created this brand-new Artillery deck which I theory-crafted myself while I was taking a shower. The deck featured a bunch of cheap units while taking advantage of the Scavengers. No one has ever seen this deck before and it was very different than the artillery deck that was being played on ladder at the time.
I knew my early rounds would be easy so I would play decks that I made as “scapegoat” decks. These decks are ones that I made that are brand new but I don’t think they’re that good. They’re good enough for me to use and beat my early round opponents but just not overall that decent. That way I give people the false impression that I will play those later in the tournament and have them prepare for these decks.
Suzaku was my first super-dangerous opponent in that tournament and I knew he would be expecting one of my regular decks so I played one of the “scapegoat” decks for round 1 which was a really awful Avatar deck that he didn’t expect. After winning with that, I brought out my infamous Scavenger Artillery deck and absolutely destroyed him. I then proceeded to use the same tactic on all of my later opponents and that was the most one-sided tournament the community has ever seen where I won it and only dropped 1 game for the entire tourney.
The never-seen artillery deck was more than a success, it won every single game that I used it in with the exception of pontiki putting in Rock Worm specifically to counter the deck after losing to it twice. That totally wasn’t funny! I swapped out phantom for banshee for the 4th round and killed the rock worm with the banshees. RIFLE 2 was the beginning of my new total dominance with my overall match result being 11-1 after beating Realm, Suzaku, VictorBansemer, Lopatka, and Pontiki. And that is no easy feat; I wouldn’t even hesitate putting Suzaku and Victor in my personal top 5 best players of all time.
The next tournament in which I deployed this brand new approach to was the “Crazy Pimpin’ Rivals Tournament” by CrazyPsychopath and Gizarius which featured a $500 prize for 1st place. I spent hours and hours coming up with 100% brand new decks including ...
- the 3-2-0-1 Liang Sandstorm deck which I dubbed as “Tournament Liang”,
- my terrible Avatar deck from the previous tournament,
- a Jackson Aggro Fortress deck,
- “Jade Infernom”, a variation of my classic “Infernom” deck that revolves around war factory with Inferno + Phantom as its late game,
- a return of the tournament winning Scavenger Artillery deck,
- and finally my double boost Giga Cannon / Fanatic deck as one of my “scapegoat” decks.
- I also obviously would bring my classic “Infernom” deck which was Oxanna, Fanatics, Cyberwheels, Attack Bikes, Scorpion Tank, Inferno, & Phantom. I just can’t play a tournament without that one being in my lineup due to my long history and experience with it.
The games against Benven2
In the very last round vs ThxForMMR I was 100% ready for him. I felt the adrenaline flowing through my veins as I perfectly displayed all of my ability at once. I would say it was an easy win, but then I was totally prepared!
Grand Finals of AliciaDestiny vs ThxForMMR, mentioned in the paragraph above
Not too long after that tournament, Bikerush & Gizarius hosted a tournament with an even bigger prize pool called “C&C Rivals World Cup” and in tournament you will see my best performance to date. I brought a few new decks to confuse my opponents as well as the ones with proven performance.
New additions to my lineup included a Solomon deck that I copied from Suzaku’s ‘armies’ tab on his profile and the dreaded cookie cutter “Ckm Jade deck” that everyone hates. Needless to say, no one was prepared *Insert Illidan quote here*. My overall performance was a staggering 14-0. #UndefeatedQueen
Alicia used her famous ladder deck also in the finals against VictorBansemer (video see below)
I think I’ve pretty much explained my tactic and strategy already earlier in this question so I won’t repeat myself. In summary, the new Solomon deck trolled everyone and the Jade deck took a fat smelly dump on Nukin while my iconic “Infernom” deck was played 4 times in a row against VictorBansemer in the final match.
Q: In the latest big tournament, the Bandito Smackdown, you lost in the semifinals against srpss and his Razorbacks. Can you tell us a bit about this event and the games?
AliciaDestiny: Razorback is by far the most infuriating fucking shit that I’ve ever experience in my entire Rivals career. Just before the finals I had to face BigMenace as my final round in the regionals and he used a similar deck to srpss and had razorback with a parade of really cheap infantry. I barely beat him and let me tell you, I’ve never been more pissed off than ever playing the game. The operator of the Razorback doesn’t even have to be competent and it’s so tanky that you can send it into grave danger and still manage to take out its target. Also, I’ve been saying for a while that the Mohawk gunship is also in need of nerfs. It is strong enough to kill 2 pitbulls back-to-back while only costing 10 more than 1 of them. Do you think that’s fair? Anyways, rant over.
