Rivals Coliseum June Finals -- Video Links for each Game

Recently, my favorite tournament series concluded with it's June Finals. It's 13lade's Colliseum series.

What do I like about it?

• It's streamed & commented on by strong players
• The video is efficiently cut with little downtime between videos
• The players are all good and know each other, so they (try to) adapt their decks to maps and their opponents, which gives an interesting variety of games at high level

To give you an idea of the breadth of decks played, and to allow you to quickly navigate to the video(s) showcasing certain decks, here's an extensive link of YouTube jump-links:

• Nickcool
• 3-1-2 JJ / Borca
• wwfyin 1-3-2 APC / Orca
• MavMitchell 3-2-1 Marauder / Chuggy
• 2-3-1 Oxanna / Marauder / Chuggy 
• wwfyin 3-3 Jade / Scavenger
• 2-3-1 Scavenger / Inferno
• srpss 2-2-2 Tank / Borca
• MavMitchell 3-3 Tick Tank
• Alarak 2-3-1 Oxanna Aggro with Fanatic / Phantom
• Alarak 2-3-1 Oxanna Aggro with Fanatic / Phantom
• 2-4 Giga
• srpss vs 2-3-1 Aggro with Fanatic / Scavengers
• Alarak
• 2-3-1 Oxanna Aggro with Fanatic / Phantom
• MavMitchell 3-1-2 with Oxanna / Scavenger / Marauder / Venom / Banshee
• wwfyin 2-3-1 JJ / Sniper / Tank / Talon
• srpss 2-3-1 Nod Aggro with Fanatic / Scavenger 
• nickcool  2-3-1 Scavenger / Inferno
• nickcool 2-3-1 Oxanna Aggro with Fanatic / Phantom vs 2-3-1 Inferno
• 2-2-2 Strongarm / Mohawk
• MavMitchell 3-2-1 Marauder / Chuggy
• 2-2-2 Scavenger / Inferno / Phantom
• wwfyin  2-3-1 Inferno
• srpss 2-2-2 Scavenger / Inferno / Phantom vs 3-3 MG / Grenadier / Tank deck
• srpss
• 2-2-2 Tank / Borca
• nickcool 2-3-1 Scavenger / Inferno
• wwfyin 2-3-1 Scavenger / Inferno
• 2-3-1 Fanatic / Scavenger Aggro
• nickcool 2-4 Giga
• Alarak 2-3-1 Oxanna Aggro with Fanatic / Phantom
• Marauder / Chuggy
• MavMitchell Marauder / Chuggy mirror with / without Banshee
• Liang / Shatterer / Borca
• MavMitchell 3-3 Marauder / Chuggy
• 3-3 MG / Grenadier / Tank deck
• Alarak 2-2-2 Scavenger / Inferno / Phantom 
• 2-4 Fanatic / Scavenger / Stealth
• wwfyin 2-4 Seth(!) Marauder / Chuggy 
• MavMitchell
• 3-1-2 with Oxanna / Scavenger / Marauder / Venom / Banshee
• Alarak 2-3-1 Oxanna Aggro with Fanatic / Phantom
• 3-2-1 Marauder / Chuggy
• Alarak 2-2-2 Strongarm / Mohawk
• nickcool 3-2-1 JJ / Borca 
• 3-3 Scavenger / Marauder / Tick Tank
• wwfyin 2-3-1 Scavenger / Inferno 
• nickcool 2-3-1 Inferno
• 3-3 Marauder / Chuggy
• wwfyin 2-3-1 Aggro with Fanatic / Scavengers
• srpss Marauder / Chuggy Mirror with / without Banshee
• srpss Liang / Shatterer / Borca
• wwfyin
• 3-3 Jade / Scavenger
• nickcool 2-3-1 Oxanna Marauder / Chem Buggy
• 1-3-2 APC / Orca
• nickcool 3-1-2 JJ / Borca
• 2-3-1 Scavenger / Inferno
• MavMitchell  3-3 Scavenger / Marauder / Tick Tank
• Alarak 2-2-2 Scavenger / Inferno / Phantom
• srpss 2-2-2 Tank / Borca
• 2-3-1 Aggro with Fanatic / Scavengers
• MavMitchell  3-3 Marauder / Chuggy
• 2-3-1 GDI JJ / Sniper / Tank / Talon
• Alarak 2-3-1 Oxanna Aggro with Fanatic / Phantom
• 2-4 Seth / Marauder / Chuggy
• srpss 2-4 Fanatic / Scavenger / Stealth

And if you want to watch the full 71 minutes in no particular order, here's the full video:

RLong tournament #2 on July 28 – all details about maps and unit bans

RLong's second tournament has opened up for sign-ups. Here's what you need to know:

• When: Sunday, July 28 2019, 9:30 am Central US time
• In London, that would be 14:30, in Germany 15:30
• Sign up phase runs until July 24 – to sign up, join the discord
• Hosts: RLong & AliciaDestiny
• Mode: Single-round knock-out
• Prize pool: $20 plus $50 gift card plus donations (check out the discord for the donation link)

As part of building up buzz for the tournament, there's going to be a show match against AliciaDestiny to kick things off. If you want to play against Alicia, join the "show-match-raffle" channel in RLong's discord.

