Frogmind is a developer that is arguably best known for its Rumble and Badland franchises of mobile games, with the former one producing Rumble Stars Football. Those same characters are back in the recently released Rumble Hockey, and if you’ve got an iOS or Android device, you can play this game and match wits with players from all over the world, fighting to be the first to score three goals in games/matches while collecting dozens of characters, or Rumblers, who have their own distinct personalities and skill sets that set them apart from each other.
Despite the ostensibly casual mechanics and the fact that you’re controlling a team largely made up of animal-based characters, this game is much like its cousins in the Rumble franchise in the sense that it’s deceptively deep. There’s a good deal of strategy involved when it comes to winning more matches, and while the game’s description talks about stringing together combos for better chances of scoring a goal, we don’t mention that too much because you won’t be able to string them on every occasion.
But we will talk about some things you can keep in mind as an intermediate player, meaning one who’s reached the Frozenado or Zen Palace leagues. So join us for this new Rumble Hockey strategy guide, where we discuss seven tips and tricks that could ensure you remain competitive once you’re past the beginner stages of the game.
1. Join A Club And Make Sure To Participate In The Activities
Clubs are Rumble Hockey’s equivalent of guilds in RPGs and other similar titles, and it’s no surprise that Frogmind pushes this feature quite aggressively. While you always have the option to be a lone wolf and simply focus on winning more matches for yourself, you will ultimately need to join a club in order to quickly get through the quests and get closer to that prize chest for 10 completed quests. Plus, it’s also a good way to at least make some new online friends as you help each other out in the weekly battles against rival clubs!
We generally recommend joining a club that has your country’s flag in its logo, as this typically ensures you get to work alongside others who speak the same language and, who knows, maybe live in the same area. Otherwise, your best bet is to join an open, active club whose requirements (i.e. minimum trophies) you meet, help out while you can, and if one exists, join the club’s Discord server for a more robust chatting experience than what the game offers.
Each week, your club will be pitted against another one as all of you work together to accumulate as many stars as possible over a span of seven days. These stars in the club vs. club battles are awarded for your participation in the game’s different modes, may these be regular matches or special events, and if your club wins the battle, each member wins a prize chest loaded with Rumbler cards, with higher-level chests coming with more cards and maybe rarer Rumblers that could help you add to your collection.
In addition to club vs. club battles, it’s also important to, at the very least, donate some of your Rumblers to club mates who submit their requests through the Club menu. You can, of course, ask for cards, but if you do, make sure you’re returning the favor! It’s basic club etiquette, and not doing your part by donating Rumblers to those who need them (especially if you submitted a request which was granted) is something that could get you kicked out!
2. Compete In The Limited-Time Events For More Rewards
The fifth and rightmost button in the bottom part of your screen — the one with the winged hockey puck — is where you’ll want to go if you want to take part in Rumble Hockey’s special events. What are these events, how do they differ from conventional one-on-one PvP matches, and what kind of prizes can you expect if you take part in such events? Keep reading, as we’ve got that all explained in this tip.
Most of the time, the special events last for one day and focus on a certain type of challenge — you may be placed in a scenario in which both teams do not have a goalie, you and your opponent may be forced to use only Core Rumblers or static Rumblers, or you may be limited to using Mr. Fire to score goals in a goalie-less scenario. Either way, the first player to reach three goals wins, and all your opponents here are human. You will also notice that both teams have the same level Rumblers, thus ensuring that the games played in the special events are decided based on the player’s skill and not on the strength of their team.
That may sound like a good thing for the most part, but bear in mind that the matchmaking system will no longer be taking Trophies into account. All matches will pit you against a random opponent from a random league/tier in regular PvP mode, but with the above caveat in play — both teams have the same Rumblers and all Rumblers are at the same level — for example, your team and your opponent will always have a level 13 Striker Tiger and a level 3 Croco in those no-goalie affairs, and all Mr. Fires, regardless of team, will be level 13.
By default, you’ll start out with three tickets — you lose one when you lose a match — and a goal of winning 10 times in one day in order to get the ultimate reward — a prize chest with dozens of cards and a whole lot of gold inside! Each win will also give you certain prizes — these may include coins, Core Rumbler cards, or Pro Rumbler cards. If you run out of tickets, you can watch an ad video to replenish your tickets back to three, though you’re typically limited to two videos per event per day. Otherwise, you’ll have to pay 20 to 30 gems (depending on how many cards/coins are inside the prize chest) to get a fresh set of tickets.
Also in this category are the tournaments that take place once a week and run for a total of two days. These are 32-player tournaments in which you’ll have to win a total of five matches — that’s the round of 32, round of 16, round of 8, round of 4, and the final — in order to win the grand prize, which is a prize chest with 972 to 1,296 gold and 162 Rumbler cards! In here, you’re going to be playing conventional matches with your actual team of eight in play, but the catch here is that the game won’t show you how many trophies your opponent has!
