Snatching a victory in Rainmaker

6th January 2016 – 5.28 pm

Rainmaker is a fun mode for Ranked battles. It takes a little explaining, but once you have the basics it's all pretty simple. There's a special weapon called the Rainmaker, which has its own shield. You need to throw loads of ink at the shield, at which point it bursts with ink of the colour that burst it. You need to watch out for that if your opponents are about to burst the shield. The Rainmaker then becomes available for use, by any squid. If the Rainmaker is lost, its shield comes back.

When you pick up the Rainmaker, you become visible on the Gamepad map when you walk, and you glow in the ink when you're a squid. But you also get to use its power. The Rainmaker acts like an Inkzooka, but one that needs to be charged up for each use. But don't get caught up trying to splat other squids, because there is also a counter, and once that counter gets to zero the Rainmaker explodes. To stop that, you need to get the Rainmaker to its podium, conveniently placed close to the opponents' base.

Of course, not only are you heading deep in to opposition territory, but you're doing so with the objective in your tentacles, and glowing as you do. And you can't use your weapon, or your sub, or your special. That's what squidmates are for. They need to help ink a path for you, or you can use the Rainmaker to do that, and you need to dunk the Rainmaker to get a knockout victory. If neither team dunks the Rainmaker, victory goes to the team that gets it closest to the podium.

In this battle I'm using the Tri-slosher. I like the weapon, but maybe in other modes more than Rainmaker. It does well anywhere, though. You can see how far the Rainmaker has been moved by the gauge at the top of the screen, and on-screen tips show who has the Rainmaker and if the lead is taken or lost.

Rainmaker is a really interesting battle, given the dual vulnerability of the carrier of the Rainmaker and its potency as a weapon, the importance of carrying the Rainmaker but the equal importance of inking turf to allow ally movement and denying opposition movement. Having multiple paths to the podium also allows for some diversions away from the opposition.

In this match, we lose the lead and don't look like taking it back. But a late move at the end has my taking the Rainmaker in to opposition territory, and avoiding a Killer Wail bumps me in to an inked block that is not normally there in Turf War, and from there a squidmate carries the Rainmaker forward in overtime for the win. Quite a turnaround!

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