The RA25. A major project announcement.
Well this is the start of a series of posts you have all wanted to see for a very long time. 2v2 is by far the most popular game type in Red Alert 1. I guess it's a combination of 1v1 being pretty one dimensional (better tanker wins 90% of the time) but also 2v2 being more fun and maybe requiring a greater range of skills. Being the wise owl that I am I will try my best to take away any bias, personal grudges and give an accurate fair assessment of the top 25 2v2 opponents I ever encountered in my 10+ years of experience on Red Alert. I feel having played 1000s of games against the vast majority of great 2v2 players in the CnCNet era, winning many games and losing many games, that I'm in a decent position to offer a consensus on this.
The criteria
1) I will only include players whom I have a decent sample size of games with (25+ seems fair).
2. I have rated the players I think could be on the list and have narrowed it down to 25 (started with 32)
3. Obviously not including myself or rating myself.
4. 1v1 level is completely irrelevant and not factored into these rankings - it's a different game type. 1v1 rankings would be completely different.
5. Players who ONLY play P4/Rasta cannot qualify for the list as I can't assess their gem/ore play.
6. Grading out of 10 on 5 categories to find a total net score in order to categorise the players. The 5 categories I settled on are as follows:
1. Unlimited ore maps
2. Gem maps
3. Ore maps
4. Teamwork
5. Tactics/Awareness
It goes without saying that this is my personal point of view from what I've personally experienced so please do not feel offended if I rated someone higher than you or you did not make the list - perhaps said player performs better against me than you do and you may well be stronger than them overall. After all - styles make fights. Given it's over many years and my playing level has fluctuated significantly over the years (depending on how actively I was playing, how much I was drinking etc) it is also obviously impossible for me to give a completely accurate assessment. I will try my best.
I will first give some honourable mentions. My next post will feature rankings 25-21 (I need some more time to analyse and make the rankings as fair as possible). Then I will release these in batches of 5. To keep you all excited and give a fair game biography of each player who made the list!
On a side note, if you enjoy my journalism and want to support/motivate me then please consider donating via PayPal in the top right hand corner of blog. I have decided to disable ads on the blog to make it more user friendly at some personal cost (the ad revenue did bring some reasonable side income). I would appreciate any donations or suggestions - feel free to comment on email in the PayPal link if there's any topics you wish me to cover in future.
Naturally there have been 100s of players I've played with over the years so I think to make the list is an achievement regardless whether you are 2nd or 25th.
Before I complete the first batch of rankings I would like to give some honourable mentions to players I have excluded and the reasons why.
- Kr0nic. Was obviously a phenomenal player and tanker especially, however he played during an era I was not very active. I only ever played a handful of games with him (less than 10) therefore i cannot include him based on the criteria. Impossible for me to rank him fairly.
- Pinky323 and Yaunger and other Chinese superpros. Some of these players were very strong but unfortunately there was often bad lag in the games and I did not get to play with them as much as I'd want to.
- Katsh and Blank - both very strong 1v1 players. Have not played enough with them 2v2.