What's special about this tournament is that RLong wants to pursue a certain idea for each. This time, he wants to get people to play more tech. To do that, he limits the allowed units and commanders for both factions.

Allowed units GDI

• Commanders: Strongarm, Jackson
• Infantry: Rifle, Missile, Grenadiers, MG
• Vehicles: Pitbull, Shatterer, Slingshot, MLRS
• Air: Talon, Mohawk, Orca, Hammerhead
• Tech: All

Allowed units Nod

• Infantry: Militants, Lasers, Flames, Chem Troopers, Scarabs
• Vehicles: Bikes, Buggies, Giga Cannon
• Air: Laser Drones, Venom, Banshee, Phantom
• Tech: All

Plus, you can prepare for the exact maps for each round, in theory having your perfect deck ready for every map. The maps per round of the knock-out tournamnet are:

1. Neutral Zone
2. Frozen Road
3. Fortress
4. Flooded Fields
5. Middle Oasis
6. Hot Zone
7. Twin Pillars
8. Tiberium Stripes

With no wheels and dogs, expect Rifle / Militant openers. Considering the recent balance changes that favor multiple buildings into tech, and considering the unit restrictions, maybe we see a decent number of 4-building decks here.

You can see 6 of the 8 maps below. What I'm wondering is whether all of these maps will incentivize tech play. Middle Oasis especially doesn't really suit tech at all. 

Balance Patch July 2019 -- The Rise of "Tech Splash" and Nod Drones?

Just a couple of days after the last patch we get more balance changes.

If you prefer video, and some additional analysis, I highly recommend 13lade's video on the patch:

Buffs:

• Tech Lab cost reduced depending on the number of other buildings you have. It now costs 150 Tiberium, which is up from 120 Tib. But the cost is reduced by 30 Tib for each other building you already have. Means Barracks into Tech lab, the effective Tech lab cost is identical. But now 4 buildings might be viable, and then the Tech lab would only cost 60 effectively!
• Hammerhead attack speed +6%
• Wolverine vehicle damage +27%, air damage +11% -- might mean that it now beats Pitbulls again?
• Zone Troopers & Cyborgs double attack speed and halve damage to air and vehicles. If this is not a typo, their DPS against air doubles. If it is a typo and air damage is also halved, it's just relevant against GDI drones. Which seems questionable as drones were nerfed independently already.
• Centurion 
• attack speed doubled
• vehicle damage halved -- this means it's better against squad units like Wheels & Dogs
• infantry damage reduced by a third -- this means it's DPS vs infantry is now effectively up 50%, considering the attack speed
• Confessors +12.5% air damage
• Nod Laser Drones +25% attack speed, +15% vehicle damage -- so compound +44% DPS! This is gigantic. Harvester damage was reduced by 6%, but even that is still higher due to the attack speed buff.
• Phantom now has 4 rockets with roughly the same DPS, which is a buff mostly against GDI drones (now also vs Laser Drones, which might become more commonplace)

Nerfs:

• Pitbull is nerfed in a bit of a "hard to understand" way:
• "Charge delay increased from 0.1 to 0.75"-- if this is the delay to the first shot, this seems very significant
• "Attack Lock on Timer" increased from 0 to 0.75" -- this might mean the Pitbull will lose it's acquired target (seen with the red beam quicker if it doesn't stay in range
• Without testing, it seems hard to foresee how much it changes the typical situations, e.g. standard Bíke vs Pitbull fights, or Banshee vs Pitbull fights, or Orca vs Pitbull fights
• Scavengers attack speed -15%, hitpoints -13%

Both nerf and buff:

• Liang drone 
• Duration down from 30 to 26 seconds 
• Hitpoints +30%
• Healing to infantry reduced by 10%

Personal thoughts:

