Welcome to the beginner’s walkthrough for Rivals At War, the new one on one (or five on five) strategy war game from Hothead Games! Being as this is made by the same company behind the popular Big Win series, the gameplay is similar to those games, but tailored to a wartime setting, and with more unique features than the Big Win games. Whether you have played the Big Win games or not, read on and you’ll learn more than enough about how to play this one.
The gameplay is quite simple in this game. You have a team of five soldiers, and when you play a game, they get matched up against another player’s team of five soldiers. There are three different modes of battle that you can choose from. These will be either quick battle, regular campaign, or veteran campaign.
Quick battle will pit you against a random team chosen by their team rating (generally, it will be the same as your team rating). Regular campaign will pit you against players based on how similar their rank is to yours. Veteran campaign will pit you against another team completely randomly – so theoretically, you could play against either a low level team or a high level team.
Whichever one of the battles that you play, you will be prompted to pick 3 different tactic cards, which will aid your team in battle. If you don’t pick any, your chances of winning are diminished, but you can still knock out wins without them. When you win a battle, you will win experience points, which go towards increasing your rank (experience level), and coins, which you can then use to buy card packs.
When you lose a battle, you will earn about half the amount of coins as you could for a win, and about 1/10 the amount of experience points as you would for a win. Each battle that you engage in costs energy (your energy bar will be in the lower left corner of the screen). When you gain a rank, you will get all of your energy back, as well as one buck (which is the premium currency of the game). You can either choose to watch the battle, or skip to the very end – either way, the results will be the same.
In part 2 of the Rivals At War beginner’s guide, we’ll talk about the intricacies of managing your team, as well as powering them up.