http://wiki.opendominion.net/api.php?action=feedcontributions&feedformat=atom&user=Sly 2026-09-28T02:49:04Z User contributions MediaWiki 1.43.1 http://wiki.opendominion.net/index.php?title=Round_51_Win_Story&diff=2741 2026-09-27T23:21:35Z

<p>Sly: </p> <hr /> <div>'''Realm 10 - Round 51 Win Story'''<br /> <br /> [[Round 51|← Round 51]]<br /> <br /> See also: [[https://wiki.opendominion.net/wiki/Round_51_Note_From_Sly a Note from Sly on the round controversy]]<br /> <br /> == Soundcheck (Realm Composition and Pre-Round Planning) ==<br /> <br /> === How we got here (written by Gabbe) ===<br /> <br /> Charles asked me to write the start of this, so here goes.<br /> <br /> Charles is the winner, so I think it's only right that I write a bit about him. My first impression of him was back in Round 49. He was feeding a bunch, and some guy came into the Discord and flamed him for it. That seemed like an asshole move to pull on a new player. My impression was: ok, this guy is new, he kinda sucks, but what can you expect?<br /> <br /> Then Charles randomed into our realm in the tester. He was very vocal and super eager to learn, basically the perfect person you want as the new guy at your office or in a game: active, hardworking and willing to learn. Funnily enough, he had zero ego. That might come as a shock to some people, but that was my impression(at the time 🙂). Throughout the tester we had a lot of chats and discussions about the nature of an FA and what to think about. It was a nice round, and I thought that if this guy kept picking things up, he'd be good. He's basically a sponge, without any negative connotation.<br /> <br /> With some of the absolute strongest names in strategy around him in Mris, Mdk and Jboy, I think Charles has learned a lot. Being around minds like Sly's has added a lot of knowledge too, I'm sure.<br /> <br /> It's not often a guy comes in, plays three rounds and wins. But super activity like his, plus guidance from people with several realm wins under their belt, gave the absolute best conditions for it to happen.<br /> <br /> This pack goes back a long way, all the way to beta round 13. The lineup has changed a lot over the years, with people coming and going. Mris, is the one constant who's never left. Over the years it's included names like Pasi/Soc, Sarmis, Nate and KongB, and now the amazing lineup we had this round. All amazing players.<br /> <br /> I came back last round after six years away. It wasn't meant to be a serious comeback. I didn't have time to play properly, and I'd actually agreed to pack with two real-life friends. Then mris, who had already talked mdk into playing, asked why the three of us didn't just come pack with him and mdk and chill. When one of the guys dropped out for lack of time, we needed a fifth, so I asked jboy, who I'd played with in a draft round. Before that round there was a test round. mris, jboy, neruht and I packed together, and that's where we met Charles.<br /> <br /> I didn't have much time, so I ran a kobold converter but deconverted fast. The bigger problem that round was ops. We barely had any, and we're convinced it would have been a very different round if we had.<br /> <br /> Although I had no time to play Round 50 for real, I did have a few hours every night. From the end of June I spent them number-crunching OOP through hour 72 and simming to break every number I could.<br /> <br /> So going into Round 51 we made a rule: we're not playing unless we have proper ops, but if we do we are going for the win.<br /> <br /> Mris decided to run a Dark Elf farming XP on a shrine strat built around ops, which covered NA hours. That left Euro time. We talked about inviting neruht, but he's in almost the same timezone as mris, so we'd still be mostly blind during EU hours. We needed EU or Asia ops.<br /> <br /> That's where Charles came in. He messaged me saying he'd tried FA in the tester and SA/converter in Round 50, and was thinking of just randoming this time as an ops player. He wanted to learn by watching what everyone else was doing. I put it to the others: &quot;He's a super active guy and always willing to listen and learn. I think he'll be a good fit.&quot;<br /> <br /> === The realm, roles, and the sims ===<br /> <br /> Then the realms were assigned, and we landed an insane random realm. We got neruht and his brother hytt, two amazingly active ops players who are always around and great people all round. We got Adam. I didn't know much about him, but I knew he had strong black ops knowledge and had played with some of the top black ops people, so that side was covered. We landed with Sly again, a great veteran with real insight and a really good grasp of the game. Then we got luckier still and landed slz my real life friend, who'd been in our pack last round, as well as Sizzler who had been great in the test round and m4nus who jboy knew from before –a '''full realm''' of very solid, active players. slz is Euro, and the round started in EU-preferred hours, so I asked him straight away if he could cover ops for the first 12 hours. We tried to get Sly onto a lycanthrope, but he had flights to catch. Charles had been quiet. He really didn't want to ops, but he was ready to take one for the team for a spot in the pack. I didn't want him on ops either if I could avoid it, because with his activity I knew he'd be a bigger asset as an FA. He was talking about some slow dwarf, and I wasn't a fan. So when he showed interest in lyc, I jumped on it.<br /> <br /> Lyc doesn't suit my playstyle anyway, so I was never going to run it myself. I'd already made the lyc sim, because the plan had been for mdk to run it. But mdk was on vacation during OOP and for a couple of days after. We were worried he'd miss spec drop or wouldn't be able to hit when it mattered, so we'd already moved him to the Firewalker I was originally meant to play. With Charles on lyc, I went straight back and changed my Lizard sim. It went from a potential runner to a torpedo, whose job was taking out threats so mdk or Charles could run.<br /> <br /> mdk's sim we made super, super greedy: low mods, big alchemies and homes. It sat right on the edge of DP, turtling as many salas as possible. It was purely economy-based, so we knew that if it survived the first 36 hours and got its hits in, it would be a beast.<br /> <br /> The lyc and Lizard ran higher mods. The lyc sim was the safe one, always keeping enough DP. The Lizard pushed high OP on minimal DP. I'd gone through all the ops we had from the tester and the last two rounds, so I knew roughly what every top dominion had for OP and DP in the first 72 hours. I simmed all three out to at least 48 hours past protection: the Lizard pushing high OP with minimal DP; the lyc with nice OP but always &quot;safe&quot; DP using mods; and the FW running big salas and a big-population economy, as greedy as possible.<br /> <br /> For the rest of the realm we would have 3 Demon explorers getting ops, jboy doing a Gnome converter, 3 crazy Dark Elf converters played by mris Sly and slz, Sizz doing a Demon attacker, and m4nus playing his Troll.<br /> <br /> === Opening hits, and getting hit ===<br /> <br /> When the round started, we saw Joe Riogan (Disco) running the same sim he'd run in the tester and again in Round 50. He'd executed it better every time, and this time he had a great OOP with a huge hit. We looked for a big explorer to hit instead, but nobody was big enough to justify leaving Disco alone. I already knew he'd be a problem. This was his third run of the same sim, he'd got stronger each time, and his OOP was crazy good.<br /> <br /> So I hit him, 12 hours out, for 48 acres. In my opinion it didn't kill him, but he decided to opt out right there. It must have sucked to have an OOP that good and then get hit 12 hours later. In the same opening hits, Charles got an easy one on a DE in realm 4 for 35 acres, and mdk followed him into the same target for 33.<br /> <br /> The BGs in realm 2 had pretty strong sims early on. I'd been greedy in the first 12 hours. Going reptiles for the big 12-hour hit lowered my DP, and I probably oversent a bit too. On top of that I was asleep, with my training timed only so the offensive units arrived for my hits. I didn't have any defence trickling in beforehand, which would probably have saved me. We foolishly assumed they'd want to hit at 12 hours out. Instead Thorfinn, the Firewalker in 2, sat and built up his OP. Love in Oklahoma (MERF, the lyc in 7), was bigger than me with less DP, but I'd just landed a huge hit, so Thorfinn made a good hit on me at hour 20.<br /> <br /> If I hadn't been greedy and had trained lizards at 4am, I think they'd have covered me. I needed about 100 to be safe. Even though my dom was seen as a burn-and-die torpedo, it could have run if it kept landing hits. But Charles and mdk were the clearer runners and the stronger long-term doms. Either way, I took Thorfinn's hit, and LOVE got off free.<br /> <br /> That hit hurt, and it exposed a flaw in how we'd set things up. All three FAs were hitting on the same tick, so there was nobody home to cover anyone. Charles spotted it before the hit even landed and asked if we should stagger, since it made no sense having four of us out at once. mris later admitted that in hindsight we should have put the third FA on a delay when we added him.<br /> <br /> The frustrating part was that Thorfinn had a better target. LOVE was top OP, sitting super low on DP, with better land types for him. We thought it was insane for him not to hit the lyc. But I'd just landed a huge hit, and he came for me instead.<br /> <br /> It could have been worse. I lost less than an hour of plat in troops, and if you're going to get hit, that's not a bad time for it. Charles, with huge OP incoming, offered to stagger instead. mris loved that, because everyone was watching his 13/13 paid and waiting for it.<br /> <br /> Meanwhile, the question was whether Charles could punish the lyc in 7. mdk had Charles about 8 short on the chart with his 515 draftees, and said even a small lumber invest would get him there.<br /> <br /> === The 24-hour hits and the night after ===<br /> <br /> Going into the 24-hour hits, the pack was busy with both builds and targets.<br /> <br /> mdk was rezoning his plains into GTs and building caverns for homes. mdk had himself at about 13.7k/13.7k at 36 hours, which he called depressing. He knew he needed to start having top OP soon and force others onto defence.<br /> <br /> Charles's big question was docks. War couldn't be declared until Day 4, so we had 48 hours before anyone could start killing boats. So he should work out how many garou and WW he would have and have at least that many docks. That came to roughly 4,500 troops, or close to 50 docks. Later that evening Charles's boats read 59/58. He was self-sunk, if only barely.<br /> <br /> mdk then ran through the threat board. The lyc in 2 had garbage OP, the Lizard in 4 (allegorical) looked slow, and the Lizard in 9 was spamming chams.The only thing stopping us from pulling way ahead was the goblin Norm (Scratch) or Oklahoma(Merf)<br /> <br /> Target hunting started around 8pm. I thought the orc in 9 looked juicy. mdk lined up a nomad, Suutei tsai.<br /> <br /> The problem was LOVE. Very few dominions had over 10k OP, and none of them could send until we did, but LOVE had mdk on full send by just 30 points. My call was that nobody could send before we did, Charles settled on the orc in 9, Stevinn Wright (HighLow).<br /> <br /> Then Charles sent early. I grumbled that he'd just let everyone else send the same hour as him, until he explained his kids were going crazy. Fair enough.<br /> <br /> A few minutes later LOVE finally sent. It was a big hit off top OP, and he took 56 acres from Eddie Merfy in realm 9 (lamb), more than either of ours. With LOVE out, he was no longer home to threaten mdk, so mdk could send more. Charles took 42 acres from Stevinn Wright, the orc in 9.<br /> <br /> LOVE took 56 acres from Eddie Merfy (#9).<br /> <br /> mdk took 42 acres from Suutei tsai, the nomad in 3, 41 seconds after LOVE's hit.<br /> <br /> The best part was that nobody else sent that hour except LOVE.<br /> <br /> With three FAs we could stagger OP pushes and force everyone onto defence. I had 1good OP paid with my plat bonus still available, so if we all pushed, who was going to stop Charles? I said it at the time: this felt a lot better than last round.<br /> <br /> While the rest of us slept, Mdk kept a solo vigil and reported what he saw. When you're running on barely any sleep, waking up to condensed, easy-to-read info like this is super helpful:<br /> <br /> LOVE''':''' getting very close to self-sinking on boats.<br /> <br /> The goblin, Norm Mithdonald''':''' trained defence hard to be able to send, with a GN boost coming. Mdk suspected Norm would send but couldn't defend against Mdk's OP push. If it forced Norm to slam shamans, that was a win for us. Fast gobs can be strong, so '''Mdk '''kept an eye on him.<br /> <br /> The top OP''':''' with the gob out, LOVE was the only one outside our realm with real OP.<br /> <br /> When I got back online, Adam cleared ops on the top OP for us, and we scouted for targets. LOVE's draftees stopped me from hitting him. Instead we found Eddie Merfy, the troll LOVE had hit at 24 hours: I sent it all and took 51 acres. It was another huge hit. So far pretty much every hit I'd made was at 100%, which is admittedly easier when you've just been hit yourself haha<br /> <br /> Day 2: the 36-hour hits<br /> <br /> Charles kept hitting on the dot: 0 hours, 12, 24, and at 36 he took 42 acres from Raining on the Rock (#7). Two hours later Sizz double-tapped the same target for 44.<br /> <br /> mdk had to stagger. He was working that day, in and out of cases, and could only hop on his phone for a few minutes at a time. When he got his window, jboy grabbed fresh ops on the merfolk Eddie IzZard (#9): he took 66 acres, and had to return to work.<br /> <br /> I doubled and took 59 acres.<br /> <br /> The only one home who might follow was Norm. Then I realised Norm was in the merfolk's realm, which was hilarious<br /> <br /> That made two big hits back to back, 12 hours apart, and I'd sat 8 hours to line them up. I'd just gained about 200 acres and was still tiny in our realm. I honestly think an earlier cham push I did helped a lot. That extra 1k DP kept me safe long enough to find the hit. Charles warned me not to overdo the chams: 400–600 was perfect, in his view. That was a quip, since I'd told him something similar back in the tester when Charles played lizzie.<br /> <br /> Charles was making more docks and spies before black ops opened in 16 hours, because he didn't want to be caught on low docks or a bad SPA like some of last roun<br /> <br /> That afternoon the talk turned to economy. mdk would be at 14.4k peasants once he'd built,. We discussed and made the point that getting hit early doesn't matter much, as long as you hit big yourself. I'd hit for 100 and been hit for 50 so just ~20 acres behind what others had gained<br /> <br /> mdk was deciding what to build with his incoming land, and I pushed him to go all docks on his water, which would take him to 84. At that many docks you become almost impossible to sink for a long while in the roundWe discussed rax and he agreed he wouldn't go alchs until we were running. The sim had so many alchs, and that's exactly what made it so good. We were both really happy with it. But it had struggled during the first 24h<br /> <br /> Then the threat board again. In mdk's view the lycs in 2 were already dead, leaving the lyc in 7 and the gob in 9. The merfolk in 1 (Sharkey) was falling behind. We had to kill off the last one to three FAs before anyone could relax.<br /> <br /> I asked the realm to bear with us and keep their dominions nicely over-defended for another day or two. We didn't know exactly what top OP was, and it sucks getting hit when you believed you were safe. It especially sucks when your realm is feeding as you are trying to run.The three FAs were slowly choking the others out, and after that everyone in the realm could explore much more easily.<br /> <br /> == Accelerando (The Fast Attacking Race) ==<br /> <br /> The fast race had narrowed significantly, and we were confident we would end up dominating the round at this point, but still had some work to do.<br /> <br /> Charles planned one more non-home build to push the 60-hour marker, and then mdk and I could take hour 72 by storm. mdk suggested setting up to snare the lyc in 7. Our opsers were already training spies for when stealing and draftee assassination opened: neruht and hytt at 200 spies, Adam too, and Sizz up to 100 spy/wiz.<br /> <br /> By evening I was bigger than mdk, by two acres counting incoming, gloating commenced Sly said he should have gone FA so we would’ve had four. I told him it would have been epic, and reminded him I'd told him I had a good lyc sim for him before the round.<br /> <br /> Right at hour change and still on his 12-hour train, Charles tripled Eddie IzZard for 48 acres. He hit at the start of the tick because he knew others would hit him 100% otherwise. The merf was heavy on caverns so itt was great for him,<br /> <br /> The scav drop night, and the FW<br /> <br /> At 2am server time, LOVE finally sent again. He took 48 acres from the spirit Boolong (#3).<br /> <br /> mdk went straight to &quot;Ok now is the time to make our play.&quot;<br /> <br /> With his army out, LOVE was down on op The question was whether we could hit him when his land came in and his mods dropped. mdk calced him, he couldn't reach. I could get there, but it probably wasn't safe. Then an idea came to me: why doesn't Charles just scav-drop him? Charles had 700 draftees and 90k plat. Mdk agreed.<br /> <br /> There was one problem. It was the middle of the night and Charles was asleep. We had to wake him before :30 in case his automations fired and trained something that ruined the plan. mris had his WhatsApp and started calling. jboy joked that there's no sleep in dom. Sly called it his trial by fire. When Charles came on, his first question was &quot;Why you wake me now lol.&quot; His automations had gone off hours ago, so that worry was dispelled. The plan was to train nothing yet, then drop scavs 9 hours before the hit.<br /> <br /> That started the debate about how Mdk and I should play it. Mdk wanted to go spec defence, because what good is OP if a second-tier dom hits you? My view was that we had to keep pressure on LOVE so he couldn't stack draftees. He either trains defence against Mdk and me, or stacks to defend against Charles.<br /> <br /> Jboy asked whether we could guarantee a hit if LOVE did stack, and warned us not to get so fixated that we missed other safe hits. ((Jboy turned out to be right, but not in the way anyone expected: the scav drop ended up opening an even bigger target)).<br /> <br /> In the end we split roles. mdk realised he'd land a huge hit regardless: big op close to 14k peasants,, ready to follow if Charles got him. I had good OP and kept pushing lizards and GNs to force LOVE and the lycs in 2 onto defence.<br /> <br /> LOVE had dropped rats, as expected. Charles could produce 583 scavs, about OP.<br /> <br /> That meant waking Charles again. He didn't want to swap his resources and asked if he could keep them for emergency forges. mdk wasn't having it: &quot;Dump lumber please..&quot; Boats were checked too. Charles had 48 free boats, and jboy and mris agreed that was enough.<br /> <br /> mdk had been clear that the instructions needed to be simple: lumber to plat, max scavs, and leave ore out of it, because it's easy to mess up half asleep. But then, somebody said to trade ore anyway! Charles, half asleep, converted his ore to plat too and realised with a minute to go: &quot;Ffs I fucked it up.&quot; mdk: &quot;lol I told you guys don't tell ore. He's half asleep.&quot;<br /> <br /> Then came the big question: did Charles actually have LOVE? mdk first thought the lyc might be safe, and I saw the opposite. mdk's diagnosis for the confusion was that I was sleep-deprived. He recalced and had Charles winning by about 100 with LOVE on full draftees.<br /> <br /> Sly warned us not to write off realm 2. Their FW had 15% GN, the lycs could be strong behind that cover, and Thorfinn was bringing in OP. Sly also rebuilt his top OP sheet so it worked on mobile. It showed the top three OP in the game were all us, summed it up as a 3v1v1.<br /> <br /> Mris and then Sly pointed out that the biggest dom in the game was hittable, the FW Wanker (#8),The FW was worth 178 acres to Charles against 130 from LOVE. jboy and Charles leaned toward the FW, since it was bigger and LOVE was pinned anyway.<br /> <br /> mdk was firm: the FW only made sense if he could double him. Otherwise we kill the lyc. &quot;40 land means nothing&quot; compared with taking out a threat. I backed him on one point: I could only keep LOVE pinned while Charles stayed home. If Charles went out and LOVE trained all his draftees as rats, I couldn't get him.<br /> <br /> The final ops settled it mdk admitted he'd miscounted them, sleep-deprived. So LOVE was safe for now. Charles joked that I could raze him.<br /> <br /> jboy told Charles not to pretend to be sad, because he knew Charles wanted the FW hit all along.<br /> <br /> The FW then made it easy. He explored and spent plat that tick, and his morale was at 96%, which dropped his DP Charles sent. He took 90 acres, gained 76 prestige, converted 1<br /> <br /> jboy: &quot;you're stealing the show.&quot; Charles thanked mris for the 3am wake-up call and told him to ring any time a hit like that came up.<br /> <br /> mdk wanted to follow, but was short by less than 100 OP. That left LOVE pinned, and Thorfinn now had spec OP incoming we needed to watch closely. The new plan was to save SS to sink Thorfinn and let me all-in LOVE. I<br /> <br /> === The war with realm 2, and the LOVE trade ===<br /> <br /> The war with realm 2 actually was because a small slip. The tick Charles hit the FW, he didn't get his rat training in, even though I'd told him to. It's a stressful situation, and he was new to this. In hindsight he was probably safe, because they would have needed a raze to get him. But with 200 acres incoming, we didn't want to risk it.<br /> <br /> Realm 2 had been a thorn from the start. They hit us three times before any war existed: Rusla took 60 acres from Sly at hour 9, Thorfinn took 50 from me at hour 20, and Thorfinn took 40 from M4nus at hour 36. M4nus didn't even notice his until hour 68: &quot;I forgot this. I'm going to get an early revenge!!!!!!&quot;<br /> <br /> We declared at hour 72 and sank Thorfinn straight away. On the wizard front, my plan had been to stay undefended if war came to us. With no wizards I'd be the easy, juicy fireball target, and that would hopefully steer people away from mdk and Charles. That's obviously a bit silly when you're the ones declaring war, but we hadn't expected to be the ones going there, haha. Charles had skipped wizards too, to put everything into (failing) smashing LOVE, so sadly he got fireballed straight away. mdk was well protected and came through fine.<br /> <br /> At hour 75 I hit LOVE for 80 acres. By then I was clearly top OP, and LOVE was the only one who could trade with me. I decided to take that trade, since that was my job in this pack. To his credit, he had played it smart and had pushed scavs back on me. If he'd gone rats, like the lycs in 2 he would just have eaten the hit with no way to hit back. Six hours later he retaliated and took 64 acres back.<br /> <br /> The plan was for mdk to double LOVE right there. mdk couldn't be hit all-in as FW, and after our earlier talk he had enough docks that he couldn't be sunk. His weak spot was that he had zero spies, and realm 2 snared him, so LOVE got away. In hindsight he said he should have pre-cast or amped ares. Still, the trade did its job. By hour 93 Charles was 100 acres ahead of LOVE, which is a big lead that early in the round.<br /> <br /> === Killing Floki ===<br /> <br /> Floki (Ivetza), the lyc in 2. He pushed to around 31k OP and became the biggest threat on the board. So we FBed him down to about 6k peasants and snared him to zero wizard strength so he could never get Ares back up. Early on day 5 mdk landed a hit for 81 acres. Sizz summed up the channel: &quot;What a team!&quot; Charles then took a last war hit on Floki for 78 just before we canceled at the start of day 6. Ivetza had tried to suicide a bot in order to feed the competition and had his locked by the Rules Committee.<br /> <br /> === LOVE's last stand(written by Charles) ===<br /> <br /> With the war over we switched to deterrence. The three FAs staggered their OP so LOVE and the Lizard in 4 could never train freely. On day 7 Charles full-sent into AAAA, a DE in LOVE's realm, for 76, and ate a fireball storm in return. His wizard guilds and reflect held. Charles: &quot;its one verry very mad DE.&quot;<br /> <br /> On day 8 mdk spotted a merfolk in 7 Here Comes the Rain Again (Esthera) with low SPA, about 1,200 draftees. With GNs coming in that tick, the whole realm stabbed draftees. Charles hit for 103. His read afterwards: &quot;and now we have idea which top explorers are dropping… and the answer is they all will be 😄&quot;<br /> <br /> Day 10 was a huge day for us and it seemed like nothing could go wrong at this point. Charles hit the Icekin in 4 Scratch's Cat (Mithrandir), for 122, and just two minutes later M4nus landed the killshot on the Fountain of Youth: 17,354 damage after a cyclone barrage from the demons. Sly: &quot;massive fucking hit on a competitive icer, and they get foy all within minutes.&quot; Charles and mdk both crossed about 70k OP with GN drops.<br /> <br /> On day 11, after Charles had taken 133 off &quot;Young Wife&quot; in 4 overnight, LOVE did something nobody expected. He had looked abandoned all morning. Then he suicided a full WW send into jboy's teched gnome for 94. Sly: &quot;this is deliberate.