• Tech changes are interesting, and especially Tech units that are used as the single Tech unit (aka "Tech splash") will benefit, i.e. Sandstorm, Artillery, Mammoth, Avatar, maybe Kodiak/Basilisk. Interesting to see whether 4-building decks will be seen a bit more commonly now
• Yet, I do not agree with Captain Benzie that it's great that we'll see more Tech. I do like "Aggro metas", as the units are balanced better against each other than many Tech units are. So if you like micro battles, you like a diverse Aggro meta more than a "Tech Splash" meta
• Scavenger nerf is very justified. Hard to judge whether it's enough, but it seems reasonable.
• Pitbull nerf is hard to foresee just from the theory. Need to test.
• Nod Laser Drones buff seems very hefty, I'm a bit worried it might be a tad too much. Certainly enough that we might now see more Nod air decks!
• Inferno / Phantom already was very strong again after the hitpoint buff for Inferno. One weekness were GDI drones, which are now easier to kill for the Phantom. 
• The direct nerfs to GDI drones from the last patch, and now the indirect ones from this patch (Phantom, Zone Trooper, Cyborg) seem too much

Captain Benzie on the patch:

Rivals Team League going into Playoffs & RLong's 2nd tournament starting soon

The community often asks for more tournaments. And it's true that the developers could do more to help here. (And partly they did, e.g. they in principle agreed to advertise tournaments through in-app messages, and already did that at least for a Russian-language tournament series.)

At the same time, we as the community also can do a better job: We can spread the word about existing tournaments, play in them, and watch them. That's what I want to do today, by telling you about two different Rivals tournaments.


Rivals Team League (RTL)

RTL is a team league run by AwDaSea. The rules are simple and the format works like follows:

• Teams of at least 3 players sign up (4-6 is better to have replacement players)
• A match between two teams consists of 3 Best-of-3 matches
• The first maps for each of the 3 games are set by the organizers every day; this also helps match players, as each team assigns their 3 players for the match day to these 3 starting maps
• The following map is chosen by the loser of the previous match

We just finished the group phase of the first RTL season. You can see the result below. In each of the groups, every team played against every team. We always had a week to organize the games. This worked very well, as it allowed for flexible scheduling. My opponents also all were friendly guys that were easy to talk to and organize your game. So I can highly recommend to think about whether you want to bring a team from your alliance or group of friends to this for season two!

The teams highlighted in green qualified for the playoffs, which are about to start. See the brackets below or here.

There's a lot of strong players in this league, including AliciaDestiny, 13lade, Bikerush, Alarak and many more. So it's quite a cool way to play some custom matches (i.e. equal-level units) against strong and well-known players.

Curious? Join the RTL discord to stay up-to-date with the league, and when the new season starts.

KiControl recorded a number of tournament games and thankfully posted them to his YouTube channel: YouTube Playlist with Videos from the event. Below, find a couple examples:

SiNKiLLeR vs VictorBansemer; if you like it, here's game 2 and 3 of this series

BenediktErnst vs Sasteek

RLong's tournament series

RLong recently ran his first tournament, and plans to extend this into a series of tournaments. The first one was won by AliciaDestiny and had a prize pool of $50. There's sadly no video recording available, as the recording of the finals got wiped from YouTube due to a music violation.

RLong's tournaments are unique in that he bans certain units and commanders from being used. For the upcoming tournament, he's currently working on the exact list, but has the general idea to nudge people to play tech.

If you're curious about this, please join RLong's tournament discord to stay up-to-date with tournament announcements

Permanent rules of the tournaments:

1. Do not bash other players after your matches. We are all here for fun and entertainment.
2. If you bring a banned unit or commander into you match you will be disqualified.
3. You must watch the stream during the tournament so I can match you with your opponent. If you miss your match you are disqualified.
4. Must post in the participant channel (join the discord) your Twitch name so I can take your name into my matching list.

Dear Devs, please expand the Masters Map Pool

Masters League is a special league in that a lot of the active players in our community spend a lot of time in it each season. The reasons for that are:

1. Below Masters, there's win streak bonuses, which makes climbing to the next leagues easier
2. Masters already has an L13 cap, which is far higher than most players' decks. This means they have to fight against higher-levelled decks a lot of the time.
3. The seasonal reset puts Masters players into leagues from where they can climb quickly back to Masters, but then need a lot of time to potentially get to Tiberium

You can say much of the above also for Tiberium. Yet, in Tiberium League, the map pool gets a lot of love from the devs:

• There is no limitation of Tiberium League maps to one tileset. In Masters, there's the limitation to "Ice tile set" maps.
• The Tiberium League map pool gets shuffled around each month
• The Tiberium League map pool is larger, i.e. you have more diversity within a season

In April, I had suggested to at least change the Masters Map pool, leveraging the other Ice maps that existed in lower leagues. And whether my suggestion was the reason for it or not, that's what the devs thankfully did a couple of weeks later.

