My review: Rival - Astral Luck 50 Line Slot

Hey Guys,

tried today the new RIVAL Slot "Astral Luck"... It's a pretty standard RIVAL slot that fullfilled all my expectations. (Slots Capital already has the slot )

+ Free Spins + Bonus Round
+ Bonus Round Payouts (as in most RIVAL slots) very good. Had 3 Bonus Rounds (triggered very fast) payouts between 40 and 70 times the total bet.
+ Nice graphics

- Symbols need some time to get memorized...

Nothing that get's me super excited, but a decent slot. It's more the theme which i think is a bit boring...

Cheers

 

That's interesting - I didn't think it was being released until tomorrow (Sep-1st)!

It's a very pretty looking slot and I can't wait to give it a try for real money!
(Had a few spins in fun mode just now)
It's also the first Rival slot AFAIK where the reels do a longer spin after you get 2 scatters...

KK

 

YES! I wanted to mention that too with the longer spinning reels after 2 scatters, forgot it Thanks

On which RIVAL casinos do you play? Not at Slots Capital?

 

No not there - because I've been bonus banned at that casino for several years. Not that I would take their bonuses anyway as they are not very good from what I can gather.

I don't play many Rivals at all these days to be honest, because I am either bonus-banned, or their bonuses are crap.
That's a great shame because I really do love the software.
I have some money in Royal Club (rogue-ish - don't go there!) so I'll probably play this slot there until I can find another reputable Rival with a sensible bonus offer.

KK

 

So why exactly did you get bonus banned?!

And i mean with RIVALS most low variance slots it would be easy to play without a bonus no??

 

No need to answer Hoff.

You'll find out if you keep taking bonuses.

 

So what you are saying is that every RIVAL casino will bonus ban me after i win a lot?

Or is it also based on how you play? Or maybe they don't like of you take big bonus offer's at a lot of different RIVALS?

Other members having experiences with this?!

I just can't believe that Slots Capital will remove all my VIP exclusive bonusses etc. just because i'm winning??

Maybe an official word from Mrs. Sloto?!

 

Dont think even Sloto can help you there, im bonus banned as well on most Rivals, Slots capital included
they dont tell you why they bonus ban you, so dont bother ask if you will be
its just one weird system, i was bonus banned at this new Dom rival even before i cashed out after couple of deposits, didnt even take a bonus

 

Thanks... I would just love to know why this happens... I mean there must be something more then just winning.... Maybe it's absed on "Location" - "How fast after wagering you cash out" - ...

I don't know...

But i still don't get the point why a lot of players then stop playing. In my opininon: If there is one software i can play without a bonus without getting busted in minutes, it's RIVAL.

Countless times i was down to 20-25$ and 5 minutes later over 100$....

Cheers

 

The ban on Rivals White label casinos is done by Rival, but then the casino can chose for themselves if they want to give the customer bonuses or not.
If they do they usually give them a higher wagering instead. I have had bonuses with wagering for 1000xd+b. No one that's sane would use them, but then they feel they have at least been giving you bonuses

I'm sad you never had the chance to see the bonuses they offered a few years ago. 5-15x on 100% or higher bonuses and no max cashout. I miss those days

But Hoff, you need to remember that it's a business. If I run it and you were winning too much I would probably ban you too from bonuses, and if you still won, from the casino also.

Other kind of bans I don't understand or like, but I have learned to chose the places I play at and leave the rest to miss me

Edit: Now I'm a little confused. I went to play on Slots Capital and all my bonuses was gone, except for a 20%
Hoff, it's impossible to know why they do what they do

 

The truth of the matter is that a lot of Rival bonuses are pretty generous compared to other casino groups, and if you take the time to look at the RTPs of some of the slots that contribute 100% to the WR (listed in the help file on a game by game basis), it doesn't take a genius to work out that some of them are quite comfortably beatable. So maybe they profile players on this basis and remove bonus offers accordingly. (Rival have slots up at 97% and 98% RTP, and not particularly high variance slots at that.)

They also do a lot of NDBs, so maybe they keep an eye out for players who just take NDBs all the time, occasionally make a cashout, but never deposit.

Tropica Casino's 1777% bonus is a case in point, where else would you get a £1877 bankroll from a £100 deposit with a max cashout of over £1000? (I beat that bonus and walked away with £1050, although the bonus T&Cs have been much revised now, not least to reduce the WR contribution to 10% of the 99% RTP (with perfect skill strategy) slot The Back Nine )

At the end of the day the casino can choose to offer or not offer bonuses any which way it wants to, as long as they honour any existing bonuses in progress before removing them and/or changing the T&Cs, I don't see the problem.