&quot; Charles all-inned LOVE for 109 that afternoon, and Sly called it: &quot;FA race is officially over.&quot;<br /> <br /> LOVE rebuilt, then suicided into jboy again on day 12 for 97, and mdk all-inned him that evening for 112. On day 13 mdk caught him on an Ares drop for 100 more, his third in a row. jboy: &quot;3 in a row for oklahoma.&quot; mdk: &quot;Why won't he just die.&quot; But he was indeed dead.<br /> <br /> == Harmony (Midround Consolidation) ==<br /> <br /> === Day 13: Burnout, and a Kobold ===<br /> <br /> So the FA race was over before the end of the second week of the round. We had a Liz in 4 that was pushing OP, but we knew this would be temporary. He de-converted two days later. I was chasing a large FWer for a few days here, but he kept being one step ahead of me. Anyway, after the FA race I was a little burned out. I felt exhausted and hits were getting harder to find.<br /> <br /> I reached out to a realmie, Sly, who is a very experienced and very helpful vet. We were lucky to have him random in!<br /> <br /> &quot;I'm Losing momentum and motivation here, if You get 10 Mins. Could you see if there's any guys close I can hit. The Liz and FW tricks really took the steam out of my whistle&quot;<br /> <br /> Sly gave me one of his nifty inspirational pep talks and within minutes found an underdefended Kobold to hit. This hit almost reset me. I slept well that night and was onto bigger things the next day.<br /> <br /> 2026-08-21 16:48:41 Victorious on the battlefield, Britney Baby (#10) conquered 119 land from Shelter from the storm (#7).<br /> <br /> The same night, LOVE finally abandoned. Gabbe had told the channel &quot;he probably abandons in 27 minutes,&quot; and LOVE was gone at 22:06. Sizz: &quot;nailed it.&quot; The next morning Thorfinn abandoned too. Both of realm 2's early thorns and LOVE were gone inside 24 hours.<br /> <br /> === Day 14: Calypso ===<br /> <br /> Huge shoutout to neruht here.<br /> <br /> At this stage I was ahead and feeling very confident, but because I'd hit 15 or so hours earlier my OP was diminished. Randomly, neruht decided to rev everyone in my range, five of them or so. I came onto my PC and had a look, thinking it was a wasted venture, but just making notes on when these guys dropped Ares.<br /> <br /> Then I saw how close it was. neruht did the math: 1,005 draftees now, plus 348 incoming, minus 500 killed, left 853. One Fortnight Stand With Calypso (#5) was on 106,079.69 total defense, 2.35% vs temples, with his 16 phoenixes. I posted &quot;we need to stab 500 so i worked out 15 stabs is enough, we have over 20 stabs here&quot; in my broken, rushed, excited English.<br /> <br /> But it was a weird timezone, and neruht didn't have any SS. Neither did Gabbe or I. Thankfully, after a bit of spam and pings, slz and hytt came on to save the day. This was all organised within 20 minutes at 06:00, which is midnight or later for the Americans. With one minute to the tick slz asked who we were stabbing, but we told him with plenty of seconds left and the hour change approached. Stabbing complete, we CS'd again, checked drafts, revved, I asked for one more rev, and action.<br /> <br /> 2026-08-22 09:02:00 Victorious on the battlefield, Britney Baby (#10) conquered 160 land from One Fortnight Stand With Calypso (#5).<br /> <br /> Back to back, putting me so far ahead.<br /> <br /> === Day 16: The Wanker ===<br /> <br /> A very interesting hit, and much harder than it seems.<br /> <br /> After the earlier disappointment of not being able to hit the 8 FWer, because of the chance of someone coming into range to smack me, this hit was back on the cards. Since then, though, he had been massing DP. So the planning started. I stopped training, put Fool's Gold on in the middle of the day and drafted up. The beauty here is that only about five doms had me in range. They did kill draftees at 80 or so per shot, but they soon ran out of SS, and they were in different realms, so it wasn't exactly a joint effort.<br /> <br /> The play was simple but cute: train big garou before the land came in, take two land bonus rezones for swamps, and destroy the 30 WGs I had from the earlier war into temples for a decent defence-reduction bonus. Followed by mass spec OP to ensure the hit.<br /> <br /> So I bountied up all ops, including rev. They got done and I used the bot to track. Then, after a quick discussion with mdk, it looked like I might breach my 5:4. I told him I had it handled, but maybe I didn't, so I did spec OP and rats. Then I rechecked the actual ops I'd requested earlier, either that tick or the tick before.<br /> <br /> WOW, the guy had no Ares! So I spammed the channel: can someone look at this, am I seeing crazy stuff here? Then Sly gracefully slapped me down along the lines of &quot;calc it yourself, big boy, you're trying to win.&quot;<br /> <br /> So I requested another rev and prepared my hit. As the Liz hadn't sent yet I could full send, so I put my self spell on for extra converts, and after one more Ares, I full sent!<br /> <br /> 2026-08-23 19:08:33 Victorious on the battlefield, Britney Baby (#10) conquered 161 land from ⬇️ Is an absolute Wanker ! (#8).<br /> <br /> What looked like an Ares-drop hit... well, it was an Ares-drop hit, but I did have him 9 hours later for sure. I promise.<br /> <br /> === The war debate (team) ===<br /> <br /> Charles went back to the Wanker the next evening for 144 more. That same day brought the round's big strategy argument. Charles wanted to use our three demons to wipe out the competition realm by realm: &quot;Winning isn't enough.&quot; mdk, Gabbe and jboy talked him down. War would upset the balance, where the second-tier doms were busy pinning each other, it risked the Fountain, and it would get Gabbe and Sizz fireballed out of training. Gabbe answered with a &quot;let them eat cake&quot; gif. Charles took it well, and mris added the caveat that we were trying to win the round, not collect style points.<br /> <br /> === Stagnation (Days 17–20, team) ===<br /> <br /> mdk's plan for the next stretch (&quot;Do we want to stagnate game&quot;) was to skip his daily bonus, keep the Lizard in 4 pinned in his range so he could never send, and make him burn his population on chams and DP while Charles ballooned toward 46k peasants and 500 DMs. mdk was openly willing to sacrifice his own dom to freeze the board. Björn in 2 abandoned on day 17.<br /> <br /> It paid off on day 19. The Lizard was about to get hit all in and decided to try and send and not let mdk get land but mdk was faster hit him for 128 and Norm (#9) might have tried to hit him first because it was a short time in between the hits or he thought he was safe to hit, which left Norm open. Gabbe took 155 off Norm (scratch) Gabbe:&quot;not bad for a dead dom&quot; Norm abandoned the next day which was to bad be was actually strong there and could have offered some threat, the Lizard was finished, and mdk went back to farm the Wanker for 160.<br /> <br /> === Days 21–22: Bottom feeds #1 (back to Charles) ===<br /> <br /> On day 21 mris made the call: &quot;both of them are at 5:4. the time is now.&quot;<br /> <br /> I was always very reluctant to bottom feed. However, I knew I had a decent average spy ratio of 0.4, which could help mitigate the risk. I simply ran out of targets, and the guys I was failing to target kept casting Ares or building a buffer defence against snares. Nothing much to say other than that I greedily took four. The first was a decent land grab, and that guy had kept swarming me forever, so I owed him one. The human was a semi-threat, so we thought it would be good to tap him.<br /> <br /> 2026-08-29 05:55:18 Victorious on the battlefield, Britney Baby (#10) conquered 145 land from ᛋᛚᛁᛁᛒᚾᛁᚱ aka Sleipnir (#2). 2026-08-29 17:36:58 Victorious on the battlefield, Britney Baby (#10) conquered 84 land from Registered to Round 51 ⬇️ (#8). 2026-08-30 05:26:47 Victorious on the battlefield, Britney Baby (#10) conquered 99 land from AAAA (#7). 2026-08-30 17:37:28 Victorious on the battlefield, Britney Baby (#10) conquered 92 land from Joe Riogan (#9).<br /> <br /> (Team note: that last one was Disco's dom, the one Gabbe had hit 12 hours out at the very start of the round.) Charles then went back into guard for a week, around 650 DMs and 60k peasants: &quot;Come back as a monster in a weeks time 😜&quot;.<br /> <br /> === Day 27: Vishakmar ===<br /> <br /> Me and my main ops boy neruht had been working on this guy for about 10 days, if not longer. He's a 12-hour caster. We did have a chance to catch him once before, but I didn't pre-cast Ares, so I messed up my 5:4. Anyway, patience is key, and 12-hour casting is a dangerous game.<br /> <br /> We voiced up for this hit as well.<br /> <br /> 2026-09-04 06:00:25 Victorious on the battlefield, Britney Baby (#10) conquered 247 land from Vishakmar (#4).<br /> <br /> (Team note: &quot;FUCKING MERKED.&quot; Vishakmar explored out of range that same hour and abandoned that evening.)<br /> <br /> === Day 28: The freeze breaks ===<br /> <br /> mdk had spent days as the plug, pinning the merfolk Da Hong Pao in 3 while the converts caught up. Early on day 28 he finally sent, 169 acres off Prawn Bernthal (#1, merfolk): &quot;Community has been unleashed.&quot; mris landed his first convert hit that afternoon. In between, Charles spent three ticks locked over a same-name account a friend had registered. The RC cleared him and re-ran his ticks.<br /> <br /> === Day 30: The Gabbabomb ===<br /> <br /> Gabbe just sat and trained 5:4 to hit someone. Then Koi Leonard (Weaser), the Icekin in 1, became top OP out of realm (240k, heading to 260k) and spec dropped Sizz. Sinking him wasn't realistic, Gabbe sent his leftover lizardmen into Koi for 231 acres. Gabbe: &quot;Haha they were ready.&quot; mris: &quot;gabbe has now killed 5 threats.&quot; Adam: &quot;Fastest deconversion in history.&quot; The price was about a thousand acres: six doms from realms 1, 2 and 3 fed on Gabbe in the same tick. Charles: &quot;I would literally walk my dominion off a cliff to follow general Gabbe.&quot;<br /> <br /> === Day 31: Bottom feeds #2 ===<br /> <br /> With no other targets in sight we opted to BF again. This time I just picked the two biggest I could hit and went back into the guard. It took so long to build my acres after the first BF that I was keen to cap it at two hits.<br /> <br /> 2026-09-08 04:45:29 Victorious on the battlefield, Britney Baby (#10) conquered 200 land from Prawn Michaels (#1). 2026-09-08 16:51:53 Victorious on the battlefield, Britney Baby (#10) conquered 173 land from Tie guan yin (#3).<br /> <br /> === Day 35: The Downrightdave snare ===<br /> <br /> So I found a snare opportunity hit. This merfolk hadn't been in range for long, and I tracked that he was letting Ares drop to 6/5/4, so I thought we had a good chance. After we math'd it, it all seemed very possible. The nice thing was that the merf wasn't in any guard, so we had 10 or 11 guys who could take part in the snaring. Also, thanks to the greedy explorer vibe we'd seen this round, his ratios were around 0.4 (about to get even worse!).<br /> <br /> We swapped monarchs and voiced up. Around six of us were in voice, with another few in Discord and a couple around to sustain the snare. After a quick rev and war declaration we spammed snare. I got an instant server error but managed to get to 25 SS in about 3 seconds. The re-rev showed Ares 5, so it was successful! We maintained the snare with plenty of SS still available, soon to be needed.<br /> <br /> It was an annoying time for me: 10pm, past my usual 9pm bedtime. My wife wondered why I was still awake. Little did she know it was for a big Ares-drop hit in Open Dominion!<br /> <br /> So I got new ops just after 10pm, and where I should have had him by 4k or so, he was 5k over my OP! Shock! He'd released his full wizards.<br /> <br /> Problem 1: his castle. He'd invested into castle and it was huge, so we started to lightning bolt it.<br /> <br /> Problem 2: his spies. He still had some, and we obviously didn't want any chance of a bounce, so we assassinated a few. He released spies, we killed some more, and he released all his spies. He was now at a 0 ratio for spies and wizards, lol. We even had our FWer, with a terrible spy ratio, assassinate a thousand draftees on top. He went from around 10k total (after the multiple releases) to around 3k.<br /> <br /> New ops showed we had him by 2k. Fair play and nice try. Thankfully our active realm saved the day!<br /> <br /> 2026-09-11 21:27:27 Victorious on the battlefield, Britney Baby (#10) conquered 257 land from Downrightdave Chappelle (#9).<br /> <br /> === Keeping the Fountain ===<br /> <br /> mdk, Sizz and mris all landed 200+ hits the same evening. The war with 9 came with a cost, though. While we were at war, realm 9 cycloned our Fountain down to 35,044 of 250,000. On day 36 we finished it off and rebuilt it ourselves (&quot;wonder at a mil now,&quot; per mdk), then canceled the war. We held the Fountain from day 10 to the end of the round.<br /> <br /> == Grand Finale (The Endgame) ==<br /> <br /> === Day 37: Time for an all-in (Charles) ===<br /> <br /> We noticed almost instantly that the merf in 3 had released all his wizards and spies to spec OP for a hit, and we identified our demons as the likely targets. But what mdk spotted first was that this might be the day the win could be sealed. The merf would enter my range and I could potentially all-in him. He had no ops on me at this time and would have none when he arrived home either, with no spies or wizards.<br /> <br /> (Team note: mdk's call that afternoon was &quot;Merfolk hitting our demon pretty much wins round for us.&quot;)<br /> <br /> The funny thing is that when his specs dropped, our guys started assassinating the demon with the higher DP (by about 5k). It saved our demon from having to release around 5k spies and wizards anyway. So that demon made himself safe, but just before hour change more draftees were killed on the other one, and the hit happened.<br /> <br /> 2026-09-13 18:53:45 Da Hong Pao (#3) invaded fellow dominion Charli XCX (#10) and captured 376 land.<br /> <br /> A loss for neruht, but a huge gain for our realm.<br /> <br /> For this hit I took my daily bonus, rezoned to temple, and proceeded to drop spec and draft up to increase my 5:4. The hit was very easy. We calculated a full invest and release of mermen, but I killed a ton of draftees too, and so did a couple of others online at the time. I sent roughly 9k over, as there were no other attackers in my range. Revenge hit complete.<br /> <br /> 2026-09-14 06:26:17 Victorious on the battlefield, Britney Baby (#10) conquered 270 land from Da Hong Pao (#3).<br /> <br /> (Team note: mdk, several drinks deep: &quot;I might be drunk and stupid but I am a fucking oracle.&quot;)<br /> <br /> === &quot;The only way to lose&quot; ===<br /> <br /> After that the round went to stall. Nobody wanted to send first, and mris stood down to act as a feeder and suicide insurance for Charles. Charles wanted to bottom-feed twice more to widen the gap. mdk put a stop to it: &quot;The only way to lose is us attacking… Charles does not bottom feed now… Literally only way to lose this.&quot;<br /> <br /> === Day 41: Another BF, this time a war BF (Charles) ===<br /> <br /> Realm 4 declared on us, seemingly to sink our FW so they could free up their attackers. We think! Of course we responded with a mutual!<br /> <br /> However, only their DE sent, and he was already safe to do so? Anyway, we calced that I could leave guard and make a safe war hit. We first aimed for one of their merfs, but I would have had to send some WW, so we decided against it and grabbed the UD instead.<br /> <br /> There was a potential chance of three razes from different realms, and then an Icer with a mutual-war suicide on me, so we sank him too.<br /> <br /> 2026-09-17 19:59:38 Victorious on the battlefield, Britney Baby (#10) conquered 272 land from Secret channel club member (#4).<br /> <br /> (Team note: mdk had been sunk, fireballed and plagued, and bottom-fed AAAA for 219 to escape before the mutual. Gabbe the next morning: &quot;8300 wins rounds.&quot; Charles: &quot;I think I'm done hitting for you round.&quot; Both wars were canceled on day 42.)<br /> <br /> === Victory lap (Days 43–47) ===<br /> <br /> One dom with real OP was still near Charles: Koi Leonard (Weaser), the Icekin in 1. On the evening of day 42 Koi sent twice, taking 204 from Siren's Open Mic Night and 229 from &quot;wants to attack you!&quot; in 8, which left him light at home. Overnight we set up the same all-in play that had worked on the merfolk. Charles would all-in Koi at hour change, before his conquered land and a mountain rezone could lift his DP. Adam, hytt and neruht were staged to stab draftees, and mdk was on standby with a raze. Sly ran Koi's DP under the rezone assumptions while Gabbe ran the bot calcs. Charles released spies and wizards to be sure he had enough scavs incoming to break. At hour change on day 43 he took 315 acres. Adam: &quot;Holy Shit!&quot; neruht: &quot;didnt even need the raze 😎&quot; Gabbe explained why: &quot;the guy did not have enough plat to even rezone.&quot; A few hours later mdk said it outright: &quot;win is honestly secured.&quot;<br /> <br /> That afternoon jboy did his end-of-round suicide duty. He chose the DE in 4 (Apologize) over the Icer and took 380, then got fed back three times: 212 to Show me your cat, 222 to Scratch's cat isn't real and 144 to Apologize. His verdict: &quot;Nice, they denied #1 from hitting me xD&quot;. That evening mdk took 282 off Show me your cat, the gob in 4: &quot;Should Secure 1/2 atleast&quot;.<br /> <br /> From there it was about not losing. On day 44 Charles itched to drop out of guard for more land, and the realm shut it down. jboy: &quot;If u wanna lose, go 😆&quot;. Gabbe: &quot;You are not safe.&quot; hytt, who had been ready to war for the realm all round, was pointed at a personal-best finish instead. Gabbe: &quot;Let's get you a record finish. Thank you for always being ready to war for the realm 🙏&quot;<br /> <br /> The last real jolt came on day 45. mris's Ares dropped, and Koi sent the moment it did, taking 253 acres. We scrambled to get mris back online before a double-tap, but almost nobody could reach his DP, and it stayed a single hit. After that, Gabbe's instruction was the whole plan: &quot;only build spec dp now.&quot; On day 46 the rest of the server fed each other.<br /> <br /> We went out with a bang. On the final evening we declared on realm 4 one last time. We waited for wizard strength to reach 100%, then sank their Icekin's to limit any last second 5:4 chaos. neruht: &quot;burned 16k of his pes lol&quot;. hytt: &quot;He is down to 8862 boats&quot;.<br /> <br /> Offense disabled early, at 03:47 server time on the last day. neruht: &quot;wow early disable&quot;. M4nus: &quot;Winning realm!&quot; slz: &quot;Really well played round guys. Amazing teamwork. Best realm I've been in.&quot; jboy: &quot;Finally in a runaway realm (First time) haha&quot;<br /> <br /> Charles finished at 9,070 acres, about 1,400 clear of the next dominion, with mdk on 7,515 in third.<br /> <br /> == Curtain Call (Afterword) ==<br /> <br /> A note from Charles below.<br /> <br /> I’d like to thank my pack, and my realm.<br /> <br /> Firstly to Gabbe for letting me in. Considering I joined to be the Opsplorer as they didn’t have room for another attacker in the pack! Then the rest of the pack, mris, mdk, jboy.<br /> <br /> Almost every move, every decision, and all long term planning came from serious debate. Not just with the pack with our realm vets too, Sly in particular.<br /> <br /> The rest of the realm, starting with our 3 demons (Adam, neruht, hytt), plus Sly, Sizz, m4, and slz all playing such a pivotal role.<br /> <br /> Particular thanks to mdk for being my full round running mate. To sit and stall while I BF and grew takes a real top man. Hope one day I can return the favour.<br /> <br /> To my ares drop voice pal neruht, wouldn’t have made half my mid round hits without your activity and teamwork.<br /> <br /> And once again to Gabbe for his guidance, sacrifice and patience. &amp;lt;3</div>

Sly http://wiki.opendominion.net/index.php?title=Round_51_Note_From_Sly&diff=2740 2026-09-27T23:18:25Z

<p>Sly: Created page with &quot;A note on the very unfortunate controversy from Round 51. I hope to at least clear up a few things so that people are not in the dark about what transpired. I also wanted to make sure that people had what I believe are the facts, rather than rumors or speculation that was circulated during the round. Immediately after the round I spoke to several people to try to piece together why certain people believed what they did, and how the rumors came to be. I also wanted to se...&quot;</p> <hr /> <div>A note on the very unfortunate controversy from Round 51. I hope to at least clear up a few things so that people are not in the dark about what transpired. I also wanted to make sure that people had what I believe are the facts, rather than rumors or speculation that was circulated during the round.<br /> <br /> Immediately after the round I spoke to several people to try to piece together why certain people believed what they did, and how the rumors came to be. I also wanted to see if there were facts I was not aware of. What if the rumors were true, and I just didn't know? Had I wasted 47 days of time and effort? I was able to speak with several people and piece together quite a bit. This is a sort of TL;DR version, but I feel compelled to share information that will illuminate the circumstances, because it seems like everyone only has tiny pieces of what they think happened instead of the full story.<br /> <br /> == Charles, Gabbe, and Advent ==<br /> <br /> The round win story shares how Charles came to join up with mris/Gabbe pack. Charles wasn't even planning to play FA as the round win story details. I won't rehash that whole story since you can read it for yourself, but it was not because Gabbe played 'PA' with Charles. Gabbe has never played PA, and is one of the most senior (in experience) members of our community going back to early rounds of Classic Dominion. I have no idea why anyone ever could've thought he was a new player from some other game. Gabbe (along with Pasi, who he was regularly packed with) actually taught me how to play in Classic when I was a kid.<br /> <br /> Additionally, as far as I can tell, Charles has no relationship with Advent. The rumor was that Advent was also from PA along with Gabbe (what?), but there is nobody named Advent who played PA. The source of this rumor seems to stem from an AI hallucination which served to confirm the pre-existing bias of its user. The AI simply made up that Charles, Gabbe, and Advent played together in PA. There is no record of this; it is an invention of fiction. We knew Advent (4 FW) was 12-hour casting AC for many days before we managed to actually hit him. The first time he dropped it for more than a few seconds, Charles mistakenly thought he didn't have the OP to break him because he miscalculated 5:4 without AC on. The next time it required neruht in voice chat to ensure the spell stayed down and help Charles calc. Pretty deep conspiracy...<br /> <br /> Another rumor said that Charles IS Advent, and that Charles had several multis in various realms. I have not found a source for this other than crude implications made in general chat, but the RC has stated that Charles played the whole round on a real IP (not a VPN or proxy). I assume if his IP was shared with anyone else, he would've been locked quite early, as this is very easy to catch. Finally, Charles is British, while I am fairly confident that Advent is American.<br /> <br /> So who is Advent? I'm not 100% sure, but it is clear to me that he is not new, but rather an old(ish?) OD player. Just look at his build (prior to lock): 5% shrines, and strategically built WGs--not to mention the fact that he was able to keep up very well as a fast explorer. No new player would have this combination without serious coaching, and what I'm told by that realm is that Advent was not open to receiving feedback (or even sharing advisors until like a week in).<br /> <br /> It also probably didn't help that Advent was so flagrant in general chat after the events went down the way they did, and I can see why people just assumed there might have been something to the rumors based on their public chats/personalities.<br /> <br /> == The Sinking of mdk ==<br /> <br /> Rio also thought (initially, I believe he has since recanted) that Advent or someone must've been feeding us information because his realm (4) was gearing up to sink mdk (our FW) which could've opened up the round a bit, but mdk 'suddenly' invested in harbor and so on. It seems to me that this assumption rested on weeks of self-reinforcement of the other delusional rumors, because the facts clear this up easily. They were planning to sink mdk in early Sept, but as early as Aug 25 we were discussing mdk pumping harbor. And Gabbe identified that realm 4 was pushing spies likely to sink mdk on this date. There was a Flood that hit mdk right around when they were considering sinking, triggering him to take defensive precautions which also added to their suspicion, but this was pure coincidence by a third party.<br /> <br /> == The Rules Committee &amp; Charles' &quot;Multi&quot; ==<br /> <br /> Adding on to what was already being speculated was an unfortunate situation with the Rules Committee. Fett was away, and I have not been on the RC since r45. They added 2 members in the middle of the round to help but Fett is the only one with full access to the database (up until more recently, that is).