Interview with Maximus – “Either you change your deck to the meta, or you wait long enough for your deck to become META!”

 

We are excited to kick off a new series of interviews with key members of the Rivals community! Our first guest is Maximus, up-and-comer tournament competitor, top ladder player & Wolverine enthusiast!

Q: Hi Maximus! To get things rolling: can you tell us a little about your background, who are you and what you do when you are not playing Rivals?

Maximus: “My name is Maximus Decimus Meridius, commander of the Armies of the North, General of the Felix Legions and loyal servant to the TRUE emperor, Marcus Aurelius. Father to a murdered son, husband to a murdered wife. And I will have my vengeance, in this life or the next.” (Gladiator, 2000)

But players may also call me Max, that is fine. I live in the Netherlands, where I was born 32 years ago. After growing up near Amsterdam, I studied Civil Engineering at the Technical University of Delft. Since my graduation I work as an engineer for a construction company. In my spare time I play water polo, like to watch all kind of sports on television and play (board) games. Favourite non-video games on my list are Magic the Gathering and Game of Thrones. Game of Thrones takes 6 to 8 hours per game, but with beer, food and friends it is one of the best and most intriguing games to play.

Q: What was your gaming career like before this? Did you play any other games competitively before Rivals? Are there any multiplayer games that you played competitively before? Which ones?

Maximus: When I was younger, I played multiple games on pc, but non-competitive, or even online. I liked Warcraft 2 and 3 the most (no World of Warcraft!), but also played Command & Conquer: Red Alert (which triggered me to download this game), KKnD, StarCraft, Age of Empires II and III, Diablo II, Heroes of Might and Magic 3 and 4, Commando’s 1 to 3. Most of these games I just played the campaigns or did some customs with my brother.

Also played a lot of games on the Nintendo 64 against my brother, mostly James Bond: Golden Eye, Perfect Dark and Mario Kart 64. Nowadays I play some games on the Nintendo Switch, mostly Zelda and The Witcher 3. Have not played any PC games the last few years, my laptop is not that great.

On mobile phone I played a lot of Clash of Clans for 2-3 years straight and had 2 accounts fully upgraded for that time. Did not play competitive but had an active clan with which we did many clan wars. One week after downloading CnC Rivals, I deleted both accounts and never looked back.

I started playing Rivals in November 2018 and have not stopped since. After playing for more than 2.5 years, I can say that it is possible to become a whale as a free to play player! It will take a lot of persistence of being under levelled most of the time. But if you keep playing long enough, you will become the whale.

Delft, the city Maximus lived in for 7 years

Q: What device do you play on? What position? Is there any specific environment you find the easiest? Do you have a tryhard tournament position?

Maximus: I only play the game on my iPhone 7, not on tablet / BlueStacks. I hold the phone in my hands during playing and make the moves with right index finger and left thumb. Sitting in a chair or on the couch does not really matter if my girlfriend is not around. She does not like the sounds I make during close matches, the wiggling of my toes and heavy (not constant) breathing 😉 I play without music in the background, but also without the game sound on my phone. I think I am one of the few players who mute all game sounds but did so since the installing the game. So, I do not think it is a big disadvantage.

Q: You have had some impressive tournament success in recent months, with winning the first Legion Blitz event, and only losing to Lopatka in the finals of Bikerush's Fallen Brotherhood tournament in March. Do you do anything specific in preparation for tournaments? Do you have ambitions about maybe beating Alicia or Agent in the future?

Maximus: I do not really prepare for tournaments. Since I mostly play the same decks for NOD and GDI, any specific practice before the tournaments is not useful. Two / three ladder games with both factions as warm-up usually do the trick as preparation.

Of course, I would like to beat Alicia or Agent at some point in a tournament. The gap is getting smaller, I lost the last two tournament encounters with Agent with 2-1 in a best of 3. However, their skill level is far above the other (active) players. After them, there is a larger group of skilled players who fight for the remaining positions in tournaments. The order of these players changes per tournament, depending on bracket, participation and skill of the day.

“You should see the Colosseum Spaniard. Fifty-thousand Romans... watching every movement of your sword... willing you to make that killer blow. The silence before you strike and the noise afterwards. It rises. It rises... like a storm. As if you were the thunder god himself. “(Gladiator, 2000)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WWEXVXEBwFI&t=5170s&ab_channel=13lade
Maximus overcoming flame tanks in the Legion Blitz Finals.

Q: You have quite a unique playstyle, being one of the only high tournament players who do not use Pitbulls or Bikes in their regular decks. You have mostly stuck to these decks despite what was thrown at you, be it the age of the Razorback and Fanatics, or the current APC/Catalyst Gunship metagame. How did these decks develop? On GDI you are especially known for your signature Wolverine. Is it fair to assume Wolverine is your favorite unit? Do you see yourself changing to different decks after the next balance patch?

