Top50 Nod Decks in April – Avatar goes, Stealth Tank stays. From the total average, the Levels Δ vs average shows the same for the unit level. 2 infantry units is the absolute standard; only 3 decks run no infantry, 2 decks a. Command and Conquer: Rivals Covering the Mobile RTS Rivals for new players and it's competitive community. March 04, 2020. The average deck has a level of 14.4, 2.0 infantry units. +8% to 20%.There's a wide range of decks employing the Buggy: 3 Inferno decks (possibly inspired by VictorBansemer), 3 Avatar decks, a Tick Tank deck, 3 Shade.

When EA announced a new Command & Conquer game exclusive to mobile devices, the reaction wasn't great.

1v1 competitive multiplayer title Command & Conquer Rivals was revealed via a live match between two real-time strategy experts, who played on-stage to commentary from a shoutcaster. It's safe to say this reveal - indeed the very existence of the game - hasn't gone down well.

Social media has already had its say - accusing EA of using the Command & Conquer name as part of a cynical cash grab as it seeks a piece of the mobile money pie so far dominated by Clash of Clans and Clash Royale. Command & Conquer fans are also slamming the game on YouTube, where official trailers have been hit by tens of thousands of downvotes.

The message is loud and clear: we don't want a new Command & Conquer game on mobile, home to exploitative mechanics and depressing in-app purchases. We want a new Command & Conquer game on PC, a traditional RTS that drags the series kicking and screaming back into its former glory.

The developers of the game are, of course, not immune to this feedback. In fact, the developers are well aware of it.

Command & Conquer Rivals is developed by Redwood Studios, a relatively new outfit that began life a couple of years ago in EA's headquarters in Redwood City.

'For us, at its core an RTS is all about building an army, controlling an army and then dominating an enemy with that army,' Redwood Studios general manager Michael Martinez told Eurogamer at EA Play 2018.

'That's the essence of what we were trying to deliver. And we wanted to tackle it on mobile, because there's really no great real-time strategy game on mobile. That was our goal, to try and deliver that experience, that fantasy of commanding an army to victory and put it in your hands on a mobile device. It was a pretty big challenge, but that's what we were excited to do.'

Martinez may be excited to take on the challenge of building an RTS on mobile, but he and EA face an uphill struggle winning an already sceptical audience around. Speaking to Eurogamer just a handful of hours after Rivals' reveal during EA's media briefing, Martinez acknowledged the reaction had had an impact.

'Some of what we're seeing today, obviously you don't want to read those things,' he said. 'That's not nice. But that's why we're so excited about the pre-alpha. The game's out there. We want people to play it. Please give the game a try and seriously, let us know what you think.'

Command & Conquer Rivals is already playable in pre-alpha form on Android devices in North America (it's not out in Europe yet). Martinez's message to sceptical fans is to try the game out before casting judgement, to consider its gameplay before casting it aside.

'Please please just give the game a try,' he told Eurogamer. 'Anything we say, it really doesn't matter. If we could be judged by gameplay, that would be very lucky and fortunate. Just give it a fair shake.'

Part of the frustration expressed by Command & Conquer fans has to do with the lack of a new, modern traditional PC RTS C&C game. The last mainline Command & Conquer game was 2012's Command & Conquer: Tiberium Alliances, a free-to-play online-only browser game. Command & Conquer (previously known as Command & Conquer: Generals 2) was a traditional RTS game that was cancelled in 2013 after negative feedback suffered during a closed alpha stage. EA went on to shut down the developer, Victory Games.

So, Command & Conquer fans haven't had a new game to get behind in recent years, which made the announcement of Rivals - a free-to-play mobile title - all the more frustrating.

'That's the challenge and I appreciate the fans think that,' Martinez told Eurogamer. 'But for our team, it was not a binary thing. We're here to talk about Rivals and that's the game we made.'

To help meet that challenge, Redwood Studios hired Greg Black as Rivals' combat designer in November 2017. Black has a long history with the Command & Conquer series, working on everything from Red Alert 2 expansion Yuri's Revenge to Red Alert 3 before leaving EA to work on StarCraft 2 at Blizzard

'When I heard these guys were making a mobile Command & Conquer game I was like, that's not going to be very good,' Black told Eurogamer.

'But I wanted to go look at it to see what they were up to, and it was amazing. Literally in my first interview we sat down to play the game and within a couple of seconds I was like, they figured this out. This is amazing. It was just super fun to play and really felt like a genuine RTS experience. And I've been in love with it ever since.'