Overall, I didn't really like this tournament at all. The format was extremely confusing with a hundred different rules and a harvester-load full of different prizes. It was a lot to take in any quite frankly. I enjoy keeping things simple. The regions were a nice touch but I felt like there were too much filler content in order to make the tournament seem greater than it was. Also, I won the spectator prize which involved betting on the outcome of the matches in the Twitch chat but I was disqualified for the prize due to me being a participant in the tournament. I’m still salty over that by the way! Nothing in the rules said that a participant couldn’t win the prize and I wouldn’t have been so emotional over pointless bets otherwise!
I do appreciate all the work people put into organizing the event, but this has been the first event that I genuinely disliked due to the lack of clarity in everything. Also, now that I’ve been humiliated by the trollcopter once, I can assure you that it’s not going to happen again as I’ll be way better prepared for it. You know, the complete beatdown was due to my complete lack of experience in playing against the Razorback. In ranked, I just play the same 2 decks and neither of them are infantry heavy. Both of the decks also have my anti-air units at level 15 so someone will have to be a really fat whale in order to get the brand new razorback at a high enough level to even be a factor. It is absurd how it needs 3 salvos from attack bikes in order to be taken out. If it’s not changed before the next tournament you may even see me abusing the silly thing as I have no morals when it comes to playing decks :).
Does srpss stand for "surprises" after all? The Bulgarian trollcopters at least caught her by surprise.
Q: The Rivals tournament scene recently has grown in frequency and prize money. I assume you’re not done winning them?
AliciaDestiny: Haha, of course not! The only time I don’t win them is when the blindfold is too tight, or when I drown from being underwater, or when I suffocate for being in space. On a serious note, I’m very excited for all the upcoming tournaments and they are reviving my interest and love for this game !
Q: You also won the October season individually, setting a new world record for medals in a season and celebrated it on Reddit. How easy was it?
AliciaDestiny: To be honest, it was unintentional. My job last month forced me to change my shift to 3rd shift. And with me working at a different time, I had to create a new schedule to start streaming again routinely. I noticed the majority of people that watch Rivals streams are during the afternoon, so I started streaming during that time since I no longer worked during that time. It is extremely easy for me to stream during this time because I can always stream 2-4 hours before I go to work and then go to work right after that. The problem with streaming after I get home from work is sometimes I’m not in the mood due to having a rough day at work or just wanting to go to bed when I get home. Due to this new streaming time I started routinely streaming Mondays through Fridays for 2-4 hours at a time.
Due to the sheer amount of hours streaming, I easily secured rank 1 mid-way through the season just based on my raw winrate alone. Every week I usually maintain around a 95-98% win rate while my opposition is around 80-85%. It is evident when you compare how many games I play versus the people around my rank. Suzaku, Nukin, Nickcool, Anas, MidnightNation, 13lade, & Noid Hex all had more games played than me (as recorded in our ‘Seasons’ tab) yet I’m the one with the most medals. The reason being is simple, at the top of the top winrate starts playing a huge factor when you queue into mid-ranked Tiberium players because you’ll only get 8 medals per victory and you lose 32 medals per loss. That is a huge hit as you’d have to get 4 wins to make up for any losses. There may have been 1 or 2 days that month where I played the game and didn’t stream it but the majority of the games were played during my streams before work. At the very last week of the season I actually did play more than I usually do because I had won 10,000 diamonds from the RIFLE #3 qualifier and spent them all in the ‘Resource Challenge’ so I had a substantial amount of cloning labs to go through. I had a personal goal to get a level 15 inferno before season’s end because I wanted to see how it would perform. With most players getting to the level 15 ceiling, I don’t see this record being broken anytime soon as opposition will get harder and harder due to the level cap. It is a very beautiful medal count too. My next goal is to achieve at 7,000 medals in one faction as Suzaku currently holds the record for having the highest ever Nod medals and Bikerush holding the record for GDI. If either of you are reading this then you better cherish your meaningless record while it still stands ! 😏
Q: Your alliance, Hellz Ascendance, also won the October season amidst some drama. What happened?
AliciaDestiny: What happened is Hellz Ascendance just kicks ass! I honestly believe that the merger between Ascendance and Hellz Connection turned a lot of heads within the community. The new guild attracted a lot of high profile players that wanted to be in an elite guild. We got several new people that season in such a short period of time. I believe people didn’t like the image of the old Ascendance as it was getting the reputation of being a no-skill whale guild.