As tournament seedings are also random, it is possible that you may face a much stronger opponent, though then again, it’s also possible to face a much weaker one and get an easy pass to the next round. (Round prizes are strictly in gold coins, in case you’re wondering, and if an ad video isn’t available, you’ll have to pay a 20 gem entrance fee if you’ve used up your free entrance for the day and weren’t able to make it far in the tourney.)
To sum it all up, the Events tab offers a wide range of new ways to play Rumble Hockey, and just as the regular matches do, they all involve human opponents from all corners of the world.
3. Keep Upgrading Your Striker Tiger
As you get promoted from one tier or one league to the next in Rumble Hockey, Rumblers will come and go. You may choose to remove some of them from your roster, including old reliables like Lazy Panda, Raging Bull, or Loyal Dog, and replace them with newer, shinier characters like Tiny Tanuki, Froggy, Fast Monkey, and many others. But as far as the first three leagues are concerned, Striker Tiger will likely be the true mainstay of your team — that one Rumbler you couldn’t afford to leave on the bench.
As we mentioned in our Rumble Hockey beginner’s guide, he’s essentially a jack-of-all-trades that isn’t especially fast, accurate, or powerful but isn’t that bad either when it comes to his physical tools and skills. However, he is far more durable than the average offensive-minded Rumbler, and if you’re lucky, you can have your Striker Tiger scoring two straight goals in empty-net situations! We’d go as far as to say that there isn’t any real drawback to using Striker Tiger.
With all that in mind, you should prioritize Striker Tiger ahead of other Pro or rarer Rumblers when it comes to your upgrades — at least in the first three leagues, once again. You’ll be using him the most across the board and you’ll generally be using him a lot in match situations, especially since it costs just 5 Energy to deploy him, as compared to 6 for other high-powered, high-scoring Rumblers.
As such, it makes sense to make sure his stats keep steadily improving and, unless you’re overflowing with coins, refrain from upgrading other Pro, Superstar, or Legendary Rumblers so that you’ll have enough for that always-steady Tiger who can never be discounted. And that’s no matter how far you are along in the Backwater Pond, Frozenado, or Zen Palace leagues.
4. Avoid Using These Rumblers In Most Cases
For our next tip, we’re going to be a bit subjective as we touch on a topic where one’s mileage may vary. Everyone has their own favorite and least-favorite Rumblers, and as far as our least favorites go, we’ve come up with a couple that we wouldn’t recommend in most situations because of how useless they tend to be compared to others.
The Melon is an especially useless Rumbler by all account. The game describes it as a “cheap unit for quick saves and quick skill goals,” and we guess it’s possible that your Melon could push the puck to the enemy goal for a quick score, or prevent an enemy shot from going into yours. But such situations are very, very rare, and the only really good thing about Melon is that it costs just 1 Energy to deploy it — if it’s any consolation, using Melon means you can get that “rumbling order” moving faster if you need some big-time scoring or defensive stops!
Royal Dung is what he is, and as a Pro Rumbler, he just might sound cool and useful enough for some players, as his job is to repel any Rumblers who cross his path, with the exception of your goalkeeper. At the end of the day, though, Royal Dung can only protect a small area, which means offensive Rumblers can easily get around him if they’re lucky. You’re better off using Lover or Magnetman if you’re trying to clear things out near your goal and keep the danger away.
Lastly, Sniper Wolf may serve you well as your first Superstar Rumbler in the early goings, but as you unlock more high-level, rare Rumblers, he probably won’t be as helpful as a goal-scoring threat. It is true that he can fire away with epic power and from a good distance, but it does take him a while to charge up, thus making him susceptible to being intercepted, may it be from a smaller, faster Rumbler like Tiny Tanuki, the long-tongued Froggy, or the high-jumping, hard-stomping (for lack of a better term) Stomparoo. By the time you unlock Fast Monkey, you’ll probably have no more use for Sniper Wolf in your team of eight.
5. Here Are Some Sneakily Good Rumblers That Could Help You Win More Matches
We’ve told you about three Rumblers that we feel may be overrated or outright useless, but what about the underrated, unheralded Rumblers that could save your team with some timely heroics, or deal your team the loss if they happen to be on your opponent’s side?
Froggy is probably the most obvious Rumbler we can name in this category. While he’s a static Rumbler who remains stationary once he hits the ice, his long tongue can be very accurate in a number of ways — intercepting the puck, passing the puck, shooting it toward the enemy goal, and scoring when things are especially chaotic around that enemy goal.