 

Its simple... Cash out maybe twice on a bonus and you become a risk to them...

I have a Slots Capital account but I am not very fond of rival. I play at their RTG Casino and I have been partially bonus banned. The VIP rep states that my account doesn't qualify for the offers on 81% to XXX% ...

Nate

 

My thoughts

Lumped a few hundred spins through this slot and I'm a bit 'meh' about it.

Thanks to Rival's incredibly mean decision to disallow autoplay with free money I refuse to manually press the SPIN button any more than I have done, so these are more my impressions than a deeply considered review.

(On a tangent, why disallow autoplay with free money? It doesn't motivate me to deposit, it just annoys me with its pettiness, denies me the chance to get well acclimatised to a slot before I play with real money, and leaves me feeling like I just want to go and play some other software, somewhere else.)

Anyway, back to Astral Luck..

Base game - 50 lines with expanding wilds on 1/3/5, most pays are pretty low, only the jackpot symbol is really capable of making any big wins. Without that I'd be surprised to ever see over 100x stake on the base game. (Standard issue Rival in that regard, which is no bad thing as video slots should weight the pays towards the bonus rounds IMO.)

Graphics and sound - Perfectly nice, but continues with Rival's noble tradition of having a seemingly random selection of symbols relating to the various wins and bonus rounds. Even after three free spins rounds I didn't realise the symbols had dropped in until the round started. Plus the bonus round symbol looks quite similar to one of the basic win symbols - bonus/free spin symbols should be DISTINCTIVE!

Free spins bonus - Five spins at three times pay, could get interesting with the expanding wilds and like all Rival slots, the multiplier will carry over into the bonus round if triggered within free spins, which could make for some big pays.

Bonus round - Three spins of a 'double wheel', going off the available values it looks like it should be a pretty consistent 50-100x stake, which if triggered in free spins would make a tasty 150-300x stake. However, to compensate for this the round will most likely be pretty rare, I only saw it once in 300 spins.

RTP - Is listed as 'about 94', but remember that Rival list the RTP of WinMill as 'about 95' and according to the tech sheet the actual RTP for that game is 94.2%, so Astral Luck may well have a T-RTP of 93.2% and they've just rounded it up to 'about 94'. Maybe Tropica can confirm?

Either way that's on the low side for my taste, anything below 95% RTP is too low for a video slot IMO.

Overall - This isn't a slot that's going to get me depositing at a Rival any time soon. And I'm still annoyed with them for buggering around with The Back Nine. (The help file for that changed from 'about 99' to 'about 95'......)

 

RiVAL NOT FAIR

hello
i played in several rival casinos with bonus. and won.
also is now all rivals logged.

the answer from a rival casino: Your account is locked and you are bonus banned at all Rival casinos. If you open accounts at any Rival casino, they will be suspended immediately. We have the right to refuse entry to our casino and to not offer bonuses.
There are over 2000 online casinos for you to play at. Please find one that allows you as a customer.

 

Yeah i get that... Of course...

Actually i get the bonus thing,.. But i don't think that players will be banned from a "good" RIVAL casino just because they're winning, maybe they ban them from bonuses, but i think if they ban you from the casino if you win too much they are pretty rogue

But yeah, we'll see )

I still believe the bonus banning is really for players that always try to make an advantage out of it. If RIVAL see's that they collect all the free chips from RIVAL casinos and use always the big bonuses, then i kind of get their point .

 

Yes, we're only taking about being bonus-banned - not completely banned from the casino.

I don't know what the exact criteria are - but when I was bonus-banned at Sloto'Cash (Rival) I was life-time ahead with them, and only deposited when I was getting bonuses.

Then another time I made a very modest profit from a bonus at Vegas Sky and then found after I cashed-out that I was bonus-banned at ALL Rival casinos. This confirmed to me that they definitely use a central data-base of players across the brand. After that, I found that when a new Rival casino opened and I registered an account I was already bonus-banned immediately, right from the off

All that was several years ago - it's a little bit different now; I have opened new accounts at Rivals in the last 2 years and found I am NOT already bonus-banned at them, although I am still banned at the older ones.

At the end of the day though as I always say myself, bonuses should be looked at as a privilege, not a right and casinos or groups of casinos can choose who to give bonuses to or not. You can't really complain about that.

KK

 

You should take is as a compliment!
They closed all my accounts too, after cashing out the max amount on a bonus.
I only took the good ones, so I can't blame them.
I would love if Rival started licensing their games to some of the reputable operators!

Even though certain Rival casinos have agreed to let me back in, IMO you really need good bonuses, to make up for what they lack in other aspects. Like weekly withdrawal limits, no flush, low max bet and so on.

Freddy