<br /> <br /> When I was on the RC, we had a standard process (that Fett ran) to check for multis, among other things that I won't detail here. I'm 'educatedly' guessing that process might not have happened at the start of the round, and was only evaluated when reports that Charles was a multi came in. I'm also guessing what transpired went something like this:<br /> <br /> * we've received reports of multis, Fett can you check?<br /> * info shows there are a couple obvious multis we need to address with the same IPs<br /> * what about Charles?<br /> * someone in Ireland made an account with his real name as the dominion name, pretty close to UK, just lock him and we'll figure it out<br /> * locked 3 pairs of assumed multis, Charles included<br /> <br /> There were a few problems here. If the RC had reached out to Charles they would've found out what they learned later: Charles DID have a friend who he invited to play, but the player made an account with Charles' actual name to troll him and never logged in/completed protection. I'm not sure why the RC just assumed it ''was'' Charles, and even if they did, it is not standard practice for us to lock a player in this situation without speaking with him/her first. Charles later showed the RC a screenshot of his text messages with that friend, and this is what Fett said in the later RC announcement: &quot;We also saw screenshots of a conversation where the friend was being told about the game and they matched exactly with the timestamps of registration, etc.&quot;<br /> <br /> Another problem was the initial communication. When the RC locked the pairs of suspected multis, people may have mistakenly believed that all accounts listed were related. But this is not the case; they were listed in pairs for a reason. Additionally, despite the unlock coming just a few hours after the initial announcement, the follow up announcement left an ominous &quot;pending further investigation&quot; which was not ''formally'' addressed until almost the end of the round. I'm sure now that the RC is at full strength, and with the benefit of hindsight, things will be more smooth in this regard.<br /> <br /> Finally, it was also suggested by someone that the RC and realm 10 were in coordination, I guess to ignore the cheating for their own benefit or something. This is preposterous and anyone who said this publicly should apologize to them for it. There were 0 members of realm 10 on the RC until slz was added mid-round, after this allegation was made. Even then, it is standard practice for anyone on the RC involved in relevant realms to recuse themselves from decision-making.<br /> <br /> == Cronel's 'Investigation' ==<br /> <br /> If the self-reinforcement of the paranoia and delusion from certain players was not enough, Cronel also took it upon himself (for some reason..?) to join the PA discord and ask them about Charles. Unfortunately, a great opportunity here to learn something of the truth was missed. Here is a word-for-word transcript of that text:<br /> <br /> * Cronel: This is going to be super random and feel free to ignore me, but what is the general consensus on Charles here?<br /> * Markb: King Charles III? I think he's alright<br /> * Cronel: Haha Whoever used to play here named Charles.<br /> * Rickbakara: I think he means CBA ;)<br /> * Rickbakara: If so, no comment.<br /> * SlingShot: King Charles III, I cba to comment on his royalness<br /> * Cronel: Well, he is about to ruin a whole game, so just wanted to find out opinions of his previous game. :)<br /> * Rickbakara: 100% talking about CBA then<br /> * Cronel: Hahah Thanks, that's all I needed to know.<br /> * SlingShot: if that other games dies then feel free to come join us over here<br /> * Cronel: Can we bring him with us?<br /> * Fiery (a mod): Wait, you guys didn't ask the important question. What is Charles doing to you guys? We want the tea<br /> * Cronel: Probable cheating. Coordinating with other former players from here that play there. (Not allowed outside your realm) Being a general asshole. Claimed he wins all the time here and was accused of things here, but completely innocent.<br /> * Fiery: lol<br /> * Fiery: That sounds like him<br /> * Cronel: We figured. His reaction to it all didn't sound like this was new to him. Haha<br /> * Fiery: I'm head of Multihunting. He's been closed for cheating. Nothing innocent about him.<br /> * Fiery: That group that went with him, we don't miss.<br /> * Cronel: Advent and Gabbe they go by there. Not sure if there are others.<br /> * Rickbakara: You can keep him<br /> * Fiery: I would assume Advent and Gabbe are Cardi multis<br /> <br /> Okay, so there's a lot here. For what it's worth, Charles said he was wrongly 'closed' and then 'reopened', and that Fiery is not friendly with him. But unfortunately due to the way this was handled and phrased, all we really know is that they don't like Charles--not exactly breaking news.<br /> <br /> I think if you've read all this so far you can clearly see the thread: Cronel assumes (incorrectly) that he is receiving confirmation that Advent and Gabbe are former PA players. I don't know who 'that group' Fiery is referring to is, but it's certainly not Gabbe or Advent.<br /> <br /> As I understand, Yami had already reached out an admin from PA in private to try to understand Charles' historical character. I don't know what was said. But I'm certain that Yami is not covering for Charles.<br /> <br /> If you really want to do something like this and take matters into your own hands, here is my advice: next time, ask straightforward, probing questions--and then stop talking. Let them actually provide you with information instead of making assumptions. Questions like &quot;What are the usernames of players Charles typically played with in this game?&quot;, &quot;Are the players 'Advent' and 'Gabbe' known associates?&quot;, and &quot;Has Charles been found, with concrete evidence, to have violated the rules of your games ever in the past?&quot;<br /> <br /> Instead, we don't really know anything from this--it was a wasted opportunity. If someone joined the discord here and asked about Charles, someone could respond &quot;He is an asshole and was locked&quot; but obviously that would not be enough context to understand the truth. If you wanted to prove Charles' guilt (if he was guilty), what you could've done is this: establish ''factually'' that Charles and Advent know each other, or that this 'Cardi' person played in the round and helped Charles somehow.<br /> <br /> One more thing on this. Cronel was in realm 1, while the delusion about the 'Charles, Advent and Gabbe' group paranoia originated from realm 4. So, actually, what we can establish factually from this log is that realms 4 and 1 were in coordination. Perhaps they were merely discussing what they believed to be rules violations... But someone I trust informed me that ''someone'' from realm 4 was DMing &quot;many people&quot; outside of that realm spreading these theories widely, and this log seems to confirm that statement.<br /> <br /> == What Charles Did Do ==<br /> <br /> I don't have any evidence that Charles had a multi, used friends to discover inside information from other realms, or anything of that nature. However, Charles did DM multiple (a bunch? seems accurate) people during the round in order to: (paraphrasing) &quot;intending to learn from them and find locs&quot;. Justification supposedly being that the game is more fun this way, and that people outside his pack also know things he can learn from that those in the pack don't know.<br /> <br /> This is a rules violation (the locs, not 'learning') based on the rules as they are written presently. I have not seen any of the DMs other than what Lud posted publicly. If they all look like that, my decision (were I still on RC) would've been to sternly warn both players, and any future exchanges would've resulted in both of them being locked. I assume the reason that the multi delusions were reported and the DMing was not reported until the end of the round was because people were not proud of what they did, and they shouldn't be. For far too long, a large percentage of players believe it is acceptable for them to influence behavior and exchange information in private. As long as that is against the rules, we should penalize it more severely to limit the behavior.<br /> <br /> == Parting Comments ==<br /> <br /> And finally a quick comment from me. I think it's objective and fair to say that I, more than quite literally anyone else in this community, care very deeply about having rules, ensuring players follow the rules, and fostering an environment where the integrity of the game is paramount. If anyone wants to challenge that you certainly may, but I wrote almost every word of the rulebook. The Rules Committee was my idea. Enforcement largely rested on me caring enough to monitor behavior and set/enforce a set of standards for the playerbase. You may be cynical and think I'm just saying this because I was in the winning realm. You're entitled to your opinion. But know this: I would rather not play a round to guarantee it was perfectly clean, if that were a trade within the realm of possibility.<br /> <br /> Charles should've received (at least) a warning for DMing a bunch of players asking for locs. The same is true of probably dozens of other players. It's a shame, because the DMing had no relevance on the outcome of the round, but I imagine it's still going to leave a bad taste. The community needs to decide what it wants the rules to be, and then once decided, respect them. I don't know how it would work if 'diplomacy' were legal (where is the line?), but that's not for me to decide.<br /> <br /> And as far as reporting players who you believe are breaking the rules: please REPORT them! Don't complain in general chat while not reporting anything; that does no good. In fact, as we saw this round, it can be very toxic and do more harm than good to create controversy without a resolution. Even if you think you're in the right, why create an environment that makes people want to quit playing? The members of the RC are not pro-cheating. Their lack of a standardized process during this round was unfortunate and fueled the speculation, but there were extenuating circumstances as mentioned earlier.<br /> <br /> A couple players have essentially said that no amount of evidence could convince them otherwise, and that I'm just wrong. There may certainly be things I don't know. But I have no idea why someone would ''want'' the worst rumors to be true. Thankfully, what seems to have happened is that a series of unfortunate circumstances collided with an AI-hallucinated paranoia. If people have hard evidence of something, I really wish you would've brought it forward (and still do). I hope in the future we can clarify the rules, follow them instead of taking matters into our own hands, and then trust each other &amp; the RC to handle things appropriately. And I hope this provides clarity to the players who were just plain confused and annoyed by everything that went down. Thanks for reading.</div>

Sly http://wiki.opendominion.net/index.php?title=Round_51_Win_Story&diff=2738 2026-09-27T20:32:56Z

<p>Sly: Create Round 51 win story from the supplied Google document, preserving the text and headings.</p> <hr /> <div>'''Realm 10 - Round 51 Win Story'''<br /> <br /> [[Round 51|← Round 51]]<br /> <br /> == Soundcheck (Realm Composition and Pre-Round Planning) ==<br /> <br /> === How we got here (written by Gabbe) ===<br /> <br /> Charles asked me to write the start of this, so here goes.<br /> <br /> Charles is the winner, so I think it's only right that I write a bit about him. My first impression of him was back in Round 49. He was feeding a bunch, and some guy came into the Discord and flamed him for it. That seemed like an asshole move to pull on a new player. My impression was: ok, this guy is new, he kinda sucks, but what can you expect?<br /> <br /> Then Charles randomed into our realm in the tester. He was very vocal and super eager to learn, basically the perfect person you want as the new guy at your office or in a game: active, hardworking and willing to learn. Funnily enough, he had zero ego. That might come as a shock to some people, but that was my impression(at the time 🙂). Throughout the tester we had a lot of chats and discussions about the nature of an FA and what to think about. It was a nice round, and I thought that if this guy kept picking things up, he'd be good. He's basically a sponge, without any negative connotation.<br /> <br /> With some of the absolute strongest names in strategy around him in Mris, Mdk and Jboy, I think Charles has learned a lot. Being around minds like Sly's has added a lot of knowledge too, I'm sure.<br /> <br /> It's not often a guy comes in, plays three rounds and wins. But super activity like his, plus guidance from people with several realm wins under their belt, gave the absolute best conditions for it to happen.<br /> <br /> This pack goes back a long way, all the way to beta round 13. The lineup has changed a lot over the years, with people coming and going. Mris, is the one constant who's never left. Over the years it's included names like Pasi/Soc, Sarmis, Nate and KongB, and now the amazing lineup we had this round. All amazing players.<br /> <br /> I came back last round after six years away. It wasn't meant to be a serious comeback. I didn't have time to play properly, and I'd actually agreed to pack with two real-life friends. Then mris, who had already talked mdk into playing, asked why the three of us didn't just come pack with him and mdk and chill. When one of the guys dropped out for lack of time, we needed a fifth, so I asked jboy, who I'd played with in a draft round. Before that round there was a test round. mris, jboy, neruht and I packed together, and that's where we met Charles.<br /> <br /> I didn't have much time, so I ran a kobold converter but deconverted fast. The bigger problem that round was ops. We barely had any, and we're convinced it would have been a very different round if we had.<br /> <br /> Although I had no time to play Round 50 for real, I did have a few hours every night. From the end of June I spent them number-crunching OOP through hour 72 and simming to break every number I could.<br /> <br /> So going into Round 51 we made a rule: we're not playing unless we have proper ops, but if we do we are going for the win.<br /> <br /> Mris decided to run a Dark Elf farming XP on a shrine strat built around ops, which covered NA hours. That left Euro time. We talked about inviting neruht, but he's in almost the same timezone as mris, so we'd still be mostly blind during EU hours. We needed EU or Asia ops.<br /> <br /> That's where Charles came in. He messaged me saying he'd tried FA in the tester and SA/converter in Round 50, and was thinking of just randoming this time as an ops player. He wanted to learn by watching what everyone else was doing. I put it to the others: &quot;He's a super active guy and always willing to listen and learn. I think he'll be a good fit.&quot;<br /> <br /> === The realm, roles, and the sims ===<br /> <br /> Then the realms were assigned, and we landed an insane random realm. We got neruht and his brother hytt, two amazingly active ops players who are always around and great people all round. We got Adam. I didn't know much about him, but I knew he had strong black ops knowledge and had played with some of the top black ops people, so that side was covered. We landed with Sly again, a great veteran with real insight and a really good grasp of the game. Then we got luckier still and landed slz my real life friend, who'd been in our pack last round, as well as Sizzler who had been great in the test round and m4nus who jboy knew from before –a '''full realm''' of very solid, active players. slz is Euro, and the round started in EU-preferred hours, so I asked him straight away if he could cover ops for the first 12 hours. We tried to get Sly onto a lycanthrope, but he had flights to catch. Charles had been quiet. He really didn't want to ops, but he was ready to take one for the team for a spot in the pack. I didn't want him on ops either if I could avoid it, because with his activity I knew he'd be a bigger asset as an FA. He was talking about some slow dwarf, and I wasn't a fan. So when he showed interest in lyc, I jumped on it.<br /> <br /> Lyc doesn't suit my playstyle anyway, so I was never going to run it myself. I'd already made the lyc sim, because the plan had been for mdk to run it. But mdk was on vacation during OOP and for a couple of days after. We were worried he'd miss spec drop or wouldn't be able to hit when it mattered, so we'd already moved him to the Firewalker I was originally meant to play. With Charles on lyc, I went straight back and changed my Lizard sim. It went from a potential runner to a torpedo, whose job was taking out threats so mdk or Charles could run.<br /> <br /> mdk's sim we made super, super greedy: low mods, big alchemies and homes. It sat right on the edge of DP, turtling as many salas as possible. It was purely economy-based, so we knew that if it survived the first 36 hours and got its hits in, it would be a beast.<br /> <br /> The lyc and Lizard ran higher mods. The lyc sim was the safe one, always keeping enough DP. The Lizard pushed high OP on minimal DP. I'd gone through all the ops we had from the tester and the last two rounds, so I knew roughly what every top dominion had for OP and DP in the first 72 hours. I simmed all three out to at least 48 hours past protection: the Lizard pushing high OP with minimal DP; the lyc with nice OP but always &quot;safe&quot; DP using mods; and the FW running big salas and a big-population economy, as greedy as possible.<br /> <br /> For the rest of the realm we would have 3 Demon explorers getting ops, jboy doing a Gnome converter, 3 crazy Dark Elf converters played by mris Sly and slz, Sizz doing a Demon attacker, and m4nus playing his Troll.<br /> <br /> === Opening hits, and getting hit ===<br /> <br /> When the round started, we saw Joe Riogan (Disco) running the same sim he'd run in the tester and again in Round 50. He'd executed it better every time, and this time he had a great OOP with a huge hit. We looked for a big explorer to hit instead, but nobody was big enough to justify leaving Disco alone. I already knew he'd be a problem. This was his third run of the same sim, he'd got stronger each time, and his OOP was crazy good.<br /> <br /> So I hit him, 12 hours out, for 48 acres. In my opinion it didn't kill him, but he decided to opt out right there. It must have sucked to have an OOP that good and then get hit 12 hours later. In the same opening hits, Charles got an easy one on a DE in realm 4 for 35 acres, and mdk followed him into the same target for 33.<br /> <br /> The BGs in realm 2 had pretty strong sims early on. I'd been greedy in the first 12 hours. Going reptiles for the big 12-hour hit lowered my DP, and I probably oversent a bit too. On top of that I was asleep, with my training timed only so the offensive units arrived for my hits. I didn't have any defence trickling in beforehand, which would probably have saved me. We foolishly assumed they'd want to hit at 12 hours out. Instead Thorfinn, the Firewalker in 2, sat and built up his OP. Love in Oklahoma (MERF, the lyc in 7), was bigger than me with less DP, but I'd just landed a huge hit, so Thorfinn made a good hit on me at hour 20.<br /> <br /> If I hadn't been greedy and had trained lizards at 4am, I think they'd have covered me. I needed about 100 to be safe. Even though my dom was seen as a burn-and-die torpedo, it could have run if it kept landing hits. But Charles and mdk were the clearer runners and the stronger long-term doms. Either way, I took Thorfinn's hit, and LOVE got off free.<br /> <br /> That hit hurt, and it exposed a flaw in how we'd set things up. All three FAs were hitting on the same tick, so there was nobody home to cover anyone. Charles spotted it before the hit even landed and asked if we should stagger, since it made no sense having four of us out at once. mris later admitted that in hindsight we should have put the third FA on a delay when we added him.<br /> <br /> The frustrating part was that Thorfinn had a better target. LOVE was top OP, sitting super low on DP, with better land types for him. We thought it was insane for him not to hit the lyc. But I'd just landed a huge hit, and he came for me instead.<br /> <br /> It could have been worse. I lost less than an hour of plat in troops, and if you're going to get hit, that's not a bad time for it. Charles, with huge OP incoming, offered to stagger instead. mris loved that, because everyone was watching his 13/13 paid and waiting for it.<br /> <br /> Meanwhile, the question was whether Charles could punish the lyc in 7. mdk had Charles about 8 short on the chart with his 515 draftees, and said even a small lumber invest would get him there.<br /> <br /> === The 24-hour hits and the night after ===<br /> <br /> Going into the 24-hour hits, the pack was busy with both builds and targets.<br /> <br /> mdk was rezoning his plains into GTs and building caverns for homes. mdk had himself at about 13.7k/13.7k at 36 hours, which he called depressing. He knew he needed to start having top OP soon and force others onto defence.<br /> <br /> Charles's big question was docks. War couldn't be declared until Day 4, so we had 48 hours before anyone could start killing boats. So he should work out how many garou and WW he would have and have at least that many docks. That came to roughly 4,500 troops, or close to 50 docks. Later that evening Charles's boats read 59/58. He was self-sunk, if only barely.<br /> <br /> mdk then ran through the threat board. The lyc in 2 had garbage OP, the Lizard in 4 (allegorical) looked slow, and the Lizard in 9 was spamming chams.The only thing stopping us from pulling way ahead was the goblin Norm (Scratch) or Oklahoma(Merf)<br /> <br /> Target hunting started around 8pm. I thought the orc in 9 looked juicy. mdk lined up a nomad, Suutei tsai.<br /> <br /> The problem was LOVE. Very few dominions had over 10k OP, and none of them could send until we did, but LOVE had mdk on full send by just 30 points. My call was that nobody could send before we did, Charles settled on the orc in 9, Stevinn Wright (HighLow).<br /> <br /> Then Charles sent early. I grumbled that he'd just let everyone else send the same hour as him, until he explained his kids were going crazy. Fair enough.<br /> <br /> A few minutes later LOVE finally sent. It was a big hit off top OP, and he took 56 acres from Eddie Merfy in realm 9 (lamb), more than either of ours. With LOVE out, he was no longer home to threaten mdk, so mdk could send more. Charles took 42 acres from Stevinn Wright, the orc in 9.<br /> <br /> LOVE took 56 acres from Eddie Merfy (#9).<br /> <br /> mdk took 42 acres from Suutei tsai, the nomad in 3, 41 seconds after LOVE's hit.<br /> <br /> The best part was that nobody else sent that hour except LOVE.<br /> <br /> With three FAs we could stagger OP pushes and force everyone onto defence. I had 1good OP paid with my plat bonus still available, so if we all pushed, who was going to stop Charles? I said it at the time: this felt a lot better than last round.<br /> <br /> While the rest of us slept, Mdk kept a solo vigil and reported what he saw. When you're running on barely any sleep, waking up to condensed, easy-to-read info like this is super helpful:<br /> <br /> LOVE''':''' getting very close to self-sinking on boats.<br /> <br /> The goblin, Norm Mithdonald''':''' trained defence hard to be able to send, with a GN boost coming. Mdk suspected Norm would send but couldn't defend against Mdk's OP push. If it forced Norm to slam shamans, that was a win for us. Fast gobs can be strong, so '''Mdk '''kept an eye on him.<br /> <br /> The top OP''':''' with the gob out, LOVE was the only one outside our realm with real OP.<br /> <br /> When I got back online, Adam cleared ops on the top OP for us, and we scouted for targets. LOVE's draftees stopped me from hitting him. Instead we found Eddie Merfy, the troll LOVE had hit at 24 hours: I sent it all and took 51 acres. It was another huge hit. So far pretty much every hit I'd made was at 100%, which is admittedly easier when you've just been hit yourself haha<br /> <br /> Day 2: the 36-hour hits<br /> <br /> Charles kept hitting on the dot: 0 hours, 12, 24, and at 36 he took 42 acres from Raining on the Rock (#7). Two hours later Sizz double-tapped the same target for 44.<br /> <br /> mdk had to stagger. He was working that day, in and out of cases, and could only hop on his phone for a few minutes at a time. When he got his window, jboy grabbed fresh ops on the merfolk Eddie IzZard (#9): he took 66 acres, and had to return to work.<br /> <br /> I doubled and took 59 acres.<br /> <br /> The only one home who might follow was Norm. Then I realised Norm was in the merfolk's realm, which was hilarious<br /> <br /> That made two big hits back to back, 12 hours apart, and I'd sat 8 hours to line them up. I'd just gained about 200 acres and was still tiny in our realm. I honestly think an earlier cham push I did helped a lot. That extra 1k DP kept me safe long enough to find the hit. Charles warned me not to overdo the chams: 400–600 was perfect, in his view. That was a quip, since I'd told him something similar back in the tester when Charles played lizzie.