He isn’t like Lazy Panda who only acts when the puck hits him; he uses his tongue to scope it out from afar before retrieving it and choosing the best course of action. Even better yet, he costs only 4 Energy to use. We couldn’t count how many matches we’ve lost because of a pesky Froggy on the opposing team, so make sure you practice regularly with him on your team, should his Rumbler card pop up among your rewards!
On the defensive side of things, we could give Mr. Fire a shout-out as it turns out he was much more useful than we gave him credit for in the beginner’s guide. But when it comes to being underrated, Turtle Spinner is arguably a better choice. Throwing him out there is a great way to break up a good scoring chance for the opponent — he spins around quickly and randomly, but he does do a fair bit of damage upon contact and does well in pushing those Rumblers away. (Just take note, however, that your own Rumblers may also be pushed away by a moving Turtle Spinner.)
Our final underrated Rumbler only becomes available at Zen Palace and is of Legendary rarity, but if you got a lot of mileage out of Lover and also like having a Loyal Dog around to get the puck moving, you’ll find out that Lovely Shiba essentially combines both of the aforementioned characters and does her job much better than they do. As explained in her Rumbler card, enemy Rumblers who get close to her get charmed into uselessness, but beyond that, she always passes the puck to teammates and never shoots it. All told, she’s helpful on the attack and on defense, and you can always benefit from a Rumbler like that on your team.
6. More In-Match Tips That You Can Use
Croco, Raging Bull, and other tackling specialists may be the choice of Rumbler for many when targeting the goalie, but for such purposes, we’ve since gotten to appreciate Mr. Fire as the best and most effective way to temporarily leave the opponent’s net unguarded. The reason we say this is because by nature — and the game does not say this — Raging Bull, Croco, and other similar Rumblers always target puck-handling enemies by default.
That means even if you throw them out there with no other opposing Rumblers except for the goalie, they will, by default, chase the goalie and try to tackle him. However, once your opponent deploys another Rumbler, say, a Lazy Panda or a Tiger Striker or whatnot, they’re usually going to change their focus from the goalie to that Lazy Panda or Tiger Striker because that’s what they do best — tackling enemy non-goalie characters.
In relation to the above, if your opponent launches a Croco or Raging Bull, and you don’t have any defensive Rumblers up just yet who could take care of this potential threat to your goalie, you may want to counter that with a low-energy offensive Rumbler who could serve as a decoy to distract Croco/Raging Bull and protect your goalie from taking significant damage.
Tiny Tanuki, a Core Rumbler who becomes available in the Frozenado league, comes to mind for such purposes. He’s probably most useful if you need a quick goal while the enemy goalie is out and waiting to re-spawn, but if you need a sacrificial lamb, so to say, that could divert Croco/Raging Bull away from your goalie, he’s a perfect choice.
We’ve tried our best to observe as closely as possible, and while we’re still not 100 percent sure about this, we believe it’s very likely that friendly fire exists in Rumble Hockey. That means your own Rumblers can get damaged by a carelessly launched Mr. Fire or Turtle Spinner or General Molotov, so when you’re launching such Rumblers, make sure the coast is as clear as possible, especially if you’ve got fragile, squishy Rumblers like Tiny Tanuki out there.
You don’t need to worry about friendly fire, however, when it comes to defensive characters like Croco and Raging Bull, because they specifically target opposing Rumblers by tackling them and do not explode like Mr. Fire or randomly ricochet across the field like Turtle Spinner.
Although you can theoretically face a unique opponent every time you play a PvP match in Rumble Hockey, it is highly recommended that you switch up your strategy from time to time. The club system allows for club members to chat about players from other clubs and, in theory, that allows them to share opponent strategies while doing so.
In order to avoid this, you can, for example, start out with a defensive attack (e.g. launching Mr. Fire at the goalie, using Croco for similar purposes or to take out an opponent’s top scorers while early) instead of your usual strategy of starting out with an offensive focus., or vice versa.
7. Take Advantage Of The Monthly Specials At The Store If You Choose To Pay Real Money
Although it is theoretically possible to play Rumble Hockey for free and not have to spend any real-life money on improving your lineup and acquiring more Rumblers, some of the deals we’ve seen in the store are quite attractive and offer a ton of value for those who want to fast-track their progress and aren’t averse to spending real money.
At the moment, Frogmind is offering a few deals for the month of June, starting with the “Champion’s Choice” offering, which costs $3 USD (or its local equivalent) and comes with 2,000 gold and 100 gems, plus 200 Rumbler cards that include a guaranteed 66 Pro cards and three Superstar cards. There’s also a slightly more expensive ($5 USD) deal that offers 10,000 gold and 400 gems, but with fewer cards — the choice is all yours, but keep in mind that aside from the fact that these are limited-time offers, you can only purchase so many of these budget-priced specials!
And this is where we end our second guide for Rumble Hockey. If you happen to know more tips or strategies for the game, please let us know in the comment area!