To be honest, I actually was going for that! I don’t like spending money in video games because if you get rank 1 in Hearthstone, or any game that has microtransactions, when you spent an obscene amount of money is it really that rewarding? If I played an RPG and bought all those “time saver” type DLCs where they level your character for you and give you late game items I wouldn’t feel any accomplishment for beating the game. Therefore I wanted as many whales in my guild as possible because whales are very generous with card donations and typically aren't familiar with the meta.
Ascendance had 5 guilds and quite frankly I was just sick of it. I didn’t have a large leadership and it felt cumbersome to manage all that crap. So I wanted a way to liquidate the guilds and bring in more leadership to help manage everything. I went to Sinkiller and proposed to him and thankfully, Hellz Connection were on board! Hellz Ascendance is now the elite of both merged guilds, Ascendance Prime is now the best of Ascendance, and we got to disband a couple Ascendance guilds ! It was perfect! As of late, Ascendance Prime has performed a lot better than our old second guild as is strong enough to break the top 10 in the alliance ranks.
The merge has also helped Ascendance with our tournament presence; have you noticed the recent representation of Hellz Ascendance? It’s crazy!! What an improvement! Now Ascendance actually is a formidable alliance other than just “Alicia and the whales”.
Terminus Shores and 13lade want to win the November season
Q: Terminus Shores, the runner-up alliance, seems to prepare to take back the #1 alliance spot in the November season. 13lade announced that Terminus Shores will take this seriously. What’s your take on this alliance rivalry, and how do you think the November season will turn out?
AliciaDestiny: This may surprise at least one person, but I don’t care at all about alliance ranks. I’ve never once talked about alliance ranks on my stream yet Terminus is so quick to accuse me of doing things in the name of rank ! It’s funny too because I watch 13lade’s stream as well as other Terminus streamers and I see alliance ranks gets mentioned frequently. The topic also gets brought up frequently in their discord as well as 13lade’s discord on top of that. They already were taking this seriously so I don’t buy the sudden bravado.
Unfortunately, with my new guild I share the same guild with a lot of people that take the alliance ranks very seriously. But you know, I like drama; I love it. so I will partake in the name of lulz. Terminus Shores is such an inferior alliance and I’ll tell you why. Their discord doesn’t have a meme channel like the Ascendance one does. They have Nukin…. Oh crap… I have Nukin now… AHHHH ok I take that back… maybe Terminus is a better alliance now...
One thing I have noticed about both of our alliances is that from time to time we’ll have players that leave our alliance and then join our competition. This has happened to both sides. Unfortunately, in a hyper competitive game there will always be drama as people tend to take things way too seriously. So tell me, why should I care about alliance ranks when I have 13k medals and the winner of over a dozen tournaments? I have to bring that up in order to prove a point because I don’t like talking about my accomplishments. It is so easy to take it the wrong way as nobody likes someone who brags; they just see it as you’re flexing or being very arrogant and egotistical but that is totally not my intent.
Anyways, I would like to thank you for giving me the opportunity to write on this platform so I can be my usual self of writing a bunch of cringey jokes while being semi-serious to even things out.
Alicia's hometown by night -- Toledo, Ohio
Q: Let’s get away from Rivals for a bit. Tell us a bit about your hometown, Toledo, Ohio. And bonus question: Have you ever visited the original Toledo, Spain?
AliciaDestiny: It is a really neat city with its greats and its flaws. The greats is that it has an overabundance of local restaurant chains and a really cool Zoo. Geographically, it's very close to Detroit and therefore has a ton of manufacturing everywhere. In fact, my current job and 2 of my previous jobs have been within the manufacturing industry. Another cool fact is that it has a nuclear power plant near the city. I've worked there for a year! It is called the ‘Davis-Besse’ nuclear plant.
I was born in Thailand but I’ve pretty much lived in Toledo my whole life as my parents moved there when I was 3 years old. I don’t travel much so I’ve kinda lived a really boring life of video games! I am planning on changing that as I’m meeting so many awesome people all over the world in Rivals and wouldn’t mind meeting some of my long distance fans one day. If anyone reading this blog is close to Toledo then feel free to contact me if you want to witness some crazy micro in person ! lol ;)
And no, I have not visited the Toledo in Spain; I would like to one day though !!
Q: Thank you so much for your answers and all the time you put into this interview! As a bonus, we have prepared an article with AliciaDestiny's tips for new Rivals players. And here's how you can find more from AliciaDestiny online:
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