<br /> <br /> Charles was making more docks and spies before black ops opened in 16 hours, because he didn't want to be caught on low docks or a bad SPA like some of last roun<br /> <br /> That afternoon the talk turned to economy. mdk would be at 14.4k peasants once he'd built,. We discussed and made the point that getting hit early doesn't matter much, as long as you hit big yourself. I'd hit for 100 and been hit for 50 so just ~20 acres behind what others had gained<br /> <br /> mdk was deciding what to build with his incoming land, and I pushed him to go all docks on his water, which would take him to 84. At that many docks you become almost impossible to sink for a long while in the roundWe discussed rax and he agreed he wouldn't go alchs until we were running. The sim had so many alchs, and that's exactly what made it so good. We were both really happy with it. But it had struggled during the first 24h<br /> <br /> Then the threat board again. In mdk's view the lycs in 2 were already dead, leaving the lyc in 7 and the gob in 9. The merfolk in 1 (Sharkey) was falling behind. We had to kill off the last one to three FAs before anyone could relax.<br /> <br /> I asked the realm to bear with us and keep their dominions nicely over-defended for another day or two. We didn't know exactly what top OP was, and it sucks getting hit when you believed you were safe. It especially sucks when your realm is feeding as you are trying to run.The three FAs were slowly choking the others out, and after that everyone in the realm could explore much more easily.<br /> <br /> == Accelerando (The Fast Attacking Race) ==<br /> <br /> The fast race had narrowed significantly, and we were confident we would end up dominating the round at this point, but still had some work to do.<br /> <br /> Charles planned one more non-home build to push the 60-hour marker, and then mdk and I could take hour 72 by storm. mdk suggested setting up to snare the lyc in 7. Our opsers were already training spies for when stealing and draftee assassination opened: neruht and hytt at 200 spies, Adam too, and Sizz up to 100 spy/wiz.<br /> <br /> By evening I was bigger than mdk, by two acres counting incoming, gloating commenced Sly said he should have gone FA so we would’ve had four. I told him it would have been epic, and reminded him I'd told him I had a good lyc sim for him before the round.<br /> <br /> Right at hour change and still on his 12-hour train, Charles tripled Eddie IzZard for 48 acres. He hit at the start of the tick because he knew others would hit him 100% otherwise. The merf was heavy on caverns so itt was great for him,<br /> <br /> The scav drop night, and the FW<br /> <br /> At 2am server time, LOVE finally sent again. He took 48 acres from the spirit Boolong (#3).<br /> <br /> mdk went straight to &quot;Ok now is the time to make our play.&quot;<br /> <br /> With his army out, LOVE was down on op The question was whether we could hit him when his land came in and his mods dropped. mdk calced him, he couldn't reach. I could get there, but it probably wasn't safe. Then an idea came to me: why doesn't Charles just scav-drop him? Charles had 700 draftees and 90k plat. Mdk agreed.<br /> <br /> There was one problem. It was the middle of the night and Charles was asleep. We had to wake him before :30 in case his automations fired and trained something that ruined the plan. mris had his WhatsApp and started calling. jboy joked that there's no sleep in dom. Sly called it his trial by fire. When Charles came on, his first question was &quot;Why you wake me now lol.&quot; His automations had gone off hours ago, so that worry was dispelled. The plan was to train nothing yet, then drop scavs 9 hours before the hit.<br /> <br /> That started the debate about how Mdk and I should play it. Mdk wanted to go spec defence, because what good is OP if a second-tier dom hits you? My view was that we had to keep pressure on LOVE so he couldn't stack draftees. He either trains defence against Mdk and me, or stacks to defend against Charles.<br /> <br /> Jboy asked whether we could guarantee a hit if LOVE did stack, and warned us not to get so fixated that we missed other safe hits. ((Jboy turned out to be right, but not in the way anyone expected: the scav drop ended up opening an even bigger target)).<br /> <br /> In the end we split roles. mdk realised he'd land a huge hit regardless: big op close to 14k peasants,, ready to follow if Charles got him. I had good OP and kept pushing lizards and GNs to force LOVE and the lycs in 2 onto defence.<br /> <br /> LOVE had dropped rats, as expected. Charles could produce 583 scavs, about OP.<br /> <br /> That meant waking Charles again. He didn't want to swap his resources and asked if he could keep them for emergency forges. mdk wasn't having it: &quot;Dump lumber please..&quot; Boats were checked too. Charles had 48 free boats, and jboy and mris agreed that was enough.<br /> <br /> mdk had been clear that the instructions needed to be simple: lumber to plat, max scavs, and leave ore out of it, because it's easy to mess up half asleep. But then, somebody said to trade ore anyway! Charles, half asleep, converted his ore to plat too and realised with a minute to go: &quot;Ffs I fucked it up.&quot; mdk: &quot;lol I told you guys don't tell ore. He's half asleep.&quot;<br /> <br /> Then came the big question: did Charles actually have LOVE? mdk first thought the lyc might be safe, and I saw the opposite. mdk's diagnosis for the confusion was that I was sleep-deprived. He recalced and had Charles winning by about 100 with LOVE on full draftees.<br /> <br /> Sly warned us not to write off realm 2. Their FW had 15% GN, the lycs could be strong behind that cover, and Thorfinn was bringing in OP. Sly also rebuilt his top OP sheet so it worked on mobile. It showed the top three OP in the game were all us, summed it up as a 3v1v1.<br /> <br /> Mris and then Sly pointed out that the biggest dom in the game was hittable, the FW Wanker (#8),The FW was worth 178 acres to Charles against 130 from LOVE. jboy and Charles leaned toward the FW, since it was bigger and LOVE was pinned anyway.<br /> <br /> mdk was firm: the FW only made sense if he could double him. Otherwise we kill the lyc. &quot;40 land means nothing&quot; compared with taking out a threat. I backed him on one point: I could only keep LOVE pinned while Charles stayed home. If Charles went out and LOVE trained all his draftees as rats, I couldn't get him.<br /> <br /> The final ops settled it mdk admitted he'd miscounted them, sleep-deprived. So LOVE was safe for now. Charles joked that I could raze him.<br /> <br /> jboy told Charles not to pretend to be sad, because he knew Charles wanted the FW hit all along.<br /> <br /> The FW then made it easy. He explored and spent plat that tick, and his morale was at 96%, which dropped his DP Charles sent. He took 90 acres, gained 76 prestige, converted 1<br /> <br /> jboy: &quot;you're stealing the show.&quot; Charles thanked mris for the 3am wake-up call and told him to ring any time a hit like that came up.<br /> <br /> mdk wanted to follow, but was short by less than 100 OP. That left LOVE pinned, and Thorfinn now had spec OP incoming we needed to watch closely. The new plan was to save SS to sink Thorfinn and let me all-in LOVE. I<br /> <br /> === The war with realm 2, and the LOVE trade ===<br /> <br /> The war with realm 2 actually was because a small slip. The tick Charles hit the FW, he didn't get his rat training in, even though I'd told him to. It's a stressful situation, and he was new to this. In hindsight he was probably safe, because they would have needed a raze to get him. But with 200 acres incoming, we didn't want to risk it.<br /> <br /> Realm 2 had been a thorn from the start. They hit us three times before any war existed: Rusla took 60 acres from Sly at hour 9, Thorfinn took 50 from me at hour 20, and Thorfinn took 40 from M4nus at hour 36. M4nus didn't even notice his until hour 68: &quot;I forgot this. I'm going to get an early revenge!!!!!!&quot;<br /> <br /> We declared at hour 72 and sank Thorfinn straight away. On the wizard front, my plan had been to stay undefended if war came to us. With no wizards I'd be the easy, juicy fireball target, and that would hopefully steer people away from mdk and Charles. That's obviously a bit silly when you're the ones declaring war, but we hadn't expected to be the ones going there, haha. Charles had skipped wizards too, to put everything into (failing) smashing LOVE, so sadly he got fireballed straight away. mdk was well protected and came through fine.<br /> <br /> At hour 75 I hit LOVE for 80 acres. By then I was clearly top OP, and LOVE was the only one who could trade with me. I decided to take that trade, since that was my job in this pack. To his credit, he had played it smart and had pushed scavs back on me. If he'd gone rats, like the lycs in 2 he would just have eaten the hit with no way to hit back. Six hours later he retaliated and took 64 acres back.<br /> <br /> The plan was for mdk to double LOVE right there. mdk couldn't be hit all-in as FW, and after our earlier talk he had enough docks that he couldn't be sunk. His weak spot was that he had zero spies, and realm 2 snared him, so LOVE got away. In hindsight he said he should have pre-cast or amped ares. Still, the trade did its job. By hour 93 Charles was 100 acres ahead of LOVE, which is a big lead that early in the round.<br /> <br /> === Killing Floki ===<br /> <br /> Floki (Ivetza), the lyc in 2. He pushed to around 31k OP and became the biggest threat on the board. So we FBed him down to about 6k peasants and snared him to zero wizard strength so he could never get Ares back up. Early on day 5 mdk landed a hit for 81 acres. Sizz summed up the channel: &quot;What a team!&quot; Charles then took a last war hit on Floki for 78 just before we canceled at the start of day 6. Ivetza had tried to suicide a bot in order to feed the competition and had his locked by the Rules Committee.<br /> <br /> === LOVE's last stand(written by Charles) ===<br /> <br /> With the war over we switched to deterrence. The three FAs staggered their OP so LOVE and the Lizard in 4 could never train freely. On day 7 Charles full-sent into AAAA, a DE in LOVE's realm, for 76, and ate a fireball storm in return. His wizard guilds and reflect held. Charles: &quot;its one verry very mad DE.&quot;<br /> <br /> On day 8 mdk spotted a merfolk in 7 Here Comes the Rain Again (Esthera) with low SPA, about 1,200 draftees. With GNs coming in that tick, the whole realm stabbed draftees. Charles hit for 103. His read afterwards: &quot;and now we have idea which top explorers are dropping… and the answer is they all will be 😄&quot;<br /> <br /> Day 10 was a huge day for us and it seemed like nothing could go wrong at this point. Charles hit the Icekin in 4 Scratch's Cat (Mithrandir), for 122, and just two minutes later M4nus landed the killshot on the Fountain of Youth: 17,354 damage after a cyclone barrage from the demons. Sly: &quot;massive fucking hit on a competitive icer, and they get foy all within minutes.&quot; Charles and mdk both crossed about 70k OP with GN drops.<br /> <br /> On day 11, after Charles had taken 133 off &quot;Young Wife&quot; in 4 overnight, LOVE did something nobody expected. He had looked abandoned all morning. Then he suicided a full WW send into jboy's teched gnome for 94. Sly: &quot;this is deliberate.&quot; Charles all-inned LOVE for 109 that afternoon, and Sly called it: &quot;FA race is officially over.&quot;<br /> <br /> LOVE rebuilt, then suicided into jboy again on day 12 for 97, and mdk all-inned him that evening for 112. On day 13 mdk caught him on an Ares drop for 100 more, his third in a row. jboy: &quot;3 in a row for oklahoma.&quot; mdk: &quot;Why won't he just die.&quot; But he was indeed dead.<br /> <br /> == Harmony (Midround Consolidation) ==<br /> <br /> === Day 13: Burnout, and a Kobold ===<br /> <br /> So the FA race was over before the end of the second week of the round. We had a Liz in 4 that was pushing OP, but we knew this would be temporary. He de-converted two days later. I was chasing a large FWer for a few days here, but he kept being one step ahead of me. Anyway, after the FA race I was a little burned out. I felt exhausted and hits were getting harder to find.<br /> <br /> I reached out to a realmie, Sly, who is a very experienced and very helpful vet. We were lucky to have him random in!<br /> <br /> &quot;I'm Losing momentum and motivation here, if You get 10 Mins. Could you see if there's any guys close I can hit. The Liz and FW tricks really took the steam out of my whistle&quot;<br /> <br /> Sly gave me one of his nifty inspirational pep talks and within minutes found an underdefended Kobold to hit. This hit almost reset me. I slept well that night and was onto bigger things the next day.<br /> <br /> 2026-08-21 16:48:41 Victorious on the battlefield, Britney Baby (#10) conquered 119 land from Shelter from the storm (#7).<br /> <br /> The same night, LOVE finally abandoned. Gabbe had told the channel &quot;he probably abandons in 27 minutes,&quot; and LOVE was gone at 22:06. Sizz: &quot;nailed it.&quot; The next morning Thorfinn abandoned too. Both of realm 2's early thorns and LOVE were gone inside 24 hours.<br /> <br /> === Day 14: Calypso ===<br /> <br /> Huge shoutout to neruht here.<br /> <br /> At this stage I was ahead and feeling very confident, but because I'd hit 15 or so hours earlier my OP was diminished. Randomly, neruht decided to rev everyone in my range, five of them or so. I came onto my PC and had a look, thinking it was a wasted venture, but just making notes on when these guys dropped Ares.<br /> <br /> Then I saw how close it was. neruht did the math: 1,005 draftees now, plus 348 incoming, minus 500 killed, left 853. One Fortnight Stand With Calypso (#5) was on 106,079.69 total defense, 2.35% vs temples, with his 16 phoenixes. I posted &quot;we need to stab 500 so i worked out 15 stabs is enough, we have over 20 stabs here&quot; in my broken, rushed, excited English.<br /> <br /> But it was a weird timezone, and neruht didn't have any SS. Neither did Gabbe or I. Thankfully, after a bit of spam and pings, slz and hytt came on to save the day. This was all organised within 20 minutes at 06:00, which is midnight or later for the Americans. With one minute to the tick slz asked who we were stabbing, but we told him with plenty of seconds left and the hour change approached. Stabbing complete, we CS'd again, checked drafts, revved, I asked for one more rev, and action.<br /> <br /> 2026-08-22 09:02:00 Victorious on the battlefield, Britney Baby (#10) conquered 160 land from One Fortnight Stand With Calypso (#5).<br /> <br /> Back to back, putting me so far ahead.<br /> <br /> === Day 16: The Wanker ===<br /> <br /> A very interesting hit, and much harder than it seems.<br /> <br /> After the earlier disappointment of not being able to hit the 8 FWer, because of the chance of someone coming into range to smack me, this hit was back on the cards. Since then, though, he had been massing DP. So the planning started. I stopped training, put Fool's Gold on in the middle of the day and drafted up. The beauty here is that only about five doms had me in range. They did kill draftees at 80 or so per shot, but they soon ran out of SS, and they were in different realms, so it wasn't exactly a joint effort.<br /> <br /> The play was simple but cute: train big garou before the land came in, take two land bonus rezones for swamps, and destroy the 30 WGs I had from the earlier war into temples for a decent defence-reduction bonus. Followed by mass spec OP to ensure the hit.<br /> <br /> So I bountied up all ops, including rev. They got done and I used the bot to track. Then, after a quick discussion with mdk, it looked like I might breach my 5:4. I told him I had it handled, but maybe I didn't, so I did spec OP and rats. Then I rechecked the actual ops I'd requested earlier, either that tick or the tick before.<br /> <br /> WOW, the guy had no Ares! So I spammed the channel: can someone look at this, am I seeing crazy stuff here? Then Sly gracefully slapped me down along the lines of &quot;calc it yourself, big boy, you're trying to win.&quot;<br /> <br /> So I requested another rev and prepared my hit. As the Liz hadn't sent yet I could full send, so I put my self spell on for extra converts, and after one more Ares, I full sent!<br /> <br /> 2026-08-23 19:08:33 Victorious on the battlefield, Britney Baby (#10) conquered 161 land from ⬇️ Is an absolute Wanker ! (#8).<br /> <br /> What looked like an Ares-drop hit... well, it was an Ares-drop hit, but I did have him 9 hours later for sure. I promise.<br /> <br /> === The war debate (team) ===<br /> <br /> Charles went back to the Wanker the next evening for 144 more. That same day brought the round's big strategy argument. Charles wanted to use our three demons to wipe out the competition realm by realm: &quot;Winning isn't enough.&quot; mdk, Gabbe and jboy talked him down. War would upset the balance, where the second-tier doms were busy pinning each other, it risked the Fountain, and it would get Gabbe and Sizz fireballed out of training. Gabbe answered with a &quot;let them eat cake&quot; gif. Charles took it well, and mris added the caveat that we were trying to win the round, not collect style points.<br /> <br /> === Stagnation (Days 17–20, team) ===<br /> <br /> mdk's plan for the next stretch (&quot;Do we want to stagnate game&quot;) was to skip his daily bonus, keep the Lizard in 4 pinned in his range so he could never send, and make him burn his population on chams and DP while Charles ballooned toward 46k peasants and 500 DMs. mdk was openly willing to sacrifice his own dom to freeze the board. Björn in 2 abandoned on day 17.<br /> <br /> It paid off on day 19. The Lizard was about to get hit all in and decided to try and send and not let mdk get land but mdk was faster hit him for 128 and Norm (#9) might have tried to hit him first because it was a short time in between the hits or he thought he was safe to hit, which left Norm open. Gabbe took 155 off Norm (scratch) Gabbe:&quot;not bad for a dead dom&quot; Norm abandoned the next day which was to bad be was actually strong there and could have offered some threat, the Lizard was finished, and mdk went back to farm the Wanker for 160.<br /> <br /> === Days 21–22: Bottom feeds #1 (back to Charles) ===<br /> <br /> On day 21 mris made the call: &quot;both of them are at 5:4. the time is now.&quot;<br /> <br /> I was always very reluctant to bottom feed. However, I knew I had a decent average spy ratio of 0.4, which could help mitigate the risk. I simply ran out of targets, and the guys I was failing to target kept casting Ares or building a buffer defence against snares. Nothing much to say other than that I greedily took four. The first was a decent land grab, and that guy had kept swarming me forever, so I owed him one. The human was a semi-threat, so we thought it would be good to tap him.<br /> <br /> 2026-08-29 05:55:18 Victorious on the battlefield, Britney Baby (#10) conquered 145 land from ᛋᛚᛁᛁᛒᚾᛁᚱ aka Sleipnir (#2). 2026-08-29 17:36:58 Victorious on the battlefield, Britney Baby (#10) conquered 84 land from Registered to Round 51 ⬇️ (#8). 2026-08-30 05:26:47 Victorious on the battlefield, Britney Baby (#10) conquered 99 land from AAAA (#7). 2026-08-30 17:37:28 Victorious on the battlefield, Britney Baby (#10) conquered 92 land from Joe Riogan (#9).<br /> <br /> (Team note: that last one was Disco's dom, the one Gabbe had hit 12 hours out at the very start of the round.) Charles then went back into guard for a week, around 650 DMs and 60k peasants: &quot;Come back as a monster in a weeks time 😜&quot;.<br /> <br /> === Day 27: Vishakmar ===<br /> <br /> Me and my main ops boy neruht had been working on this guy for about 10 days, if not longer. He's a 12-hour caster. We did have a chance to catch him once before, but I didn't pre-cast Ares, so I messed up my 5:4. Anyway, patience is key, and 12-hour casting is a dangerous game.<br /> <br /> We voiced up for this hit as well.<br /> <br /> 2026-09-04 06:00:25 Victorious on the battlefield, Britney Baby (#10) conquered 247 land from Vishakmar (#4).<br /> <br /> (Team note: &quot;FUCKING MERKED.&quot; Vishakmar explored out of range that same hour and abandoned that evening.)<br /> <br /> === Day 28: The freeze breaks ===<br /> <br /> mdk had spent days as the plug, pinning the merfolk Da Hong Pao in 3 while the converts caught up. Early on day 28 he finally sent, 169 acres off Prawn Bernthal (#1, merfolk): &quot;Community has been unleashed.&quot; mris landed his first convert hit that afternoon. In between, Charles spent three ticks locked over a same-name account a friend had registered. The RC cleared him and re-ran his ticks.<br /> <br /> === Day 30: The Gabbabomb ===<br /> <br /> Gabbe just sat and trained 5:4 to hit someone. Then Koi Leonard (Weaser), the Icekin in 1, became top OP out of realm (240k, heading to 260k) and spec dropped Sizz. Sinking him wasn't realistic, Gabbe sent his leftover lizardmen into Koi for 231 acres. Gabbe: &quot;Haha they were ready.&quot; mris: &quot;gabbe has now killed 5 threats.&quot; Adam: &quot;Fastest deconversion in history.&quot; The price was about a thousand acres: six doms from realms 1, 2 and 3 fed on Gabbe in the same tick. Charles: &quot;I would literally walk my dominion off a cliff to follow general Gabbe.&quot;<br /> <br /> === Day 31: Bottom feeds #2 ===<br /> <br /> With no other targets in sight we opted to BF again. This time I just picked the two biggest I could hit and went back into the guard. It took so long to build my acres after the first BF that I was keen to cap it at two hits.<br /> <br /> 2026-09-08 04:45:29 Victorious on the battlefield, Britney Baby (#10) conquered 200 land from Prawn Michaels (#1). 2026-09-08 16:51:53 Victorious on the battlefield, Britney Baby (#10) conquered 173 land from Tie guan yin (#3).<br /> <br /> === Day 35: The Downrightdave snare ===<br /> <br /> So I found a snare opportunity hit. This merfolk hadn't been in range for long, and I tracked that he was letting Ares drop to 6/5/4, so I thought we had a good chance. After we math'd it, it all seemed very possible. The nice thing was that the merf wasn't in any guard, so we had 10 or 11 guys who could take part in the snaring. Also, thanks to the greedy explorer vibe we'd seen this round, his ratios were around 0.4 (about to get even worse!).<br /> <br /> We swapped monarchs and voiced up. Around six of us were in voice, with another few in Discord and a couple around to sustain the snare. After a quick rev and war declaration we spammed snare. I got an instant server error but managed to get to 25 SS in about 3 seconds. The re-rev showed Ares 5, so it was successful! We maintained the snare with plenty of SS still available, soon to be needed.<br /> <br /> It was an annoying time for me: 10pm, past my usual 9pm bedtime. My wife wondered why I was still awake. Little did she know it was for a big Ares-drop hit in Open Dominion!<br /> <br /> So I got new ops just after 10pm, and where I should have had him by 4k or so, he was 5k over my OP! Shock! He'd released his full wizards.<br /> <br /> Problem 1: his castle. He'd invested into castle and it was huge, so we started to lightning bolt it.<br /> <br /> Problem 2: his spies. He still had some, and we obviously didn't want any chance of a bounce, so we assassinated a few. He released spies, we killed some more, and he released all his spies. He was now at a 0 ratio for spies and wizards, lol. We even had our FWer, with a terrible spy ratio, assassinate a thousand draftees on top. He went from around 10k total (after the multiple releases) to around 3k.<br /> <br /> New ops showed we had him by 2k. Fair play and nice try. Thankfully our active realm saved the day!<br /> <br /> 2026-09-11 21:27:27 Victorious on the battlefield, Britney Baby (#10) conquered 257 land from Downrightdave Chappelle (#9).<br /> <br /> === Keeping the Fountain ===<br /> <br /> mdk, Sizz and mris all landed 200+ hits the same evening. The war with 9 came with a cost, though. While we were at war, realm 9 cycloned our Fountain down to 35,044 of 250,000. On day 36 we finished it off and rebuilt it ourselves (&quot;wonder at a mil now,&quot; per mdk), then canceled the war. We held the Fountain from day 10 to the end of the round.<br /> <br /> == Grand Finale (The Endgame) ==<br /> <br /> === Day 37: Time for an all-in (Charles) ===<br /> <br /> We noticed almost instantly that the merf in 3 had released all his wizards and spies to spec OP for a hit, and we identified our demons as the likely targets. But what mdk spotted first was that this might be the day the win could be sealed. The merf would enter my range and I could potentially all-in him. He had no ops on me at this time and would have none when he arrived home either, with no spies or wizards.<br /> <br /> (Team note: mdk's call that afternoon was &quot;Merfolk hitting our demon pretty much wins round for us.&quot;)<br /> <br /> The funny thing is that when his specs dropped, our guys started assassinating the demon with the higher DP (by about 5k). It saved our demon from having to release around 5k spies and wizards anyway. So that demon made himself safe, but just before hour change more draftees were killed on the other one, and the hit happened.<br /> <br /> 2026-09-13 18:53:45 Da Hong Pao (#3) invaded fellow dominion Charli XCX (#10) and captured 376 land.<br /> <br /> A loss for neruht, but a huge gain for our realm.<br /> <br /> For this hit I took my daily bonus, rezoned to temple, and proceeded to drop spec and draft up to increase my 5:4. The hit was very easy. We calculated a full invest and release of mermen, but I killed a ton of draftees too, and so did a couple of others online at the time. I sent roughly 9k over, as there were no other attackers in my range. Revenge hit complete.<br /> <br /> 2026-09-14 06:26:17 Victorious on the battlefield, Britney Baby (#10) conquered 270 land from Da Hong Pao (#3).<br /> <br /> (Team note: mdk, several drinks deep: &quot;I might be drunk and stupid but I am a fucking oracle.&quot;)<br /> <br /> === &quot;The only way to lose&quot; ===<br /> <br /> After that the round went to stall. Nobody wanted to send first, and mris stood down to act as a feeder and suicide insurance for Charles. Charles wanted to bottom-feed twice more to widen the gap. mdk put a stop to it: &quot;The only way to lose is us attacking… Charles does not bottom feed now… Literally only way to lose this.