Now, in my view, it's time to apply the same logic of the Tiberium League map pool to the Masters League. Map diversity for a large share of the core player base is just more important than the (in my view artificial) self-imposed rule that Masters maps must be of "Ice tile set".

Hence, my suggestion to the devs:

Please make the Masters map pool larger, and don't restrict it to Ice maps. Your community will thank you.

One additional, more optional suggestion:

• Assume there's a Masters map pool of 8 or 10 maps.
• Each month, there could be a public poll, sent to Masters players via in-game message, to ask them which 4-5 maps should be rotated out.
• That way, the players can help the devs in changing the map pool. And the devs can make the players feel more heard & involved.

To support this message to the devs (or prove it wrong!), you can participate in this short survey on map pools and map diversity. Thanks for doing so!

[Edit] The survey reached 45 responses so far, 70% of them from players who spend most of the time in a month in Masters league. Results:

• Most players want a map pool size of 10 (both average and median is at 10)
• Masters players' average is even higher at 11
• Only 3 of the 45 respondents want only Ice maps in Masters league
• 31% of the respondents don't care about the tile set, and 62% would even prefer tile set diversity in Masters league

I think the result is very clear. Of course it's a biased subset of highly engaged Masters players. But I cannot conceive that the average Masters player would have a vastly different opinion.

Besides Ice, Ice, Ice getting a bit one-sided aesthetically, the Ice maps also contain some "anti favorites", like good old Canal Row

Video of the Day: Bikerush playing Giga Cannon first before Harvester

Watch the Rivals Coliseum on Twitch this Friday, June 28 2019

The Coliseum is a long-running event where strong Rivals players meet at equal levels. The event is streamed on 13lade's Twitch channel,

Time is 23:30 CET on Friday, June 28.

• In France, Germany, Italy etc this would be an hour later, i.e. half past midnight
• In New York, this would be 5:30 pm
• As many of you live in different time zones, check this countdown to the Coliseum

The format is a "Round Robin x2":

• Each player plays each other player twice
• Every player has one map vote
• Every player has one map veto

The player lineup is incredibly strong, and quite diverse: These players are known for quite different styles and decks. And they might in addition prepare for this event to surprise their opponents. The lineup is:

• Alarak
• Mav
• Nickcool
• Srpss
• wwfyin

The caster obviously is 13lade himself, who adds insightful and entertaining commentary. Tune in, it's worth it if you enjoy high-level Rivals play!

You can also watch this video to get an idea for how these events look and feel, it's a couple of weeks old from the May edition of the Coliseum:

Mid-Season Balance Patch June 2019 -- GDI now needs to play War Factory?

A surprising Balance Patch was already rolled out to the Rivals app. CaptainBenzie already made a video on it, I embedded it at the bottom of the article. This is a quick summary of the changes. My source is the video, where the doc with patch notes is visible.

Nerfs:

• Drone Swarm: -27% HP, and speed decreased from Fastest to Fast
• Orca: Reload time increased from 8 to 10 seconds
• Orca Bomber: -12% HP
• Artillery cost up from 90 to 110

Buffs:

• Shatterer:  
• +58% damage (so kills beefier units with a single shot)
• -30% attack speed
• Infantry stun duration increased from 0.45 to 0.95 seconds
• Speed increased from Average to Fast
• Slingshot: Cost reduced from 50 to 40
• Inferno:+9% HP

Personal thoughts:

• Orca Bomber and Inferno changes seem very reasonable
• The GDI meta deck "Suzaku APC" was nerfed a ton by nerfing the two key Air units it leverages;  in my personal view, both nerfs might be over the top, as people over time especially got much better at dealing with drones. And I think most "Suzaku APC" deck users had lower win rates with it compared to their Nod decks
• Shatterer might now be very viable
• I personally will now test a War Factory heavy deck, but will use Snipers instead of Shatterer. Partly because of levels, partly because I think using Predator, Slingshot and Shatterer in the same deck will have weaknesses because each unit is strong against only one type of unit, and all have the same "armor type". So I will try Missile / Sniper - Dogs / Predator - Pitbull - Slingshot. Possibly with Jackson, just for the Predators. Liang is certainly also a strong option for Tank decks
• Pushing GDI out of air might be a strong indirect buff to Artillery; I feel the Borca prevalence was a key reason that not more players played a lot of Artillery deck. This is also what makes me feel the deck I described above might not be as great in practice. But let's see.

13lade's video on the patch:

Captain Benzie's video on the patch: