What is Swarm?
Why, it's the best PvP mode of Back4Blood that no one plays.

What does each swarm match consist of and what should I expect going into a mode with players who have been doing it for years? Let's get into it.

Swarm is a 4v4 PvP game mode which follows a best of 3 rounds archetype. Each round is divided into 2 parts. Cleaner play, and ridden play. When we roll PUG bot, it spits out what it thinks should be even teams. Team 1 will send a code that Team 2 then enters to join a private match of Swarm
Team 1 will always start the game as Cleaners and Team 2 as ridden.

When you are cleaners, you have 1 minute 30 seconds to pick your cleaners, your decks, and spawn in. Generally one person (usually the shotgunner) will hold out the timer, or until the rest of the team is ready and in position for the match to start. This is so that everyone can look around for that sweet, sweet loot before the real fun begins.

Once all cleaners spawn in, you enter the scavenge phase, which is 45 seconds long. You have this to look around for weapons, accessories, card boxes, and tool kits. Before scavenge ends, you will want to be wherever it is your team is going to be holding for the round.

Your goal as cleaners will be to survive as long as possible, while the circle you can stand in keeps getting smaller and smaller, until at 5 minutes, you have the smallest circle possible (think fortnite, or any battle royale).

Once you die (not if) then you get to be the ridden. Your goal as ridden is to kill the cleaners in a quicker time than what you just survived. Important to note, you may be enticed by the stinger classes, but don't bother. They aren't very good except in niche cases, and it's hard to find the window in which they are viable.

Once that round ends, then it's on to round 2 to do it all over again, and if necessary, round 3 for the tie breaker.

The game is full of glitches and bugs in swarm as well as campaign, so read the discord's rules about which glitches you can and cannot utilize, I'm not gonna cover all that here.

The Four Basic Archetypes that you will see in Swarm are as follows:
Walker, the Light Machine Gunner
Doc, the...doctor
Karlee, the Sniper (or whatever)
Mom, the Shotgunner

Having working decks for swarm and knowing which cards are necessary in earlier rounds for each is highly important. In each round of swarm, unlike campaign, you only get access to a portion of your deck.
Round 1, you pull the first card of your deck, then you get to choose 4. Round 2 you pick 4 more, and if it goes to round 3, you pick 4 more. Astute mathematicians may notice that that only equals 13 and a deck consists of 15 cards. Well don't fear, each map has 1-2 "attachment" crates that when opened using a tool kit, will give you a card that pulls a random card from within your deck.
Decks are generally set up to pull the cards in the order of most importance (Left to Right) for ease of access for those of us (like me) that struggle with reading comprehension.

Let's start with the LMG player, Walker.
The LMG player will generally be your best DPS player (on most maps, but that's too nuanced for this). If you are new to PUGs, unless your main team DPS really wants to play sniper, you usually won't have to worry about this. But let's take a look at a sample deck anyways:


The biggest thing to note is that Large Caliber Rounds (#5) and Inspiring Sacrifice (#6) are interchangeable depending on the map that gets rolled. Certain maps can take advantage of large caliber rounds (such as trailer trashed, or cabins on the lake) and others do not have utility for it (Pile up, or Schools out for example).
Sometimes Walker will opt not to take Inspiring Sacrifice round 1, instead taking the bullet penetration. Over the course of the years we have played this game (Who knows why), we found that having 3 inspiring sacrifices in round 1, then all 4 in round 2 works best.
If you are doc, it is important to note the maps that you are playing, because if Walker is not taking inspiring round 1, you will HAVE to.

This brings me to the next most important cleaner: Doc
Obviously as Doc your role is the doctor (haha). What does this mean? It's a little more advanced than "Me see damage, me heal damage" but first let's look at a deck.


Doc must ALWAYS pick Antibiotic Ointment, Combat Medic, and Poultice round 1. The next 2 picks you will either take life insurance and scar tissue, or, if, as discussed earlier, Walker opts to take Bullet Penetration instead of inspiring sacrifice, you will be forced to drop scar tissue for inspiring sacrifice. This means you will be incredibly susceptible to retch/shredder puke and will need to focus on keeping yourself alive.
Speaking of the retch and shredder, they apply a few debuffs known as anti-heal and pus handling slow. Remember when I said doc isn't just "see damage heal damage"? That's where this comes in. When someone is puked on by the retch or shredder, they gain a debuff called anti-healing which, as you may guess, makes healing that person essentially like wiping with soggy 1 ply toilet paper.
As the healer, you will need to pay attention to when the retch is puking on your heal targets and wait on the heal or revive. *Note: if it is after wave 3, you will likely just have to revive even if they are in anti heal as ridden spawn timers get shorter the further into the round you get*
Generally if people are anti'd they will let you know, or you can ask if they are anti'd, most players will know what you mean.

Who's next? Karlee: The Sniper (or whatever)

Karlee is very important since her use speed speeds up revives, as well as doc's healing. And if you have played with her in the campaign, you may remember that she spawns with a tool kit. Since you get extra cards from your deck by using the TK to open it, your most important role is to find a box and ping it when you open it so everyone knows they get a free card.

Karlee is unique in that she doesn't have a defined role. If your team doesn't have someone comfortable playing sniper, you can play her as shotgun, or even (gag) melee. If you are going to opt to do one of those instead of playing sniper, you can skip this part.

She is best served as a sniper since her ability lets her see through walls and on certain maps, you can shoot through the walls (depending on bullet penetration). Let's see a deck.


What's important to note here? On some maps as said with Walker earlier, bullet penetration doesn't work. In those cases, just don't take it.

As sniper, your most important role is making sure that the reeker classes get the lowest up-time possible. Retches and Shredders should be cursing the ground you walk on. And good, make them tilted, it'll make your job all the easier. Utilizing patient hunter to get to the full 30% and marked for death will make sure that you can 1 pop shredders and retches with a good barrett, even better if your doc keeps CC on you. The difference between a 4:30 time and a 5:30 time really can be if the reeker classes can't reach their full utility.

This brings us to the last player, the shotgunner: Mom

Mom's role as shotgun is to just keep blasting anything that is dumb enough to get close to you. You can easily clear common, and shred tallboys. Important to note: The best gun for you to get is an AA-12. Not much else to say about shotgun utility since it's basically just, "HERE IS MY BOOM STICK!" so here's a deck.

Generally the shotgunner is considered a "back up reviver" so in round 2 it is good to have at least 1 if not both revive cards. You should only be reviving as the back up if doc is the one that is down, or if there are 2 (or 3) downs.

That's it for the basics on cleaner side. Each role will become more apparent the more you play.

There are 3 categories of Ridden: Tallboys, Stingers, and Reekers. So really there's only 2, because stingers are generally worthless. Forget I mentioned those.

Each round you get points to spend on your ridden classes, so make sure you use them! Right Keith?

Round 1 each player gets 300 points, round 2, 500, and finally round 3, 800.
In round 1, points are spent 3 defense, 2 damage on tallboy, and 3 damage, 3 utility on retch. This never changes. Round 2, you finish retch utility, and upgrade tallboy damage to level 3, then it depends on your team and maps on what you do from there.
If you don't know, it's okay (and preferred) if you ask! Your teammates will help you out.

Tallboy classes want to just get in there and mess people up. The best tallboys are as follows:
Tallboy, Ripper, Bruiser, Crusher.
The regular tallboy is the best all around tallboy, unless you're World and are GOATed with the ripper.
It has decent speed, good damage, and overall good utility. Your goal as a tallboy player is to try to be as squirrely as possible and smack some b****es around.
You have two basic abilities: Burst, and SMACK.
Good players can burst leap (and even bunny hop) around with tallboy classes, making them hard to aim at, and just an overall menace.
Burst leaping is a bit advanced, but you are basically cancelling the end of the burst and the same time you jump, thus keeping the momentum of the burst for longer distances. If you are so inclined, you can practice doing this in fort hope by going to the range and selecting "practice as ridden"

The ripper sends spikes out from their smacks that both do damage, and knock back. This is a great class to play if you want to sit back and contemplate life while making their doc's life a living nightmare as they try (and fail) to revive under your pressuring.

Bruiser is a slower tallboy with a bit more health, but you gain an "overhead slam" ability that is an area of effect attack. This is good for room hold maps, or at the 5 minute circles. It is important to note that the AoE does not knockback, so you have to do the regular attack to stop revives.

Crusher is the worst of everything, unless it works, then it's the best. It's the slowest (tied with bruiser) and you just sit in one place and crush. It's usually only good if you can catch someone at the end of scavenge out of position, or if you can crush their Walker while the other DPS is struggling.

For Reeker classes, the only thing of importance to note is Shredder and Retch. Don't play any reeker besides these 2.

The Shredder's role is to gather the cleaners by using it's pull ability (GET OVER HERE!) So that the retch can get acid all over them, the tallboys can smack 'em around, and they just have an overall bad time. On certain maps the shredder's positioning and role can change to, "pull them to a place no one wants to be" or "pull them so high that the fall will kill them"
Your best bet is to wait for the tallboys to distract the cleaners so you can get in there and pull as many of them as possible. Once you die, don't take your hands off your keyboard (or controller) yet! You puke for 5-6 seconds after death, so you want to make sure you angle yourself so you can cover the people you just pulled in vomit.
If you find you can't get pulls (room holds) You can just bowling ball your way through the cleaners to cover them in pus, then die and try to fill as much of that room as possible with acid.

As retch your goal is to puke. Really it's a bit more than that, but your basic ability is to puke and to tick tick tick their life away and cover them in acid. The retch's acid is a great utility for timing and positioning.
If they have a down, you can (and should) save your puke for when doc starts to go for the revive. Remember, pus on a revive means they will be picked up in anti-heal, and no one wants to be picked up in anti-heal.
If there are no downs, your best bet is to mess with their positioning. This means puking on spots that the cleaners want to stand. Their choice is to either take all your damage to keep spawn blocking, or to get away from your acid, and then the rest of your team will have an easier time coming in and cleaning house.
If there are multiple downs, or later in the round, you should start edging in. If you're the only ridden alive and there are 2 or more cleaners downed, you should absolutely try to smash through them like the kool-aid man hearing "OH NO". Well, OH YEAH MFER! now you can't get those revives in time before the rest of my team can spawn back in and clean you up.

And really, the best way to learn, is by watching, or by doing. So swing by on Tuesdays or Saturdays. You can watch us play in discord (or on youtube) to get a general idea of what a swarm match really looks like, or just hop in and get a trial by fire.