&quot;<br /> <br /> === Day 41: Another BF, this time a war BF (Charles) ===<br /> <br /> Realm 4 declared on us, seemingly to sink our FW so they could free up their attackers. We think! Of course we responded with a mutual!<br /> <br /> However, only their DE sent, and he was already safe to do so? Anyway, we calced that I could leave guard and make a safe war hit. We first aimed for one of their merfs, but I would have had to send some WW, so we decided against it and grabbed the UD instead.<br /> <br /> There was a potential chance of three razes from different realms, and then an Icer with a mutual-war suicide on me, so we sank him too.<br /> <br /> 2026-09-17 19:59:38 Victorious on the battlefield, Britney Baby (#10) conquered 272 land from Secret channel club member (#4).<br /> <br /> (Team note: mdk had been sunk, fireballed and plagued, and bottom-fed AAAA for 219 to escape before the mutual. Gabbe the next morning: &quot;8300 wins rounds.&quot; Charles: &quot;I think I'm done hitting for you round.&quot; Both wars were canceled on day 42.)<br /> <br /> === Victory lap (Days 43–47) ===<br /> <br /> One dom with real OP was still near Charles: Koi Leonard (Weaser), the Icekin in 1. On the evening of day 42 Koi sent twice, taking 204 from Siren's Open Mic Night and 229 from &quot;wants to attack you!&quot; in 8, which left him light at home. Overnight we set up the same all-in play that had worked on the merfolk. Charles would all-in Koi at hour change, before his conquered land and a mountain rezone could lift his DP. Adam, hytt and neruht were staged to stab draftees, and mdk was on standby with a raze. Sly ran Koi's DP under the rezone assumptions while Gabbe ran the bot calcs. Charles released spies and wizards to be sure he had enough scavs incoming to break. At hour change on day 43 he took 315 acres. Adam: &quot;Holy Shit!&quot; neruht: &quot;didnt even need the raze 😎&quot; Gabbe explained why: &quot;the guy did not have enough plat to even rezone.&quot; A few hours later mdk said it outright: &quot;win is honestly secured.&quot;<br /> <br /> That afternoon jboy did his end-of-round suicide duty. He chose the DE in 4 (Apologize) over the Icer and took 380, then got fed back three times: 212 to Show me your cat, 222 to Scratch's cat isn't real and 144 to Apologize. His verdict: &quot;Nice, they denied #1 from hitting me xD&quot;. That evening mdk took 282 off Show me your cat, the gob in 4: &quot;Should Secure 1/2 atleast&quot;.<br /> <br /> From there it was about not losing. On day 44 Charles itched to drop out of guard for more land, and the realm shut it down. jboy: &quot;If u wanna lose, go 😆&quot;. Gabbe: &quot;You are not safe.&quot; hytt, who had been ready to war for the realm all round, was pointed at a personal-best finish instead. Gabbe: &quot;Let's get you a record finish. Thank you for always being ready to war for the realm 🙏&quot;<br /> <br /> The last real jolt came on day 45. mris's Ares dropped, and Koi sent the moment it did, taking 253 acres. We scrambled to get mris back online before a double-tap, but almost nobody could reach his DP, and it stayed a single hit. After that, Gabbe's instruction was the whole plan: &quot;only build spec dp now.&quot; On day 46 the rest of the server fed each other.<br /> <br /> We went out with a bang. On the final evening we declared on realm 4 one last time. We waited for wizard strength to reach 100%, then sank their Icekin's to limit any last second 5:4 chaos. neruht: &quot;burned 16k of his pes lol&quot;. hytt: &quot;He is down to 8862 boats&quot;.<br /> <br /> Offense disabled early, at 03:47 server time on the last day. neruht: &quot;wow early disable&quot;. M4nus: &quot;Winning realm!&quot; slz: &quot;Really well played round guys. Amazing teamwork. Best realm I've been in.&quot; jboy: &quot;Finally in a runaway realm (First time) haha&quot;<br /> <br /> Charles finished at 9,070 acres, about 1,400 clear of the next dominion, with mdk on 7,515 in third.<br /> <br /> == Curtain Call (Afterword) ==<br /> <br /> A note from Charles below.<br /> <br /> I’d like to thank my pack, and my realm.<br /> <br /> Firstly to Gabbe for letting me in. Considering I joined to be the Opsplorer as they didn’t have room for another attacker in the pack! Then the rest of the pack, mris, mdk, jboy.<br /> <br /> Almost every move, every decision, and all long term planning came from serious debate. Not just with the pack with our realm vets too, Sly in particular.<br /> <br /> The rest of the realm, starting with our 3 demons (Adam, neruht, hytt), plus Sly, Sizz, m4, and slz all playing such a pivotal role.<br /> <br /> Particular thanks to mdk for being my full round running mate. To sit and stall while I BF and grew takes a real top man. Hope one day I can return the favour.<br /> <br /> To my ares drop voice pal neruht, wouldn’t have made half my mid round hits without your activity and teamwork.<br /> <br /> And once again to Gabbe for his guidance, sacrifice and patience. &amp;lt;3</div>

Sly http://wiki.opendominion.net/index.php?title=Round_45_Dr_Evil&diff=2376 2025-07-29T13:50:20Z

<p>Sly: </p> <hr /> <div>'''FOREWORD'''<br /> <br /> I wasn't going to play this round. Honestly, it was supposed to just be one little draft round and then I was done. But here I am again, writing another roundfail. I sound like a relapsing addict. It's Rio's fault really, you get off the juice and he comes into your DMs pushing promises of war and suddenly you're right back in the rollercoaster car about to drop into another round. <br /> <br /> Actually, it wasn't the promise of war that sold me. It was the promise of proving whether or not blops are actually still worth anything in this game. We are inching, with painfully small baby steps, towards fireball not being totally useless - GPC had just unveiled a very welcome and long overdue change to how mutual war affects rejuvenation, as well as a nerf to the overbearing mutual war op bonus, reducing it by 2% overall. Would it be enough to tip the balance? I wasn't sure, but at least we definitely weren't going down the route of adding friendly spells that bring roasted peasants instantly back to life, like Jcinnz had previously announced. Forget the crack cocaine of playing OpenDominion, I want what he's on.<br /> <br /> Rio wanted to run two bloppers, two attackers, and we had a fifth slot available as a bit of a flexible position. An opper, or an attacker, or another blopper could fill it depending on who was available. We would play slow-ish, but deliberately exercise war to slow down fast attackers. <br /> <br /> &quot;Either it works, or it will prove how poor blops really are,&quot; said Rio.<br /> <br /> I sighed, wrapping the cord around my forearm and pulling it tight with my teeth, readying the OD needle. Through gritted teeth, I said: &quot;Alright, let's do it.&quot;<br /> <br /> Last round I successfully dragged AgFx out of retirement, but this round I set my sights on Swamp Fox. I knew it was going to be difficult - of everyone that had disavowed themselves of the community after the Dark Times, Swamp Fox was the one that had most successfully disconnected from it. He simply went back to reality and lived his life in a non-tick-based format. No more worrying about making hits. No more worrying about dp. No more discord. No more hiding in car parks to guest on niche podcasts. Just an OD-free existence. So I knew I had my work cut out for me.<br /> <br /> '''Rush:''' &quot;Hey Swamp, can I tempt you back to OD?&quot;<br /> <br /> '''Swamp Fox:''' &quot;You son of a bitch I'm in.&quot;<br /> <br /> That went a little easier than I'd anticipated.<br /> <br /> Rio drafted Gothia to be the second attacker, and we mulled over options for a fifth player. I initially asked Lud, who said the same thing he says every round - &quot;oh I'm not playing next round, I want to be productive&quot; - before he inevitably signs up and plays anyway. But you can't just point that out to the guy - that would be rude, right? <br /> <br /> '''Lud:''' &quot;Oh I'm definitely not playing next round. It is insane how productive I can be when I'm not playing OD.&quot;<br /> <br /> '''Rush:''' &quot;You say that every round! And then you end up getting drawn in like a moth to the flame.&quot;<br /> <br /> '''Lud:''' &quot;Yeah... but I'm trying to be strong.&quot;<br /> <br /> So Lud was out. Spoiler alert, he signed up anyway and ended up being one of the biggest pains in our collective asses. <br /> <br /> With the fifth position in our pack open, and Rio suggesting a third blopper might be the best fit anyway, I suggested Cronel.<br /> <br /> Blopping used to be more viable than it is now. You had some economic support, they took that away. In those days, Cronel would consistently finish in the 4k acres zone. In recent rounds, he's consistently in the high 5ks and mid 6ks. So to say he's improved a bit as time has gone by is a bit of an understatement. He finally figured out that balance between ratios and economy and dp that lets a blopper walk the tightrope between safely pelting enemies with wet noodleballs and being ripped apart by sharks as soon as their name touches the Town Crier. Most dedicated bloppers never manage this. A lot of positions at the top end of the Rush Ranks are riddled with liability players that will feed your competition at some point, often at the worst possible moment. You've gotta be careful who you draft when you want bloppers, we're a real minefield. But I was confident Cronel had evolved beyond that stage. From caterpillar crawling along at 4k, to butterfly finishing on decent 6ks, Cronelus Monarcha was the blopper for the job. I asked if he was free and he said aye. We had our five. <br /> <br /> '''WEEK 1 - MULTIVERSE DREAM TEAM?'''<br /> <br /> At realm assignment we landed with mris, mdk, Kongb, Phage, MusicDJ2555, Gwyn, Syscero - and oh yay, Elf Woods. Mris, mdk and Kongb did make for a potentially broken realm coupled with Gothia and Rio, with the kind of blops and ops support Cronel, Swamp Fox and myself could provide. It's usually what you'd describe as a &quot;lottery win realm&quot;. I don't know how it happened - we know realm assignment was going haywire this round, with the Emperor creating infinite realms, and at one point the round countdown timer was even going backwards. And this was the realm composition that fett collapsed our infinite quantum superposition into when he intervened to kill the loop. It all felt out of place, like things weren't meant to be like this. I kept half expecting to find out that this version of mris was from a parallel universe where preying mantises were the dominant species. But no, turns out, it was our mris. <br /> <br /> Meanwhile, over in realm #7, Dave was doing his John Travolta gif impression wondering where all his active realmies were at. They're all in our realm Dave. <br /> <br /> In contrast to last round where the theme directive was &quot;uhh anime&quot;, this round it was a bit more prescriptive: pick a character from the Austin Powers universe. Why? Because it's giffable. Job done. Naturally I grabbed Dr Evil before Cronel could. Muahahaha. Muahahaha. Muahahaha! We got a lot of gif mileage out of our theme. <br /> <br /> I struggled a bit at race selection because Gothia wanted to go Sylvan, and with Cronel and Swamp Fox already taking Undead and Vampire respectively, there just wasn't a good wiz blops race to choose. I considered Icekin for a bit: despite not being a naturally blops friendly race I usually do quite well with them, hitting 7k last time I played one. But Rio and mdk both questioned this choice, and mdk suggested Demon instead. I hadn't played Demon before, but by all accounts from attackers and bloppers that have played it alike, it wasn't great. Mdk said it had a cheap 6pt defence unit for 10% swamps so what was there to think about as a blopper? Fuck it, I figured I might as well give them a shot and see what all the griping was about. Looking at the race, that swamps requirement for cheap elite dp was literally the only perk in my favour, and the rest was attacker-oriented trash: a racial spell I couldn't use, an op bonus and a spec dp unit perk I probably wouldn't see much use from. Demon do also have Miasma, a war-only spell, but I probably wouldn't find a use for it in our heavy wiz race realm. It's an okay-ish-maybe counterblops spell - but the best offence, as the saying goes, is a fuckload of fireballs. I probably wasn't going to be wasting wiz str on Miasma. In fact, by the end of the round, I'd have cast it precisely zero times. I forgot it even existed. Performance-wise, Demon seemed to grow somewhat slower than Sylvan, and was otherwise flavourless to play. If boring was a race, Demon is it.<br /> <br /> Overall, the realm strategy was to play slow and war often. So the majority of our attackers went for wiz races and a mid or slow speed attack style. With my blopper hat on, if I looked at our realm, it would be a hard pass for war. Four dark elves, three sylvans, two icekins and a mix of vampires, demons and undead and nothing else. The plan was to war as soon as blops went live and start limiting FA realms. <br /> <br /> We got off to a rocky start. In the first two days, our all-star realm had some rookie moments. Gothia sent out knowingly unsafe on a bot and got hit by an Orc:<br /> <br /> ''2025-06-08 06:59:51 Fun Dip and Cherry Coke (SugarJon) (#7) invaded Felicity Shagwell (Gothia) (#5) and captured 45 land.''<br /> <br /> In fairness to Gothia, Fun Dip had better targets. It later transpired that Fun Dip just basically had no ops support to find them. <br /> <br /> Meanwhile, sim issues plagued Rio and mdk. Rio discovered his sim, given to him by mris, was short on docks and was limiting his army, while mdk's sim had so many issues with it that he hadn't spotted (such as razing temples) that it completely gimped him as an attacker, and he was forced to deconvert on day three of the round. To his credit, instead of losing interest, he became an invaluable asset on the ops and blops side instead. Switched-on attackers know all their own weaknesses and can predict when they're coming down the pipeline for others, and intuitively know when's best to strike thinking about the longer term. And mdk really shone in that role. <br /> <br /> Music, a school kid, did not have the activity level needed to defend his dominion and also seemed quite resilient to discord notifications, so would constantly miss advice that would help him stay safe. I got the impression that in addition to a big window of inactivty while asleep, his school must have had some sort of no smartphone policy, meaning that for ~16 hours a day this guy was not logging in. He also didn't seem to use automations. So he unavoidably became a prime feeder for spirits because he didn't have consistent dp coming in, but had tons of drafts from his sporadic activity, protecting him against regular attackers while assassination was disabled. It was unfortunate, but he would later become pretty clutch in some borderline blops scenarios where we needed someone on insane spies to get us over the line, so he went from being a liability to being invaluable as the round progressed. <br /> <br /> And, of course, Elf Woods bounced his first hit. Didn't even bother updating ops and just yolo'd.<br /> <br /> As we approached day 4, which as we all know is when the round actually begins, it became pretty clear that #3's halfling, Bunk beds: +3 barracks housing (Rury), was going to be the one to run. He was significantly ahead of the scrum. It was difficult to get blops ready while he was breathing down everyone's necks, modded up and spamming specs while we were bringing in 10% towers and defenceless wizards, and we could barely grow because we needed to focus so much dp. Thank god for the rejuv changes making mutual more of a question mark. There were more than a few hairy moments where some of us were very borderline on dp - but as is always the case in OD, there's always someone fatter and less defended out there than me, even with the blops dp / econ sacrifice. Someone gets a hot sim, flies ahead, doesn't pay enough attention, gets smashed. The meat shields above us served us well to get us into position to take action. The same hour blops went live, we declared war.<br /> <br /> 2025-06-10 18:30:03 FIRE THE LASER! (#5) has declared WAR on War: Now available at a random time on day 3 (#3).<br /> <br /> Bunk beds' blops preparation was lacklustre but it wasn't nothing. He had some Wizard Guilds, just not enough to dissuade us, and had brought in wizards, but again, not enough. It was weird; he'd semi-committed but still left himself open. It seemed indecisive. Wizard blops are very weak compared to their former iterations, perhaps he figured it wasn't worth investing in defences - but then why go half-way? <br /> <br /> We assassinated every last wizard we could and set him on fire. Then we did the same to their lyc, Sprite -0.5 DP (Poige). Poige would spend the rest of the round spitting feathers about our realm and blaming us for ruining the round. Dwarf Miner: -5r (Oment) had plenty of time to make an effort to bring in defences before our second wave assault started, but elected not to, so we roasted him too. We also considered burning Spirit: Spectre +1 DP (Vinn) for a bit, who after seeing the blops damage we were doling out to his team mates did eventually build some WGs - but too late if we decided to go after him. There was some debate about it. <br /> <br /> Gothia wanted us to hit him before his WGs came in and extend the war a bit until rejuv kicked in. He suspected because of the nomad's obssessively precise training figures (all 5s and 10s) that it was probably Vinn. Mdk on the other hand, wanted to move on and address other emergent threats.<br /> <br /> '''Gothia:''' &quot;Can we please roast him before we move on? Vinn is very skilled and he will win a round soon, let's make sure it's not this one.&quot;<br /> <br /> '''Rush:''' &quot;We'll need to continue the war if we burn the nomad. It's significant resources from us just to limit him a relatively small amount.&quot;<br /> <br /> '''Mdk:''' &quot;We can always come back for Vinn later. I'm more worried about #1's three gnomes and their human, #2's big nomad and #4's human converter.&quot;<br /> <br /> The Underground Society had also dropped again, which is an excellent Wonder for bloppers but also fantastic for attackers, acting like a quasi-Armada wonder as well as a 24/7 Fool's Gold. If we had that wonder, Rio wouldn't have to wake up in the middle of the night suffering from panic attacks over lamb stealing his 1-hour's worth of platinum production for as long as we held it. I wanted us to move on from #3 and focus on grabbing it as soon as possible. And so maybe-Vinn was spared the rod. <br /> <br /> We cancelled the war but we still had to keep an eye on the halfer's op with the lingering war bonus. Despite limiting him he was still clearly ahead - he had the land lead. Towards the end of the war Cronel was potentially hittable if they assassed his drafts. He works night shift so I'd expected him to be awake, but he'd fallen asleep at work instead. He needed to drop dp specs to be safe but we couldn't reach him for over two hours, by which point he was firmly in the danger zone. Fortunately, #3 seemingly did not check beyond a cursory look at a few of us about 10h before the end of the war bonus. Instead they went for a spirit in #8 instead. <br /> <br /> ''2025-06-13 07:16:25 Bunk beds: +3 barracks housing (Rury) (#3) invaded Church Burners (Omnialloy) (#8) and captured 71 land.''<br /> <br /> Wonder take-downs are usually a stress point in the round, at least for me. This round, though, it actually wasn't too bad. Once the Americans finally woke up after their Friday morning lie-in, we were able to take it down pretty quickly.<br /> <br /> ''2025-06-13 11:14:52 The Underground Society has been destroyed and rebuilt by Gentlemen, welcome to my underground lair... (#5).''<br /> <br /> Even changed the realm name for maximum cosplay. That's just how organised we were. <br /> <br /> With the Society secured (for my second round in a row), bolstering both our bloppers and our attackers, we were able to turn our attention back to the next new runaway threat: the lyc in #10, Werego Vespucci (Weaser). This one was a little different to the halfer - he'd obviously seen what we'd done to his rival and decided he didn't want to meet the same chargrilled fate. He wasn't the only one, we detected several other realms bringing in blops defences after we fired the laser (though as would later become obvious, plenty others would still try to fly light, and would rightly suffer for it). But Werego had brought in a staggering nearly 50 WGs. When you consider the meta to fob bloppers off was 30, he clearly wasn't taking any chances. I went through historical barracks spies and spotted that he had also been bringing in Archmages, which could mean his blops defences were both high and unstabbable. I ran the numbers on his docks and he wasn't sinkable either, and with his wiz defences, the likely scenario was we could kill maybe 3k peasants.<br /> <br /> Rio had noticed that Werego was curiously behind schedule in joining the Royal Guard, which meant he was also going to be slower than others to get into the Elite Guard - which would take him out of range of most of us bloppers except for Swamp Fox, who would have to become a One Man Army and wage most of the blops war solo, flinging maintenance fireballs after the rest of us volleyed him down to base. But it gave us the window of opportunity we needed to recharge just enough after knocking down the Society to go and fling fireballs at a single target, if we wanted to go for it. <br /> <br /> There was some debate in realm chat as to whether or not the proposed war with #10 was even worth it. <br /> <br /> '''Gothia:''' If we only fry 3k pez for 18 hours, I'm not really sure it's in our interest to war the lyc at the moment.<br /> <br /> '''Rio:''' We've gotta slow a potential runaway, regardless. Otherwise he pulls away with a bunch of large explorers to help him target hunt.<br /> <br /> '''Gothia:''' I agree that he needs to be stopped, but your statement assumes we're the only ones capable of doing it.<br /> <br /> '''Rio:''' We're the only ones willing even if others are capable. We're positioned to blop. Others will have to do their part in pushing op, which we can't do right now.<br /> <br /> '''Syscero:''' We needed another realm to step up while we dealt with bunk.<br /> <br /> '''Rush:''' This would be a hard pass from me usually. 3k pez is not worth the resources and risk. And it's our boy Swamp Fox that'll be in the danger zone all war, the rest of us will fall out of range pretty swiftly. <br /> <br /> But we all knew Rio was right. And it's not like we had better targets, or that it was even a nuanced situation. And if Swamp Fox could manage the op bonus, it was low risk to us even if the damage was also trivial. And so we warmed up the laser. <br /> <br /> ''2025-06-13 18:59:09 FIRE THE LASER! (#5) has declared WAR on Together we can sea the world (#10).''<br /> <br /> I had a whole bit here about Swamp Fox waging a one-man blops war against the top threat, our canary in the coal mine, but then I deleted about two hours worth of this roundfail by accidentally overwriting the file so you'll just have to use your imaginations. Sorry Swamp, your moment in the sun was eaten by Microsoft.<br /> <br /> Anyway, depending on the strength of your imagination, that was either an incredible action sequence, with one puny little fire mage against a giant angry wolf, or... maybe like two stick figures, with one throwing noodles at the other? Or maybe you're one of those people that literally cannot picture things in your mind, and if that's the case, I'm not really sure you're getting anything out of this paragraph, so perhaps it's best we move on. <br /> <br /> With the #10 lyc lightly singed and slinking off into the Elite Guard, we turned our attention to a second wave target... except we didn't really have one. None of the attackers in our realm seemed to have an opinion on who we should roast, which meant they weren't worried about any of the others in #10. The new guy, Syscero, wanted to burn their Monarch, Laura Bingham (B). And so Laura Bingham was burned. <br /> <br /> Let's just quickly recap this first week in three lines to make a point here: <br /> <br /> ''2025-06-10 18:30:03 FIRE THE LASER! (#5) has declared WAR on War: Now available at a random time on day 3 (#3).''<br /> <br /> ''2025-06-13 11:14:52 The Underground Society has been destroyed and rebuilt by Gentlemen, welcome to my underground lair... (#5).''<br /> <br /> ''2025-06-13 18:59:09 FIRE THE LASER! (#5) has declared WAR on Together we can sea the world (#10).''<br /> <br /> I've seen a lot of impressive blops feats in my time, but coming out of a war against top op, knocking down a Wonder and then starting another war with the next top op, in the span of just 48 hours, is up there. Our realm had a ruthless kind of organisation to it and was pursuing its goals aggressively - slowing top ops, bolstering our bloppers and attackers, and trying to keep the environment conducive to an eventual realm win. It wasn't an easy balance: the early war with #3 had damaged the econs of us bloppers, having to bring in massive towers and spywiz units instead of dp, while staying ahead of modded-up, specced-up and probably coked-up fast attackers. It's tantamount to fireballing yourself with how much it hurts. Towards the end of the war with #10, mris remarked with shock at how tiny we were, and admonished us for not focusing our econs. Like, hello? <br /> <br /> Mris was right about one thing though, we did need to seriously pivot back towards efficiency. Only Swamp Fox was able to get a decent econ going, able to play a bit faster as Vampire, so he became our nominated canary in the coalmine and was tasked with going pure efficient to try and stay in range. I was trailing him by about 100 acres as Demon, which I was beginning to think of as essentially a much worse version of Sylvan for blops, while Cronel and Syscero were trailing me by about the same amount as Undead and Icekin respectively, and mdk even further behind. We were almost all built for slow, but in all the early chaos, we were growing so slowly even Wurst's famous crack team of snails from yester-year would look on and blush.