How to play Rebels

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Ben24626
Posts: 59
Joined: April 8th, 2015, 1:07 am

How to play Rebels

Post by Ben24626 »

I suck at rebels, when's this guide coming again? xD
Last edited by Ravana on April 13th, 2016, 8:05 am, edited 1 time in total.
Reason: Split from https://forums.wesnoth.org/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=12430
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tekelili
Posts: 1039
Joined: August 19th, 2009, 9:28 pm

Re: How to play Rebels

Post by tekelili »

Until someone givees you a complete guide, I can give you some tips:

- Rebels are a quite "balanced" faction, they have 2 difficult match ups (loyalists and Knalga), one even (drakes) and 2 easy ones (Northerns and Undead). I will advice about easy ones as I use to lose diffcult ones.

- Chaotic factions have a race vs time fighting rebels, your main task is be defensive until your army composition gives you overhelming adventage.

- Fighting UD you should recruit a great amount of woses. They are slow for early attacks, but are so hard for undead that will stop any attack displaying clever lines. At some point you will be able to set an awesome solo-wose line that will allow you hold ground at night, at that moment enemy will be lost. Fill your army with some fighters for village defense and dark adept poking, mages equal to number of ghosts enemy has, and 1 shaman (and of course scouts acording to map size).

- Fighting Orcs you should spam a lot of fighters early. Northens have to melee to take spots, using a resilent fighter to hold key villages will put enemy in severe disaventage (of course if orc becomes very lucky you will lose). Support your fighters with an archer and shaman (but first go heavy on fighters). Once you feel defense at night is very strong to discourage orc, recruit a couple of mages and start killing some orcs at day. Woses are very bad in this match up unless you face a 80% troll army.
Be aware English is not my first language and I could have explained bad myself using wrong or just invented words.
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SBak
Posts: 78
Joined: October 8th, 2011, 1:36 am

Re: How to play Rebels

Post by SBak »

I can chip in as well..

The key to playing Rebels is to understand the key feature of the Elves, which is synchronicity. You start out with four basic units - Archer, Fighter, Scout and Shaman. The main weapons are blade and pierce, and you gain the ranged arcane attack at level 2 from your Shaman lines.

The key to playing Rebels is developing partnerships and relationships between your Elf units. In many cases Elves can be just as mobile as Drakes. But Elvish Fighters aren't as mobile as the other Elves. But Elvish Scouts are highly mobile. Likewise in forests Elvish Shamen are harder to hit than the other units, thanks to their dodge ability (like Thieves).

Your Elvish Fighters are quite tough units, they do well on the frontline, they're cheap and they counter-attack. But when you're short of a Fighter or your Fighter can't reach a unit you can do just as well with a Scout and an Archer. Likewise when you lack an Archer you can combine a Shaman and a Fighter, for example against an Orcish Grunt, and end up with a similar result than if you attacked the Grunt with an Archer.

Scouts combine well with Fighters against Northerners particularly when Assassins are being used, and Shamen are good for slowing Troll Whelps and Wolf Riders for Elvish Fighters in the absence of Archers. Against the Undead relying on Fighters and Shamen is a better strategy than using Woses. Shamen are also necessary against Drakes to prevent your Archers getting too roasted.

However Elves come into their own level 2 and above and you get access to faerie fire from Sorceresses and Enchantresses. Personally I find faerie fire somewhat more consistent than fireballs and it works just as well even on Boneshooters and Liches as White Mages.

The key of course is good terrain, and this is the main drawback of the Rebels in that they're just as bad on open terrain as Dwarves.
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ForPeace
Posts: 164
Joined: December 12th, 2015, 3:09 pm
Location: Kraków, Poland

Re: How to play Rebels

Post by ForPeace »

Ben24626 wrote:I suck at rebels, when's this guide coming again? xD
Hi Ben :) Like tekelili, I also have some tips I can share:
- start with many fighters in case of a chaotic rush
- don't leave good terrain or your units will take much damage
- at defense you can poke enemies receiving little counterdamage if you use shamans' slow or/and your either ranged or melee weapons. This is actually the biggest pro of this faction, the fact that they deal much damage at defense.

I disagree with this:
Chaotic factions have a race vs time fighting rebels, your main task is be defensive until your army composition gives you overhelming adventage.
This is not true about the Northerners. If you don't attack orcs, which is risky, orc will spam goblins, you will get outnumbered and lose easily.
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"When I say I've been playing for 10 years people come saying they've played for 15 years and that I know nothing about this game because I didn't use to play when the TRUE pros were playing xD" ~Hejnewar
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tekelili
Posts: 1039
Joined: August 19th, 2009, 9:28 pm

Re: How to play Rebels

Post by tekelili »

ForPeace wrote:I disagree with this:
Chaotic factions have a race vs time fighting rebels, your main task is be defensive until your army composition gives you overhelming adventage.
This is not true about the Northerners. If you don't attack orcs, which is risky, orc will spam goblins, you will get outnumbered and lose easily.
I did a statement because I am available to play a serie of match ups Rebels vs Northerns facing even Nº1 in ladder to prove Rebels win over 50% :eng:
Be aware English is not my first language and I could have explained bad myself using wrong or just invented words.
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Ben24626
Posts: 59
Joined: April 8th, 2015, 1:07 am

Re: How to play Rebels

Post by Ben24626 »

tekelili wrote:I did a statement because I am available to play a serie of match ups Rebels vs Northerns facing even Nº1 in ladder to prove Rebels win over 50% :eng:
Sounds like fun to watch. Can we schedule a time for this match?

Also thanks for advice everyone. I think main problem is found in a game recently vs drakes is I can never really kill him without getting slaughtered on bad terrain so I just sit and wait until eventually I die. Even at night if I go on flat I die. Any ideas how to solve this issue?
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tekelili
Posts: 1039
Joined: August 19th, 2009, 9:28 pm

Re: How to play Rebels

Post by tekelili »

Ben24626 wrote:Also thanks for advice everyone. I think main problem is found in a game recently vs drakes is I can never really kill him without getting slaughtered on bad terrain so I just sit and wait until eventually I die. Even at night if I go on flat I die. Any ideas how to solve this issue?
Rebels vs Drakes is very ugly match up. If both players play well, none of them should attack ever. If match up is played perfectly, after lot of turns drakes can try an attack at day with some adventage (about 55% chance of succes). But being realistic, players lose this match up mostly by failing at defense or losing nerves and starting hopeless attacks.
Be aware English is not my first language and I could have explained bad myself using wrong or just invented words.
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