Here's how Rivals works: it's an RTS in the sense that the action happens in real-time, but it plays out on a static map (you can't move the camera). There are three control points, two bases (one for each player) and Tiberium to harvest. By tapping on the screen you can spend resources to produce units, which you can then move about a hex grid by tapping again. The idea is to power up a missile silo by controlling territory, then firing off a missile to destroy the enemy base.

'We're giving you that depth without complexity,' Martinez said, 'in a really nice way, so that it has all that stuff in RTS. But RTS games are pretty daunting to play. This is a nice middle ground.'

'In my opinion, this game, the ratio of accessibility with depth is off the charts,' Black added. 'I have a hard time thinking of another strategy game I've played where I was able to get into it so immediately, but now months later, having played hundreds of thousands of games, I'm still optimising and finding new ways to play it, still learning things about it.

'That's always been the bane of RTS games - they're just a super hard thing to get into. And this really isn't. It's really intuitive.'

Both Martinez and Black stressed that Command & Conquer Rivals has many of the elements that make up a traditional RTS. In our interview, Black talked about efficient unit trades and manipulating the Rock-Paper-Scissors system built into the game. High level play, he said, can involve coordinated pushes onto two control points in order to 'snipe' the missile from an opponent at the last second. There are 'micro tricks' for preventing units from moving onto missile platforms and bumping them out of their locations.

There's even build strategies. Black said you might want to go for a straight air rush at the beginning of the game by building a helipad early, or go for a safer barracks / infantry play. You can make tech transitions, saving up resources for higher tier buildings such as the tech lab in order to get access to bigger, more powerful units.

There's harvester strategy, too. You can build none if you fancy a really aggressive strategy, but you'll need to hunt your opponent's harvesters in order to win the game quickly. Or, you could go for a greedy build and make two harvesters early on. You'll be down on units relative to your opponent, but if you can hold them off long enough you can pump out mammoth tanks to win the late game.

Rivals, then, sounds like it has all of the strategy you'd expect from a traditional Command & Conquer game, but it's mirrored, presented in an accessible format and designed to be digested in bite-sized chunks.

Perception, of course, is key, and right now the perception of Rivals' isn't great. Part of that is a distrust of mobile game monetisation (just look at what Warner Bros. recently did with the Harry Potter mobile game). As a free-to-download title, Rivals makes its money from in-app purchases (monetisation is not in the pre-alpha build available to play on Android now), but Martinez said players won't have to pay to play.

'There's nothing in the game that is locked behind a paywall,' Martinez promised. 'All of the content you will be able to get. Every player, without paying, will be able to get and earn all of that content. You progress and earn it over time. If we were to give you all of the content right away, that would actually be overwhelming. When you play the game right now there's a tutorial that ramps you onto it.'

What you can pay for, however, is to accelerate your progression. Specifically, you can pay to unlock units faster and then level them up faster than you would otherwise.

'Our commitment and what we want to do for this game, it's all about fun, fair and competitive matchmaking and fun, fair and competitive matches,' Martinez says.

'That's when we know the game is at its best, when the competition is all about skill and strategy. That's how we have fun playing this game as a dev team, and that's what we want our players to experience.

'That's why we're doing this early access, to get that right. We won't have monetisation on during this early access period. We just want to see players playing the game and be able to focus on the matchmaking and combat balance as well.

'There's nothing that gates your ability to play the game. We do have convoys that send off and bring you back rewards, but you can still battle. That's just the amount of rewards you get, so they're not uncapped. There's a certain progression to it.

'But you could play this game forever, right now. There's nothing that says, stop playing! You can play as many battles as you want.'

Rivals' pre-alpha will be key for the developers - and EA - in that it'll determine the game's future. To the developers' credit, they've made the game playable, even in this pre-alpha state, at the same time as it was revealed to the world. Better to show and tell than to tell.

Can EA win round the sceptics?

'It's a challenge!' Martinez said.

We've already had the honor of Alarak's presence on this blog a couple of months ago for a. 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.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, 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.

The sims 3 generations guide 3. 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.

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, 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. 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. 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. 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., 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).

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. 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). 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. 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. 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).

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

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

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. 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. 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. 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 or on the. 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.

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. 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. 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 or on the. 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.

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). 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.

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.