<br /> <br /> Whenever I land with a bunch of veteran attackers, as I had this round, I like to ask them for their read of the round at the one week mark. It's always interesting to see how they expect things develop and compare it end round with how the round plays out. Unfortunately, this round none of the attackers seemed willing to make any educated guesses. I can only assume they were paralysed with fear of having their potentially inaccurate predictions recorded in this roundfail, forever showing them up as charlatans and pretenders. Or they're just lazy. <br /> <br /> So to make up for the fact that I've got nothing to share, here's a video that, I think, effectively captures the essence of our realm and its influence on the round at this point. And, let's be honest, it is way more educational than anything that bunch of layabouts was ever gonna come up with:<br /> <br /> https://www.youtube.com/shorts/T1swuHPA1OU<br /> <br /> Right?<br /> <br /> '''WEEK 2 - GOTHIA REVENGE ARC'''<br /> <br /> Remember that orc that hit Gothia on day one? Well, Gothia hadn't forgotten. Fun Dip (SugarJon) in #7 had smashed him on day one when he'd made a risky send and, although taking hits earlier on seem to be easier to recover from, it was still a setback for Gothia. <br /> <br /> Now that the runaways had all sauntered off out of range of our blops, we had to gear shift and start looking around at the slow threats that might cause problems for us later. Unfortunately for Fun Dip, he was assessed to be one of them - and had the dubious honour of being the only person to negatively impact our realm so far, which just increased his Most Wanted rating. <br /> <br /> Mris did the scouting for this war, and had narrowed it down to three possible realms to go after.<br /> <br /> '''Mris:''' Realm #2 has an obviously strong nomad but also no op in their realm for us to worry about, and an orc that we can also hit. Realm #8 is top op for many of us so doesn't make sense for us to go after them while we're all making an economic push. Realm #7 has the strongest orc and strongest human. Again no op in their realm for us to worry about.<br /> <br /> '''Rio:''' I like #7 as a target. Good options, no immediate threats - and we get revenge for their orc hit on Gothia.<br /> <br /> Kong agreed with a humblebrag:<br /> <br /> '''Kong:''' The orc is a bit concerning. He has the same numbers as I did last round even though I bounced a hit oop. <br /> <br /> Gothia, unsurprisingly, was in favour of the war too:<br /> <br /> '''Gothia:''' I like warring #7.<br /> <br /> So. We were warring #7.<br /> <br /> ''2025-06-16 21:31:00 FIRE THE LASER! (#5) has declared WAR on LFO: Liza Flying Over 🌈 (#7).''<br /> <br /> The plan was to fireball and sink the orc, but we didn't have enough bloppers around immediately at war dec to do quite enough sink damage and the guy had hundreds and hundreds of spare boats just lying around. We needed one more blopper to sink him but after pinging Gwyn and Music and a bunch of others, we just could not get it over the line and the orc was able to chortle his way to a bot hit.<br /> <br /> ''2025-06-16 22:00:18 Fun Dip and Cherry Coke (#7) invaded Sinking without thinking (#0) and captured 58 land.''<br /> <br /> Gothia was not impressed. We were three wars in and this had been our first fail, but since the orc was still getting lit up, it wasn't all bad.<br /> <br /> We burned the orc and probably someone else as well, I forget who. I spent two hours writing about the tail-end of week 1 and pretty much all of week 2 and then overwrote my notes so I'm mostly working from memory here in week 3 here.<br /> <br /> [Post-round edit: the second target was Grapes. Sorry Grapes! That's what happens when you turn your back on the path of chaos I guess...]<br /> <br /> Oh, I almost forgot until Cronel randomly reminded me - we also warred #11 and roasted the goblin Delta Forks (Disco), their gnome McRangers (Crazy Guy) and dwarf Don't live in someone else's Shadow (Empoy). After the war, it was pointed out that we almost helped feed their goblin to the lyc, which instigated some mixed reactions from our attackers in realm. Some were all &quot;not our problem&quot;, others were &quot;fuck 'em, they need to manage their doms better&quot;, while very few (okay just one) conceded that it was something we should be more mindful of in future wars. In the end, though, it was the Demon, Meal Team 6 (Slice) who we hadn't even touched that ended up feeding Werego when he carelessly explored into range massively underdefended. <br /> <br /> ''2025-06-21 13:59:22 Werego Vespucci (#10) invaded Meal Team 6 (#11) and captured 113 land.''<br /> <br /> And so Swamp Fox sighed and clicked explore.<br /> <br /> Unfortunately the lyc then found another huge hit pretty much immediately. Another explorer slacking on his Ares casts.<br /> <br /> ''2025-06-22 20:00:14 Werego Vespucci (#10) invaded 🧄Garlic-Tunneler Goulash🍲 (Jcinnz) (#12) and captured 169 land.''<br /> <br /> And so Swamp Fox sighed and clicked explore. He'd be doing that a lot this round. <br /> <br /> '''WEEK 3 - SCHRODINGER'S CRONEL'''<br /> <br /> We missed the perfect opportunity to mess with #1 because Cronel was sleeping again. <br /> <br /> It had become an emergent theme this round that when we needed blops, someone key - usually Cronel - was asleep and limiting what we could do. We were a mix of Euros and Americans, so our timezones were a big factor to plan around. Cronel had said he operated on EU time, since he worked night shift, but in practice that turned out not to be the case. Middle of the day blops needed? Oh it's a Thursday, Cronel sleeps all day on Thursdays. Saturday night blops needed? Oh that's Cronel's usual sleeping hours. Monday morning blops needed? Cronel is technically at work - but is also ASLEEP AT WORK. I shit you not, I'm not even making this up for a bit, he was just asleep at work. He was Schrodinger's Comatose Cat. Open the lid of his box and it was only in that moment the universe would decide whether he was awake or asleep. And mostly it was the latter. There was no pinging him back to the waking world, you just had to wait for him to rise from his coffin on his own time - which could be anywhere from three to eighteen hours later. It was like he'd studied under Jmerc's tutelage last round and decided that being randomly AWOL when he was needed most would only add to his reputation for chaos.<br /> <br /> It wasn't all Cronel of course. Swamp Fox was caught red-handed sleeping in one day instead of blopping, and then spluttered that he was in fact fixing a sink first thing in the morning and his fingers were too covered in plumber's putty to use his phone. Naturally nobody believed him.<br /> <br /> Gothia was becoming increasingly agitated as the hours ticked by and we still didn't have the numbers to effectively sink Michael Jordan (zooj) in #1, who looked in a very strong position. He had plenty of op to make a hit and it was only a matter of time before he sent, and we needed seven people online at the same time to ensure we could sink him enough to limit him. We had five, once Swamp Fox had washed his hands. We could probably do it with six. It was prime EU hours, so of course Cronel was asleep. Our backup American bloppers, Phage and Music, were also asleep. Mris, the caretaker of these two young ODers, resolutely refused to wake them up early to blop. What sort of American values does that instill, I wonder, if you aren't teaching your kids to enjoy the smell of war in the morning?<br /> <br /> ''2025-06-23 12:58:28 Michael Jordan playing G.O.A.T simulator (zooj) (#1) invaded ...I sHaLl bE BaCk... (#0) and captured 107 land.''<br /> <br /> Gothia was not impressed.<br /> <br /> This was our second 'war fail' and this time, we had fumbled so hard we hadn't even managed to declare war. And for the next 24 painful hours, we would wait for him to build his land (to ensure he didn't bring in docks), then try to organise enough people online again to sink and fireball him, and once again fail to do so. The plan for war was firmly in the EU dead zone, between 2am and 6am, so I was definitely asleep. Cronel, who was always asleep, was also asleep. Swamp Fox was our General, and the only other person who could declare besides me, so of course he went to bed early, tuckered out from fixing sinks. And so war was off the cards until I woke up the next day. When I woke up, I was glad I had spent my wiz str the previous evening flooding merfolk and lizzies.<br /> <br /> It had taken us a whole day to get our acts together and even then, it was still borderline whether we could pull it off or not. <br /> <br /> ''2025-06-24 11:20:11 FIRE THE LASER! (#5) has declared WAR on Elon Musk Playing Starship Simulator (#1).''<br /> <br /> [Post-round edit: That's right. We went to war on zooj. I never thought I'd see the day!]<br /> <br /> It was still amazing to us that after the blops capability we'd demonstrated so far, and our ruthless focus on taking down any competitors to our realm, that so many dominions were caught with their pants around their ankles, playing greedy like there wasn't this pack of scorpions out there waiting to sting you to death if you started to look intimidating. Once we sunk MJ, we kept him sunk, and watched as he did virtually nothing except build docks from a daily bonus to protect himself. It wasn't enough. He was going to be stuck for several days while his boats regenerated. I have a rare tip for attackers here: if you get sunk, build lots of docks. It's always your better option than doing nothing, or trying to rely on DBs. I suspect zooj didn't have the experience dealing with blops to know what to do in this situation. Maybe he'll know for next rounds. Our veteran attackers picked him out as a threat so he'll likely have to deal with them again in future. <br /> <br /> Someone who wasn't Michael Jordan in realm #1, but was in realm #1, sent me a DM on the off-chance I was in #5 and one of the bloppers currently wreaking havoc on their realmie to plead for mercy, and suggested that all we were doing was griefing that player. I'm not gonna say who it was because I do have some sympathy for their intentions, which weren't to maliciously influence the game, but this is what would later lead to accusations of me cheating by Sly on the Rules Committee. I floated the sentiments to the realm. Rio seemed a bit skittish about the griefing accusation, while mdk was more hardline that it was a war game and sometimes your risks don't play out. <br /> <br /> '''Rio:''' In fairness, we can move on. But he has also done the bare minimal effort to help himself.<br /> <br /> '''mdk:''' These blops are nothing compared to what they used to be... The guy can seriously rezone smithies to docks if he wants to, but if he refuses that's on him. And fireballs are 20-24 hours, and half your peasants are protected for free.<br /> <br /> '''Cronel:''' He finally has docks coming in.<br /> <br /> '''mdk:''' Only his DBs. They have been targeted once when they are looking strong.<br /> <br /> '''Gothia:''' The thing is, he did nothing to prevent it. If he did rezone to docks and invested in harbour and trained spies, then I would understand.<br /> <br /> '''mdk:''' Calculated risk. But then you can't cry about it when you eat blops because of it.<br /> <br /> '''Gothia:''' Exactly. <br /> <br /> '''Rio:''' Players complaining usually can't see past their own perspective. &quot;I want them to do X as it benefits them and me. What?? They did Y and that hurts me and not sure it helps them right now!&quot; - I say it in pretty much every win I've had. Sometimes I'll do something that hurts me a little if it hurts someone else a lot. As long as it doesn't benefit your main threat, if it helps someone else, it's usually okay.<br /> <br /> '''Gothia:''' Amen brother.<br /> <br /> '''Rio:''' A lot of these wars have been to position our sylvans ahead of the people we're taking down. I don't see the lyc as the main competition for the win at this point: it is humans, sylvans, dwarves and gnomes.<br /> <br /> '''Rush:''' War cancel is three ticks away, I take it we are not extending?<br /> <br /> '''Gothia:''' Yeah we should cancel once their big gnome gets rejuv.<br /> <br /> '''Rush:''' I think his rejuv kicks in at the same time war cancel is available.<br /> <br /> '''Gothia:''' Perfect timing.<br /> <br /> 'Griefing' is a term that has only really come to the fore of our community in relatively recent rounds and is bandied about far to leisurely in my opinion. It's used as a cudgel to condemn blops by people who either don't like blops, or who are upset that they are being used effectively against them in the moment. Or both. There's a lot of crossover in those two groups. It is not griefing to target a threat and neutralise them. It is not griefing to target a greedy player and punish them for it. It is not griefing to use the tightly controlled blackop mechanics available to you in a war game to hurt players outside of your realm. Tattoo these three sentences on the inside of your eyelids please. <br /> <br /> Regardless, it was time to move on. <br /> <br /> ''2025-06-26 11:33:47 I always cry at endings… even evil ones. (#5) has CANCELED war against Basil Exposition Playing Cooking Simulator (#1).''<br /> <br /> ''2025-06-26 11:34:24 FIRE THE LASER! (#5) has declared WAR on The Young and Free (#2).''<br /> <br /> Mdk had been keeping tabs on the #2 nomad, Tailgating at Taj Mahal (SlyPimp), and had expected him to hit at the end of the previous tick (while we were still locked into war). He was in the middle of &quot;9hr-ing&quot;, a playstyle for certain races whose troops get home in 9 hours instead of 12, and crucially before their first hit's land arrives, meaning they can hit twice on the same land. But Taj had not sent at the end of the tick when cancel became available to us. We had planned to war immediately war #2 anyway and fireball the nomad, but when he didn't send, sinking him in the middle of a 9hr became the new strategy. <br /> <br /> '''Kong:''' That's killer for a nomad. After pushing 5% mods for a hit.<br /> <br /> '''Gothia:''' He will be able to send quite fast again if he just builds docks.<br /> <br /> We sank him. The timing could not have been more perfect from our perspective - and of course, it was very unfortunate timing for him. Unlike the previous realm, however, his reaction was to immediately bring in lots of docks, limiting the long term harm immediately. This guy's been sunk before, methinks.<br /> <br /> We weren't done yet though. This war wasn't just about bloppers sinking some attacker. It was time for some real showboating.<br /> <br /> With the war bonus, and without Ares, #2's court magister, the undead Breakdancing at the Great Wall (Karpatheo) with &quot;the gifted&quot; title, was hittable by Rio. And not just hittable, triple chainable by Gothia and mris. And not just triple chainable, potentially quad chainable by Kong if the stars aligned and somehow we managed to keep Ares off for six ticks. That last one was unlikely, and required Music with his insane 1.3 spy ratio to wake up and keep him snared, and also for the entire playerbase to ignore the target for several hours. But hey, you never know. Shoot for the stars.<br /> <br /> With some coordination and some sleep-rousing the Americans, we got enough of a motley crew together to pull off the snare when Breakdancing was at 3 hours left to recast. <br /> <br /> ''2025-06-27 13:09:59 Victorious on the battlefield, Nigel Powers (#5) conquered 165 land from Breakdancing at the Great Wall (#2).''<br /> <br /> ''2025-06-27 13:10:06 Victorious on the battlefield, Felicity Shagwell (#5) conquered 148 land from Breakdancing at the Great Wall (#2).''<br /> <br /> ''2025-06-27 13:11:04 Victorious on the battlefield, Goldmember (#5) conquered 140 land from Breakdancing at the Great Wall (#2).''<br /> <br /> Gothia, at last, was impressed.<br /> <br /> '''Swamp Fox:''' This will be a great part to Rush’s story. Less than 24 hours from &quot;we should look for war hits&quot; to &quot;let’s snare and triple tap this guy&quot; 🤣<br /> <br /> Shortly after, our mercy blops target from #1 managed to cobble enough boats together to make a hit and got instantly gobbled up for it.<br /> <br /> ''2025-06-27 13:41:47 Michael Jordan playing G.O.A.T simulator (zooj) (#1) invaded Land Of The Tainted (#0) and captured 91 land.''<br /> <br /> ''2025-06-27 13:59:55 Business Cat Rides Again (Lud) (#11) invaded Michael Jordan playing G.O.A.T simulator (#1) and captured 126 land.''<br /> <br /> '''Rio:''' His boats situation meant he needed to leave more dp home. He just went mad on op after our blops. Annoying that we worked for a hit and 11 sylvan just got one for free.<br /> <br /> Business Cat in #11 was a constant source of consternation in our realm. Everything we did seemed to also benefit him indirectly, and when it couldn't, he found another way to keep the advantage. And he'd taken precautions againsts us, running high docks and making himself virtually unassailable by our laser. <br /> <br /> But he wasnt the only regular beneficiary. Fenrir (King Jota) in #9 was also often a net benefactor from our efforts, but he was afforded more respect given their realm's more pro-active approach to war. <br /> <br /> '''WEEK 4 - POUNDING ALOTTA FAGINA'''<br /> <br /> Quite the spectacular week, but a terrible start for us. Kong, our hotshot top attacker who was ahead of everyone else in the realm and our best chance for the win, sent out on a hit that would ultimately cost him his shot at the round.<br /> <br /> ''2025-06-29 18:18:26 Alotta Fagina (Kong) (#5) invaded Moshing at Machu Picchu (Cosula) (#2) and captured 123 land.''<br /> <br /> The realm hadn't checked the sleepy nomad in #2 that we'd sank in the middle of his 9h and, well, it soon became apparent that this was a massive oversight. <br /> <br /> ''2025-06-29 18:29:29 Tailgating at Taj Mahal (SlyPimp) (#2) invaded Alotta Fagina (Kong) (#5) and captured 207 land.''<br /> <br /> ''2025-06-29 18:45:28 Purple Wolf Tail And Raging Fiery Hobpot (playt0i) (#12) invaded Alotta Fagina (Kong) (#5) and captured 169 land.''<br /> <br /> ''2025-06-29 18:48:55 Delta Forks (Disco) (#11) invaded Alotta Fagina (Kong) (#5) and captured 153 land.''<br /> <br /> ''2025-06-29 18:59:59 Business Cat Rides Again (Lud) (#11) invaded Alotta Fagina (Kong) (#5) and captured 149 land.''<br /> <br /> Kong was absolutely demolished in 30 minutes flat. Everyone was aghast. I don't know how you send out without checking the top threats aren't ready to stomp you, but that's what happened here. Mdk blamed himself harshly for not playing lookout and fell on his sword. It was all very dramatic. Kong, on the other hand, seemed quite relaxed about the whole thing. And our pack welcomed our fallen realmie onto Team Blops.<br /> <br /> Ops in general, despite the massive amount of experience and activity in our realm, were not our strongest suit. I was constantly flying by the seat of my pants with no spywiz strength to run checks and our attackers were mostly pretty comfy updating people once every 1-2 days(!) while they knew they were safe from all-ins sitting at home. I couldn't even use Swamp - who was the only explorer ahead of me - as a meat shield because he was constantly prepping to defend Werego, which meant he generally carried about 25% more dp than I did. I was 150a behind him and had 4-7 threats to second-guess. I tethered my dp to another Demon who was a few% bigger than me and just hoped he was paying attention. He had an annoyingly high spy ratio so it was often more costly than I liked just to check up on him. <br /> <br /> Anyway, I digress. I was talking about our disastrous start to the week. Alotta Fagina wasn't the only one of us to get royally fucked. <br /> <br /> You see, veteran player and four-time roundwinner Rio, did not understand how guard works and kept resetting his application to the Elite Guard. Just four hours before he was due to join the EG, he took a clear sight on someone marginally outside of his range, which reset his application. It wasn't long before an eagle-eyed #10 took notice. <br /> <br /> Two hours after he would've been in EG were it not for that op: <br /> <br /> ''2025-06-29 14:56:58 Werego Vespucci (#10) invaded fellow dominion Nigel Powers (Rio) (#5) and captured 134 land.''<br /> <br /> Rio then got carried away with revenge blops and reset his application a second time. This one's not his fault though, it was a bug. Not that it mattered much though, because he then reset his application a third time by taking ANOTHER op on someone out of range. And so Werego came round for seconds.<br /> <br /> ''2025-06-30 18:49:46 Werego Vespucci (#10) invaded fellow dominion Nigel Powers (#5) and captured 134 land.''<br /> <br /> Of course I am being a bit glib here - it's obviously very easy to just forget the weird red tape of the guard application process and take an op. There really should be an &quot;are you sure?&quot; prompt that gets in the way, or something that forces you to cancel your application before you just get hard reset like that. Or just do away with info ops resetting your guard application entirely, what's that all about anyway? <br /> <br /> That said, he did make the exact same mistake twice in 24 hours. We're into meme territory. I updated the realm message: <br /> <br /> &quot;Message of the Day: Day 25 of asking, is Rio in elite guard yet?&quot;<br /> <br /> It made a change from every other update of asking, &quot;is Swamp Fox in range yet?&quot;<br /> <br /> Naturally Rio brought out his &quot;in every round I've won I've been hit at least once&quot; line to remind everyone that he wins lots of rounds, and mainline some copium that this wasn't a major setback. Still, if anyone could claw back an advantage, he could. <br /> <br /> I recorded a podcast on the round with AgFx, Volv and Lud, and we discussed some of the current events. Until Kong's insta-death and Rio's guard shenanigans I had been planning to loc-post myself so I could go into more detail about #5's behaviour, but I decided I didn't really want to have to explain all those misplays that had just happened so I decided against it. These guys were clearly just trying to embarrass me before the pod record. <br /> <br /> During the pod, I also made brief mention of the fact that I'd received a DM asking us to stop &quot;griefing&quot; during our earlier war with #1. Sly, who was on the rules committee, caught wind of this, and started giving me shit in DMs for not reporting it. Which was fair enough, that's his role. It's just that he couldn't seem to stop his obvious dislike of me from getting in the way of some basic fact finding. And so after reading his messages, dripping with his trademark condescension, I told him to get lost. <br /> <br /> Sly would grow increasingly bitter and erratic as the round developed, and it would not be the last time #5 heard from him in his role as attack dog of the Rules Committee. <br /> <br /> '''WEEK 5 - COLLUSION!'''<br /> <br /> We had been intending to war #9 and sink Fenrir, so Rio could push suicidal op and nail the #11 sylvan once the lyc sent. Sinking the DE meant Rio could probably get away with it. <br /> <br /> Unfortunately, this incredible plan all fell apart with one simple question.<br /> <br /> '''Rush:''' DE is sinkable?<br /> <br /> '''Mdk:''' Hmm, he has a lot of docks.<br /> <br /> '''Rush:''' Is that a no? lol<br /> <br /> '''Rio:''' Hmm, probably not.<br /> <br /> Oh well, there goes that plan.<br /> <br /> Rio instead suggested we snare an explorer in #10 instead, and while we didn't have a concrete plan, we knew we were going down the spy blops route in the near future, so we aimed to get our ratios up. Mdk and I pushed to 1.0, while the ever-scrimping Swamp Fox plumped for a 0.7. Cronel, of course, already had more than a 1.0, but pushed it up to a 1.2 anyway just to flex on the rest of us. <br /> <br /> At some point Gothia noticed a scav drop on the lyc, which was bad news. It meant he had a target. We started scouting around, and confirmed our suspicions. <br /> <br /> Screaming Mimis (Craghack) (#8), had inexplicably entered range underdefended. Realm #8 had others bigger than him able to get ops on the lyc, so they must have known his op, so this had to be a case of blindly exploring without paying attention. Screaming Mimis put himself on the lyc's radar relying on 6.3k draftees for defence - which would just be assassinated by the lyc's team of elite explorers. Even worse, Screaming Mimis, having entered range, also did not slam defence. The guy seemed to be completely oblivious to the danger he was in. It became imperative that we had to intervene, and on Mimis' schedule. <br /> <br /> We identified Laura Bingham (B) as the best snare target - high land, lowest dp of all the super explorers, and the worst estimated spy ratio - somewhere between 0.3 and 0.6 depending on whether they were spies or assassins. A 1.0+ should in theory stomp him.