Choosing a Twitch Raid Train App

Most people organize their first raid train in a spreadsheet and a Discord thread, and most people only look for a tool after that goes wrong. This is what the job actually requires, so you can judge any option, including this one, against the same list.

What the job actually is

A raid train tool has one real job: make sure every streamer knows when they are on and who they raid, and keep that true as the plan changes. Everything else is convenience.

That sounds trivial until you have twelve people in nine timezones, two of whom swapped slots on Tuesday. A spreadsheet holds the information but does not tell anybody it changed, and a Discord message is accurate for about a day.

So the useful question is not which app has the longest feature list. It is which one keeps the schedule true and puts it where people will read it, including while they are live and cannot alt-tab.

Capabilities worth checking

Work down this list with whatever you are evaluating.

• Timezones handled automatically: Every participant should see their slot in their own local time without doing arithmetic. A schedule published in one fixed timezone will be misread by somebody, and that somebody misses their slot.
• Streamers claim their own slots: If the organizer has to type every name in, the lineup fills at the speed of one person's inbox. Self-service registration is the difference between a train that fills and one that limps.
• A public page you can link to: Participants need to share the event with their own communities, and viewers need somewhere to see who is up next. A private spreadsheet cannot do either.
• Check-ins and reminders: The single highest value feature, because no-shows are the main way trains fail. Being told at your slot time that someone has not checked in gives you time to react.
• The raid target where you can see it live: This is where most tools stop. Knowing who is next is only useful if you can see it without leaving your stream, which means in OBS, on a hardware key, or in your chat.
• Reordering without breaking anything: Plans change. Moving a slot should update everyone's raid target automatically, not leave three people raiding whoever the old schedule said.
• Something for recurring events: If you run monthly, rebuilding the event from scratch every time is the thing that eventually stops you running it. Look for series or templates.
• A cost that works at your size: Check what is free and what is not, and specifically whether the participants need accounts or subscriptions. A tool that charges everyone in the lineup will limit who joins.

Questions to ask before you commit

• What happens when a streamer drops out an hour before their slot?
• Can a participant see their own raid target without opening a browser tab?
• Does the schedule display in each person's timezone, or one fixed one?
• Can I run the same event again next month without rebuilding it?
• Do the people joining my train need to pay for anything?
• If the tool disappears tomorrow, do I still have the schedule?

When a spreadsheet is genuinely fine

Four people, one timezone, one afternoon. A spreadsheet and a group chat will do that, and setting up anything else is overhead you do not need.

The point where it stops working is fairly predictable: more than about six participants, more than two timezones, or a schedule that changes after you publish it. If you are past any of those, the coordination cost is already higher than learning a tool.

Where R3dLabs fits

We built R3dLabs against the list above, and the part we care most about is the last mile: getting the raid target to someone who is live and cannot go looking for it.

• Public event pages with slots streamers claim themselves, shown in each person's own timezone
• Check-ins and reminders before a slot, so a no-show is something you find out early
• Reordering that updates everyone's raid target rather than silently breaking it
• Teams and series for groups who run the same train repeatedly
• FirePanel, an OBS dock that puts the lineup and your raid target inside the software you are already looking at
• A Stream Deck plugin that lights up when your target goes live and raids them in one press
• R3ddyBot, which sends the raid from chat with !raidnow and tells your viewers when the next streamer goes live
• Free to create events, claim slots, and run the schedule, with Membership adding SMS check-ins and profile customization

What we are not

R3dLabs is built for raid trains and the communities that run them. It is not a general streaming scheduler, it does not manage your solo stream calendar for you beyond the events you are part of, and it is not a Twitch bot replacement outside the raid features R3ddyBot covers.

If all you need is a shared calendar, you have simpler options. If you are running lineups where the handoff has to happen on time, that is the specific problem we work on.

Keep reading

• R3dLabs tools: The OBS dock, Stream Deck plugin, and chat bot.
• How to host a raid train: The organizing work a tool is meant to reduce.
• Free vs Membership: Exactly what costs money and what does not.

Browse open raid trains or see what R3dLabs can do.