Maximus: As a F2P player, I chose to focus on one deck per faction from the beginning. Requesting (and later cloning) cards for one deck made it possible to have some degree of levels rather quickly. After that there was a big gap between my main deck and all my other units. This made it impossible to change decks if I still wanted to play for the pro races and the higher positions on ladder.

I am not sure how I decided to play exactly this GDI deck but it was within 2 months of playing the game. After that I have not made any changes to the deck. I guess I already liked the speed and flexibility of Jumpjets, Talons and Orcas. Add the early game Rifleman and Missile Squad and most slots are filled. Wolverine is a cheap tech unit which completes the deck against air and infantry and has a good amount of hit points as a buffer. Compared to APC, Wolverines have a 15% less health, but more than double the damage (+125%). They do not leave missile squads behind when killed, but I have the Jumpjet Orca for that. The difference in opening the tech lab or the war factory (only unit would be APC) is only 50 Tiberium. This is not that much after the first missile, so I prefer the higher damage from the Wolverine to destroy air and (heavy) infantry.

As a commander, I have tried some games with Liang and Jackson, but both did not do the trick for me. Liang could be used for pad stealing (in those days), but healing is useless for the infantry squads and talons. So, using Liang only for the Wolverines and pad stealing was not really an option. The Jackson boost gives an edge in certain matchups, but in general Lt. Strongarm is more consistent. Most players place their turrets during the game way too often and at the wrong time. Try to use it whenever the missile is close to launching to make a difference in a match-up or to block enemy units. Spamming the turret is often a waste of Tiberium and then it will be on cooldown when you need it most.

The Razorback meta was difficult with my GDI deck, which relies heavily on infantry. But there was no real other option for me at that time due to levels. It was tough games, but still winnable against most players. This improved my decision making and micro enormously, since I often had huge deck disadvantage.

My NOD deck had some changes over time, that is also why it is less known. At this moment I play Seth, Militants, Laser squads, Scorpion, Stealth Tank, Venom and Shade. It is a bit of an expensive deck, but by choosing the correct matchups it can work. Against most NOD decks I do not even have to open the war factory during the game. Venom + Shade kills almost everything together, including Pitbulls when playing against GDI. Catship is a broken unit due to the target lock-on issue, but it also does not kill Pitbulls together with Shade. Venom is an underrated unit by most players in my opinion.

The current version of the deck is a small adjustment from 3-4 months ago where I swapped the Banshee for Shade (now that I have enough cards for decent levels on Shade). I played that deck for over a year, even when the NOD meta was built around Stealth Tanks and Phantoms which slaughter Banshees.

Since the last patch (August 2020) and all the colossal crates I gathered in pro-races, I have most units at level 15, or enough cards to make it to level 14-15. So by now I can change decks, but with the current meta there is no real reason to. Jumpjet Talon is the meta for GDI nowadays, which I have been playing for 2.5 years. So I know how to handle those units like no other. The difference is that most players use the slow and boring APC, I bring the awesome shiny golden Wolverines!
So, either you change your deck to the meta, or wait long enough for your deck to become META!

If my current decks are punished too much after the next balance patch, I have the possibility to switch decks without losing levels. However, I do not have any practice with other decks / units and that will make a big difference for me. 

Q: How about tournament play? Do you think you are at a disadvantage with playing the same decks, or does your mastery of the playstyle overcome that?

Maximus: Against most players in tournaments, I can play my favorite ladder decks, for which I perfected my playstyle. However, the further we go along the bracket in tournaments, the better the opponents become. They will counter my ladder decks, and with minimal difference in skill between us it will become very hard to win the match. So later in the tournament I must switch decks, but that is also my problem. I am not used to playing other decks, so do not have the skills mastered for those decks. That leads to misclicks, wrong unit building, bad decision-making, and eventually losses. So, I try to switch it up a bit, but also go back to my favorite decks. This way I try to keep my opponent in doubt of what I will be playing, so they cannot make a full counter deck against me.

“People should know when they are conquered.

Would you, Quintus? Would I?” (Gladiator, 2000)

Q: You mentioned trying different decks in later stages of tournaments. Can you talk a bit about those decks? You have been playing Avatar & Rockworm recently, do you intend on playing those units and are just looking for the right deck, or are you just throwing things at the wall and seeing what sticks?  What goes through your mind when you decide on what deck you switch to when you feel your ladder decks are not good enough?

Maximus: I look at decks other top players have played in tournaments, my opponents (before the match is set-up, no deck sniping) but also other players, which sort of fit my playstyle. I then make small adjustments to have units my opponents do not expect from me. Like Rockworm is difficult to beat when players expect to face my GDI army without any real factory units. Other times I just want to use Avatar for fun, because when you spot it, you will shit bricks if there is no real counter in the deck. However, it is very map dependent whether Avatar can be useful or not.

For GDI I usually make only small adjustments to my main deck, just to have a slight difference in set-up which becomes unexpected. For example, switching Wolverine for Titan, but the core of my GDI deck stays the same. Especially for GDI where I am not used to playing different set-ups, big changes will screw up my game plan and automatisms.

It also depends on the opponent I face. Some other top players also stick to the same deck first game, like Agent Shadow with his NOD Fanatic Stank Aggro. I try to build a counter deck to those decks, hoping they do not switch decks or factions.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j3EfVEO0KKY&ab_channel=Kenny
Maximus’s set against At0m in RTL S6, showing off some of his Rockworm decks he has been experimenting with.

Q: Do you have a favorite opponent that you like facing on ladder or in tournaments? A least a favorite maybe...?

Maximus: On ladder all opponents who win games against me are my least favorite… The ones where I win are my favourites 😉 Being near the top of ladder for a long time means playing a lot of the same opponents every season. It is difficult to name (un)favorite players because it changes per game / army / map whether the match was great or boring. In general, all the top ladder players are great to play against.

In tournaments, I really love the community. You get to know more people, talk with them for some time after the matches and just get to know the player behind the other side of the screen. This is great, since in the tournaments we see and face a lot of the same players. This makes it more fun to watch the tournaments, even if you are knocked-out. Almost all players are polite, helpful and nice to chat with.

HOWEVER, all the Challenge Match Abusers are at the far bottom of my list of respectable players. I just cannot understand why you would play a game, exploiting a bug in the system, but feel OK with winning maybe 30% of all your matches. Play to win (with the risk of losing points), or do not play at all! The list of abusers gets longer every season, this needs to be dealt with ASAP by EA.

“Strength and honor” (Gladiator, 2000)

Q: What is your advice to any new players?

Maximus: “Gladiators... I salute you.” (Gladiator, 2000)

Choose one single deck per faction, which is decent and fits your playstyle. It does not have to be the current META deck, since that can change drastically with a balance patch. By playing the same deck over and over, you will master it completely and know all the ins and outs of the deck. How to respond to the units your opponent builds, when to charge the pads or to stall the missile, when to pressure harvesters or not. Another big advantage of playing only 2 decks is that you can reach decent levels in a limited amount of time. By playing many different decks, you spend way too many coins on units you do not need in the end. Those coins will come short for levelling up your main deck. Also, for requesting and cloning cards it is better to focus on one deck per faction. 

Try to determine what fits to your playstyle the best. If you want to play tech, limit it to max. 2 tech units to have a (sort of) balanced deck. More than 2 tech units just make other tech units in the army redundant. If you want to play a very aggressive deck (aggro) you need a lot of micromanagement. This takes a lot of practice, especially against higher ranked players. It is easy to out-micro bad players, but that will not improve your skillset. This is also one of the main reasons tanking for the races is bad for your skills. By dropping medals before every race, most of the games played are against weaker opponents, of which most also have lower levels compared to you. So, 70-90% of the games after tanking are easy wins, that require no skill at all. The difficult matches against other tankers do not really matter, since if you lose them, it is easy to get the medals back. There is no skill improvement in your play anymore, I would even say your skill level drops. By not playing tough matchups, you lose the precision, split second decision making and micromanagement needed for playing the game at higher (tournament) levels.

I see the difference in skill with some alliance members, they have been dropping medals for the races for over a year, where I did not. At the beginning we were evenly matched in games, or at least the games were close. Nowadays they are easy wins for me, even though we played approximately the same number of games the last year.

In my 2.5 years of playing Rivals, I never threw any game, always played to win. Even when I was vastly out levelled, I still tried to make the best of it. By pressuring yourself to do better, you will improve your skill enormously. I played the pro races from the beginning, even when I would not do better than rank 60. I steadily climbed the ladder to the edge of top 20 in the races, while still being lower-levelled (https://cncrivals.blogspot.com/search?q=maximus). You need to grow your skills along with your levels, until you become a whale and can play for the top positions on ladder.

“Brothers, what we do in life echoes in eternity!” (Gladiator, 2000)

Q: If you had one wish that you could make happen in the world of C&C Rivals, what would it be?

Maximus: Active development from EA with new units, (emergency) patches when needed and at this point a quick fix for all the Challenge Match Abuse. This behavior by a growing group of people is destroying our beloved game.

Q: Any last words?

Maximus:

 “Are you not entertained?

Are you not entertained?

Is this not why you are here?” (Gladiator, 2000)

Written by: kennyemmy, Entsorger