<br /> <br /> There were two problems: due to the timing of the lyc's planned hit, we had to snare Bingham at Ares 8, which is a very long snare campaign and the mechanics of the game push back hard to try and prevent long snares, giving the subject resilience which massively boosts wizard strength recovery over time. <br /> <br /> The second problem was RNG. We needed a 70-80% estimated success rate to pull this off. It needed every single player in range to contribute, even our attackers on - and lets phrase this generously - suboptimal ratios. We couldn't waste any snares, so we needed to know when to stop before we saw 0. And we needed to wait and not snare between ticks to let resilience drop a little to improve our success chances. <br /> <br /> Gothia calculated that a hit on Bingham would be 418+418 acres if the lyc went for the merf anyway, which was frankly obscene.<br /> <br /> Swamp Fox was not impressed with this plan. He gave it a zero percent chance to succeed, saying Bingham would be getting 10%+ wizard strength recovery per tick, and that we didn't have the numbers or the ratios to pull this off. He was in an unusually downbeat mood considering we were about to war. It perhaps explained his disinterest in pushing his ratios to 1.0, and instead he elected to focus on acres. He was also constantly hovering on the cusp of entering Elite Guard to avoid getting bottomfed, and us needing him to participate in a war snare campaign had the dual effect of making him the preferred option for a lyc snack while also resetting his guard application to its maximum duration. <br /> <br /> I hadn't done the maths - we had mdk and Kong, both with bigger brains than me, for that stuff - but I wasn't as pessimistic about our chances. I knew long snare campaigns were hard but I also knew they weren't impossible with broken realms. And our realm fit the definition of broken. If anyone could pull it off, it was us.<br /> <br /> So it was time to brush the dust off the old laser.<br /> <br /> ''2025-07-09 14:06:08 FIRE THE LASER! (#5) has declared WAR on ---&gt; https://youtu.be/jVSZdsAq4Bo?si=vbHsuSwN6L8APWtn (#10).''<br /> <br /> The plan was for a group of us on high SPA to snare and then stop at 8 successes each. Then disband, assuming he had any spies to get rid of. Then a secondary group with lower SPA to take over.<br /> <br /> You might think disbanding first would make more sense, but snare is the most time-senstive op in the game. You have to hit them hard and fast and you don't have time to mess about, because if you fuck it up, you are stuck in what is essentially a failed war for three days. Also it's embarrassing. <br /> <br /> It took all 15 snares from me to see 8 successes. Others in our group were reporting similar success rates. RNG was massively fucking us over, taking us closer to a 50-60% success rate instead of the projected 70-80% we needed. Swamp Fox, it seemed, was going to be proven right. <br /> <br /> Even worse, the second I declared war, one of our key first wave snarers, mdk, straight up vanished. As we all reported our snare successes, he was worryingly absent and not responding to pings.<br /> <br /> '''Gothia:''' Where is mdk?<br /> <br /> '''Kong:''' @mdk<br /> <br /> '''Swamp Fox:''' ...<br /> <br /> '''Gothia:''' @mdk<br /> <br /> '''Kong:''' lol<br /> <br /> '''Gothia:''' Fucking hell.<br /> <br /> '''Rio:''' I'm here now.<br /> <br /> '''Gothia:''' Oh we have Rio.<br /> <br /> It was Rio to the rescue. He filled in for the missing snares we needed from mdk, and the group successfully took him below 25% - but he wasn't at 0. Mdk would end up on the reserve group instead, assuming he hadn't dropped off the face of the Earth.<br /> <br /> '''Rush:''' Where tf did mdk go, wasn't this whole plan his idea? lol<br /> <br /> '''Rio:''' Mdk taking the Cronel approach, sleeping.<br /> <br /> '''Swamp Fox:''' We need to keep him at zero to keep this easily managed. <br /> <br /> '''Gothia:''' Yeah, when mdk gets here he can take him to zero.<br /> <br /> '''Rush:''' I'd rather he was at zero right now.<br /> <br /> '''Rio:''' Mdk in fairness is probably off saving someone's life from cancer.<br /> <br /> '''Rush:''' That can wait!<br /> <br /> '''Rio:''' Priorities.<br /> <br /> Mdk did show up after about 15 minutes and it was down to some crazy shit going down at his hospital. Someone better have been dying to risk our snare campaign!<br /> <br /> I'll save you eight hours of excruciating detail and just say the snare campaign seemed borderline as hell initially but our recovery was decent and we had good coordination (ie not wasting snares) and some clutch successes from Cronel's superior SPA that put us into more comfortable territory as the campaign went on. End result: we successfully stripped Bingham of his Ares, and kept it off. <br /> <br /> The result of this war forced the lyc to make a choice. He either took the hit he had lined up, and Gothia got insane acres from hitting his Monarch, or he sat and protected him, potentially missing the opportunity to hit the merfolk. We couldn't keep Bingham snared forever, and we were essentially babysitting the #8 merfolk, praying that at some point he realised the danger he was in and started taking his defence seriously.<br /> <br /> So it was good news for Bingham, but it was still a very bad scenario for the lyc, who had to pass on an easy 75%. And anything that was bad news for the lyc was an avenue we were going to pursue. We had some idea of when Bingham probably went to sleep based on automations and fools gold, so we pushed the snare a few hours longer just to see if he'd give up and go to bed with no spells, but he did recast as soon as he had the wiz str. I think we pulled off a 10-hour snare in the end, and it could have gone a few hours longer before we were tapped out too. Meanwhile, Gothia found another hit:<br /> <br /> ''2025-07-10 18:15:59 Victorious on the battlefield, Felicity Shagwell (#5) conquered 253 land from Fire-starting in the Hanging Gardens (Mongoose) (#2).''<br /> <br /> Rio laid out the two ways it could have gone:<br /> <br /> That war/snare job meant instead of:<br /> Lyc + 500<br /> Gothia + 850<br /> Sylvan + 400<br /> DE + 400<br /> Nomad + 400<br /> Dwarf + 400<br /> <br /> It is:<br /> Lyc: 0<br /> Gothia: +500<br /> Sylvan: 0<br /> DE: 0<br /> Nomad: 0<br /> Dwarf: 0<br /> <br /> It hurt all of our competition but still helped Gothia, and Rio still had his suicide card if the lyc bottomfed. But that card had an imminent expiry date.<br /> <br /> Our realm's attackers post-round credited this as the pivotal moment that the lyc lost the round. I don't know if that's really true or if it's a bit of back-patting. It could well have led to Gothia winning the round had he taken a different decision. <br /> <br /> This chain of events meant that this war was going to turn out to be one of the strangest non-wars I've ever seen, more a game of nuance and edging than fireballs and big hits. From the outside - at least according to the peanut gallery in the main discord - it looked like absolutely nothing was happening. I don't blame them; if I was on the outside looking in, I doubt I'd be taking a wide enough view of the landscape to include the merfolk in #8 in the equation. There are very few players in this game that look at the bigger picture, and a lot of them were already in our realm. <br /> <br /> Without the hit on the merfolk, it became likely that as soon as the lyc could escape Rio's suicidal op, which he would do at some point during the war, he was safe to drop guard and bottomfeed. And one of us would be the target.<br /> <br /> Swamp Fox took himself off the menu by entering Elite Guard, which left me on the chopping block.<br /> <br /> I was given a temporary reprieve (and potential out) when Taj cocked up and made a hit that would take him sailing into the lyc's range, then inexplicably didn't slam dp and just got slapped straight back out of range again.<br /> <br /> ''2025-07-11 19:54:30 Werego Vespucci (Weaser) (#10) invaded Tailgating at Taj Mahal (SlyPimp) (#2) and captured 275 land.''<br /> <br /> At this point if we'd cancelled the war, I might have dodged getting chomped entirely. Unfortunately it was a few minutes into the next tick when I had a brief discussion with Gothia and we decided to cancel, which turned out to be a huge mistake, because it meant he could still hit me with the war bonus on his return - and worse, we couldn't blop him back from dropping EG.<br /> <br /> ''2025-07-12 07:58:20 Werego Vespucci (Weaser) (#10) invaded Dr Evil (Rush) (#5) and captured 202 land.''<br /> <br /> Gothia blamed himself. I blamed myself. Rio blamed both of us. It wasn't our finest moment. <br /> <br /> I get hit so rarely that I'd forgotten how much it sucks. And this was the first time I'd ever been bottomfed. It absolutely tanked my econ and I spend the rest of the round trying to recover. I think I finished on only slightly higher pez than I had before the hit. <br /> <br /> '''FINAL WEEKS - COMING UNDONE'''<br /> <br /> Business Cat and Fenrir were now the likely winners if they could outplay Werego. Our realm was starting to arrive at the conclusion that we weren't going to win this without a hefty injection of luck. Business Cat and Fenrir had outmanouevred Gothia with a combination of skill and their own luck, and he found himself further and further behind, his op to low and his dp too high from dealing with Werego to make the hits he needed to catch up. Being further ahead, but at the wrong moments, and not able to capitalise on scenarios that could benefit him if the wind blew even slightly in his direction, seemed to have crippled him. <br /> <br /> At some point, during one of our regular wars with #10, I said what many of us were thinking: that we weren't going to win this.<br /> <br /> Syscero offered to full send on #10's Wonder if it helped. The guy was an absolute legend. But taking down their Wonder and probably getting hit in return was not an outcome I wanted to see. <br /> <br /> '''Rush:''' &quot;I don't think we're going to win this, so at this point it's more about making sure other realms don't get free land.&quot;<br /> <br /> '''Mris:''' &quot;We can still win this.&quot;<br /> <br /> I admired mris' unflappable optimism. It's what we all needed to hear. Someone to pick up our spirits in the dark times. As long as Business Cat and Fenrir didn't get any more legs up on us, maybe we could still pull through after all and win this. <br /> <br /> ''2025-07-13 10:23:38 Victorious on the battlefield, Goldmember (mris) (#5) conquered 191 land from Lizardfolk: Ore Mines now protect boats (#3).''<br /> <br /> ''2025-07-13 10:47:35 Presenting Fenrir to Masters Agility Championship (#9) invaded fellow dominion Goldmember (#5) and captured 278 land.''<br /> <br /> ''2025-07-13 10:50:34 Business Cat Rides Again (#11) invaded fellow dominion Goldmember (#5) and captured 251 land.''<br /> <br /> I cancelled my plans to attend mris' upcoming self-help seminar. <br /> <br /> Business Cat later surprised Werego with a sneaky (and as far as I know, unprecedented) move that enabled an all-in hit against the runaway. He'd released a chunk of his own dp units and retrained them as spec op, and Werego's gang of super explorers had missed it. Internally a few realmies were quite agitated by Business Cat's constant profiteering off our efforts, and also held the sentiment that he seemed to lack the 'killer instinct' to take risks, having played things differently than they would have in a few situations. But this move certainly shocked and impressed all of his detractors.<br /> <br /> There was some further drama from Sly who started accusing mdk of having access to his realm discord chat after mdk made a comment about Sly 'whining for weeks' about his round. This would be Sly's second public paranoid fit of pique in a couple of weeks and it left mdk totally nonplussed. At one point mdk was told there were discussions within the Rules Committee about locking him over his comment. He also mentioned that Sly seemed to be convinced I was a cheater and that I went out of my way to target him, and that I seemed to be 'living rent free' in his head - this was reflected in a comment he'd made publicly that he was planning to start smurfing (essentially creating a new account to evade proper realm assignment - as a regular solo player Sly would consistently complain about landing in ghettos), to which he then followed up by saying I would somehow find him anyway, implying again that I was a cheater. I'm not even sure why I was involved in the discussion at all since I had nothing to do with any of it. <br /> <br /> I don't feel a great need to defend my character against these accusations though so I'll skip over my feelings of outrage etc and just say that I don't know where this sentiment comes from. These are the facts. Historically I don't think I've been involved in taking Sly down directly in any blops war; I always try my best to target who I perceive to be threats in competitive rounds. And if I'm rank chasing instead, I'm not targeting FAs. And even if I was fed his location, it still wouldn't change anything. I just don't target people for silly disagreements or past grudges I have with them in the discord. There are bloppers that will do this - Cronel has his famous List for example - but I can confidently say I have and will never target someone for being toxic, because that in itself would be toxic. And meeting toxicity with more toxicity would just be the very definition of hypocritical. A bit like someone on the Rules Committee suggesting they'll start using a smurf account, in violation of the rules they helped write.<br /> <br /> Fortunately it seems rationality still prevailed on the RC in spite all these theatrics, and mdk did not get locked. <br /> <br /> &lt;blockquote&gt;'''Note from Sly'''<br /> Here are the ''actual'' facts:<br /> * Rush/5 Pack was given my location early in the round. He did not report it and instead used it to his advantage.<br /> * Rush was DMed multiple times with illegal info and reported none of it.<br /> * There is a list of people they want to grief, confirmed above. I was at the top of that list.<br /> * They were also given screenshots of my realm's private discord chats. Again, no report. We don't know the extent of the information shared and used as an advantage because nobody cared enough about integrity to do anything about it.<br /> * The supposed bloppers in that pack targeted me all round with hostile spells that they didn't cast on other competitive dominions for a good 20-30 days, and they did this specifically because of my identity plus because I was critical of their realm's strategy ''in my private realm's discord chats''.<br /> * They also didn't prevent me from 9-houring. I could've (and had a hit lined up) and chose not to because all in DP was very tight vs the lyc, so it was an incorrect pretext for war.<br /> * I didn't accuse anyone of targeting me before this round, so that's a strawman. I accused them of targeting me in Round 45, which there is plenty of evidence for.<br /> <br /> Make of this what you will. That group wanted me gone, and I have quit playing due to the targeting and lack of care about rules from the community, so congrats.<br /> &lt;/blockquote&gt;<br /> <br /> Back to the round. In the final week, it all fell apart for #10. I felt a little bad for their realm, which had performed well and which had, against the odds, kept a solo fast attacker that had randomed into their realm last-minute ahead of the scrum for so long. But they hadn't learned from a lesson we'd taught them early on: snare was their achilles' heel, as it often is for efficiency explorers. We had kept Bingham without Ares for 10+ hours earlier in the round while we babysat an efficiency explorer with a serious dp deficiency, and yet, Bingham didn't seem to have prioritised upping his spy ratio and instead tried to keep pace with the rest of his pack of super explorers - a challenge given we'd dented his econ in an earlier war. This decision to hoover up as many acres as possible instead of bolstering his spy defences left him vulnerable, and #9, who had already demonstrated a willingness to war, were able to take full advantage.<br /> <br /> ''2025-07-19 22:53:00 Myths and Mistakes (#9) has declared WAR on Eat Sleep Explore Repeat (#10).''<br /> <br /> ''2025-07-20 00:01:17 Presenting Fenrir to Masters Agility Championship (King Jota) (#9) invaded Laura Bingham (B) (#10) and captured 510 land.''<br /> <br /> At this point, every efficiency explorer on Fenrir's menu should have been amping Ares and dumping spies, keeping it above 12h but at the very bare minimum above 9h. This was the final stretch. If Fenrir got another snare hit, it was ov-<br /> <br /> ''2025-07-21 00:04:42 Presenting Fenrir to Masters Agility Championship (#9) invaded Leif Erikson (DavetheGoliath) (#10) and captured 524 land.''<br /> <br /> Oh no.<br /> <br /> Welp. Congrats #9!<br /> <br /> We finished off our round by indulging in the first and only frivolous rank-chasing war of the round:<br /> <br /> ''2025-07-21 20:51:39 FIRE THE LASER! (#5) has declared WAR on Eat Sleep Explore Repeat (#10).''<br /> <br /> I lit up Bodhidharma (Chunk)'s frankly obscene castle and, taking advantage of Lightning Storm, was able to leapfrog mdk in the electrofancy ranks and steal the title from Moshing at Machu Pichu (Cosula), who was more preoccupied with stealing the top fireballer rank from Cronel, beating him by 19k at the finish line. It was the first time in the entire round our blopping numbers had looked good. It's slim pickings out there targeting all these top attacker threats you know! They have sweet fuck all peasants to roast to begin with and at best middling investments to crush. Hey let's add some sort of peasant value modifier based on prestige. One FA's peasant has got to be worth 10x an explorer's, right?<br /> <br /> '''CONCLUSION'''<br /> <br /> I hope I've been able to do my realm some justice with this roundfail, but I'm afraid I probably haven't. I haven't even covered every war, and there were a few doozies in there where we really screwed up, like our late-round war on #9 where we seem to have done basically no homework and had a &quot;fuck it lets go&quot; approach to snaring the target (Serving Thyestes' Family Dinner (mcgeeal)), who had a massive stock of plat that he just invested into walls and took our hit off the table. This round I have irl been probably the busiest I have ever been when trying to keep on top of my notes, so I'm certain I've missed a ton of key details. I didn't even talk about the time Swamp Fox joined EG by accident. Rio can't get in the damn thing and somehow Swamp Fox can't stay out of it? What is going on with guard applications? Or anything on a timer, really. Spare a thought for Oment who accidentally abandoned for a tick. At least we all know now we get one fake abandon per round if we choose to. Just say it wasn't for realsies and you didn't mean it. <br /> <br /> That said, realm #5 and this round has been one of the most fun experiences I've had in OD. Every war was a blast, and there was real excitement in our realm making all these bold plays. From the concept of our pack, to the realm comp at realm assignment, to the ruthlessness and effectiveness of our wars, to the chaos and even our mistakes, it was a wild ride from start to finish. We did something truly unique this round with the whole realm on-board. And Rio did what I thought was impossible: he proved Loki's early concept of a 'combat blopper' Dark Elf (ref: [[Round 41 The Conrad von H tzendorf of OD Strategery|roundfail round 41]] ) viable. Dangerous top attacker threat, then sui threat, finishing 8th in land and 7th in the Rush Rankings this round. He's just showing off at this point. If only he could figure out how guard works, he'd be unstoppable.<br /> <br /> Rio had also proven what I had doubted: that blops are effective in their current state. Our realm was pretty unrepresentative of a normal realm, and we likely won't see anything like this again for a while, but we were a pretty terrifying realm if you found yourself in our crosshairs. Unless your name is mcgeeal. It's the first time in a very, very long time that it felt like our blops were capable of consistently altering the course of the round in our favour. In concept and (mostly) in execution, our realm was monstrous. And so, my opinion on blops as it currently stands, for whatever it's worth: I think wiz blops are sufficiently punishing early, but they do fall off quite hard in the mid to late game. I think spy blops are somewhat inaccessible without a lot of dedicated ops and blops players, although Rio's combat blopper playstyle showed you can also be pivotal in tipping the balance as an attacker, helping to make the difference between uncertain and successful in war snare and sink campaigns. And maybe spy blops are okay like that. If you have lots of ops and blops players in your pack, you have less attackers and are forced to rely more on chance at realm assignment, which is a balance in itself. <br /> <br /> The Underground Society was amazing for us this round. It really was the jewel in our deadly blops realm crown. There was a scramble for it from several realms when realm #2 sent it back to #0 during one of our wars as a &quot;fuck you&quot;, including from #11 who did significant damage to it. Ultimately it came down to a single cyclone who got it back. While we were discussing to coordinate a chain of hits to take it down (we had estimated that it was on much higher hp than it actually was), Cronel had woken up and thrown a single cyclone at it without reading the chat, rendering it once again the property of realm #5. Other realms should count themselves lucky they didn't snipe it - it would have brought all hell down on them. But we were also lucky they didn't too, because we didn't want to have to deal with being diverted into time-wasting and damaging Wonder-wars either. <br /> <br /> Thanks to packmates Rio, Gothia, Cronel and Swamp Fox. Great dudes all. And thanks to mdk, kong, mris, phage, Music, Syscero and Gwyn for completing such a fantastic realm. Syscero in particular was a pleasant surprise for everyone - an old returning player from classic, new to OD, he picked all of the concepts up effortlessly and was exceptionally helpful with blops early on, before converting and having the usual first-time converter experience. It would have gone a lot better for him in his conversion if he hadn't been so helpful on the blops side to begin with!<br /> <br /> And while I was glad I could pull Swamp Fox out of retirement, it was not without cost. It seems every time I play with that guy our realm causes seismic waves of antiblops sentiments and this round was no different. Almost every threatening realm felt our laser at one point or another. Of course, those that got truly atomised by it only have themselves to blame - greed is risk, and you can't get angry when your gamble doesn't pay off. Well, you shouldn't get angry, anyway. And hey, if you don't agree, I've got the number for a great tattoo artist I can give you. Tell 'em Rush sent ya and they'll hide all the lasers so you don't get triggered when you arrive. <br /> <br /> Congrats to King Jota and realm #9 for the win. You guys made a great team, picked your wars wisely and coordinated well. And Jota's had a win due to him for a long time now. Glad to see he finally got it in the bag. <br /> <br /> I was Dr Evil, and I finished on 6,296 acres, and 40th place for land. Quite a bad finishing position for me, but I did suffer a dirty bottomfeed in the late game.<br /> <br /> To wrap up with a bit of fun, here's a handful of AI-generated images from realm #5 and of course the highlight of the round: https://imgur.com/a/muN2b6S<br /> <br /> '''TL;DR'''<br /> <br /> From the discord of realm #5, this round in a nutshell: https://imgur.com/a/8aLZ3UD<br /> <br /> '''RUSH'S ROUNDFAIL REPOSITORY'''<br /> <br /> You can read the full back-catalogue of my Roundfail series here: https://roundfail.blogspot.com/</div>

Sly http://wiki.opendominion.net/index.php?title=Round_44_TraditionalStory&diff=2355 2025-06-05T17:41:22Z

<p>Sly: </p> <hr /> <div>== Round 44 - Realm #4 Win Story, Traditional Version ==<br /> <br /> === Draft Round Team &amp; Races ===<br /> Wurst: Damdred and I thought we had good chances to win the FA setup if we get the right draftpicks. We also thought that **SNARE** is broken with a 5+ blop pack and that a draft round potentially secures us such a setup. Hence we picked a couple of strong FA (Dan (Lyc), Sizz (Liz), Me (Goblin)) and added 2 strong midspeed players (Sly (Spirit), Damdred (Orc)) that were supposed to use our runaway position to secure the endgame.<br /> We topped that with the amazing explorer/bloppers (DaveTheGoliath, Psychosophy , Cosula, Extravadanza). We also picked KingTitus who wanted to attack I think. <br /> Then we had Dishess in our realm randomed. A buddy of Damdred who joined the blopsquad. <br /> Few words about my strat. <br /> <br /> The plan was to play a Wolfrider (WR) OOP attacker — using GN to offset WR’s high cost. I started with a high GN Lyc sim that Rio made a few rounds ago and tweaked it for my needs. But my tweaks left me with about 600 draftees at OOP that I didn’t actually need for DP.<br /> That caught my attention.<br /> <br /> Then I remembered what MDK told me last round: “The way to win with Goblins is Raiders.” To which I — always the reflective gentleman — replied: “Forget Goblins, they suck.”<br /> The result after adding massive raiders at +0? An OOP attacker that gave up its 9-hour, but broke any DP sheet at +9. I’d hoped for a massive opener — and Chunk didn’t disappoint: a clean 125% hit gave me a solid land lead. I used the surplus in drafts to push 1:1 elite/raider mix and would pivot from it once I either run or need to push 5:4 for our mid speed races.<br /> <br /> === A Fast Start ===<br /> During the Draft Podcast, we were told that our team looked scary on paper — but also like a prime candidate for drama and early abandonments. Naturally, we laughed it off. And then… came OOP.<br /> Dan made his first hit and, just two hours later, dropped Midas. Alarm bells rang. We had Damdred call him up, and Dan told us — cheerfully, we might add — that he was out drinking with a buddy, had cast Midas, and trained rats. Then he vanished again, apparently blackout drunk. <br /> After no training the whole evening and night as a small acres lyc attacker his round was sadly over. And since he nearly had no dp incoming and he needed every draftee for dp we figured he would be more likely to feed than to be of help. Oopsie. <br /> <br /> Sly: OOP for us went well, if a bit uneventful, until we realized Dan was inactive. I got my hit pretty early on, Damdred’s Orc got 3 hits, Wurst made a solid hit. The real fireworks came with our second hits, which set the tone really for the rest of the round. Wurst had the great idea to try to catch some larger doms with the 9-hour capability of Gobbo (with spec OP from OOP), and did just that to great effect. Sizz also made a nice first hit, and my Spirit managed a player hit for my second hit.<br /> <br /> 2025-04-06 09:59:52 Victorious on the battlefield, Winton, 1 year, violating 50m restraining order (#4) conquered 61 land from Daniel Michael DeVito Jr. (#3).<br /> <br /> This hit ended up being really important IMO because 3 Dwarf (Chunk) looked very strong later in the round, and we ended up feeling the need to fireball him later.<br /> <br /> 2025-04-07 11:00:24 Bluey, indicted, pulled Val Kilmer's plug (#4) has been abandoned by its ruler.<br /> <br /> The early hits were extremely important for our speed. We kept finding solid player hits for all 3 of our main fast attackers. Things were going well, until we encountered our first challenger: Wreckage (Bobbo), the Goblin in 6. Extra was a bit low on DP, but we managed to immediately retaliate with Sizz’s Lizardfolk. Damdred also managed to make a huge hit on one of our fast competitors, the halfling in realm 2.<br /> <br /> 2025-04-07 21:59:57 Wreckage (#6) invaded fellow dominion Unicorse, death row, vexatious litigation (#4) and captured 65 land.<br /> 2025-04-08 08:14:25 Victorious on the battlefield, Bingo, life without parole, decapitating Calypso (#4) conquered 66 land from Wreckage (#6).<br /> 2025-04-08 20:01:29 Victorious on the battlefield, Muffin, grand larceny, 20 years (#4) conquered 72 land from The greatest joy of magic lies in searching for it (#2).<br /> <br /> Wurst: Contenders for our FA were: #2 Halfer (Disco), #6 Goblin (Bobbo), #9 Lyc and Liz ( SugarJon and HighLow) as well as our main contender #12 Halfling and Lizard (Erix and P@cz). We stayed in the lead with Damdred even taking out #2 Halfer with his Orc. Sizz Liz kept along and smacked #6 Goblin. Sly’s Spirit was getting in position to take over under my cover but had to push quite an inefficient build to do so. <br /> <br /> === The First Challenger ===<br /> Sly: As always, my advice is to look big, as big as possible when playing FA. Even though we were barely out of the gate, we were making big moves and our amazing ops team helped us track everything. Wurst got a massive hit on the lead 9 Gobbo, Twix (Soup), who had yet to convert—and who was far from finished having a say in the round. I also then delayed a hit on an explorer in 9 Frosty Franco (who had huge drafts stacked) so that Wurst could follow, giving him back to back large hits.<br /> <br /> 2025-04-10 15:59:37 Victorious on the battlefield, Winton, 1 year, violating 50m restraining order (#4) conquered 112 land from Al-twixander The Great (#9).<br /> 2025-04-11 02:59:39 Victorious on the battlefield, Snickers, 6 months, Overdue DVD Rentals (#4) conquered 97 land from Frosty Franco (#9).<br /> 2025-04-11 03:00:15 Victorious on the battlefield, Winton, 1 year, violating 50m restraining order (#4) conquered 74 land from Frosty Franco (#9). <br /> <br /> Wurst: After those takedowns, Damdred’s Orc fell a bit behind. The Revenge hit from Wreckage on Damdred sealed his fate sadly. <br /> <br /> 2025-04-13 06:34:34 Wreckage (#6) invaded fellow dominion Muffin, grand larceny, 20 years (#4) and captured 69 land.<br /> <br /> Sly: We were confused by this as Wreckage had pushed huge OP and had much better hits available for more land, but in a classic MERF-realm fashion, desire for revenge outweighed pure improvement/winning chances. Team mcgeeal became an enemy, and we would later exact payment. Our goal was to finish winning the fast race as soon as possible. Main threats a week in appeared to be 12 Halfer Ulysses (Erix), 9 Lyc (Sugarjon), and Wreckage still training high OP. There were a lot of second tier guys too hanging around still.<br /> <br /> === The Thorn in my Side ===<br /> Sly: Wust continued to make very solid hits in his bid to run. Sizz and I managed to keep up militarily, but Wurst’s land lead would prove decisive. I dropped huge temples to catch 6 Merfolk, Deep Six (InternetFett) as well, who I thought looked very good and would be annoying later in the round if not dealt with.<br /> <br /> 2025-04-13 18:59:49 Victorious on the battlefield, Winton, 1 year, violating 50m restraining order (#4) conquered 94 land from 🧟HIGANSTOLDAWIN HIGANTE GI TULI ANG DWENDE🧟 (#10).<br /> 2025-04-16 04:45:52 Victorious on the battlefield, Winton, 1 year, violating 50m restraining order (#4) conquered 92 land from Aaron Hernandez (#5).<br /> 2025-04-16 18:14:17 Victorious on the battlefield, Winton, 1 year, violating 50m restraining order (#4) conquered 95 land from The greatest joy of magic lies in searching for it (#2).<br /> 2025-04-18 18:59:58 Victorious on the battlefield, Snickers, 6 months, Overdue DVD Rentals (#4) conquered 112 land from Deep Six (#6).<br /> <br /> Wurst: Two weeks in, I had a pretty massive lead — but hadn’t fully pulled the trigger yet. 12 Halfer was still a constant thorn in our side, and 6 Gobbo kept overtraining OP after every hit. I dropped some specs to hit Zar’s Human in #8 — the hit landed clean. Then I realized: if we can snare him, I can go back-to-back. So we pulled the team together and, for the first time this round, coordinated a snare to set up the double tap.<br /> On the first send, I was technically hittable by a suicide from Erix. But we figured it was worth the gamble — Sly and Sizzler would bite chunks out of him in return, and maybe even me. Plus, our broader plan was to get Sly into the lead, so the risk felt justified. Erix didn’t bite. Yet…<br /> <br /> 2025-04-21 07:59:54 Victorious on the battlefield, Winton, 1 year, violating 50m restraining order (#4) conquered 146 land from I wish we came up with a better theme (#8).<br /> 2025-04-22 01:51:53 ̶T̶h̶e̶ ̶F̶a̶i̶r̶y̶ ̶G̶a̶r̶d̶e̶n̶ Unicorse #1 (#4) has declared WAR on I wish you didn't (#8).<br /> 2025-04-22 04:15:12 Victorious on the battlefield, Winton, 1 year, violating 50m restraining order (#4) conquered 126 land from I wish we came up with a better theme (#8). <br /> <br /> Wurst: Once I moved out of Erix’s range, he set his sights on our top contender: Sly’s Spirit. From the sidelines, I had to watch as Sly got dragged deeper and deeper into the DP spiral. With his inefficient build, he didn’t have the staying power to outlast Erix in a slow game. So, Sly made the call: switched back to OP, took a suicide hit from Erix, and hit him right back.<br /> <br /> Unfortunately, that wasn’t the end of it. Erix barely stayed within 75%, and his Lizard was quietly massing solid OP too. The pressure kept mounting, slowing Sly down further. Eventually, he had to throw in the towel and deconvert — joining our growing Blop squad for the late game.<br /> <br /> Sly: Erix played it really well, despite his goal being obvious to us in slowing Wurst and/or myself down specifically. There were times when he dropped specs and I thought he was surely hitting me, but he didn’t. The difficulty for me in this phase of the round was that personally I wanted to just keep hitting and not defend him, forcing him to trade ASAP, thereby removing him as a threat which would enable either Wurst or I to run earlier. But before Wurst was out of his range, the issue would be that we’d find him a hit, but him going OOR of the halfer would mean it would free Erix up to hit me without Wurst being able to benefit. So we had this back and forth where I’d make a call saying I wasn’t going to defend him, then Wurst finding a hit prompting me to push huge spec DP asap to defend him so that Wurst could hit.<br /> <br /> Ultimately it all worked out, though I think I probably mishandled this situation—but give credit to Erix where it’s due. Erix ended up suiciding me after I was already dead (they wanted to be sure, fair enough I guess), but in so doing he ended up feeding both of the very nice looking dwarves… Oh, realm 6 also tried to snare me but I was online and barely got the AC cast off.<br /> <br /> 2025-04-23 04:59:28 Ulysses STACKED Grant (#12) invaded fellow dominion Snickers, 6 months, Overdue DVD Rentals (#4) and captured 194 land.<br /> 2025-04-23 05:11:46 Victorious on the battlefield, Snickers, 6 months, Overdue DVD Rentals (#4) conquered 138 land from Ulysses STACKED Grant (#12).<br /> <br /> === Running Away ===<br /> Wurst: #6 had warred us earlier in the round, targeting our Lyc Explorer (Psychosophy) and Sly — probably thinking back then they had better odds against them than against a spec-heavy Goblin like me. But now? It was payback time.<br /> <br /> McGeal, their Lyc Explorer, was greedily expanding without proper spy coverage. So we did what we do best — the classic sequence: Hit someone, push OP, snare, go again. With that, and the hit on #12’s Merfolk earlier, I now had a massive land lead and could build up a ton of DM. At this point, new contenders started popping up. #9 Goblin Al-Twix (Soup), a converting Goblin, was able to force me into some DP. But he lacked the numbers to grow into my range. We actually considered his OP overtraining a hidden blessing — it made efficient races in other realms hesitate to send under him. So thanks for that, Soup.<br /> <br /> 2025-04-27 14:51:10 I'm thinking about it... (#4) has declared WAR on And now you know (#6).<br /> 2025-04-27 19:12:50 Victorious on the battlefield, Winton, 1 year, violating 50m restraining order (#4) conquered 261 land from Keel-Haul (#6).<br /> <br /> Then came #3 Dwarf — suddenly a real threat with solid 5:4 and a growing mod push. We saw he was gearing up for a fast acre grab, so we decided to hit him preemptively. Some good old-fashioned fireball spam later, and he never really recovered. Another one off the board.<br /> <br /> 2025-04-29 19:58:15 Unicorse and his humble servants (#4) has declared WAR on We’re too old for this shit! (#3).<br /> <br /> === Twin Goblins, and Realm 12 ===<br /> Wurst: #9 Goblin Al-Twix brought in backup: his smaller Goblin buddy Ho-Chi (Tidnab) was edging into my range. Looked like they were setting up a classic pincer. I kept an eye on him and noticed he didn’t cast AC. So i pumped op and the tick before he was hittable, I dumped gem, ore, and lumber into my forge and pushed OP. Broke him AC off — by just 0.1% OP. Later, Tidnab told me they knew I was coming the next tick and planned to bounce me. Well... you’ve got to wake up earlier to catch an old fox.<br /> <br /> 2025-05-02 01:28:22 Victorious on the battlefield, Winton, 1 year, violating 50m restraining order (#4) conquered 253 land from Dwight D. EisenPOWER (#12).<br /> 2025-05-02 18:01:44 Victorious on the battlefield, Winton, 1 year, violating 50m restraining order (#4) conquered 199 land from Ho Chi Minh Mochi (#9).<br /> <br /> Elated by that slick hit, we made a blunder: We declared war on #12 at literally the worst possible moment. Their Nomad and Human looked like the most threatening endgame contenders — but they hadn’t made a hit in ages therefore sitting on low peasants, diminishing our fireball damage. Also Sizzler just deconverted hours ago, leaving no op threat versus them.<br /> <br /> They reacted immediately. They mutualed. Jboy, the Nomad, dropped mass GN + Temples and started ramping OP. Our big explorers managed to stay safe by anticipating the spike, but Sizz was toast. Knowing he’d feed at least once, he slammed the Abandon button — and we tried to delay the incoming hit with a snare.<br /> <br /> Didn’t work. Jboy slapped him for an 85% mutual war hit and had the OP to 9h him again. Absolutely brutal. Big misplay on our part. But just when things looked bleak — #8 Dwarf (Harm) came out of nowhere and whacked Jboy with a clean 100% hit. Left himself open for a retal, but it gave us an opening. Jboy was still our biggest threat. We had to stop the 9h.<br /> <br /> Enter: the Blop Pack. We tried something nuts — snaring him for nine freaking hours. It came down to the wire several times, but someone always logged in with just enough spy power to keep the snare alive. What looked like a disaster... turned into a pretty sweet turnaround.<br /> <br /> 2025-05-02 19:58:53 Unicorse and his loyal subjects (#4) has declared WAR on ABS-olutely I do (#12).<br /> 2025-05-02 20:59:13 We'll get you, and your little dogs too! (#12) has declared WAR on Unicorse and his loyal subjects (#4). <br /> 2025-05-03 20:59:03 James 6. PACK (#12) invaded fellow dominion Bingo, life without parole, decapitating Calypso (#4) and captured 226 land.<br /> 2025-05-03 21:44:24 I wish I had a rabbit in a hat with a bat (#8) invaded James 6. PACK (#12) and captured 245 land.<br /> 2025-05-05 05:07:58 The Ancient Library has been destroyed and rebuilt by Realm (#4).<br /> 2025-05-05 06:00:27 Bingo, life without parole, decapitating Calypso (#4) has been abandoned by its ruler.<br /> <br /> === Final Phase: Snares Galore, and Realm 7 ===<br /> Sly: We felt comfortable (maybe except for Wurst) going into the final phase of the round. Yes, 7 looked very strong, but I felt they were simply too far behind at this point to pose a serious danger without EXCESSIVE feeding, which seemed nearly impossible since everyone had been forced to defend Wurst’s OP already. We started a gameplan of making a snare hit on a realm, then having Wurst leave the guard for a war BF into the same realm afterwards, then rejoining guard. It worked well.<br /> <br /> 2025-05-05 21:30:26 Can't skip leg day when you have no legs!!! &lt;3 Unicorse (#4) has declared WAR on Don't even think about it (#5).<br /> 2025-05-06 04:59:08 Victorious on the battlefield, Winton, 1 year, violating 50m restraining order (#4) conquered 273 land from Timothy Tebowington (#5).<br /> 2025-05-07 04:59:10 Victorious on the battlefield, Winton, 1 year, violating 50m restraining order (#4) conquered 213 land from Tony Dickerson (#5).<br /> <br /> We went back to realm 6’s well yet again, and this hit required a ton of effort and coordination on our part to make happen as the margins were extremely tight.<br /> <br /> 2025-05-11 00:41:08 GI Joes are for kids. OD is a game for cartoon dogs. (#4) has declared WAR on Cobra Rising (#6).<br /> 2025-05-11 00:50:38 Victorious on the battlefield, Winton, 1 year, violating 50m restraining order (#4) conquered 316 land from Keel-Haul (#6).<br /> 2025-05-12 00:37:46 Victorious on the battlefield, Winton, 1 year, violating 50m restraining order (#4) conquered 231 land from Skidmark (#6).<br /> <br /> Sly: We warred realm 7 for the first time as they were the clear late-round threat, doing damage anywhere and everywhere we could with the army of explorers at our disposal. They had a bunch of possible threats: a strong Orc (kongb), Icekin (Lud), up-and-coming WE (Faith), and a Nomad (mdk) who I was concerned would BF into Wurst’s range and then pump GN/temps to limit him while the Orc/Icer hit under us. I thought it was curious at the time that they decided to use the Orc to push 5:4 OP, which effectively meant he would never send again unless he left a ton of OP home. The Icekin basically did the opposite, training enough DP to at times defend Wurst fully and kept hitting with the OP he had. At the time I was more afraid of the opposite, but Lud explained:<br /> <br /> :''“We considered but it was an issue of dp and time -- if I pushed 5:4 I was pretty trivially hittable because IE turtle sucks. And same with orc dp sucking. Orc couldn't get safe himself, and if he pushed for hits he would either be hittable, but more likely we thought wurst would just 9h hit me in reply. And even in extended trades we thought any land lead would be insurmountable given the # hits required to match his land lead as it was around day 40. So even though orc was much stronger, he and the nomad were the only ones that could safely push op while in range.”''<br /> <br /> Fair enough, and perhaps the right conclusion in hindsight considering I didn’t think Wurst’s land lead was surmountable either way. We calculated that Wurst only needed one more BF to be clear of their future 8k finisher Gobbo explorer Dark Mines (Gorgh).<br /> <br /> 2025-05-13 15:35:26 GI Joes are for kids. OD is a game for cartoon dogs. (#4) has declared WAR on There can be no peace (#7).<br /> 2025-05-17 02:58:34 Victorious on the battlefield, Winton, 1 year, violating 50m restraining order (#4) conquered 230 land from Barack SWOLEbama (#12).<br /> <br /> And that was it! Wurst was the inevitable winner.<br /> <br /> === Wurst’s Acknowledgements ===<br /> Damdred – You really put together one hell of a team and led with unwavering dedication. You stayed a true captain till the end—always motivating, fully engaged, and spreading that energy to every one of us. Thank you for an incredibly fun round.<br /> <br /> Dan – As someone in our realm said: “Easiest round win ever for you” 😅. Just kidding. We liked having you around as our mascot, and I’d still always pack with you. :*<br /> <br /> Sly – What a joy it was to pack with you. Great understanding of the game, great tactical awareness. And when I hit a low point, you were the one who pulled me out of the mud.<br /> <br /> Sizzler – My OG. I was so happy when I saw your registration and couldn’t believe my luck when Damdred drafted you. It’s always great playing with you. Your ability to read the board and to always remain calm helped me a lot.<br /> <br /> DaveTheGoliath – Someone I hadn’t played with before, and I totally fell in love with your style. Proactive, engaged, smart and a joy to talk to. Youre everything one could wish fron a packmate!<br /> <br /> Psychosophy – Thank you! I think in a way, you’re the one who sacrificed the most for this win. #6 disbanded 500 spies—you retrained 1,000. You could’ve pushed your exploring advantage, but instead, you decided to go heavy on ops eating tons of blops during our wars. Once again, it was a great pleasure to play with you. Your zealotism against McGeal after their first war on us was a constant source of joy.<br /> <br /> Cosula – Feels like you’re a packmate now, with how often we land together! You also went beyond your limits and played a tremendous round. Always there when it mattered—and always ready to throw some fireballs!<br /> <br /> Extravadanza – Oh boy. I often forgot you’re a new player because you showed such a great understanding of the game and insane activity. And your meme game even won you Meme of the Round. I hope we play again in the future—it was a pleasure.<br /> <br /> Dishness – Also a new player who immediately understood how the game works. You became a full-fledged member of the blop division in no time and needed little to no guidance.<br /> This win was 100% a team win. The amount of activity, engagement, and support everyone in this group brought was something I’ve never experienced before. One person missing and we wouldnt have done it. A big heartfelt thank you to all of you.</div>

Sly http://wiki.opendominion.net/index.php?title=Round_44&diff=2354 2025-06-05T17:40:56Z

<p>Sly: </p> <hr /> <div>{{Round_finish<br /> | round = 44<br /> | round_id = 66<br /> <br /> | winner_player = [[User:Wurstmeyer|Wurstmeyer ]]<br /> | winner_dominion = Winton, 1 year, violating 50m restraining order<br /> | winner_race = Goblin<br /> <br /> | second_player = [[User:Gorgh|Gorgh]]<br /> | second_dominion = Dark Mines<br /> | second_race = Goblin<br /> <br /> | third_player = [[User:Lud|Lud]]<br /> | third_dominion = Dominion Players Ruined Dating Sims<br /> | third_race = Icekin<br /> }}<br /> <br /> == Round 44 Draft ==<br /> [[Round_44_draft|Round 44 Draft]]<br /> <br /> == Top 100 Results ==<br /> <br /> [[Round 44 Top 100 Finishers|Round 44 top 100]]<br /> <br /> == Round 44 - Realm #4 Win Story ==<br /> <br /> Wurst:<br /> Damdred, our draft captain and undisputed MVP of the pen, took it upon himself to write our round win story — not as a dry recap, but as a full-on Bluey episode script, staying true to our team's theme. Sly and me added our annotations for future readers and OpenDominion purists who might want to decode the references or just relive the round.<br /> I will post here a combination of all three versions. On Sly’s Page [[Round_44_TraditionalStory|(Traditional Story)]] you will find the purist form, on Damdreds the Bluey Scripts alone. Enjoy!<br /> <br /> <br /> Damdred: Forward: Our round win could not be complete without thanking the man behind it all and contributing the most to it. Thank you, McGeal, without you, we couldn’t have won.<br /> <br /> <br /> Damdred: While this is an odd format for the winner story, I had fun doing it, it was time-consuming, and I had some editing help even to get it into the correct format. Special thanks to Wurst for adding his notes to make it more easily understood and something that will stand the test of time in this game. This assembled team was excellent and something that should be aspired to. We made the game boring for over a month, we sacrificed our doms' scores to get the win, we changed sleeping patterns, and we dedicated our time and energy to one another. I could not have asked for a better team.<br /> <br /> =Draft Round Team &amp; Races=<br /> Wurst: Damdred and I thought we had good chances to win the FA setup if we get the right draftpicks. We also thought that Snare is broken with a 5+ blop pack and that a draft round potentially secures us such a setup. Hence we picked a couple of strong FA (Dan (Lyc), Sizz (Liz), Me (Goblin)) and added 2 strong midspeed players (Sly (Spirit), Damdred (Orc)) that were supposed to use our runaway position to secure the endgame.<br /> <br /> <br /> We topped that with the amazing explorers/bloppers (DaveTheGoliath, Psychosophy , Cosula, Extravadanza). We also picked KingTitus who wanted to attack I think.<br /> Then we had Dishess in our realm randomed. A buddy of Damdred who joined the blopsquad.<br /> <br /> <br /> Few words about my strat.<br /> <br /> The plan was to play a Wolfrider (WR) OOP attacker — using GN to offset WR’s high cost. I started with a high GN Lyc sim that Rio made a few rounds ago and tweaked it for my needs. But my tweaks left me with about 600 draftees at OOP that I didn’t actually need for DP.<br /> <br /> That caught my attention.<br /> <br /> Then I remembered what MDK told me last round: “The way to win with Goblins is Raiders.” To which I — always the reflective gentleman — replied: “Forget Goblins, they suck.”<br /> The result after adding massive raiders at +0? An OOP attacker that gave up its 9-hour, but broke any DP sheet at +9. I’d hoped for a massive opener — and Chunk didn’t disappoint: a clean 125% hit gave me a solid land lead. I used the surplus in drafts to push 1:1 elite/raider mix and would pivot from it once I either run or need to push 5:4 for our mid speed races.<br /> <br /> <br /> &lt;blockquote&gt;<br /> Episode 1: &quot;Dantheman Abandons&quot;<br /> Episode Length: 7 minutes<br /> <br /> <br /> [Opening Scene – The Playroom]<br /> Bluey, Bingo, and their friends are setting up a big board game called OverDominon, full of tokens, dice, mini castles, and “Feeders” made from cereal boxes.<br /> Muffin: “Okay, team, four hits and a dream!”<br /> Bingo: “Feeders are giving away free land!”<br /> Wurst (Wearing a winner's crown): “Long live the Realm!”<br /> Everyone cheers and rolls the dice. The game is going well.<br /> <br /> [Scene – Imagination Sequence Begins]<br /> The board transforms into a magical battlefield, with floating castles and glowing golden artifacts. Dantheman (played by Bluey’s cousin Dan in golden armor) has a shiny staff called Midas and Ares.<br /> Narrator (Muffin): “It was a good day in the Realm. Everyone was training. Feeders were generous to other realms, sadly. The war plan was solid.”<br /> [Scene – Castle Command Post]<br /> Wurst and Damdred are talking about the main character (Bluey, Dan)<br /> Wurst: “Hey… where’s Dan’s Midas?”<br /> Muffin: “Wait… he let it drop?!”<br /> They rush to the Communication Tower (a cardboard box with wires and blinking lights) without Dan's reply.<br /> Muffin: “I’ll try the Phone Scroll. And the Text Crystal!”<br /> The magic scroll lights up. Dantheman quickly casts Midas.<br /> Muffin: “Phew! That was close…”<br /> <br /> [Nightfall – In the Realm]<br /> The moon is up. The others are training. But Dantheman’s castle is quiet.<br /> Muffin: “Still no training?”<br /> Winton: “Something’s wrong…”<br /> Bandit (as Realm Wizard): “He’s gone dark. The sauce got him.”<br /> [Flashback – Dantheman at a Tavern]<br /> Dantheman clinks two tiny glasses and immediately falls asleep under the table.<br /> <br /> [Next Morning – The Battlefield]<br /> The team gathers. Dantheman stumbles in, looking guilty.<br /> Dantheman: “I… got into the sauce. Two drinks. Sorry.”<br /> Bingo (concerned): “But the Realm! The round!”<br /> Muffin (sighs): “It’s over for him. He’s abandoning.”<br /> They all look downcast.<br /> [Sudden Entry – Titus (Marcos in a dramatic helmet)]<br /> Titus (shouting): “DANTHEMAN, YOU NINCOMPOOP! WE NEEDED YOU!”<br /> Everyone freezes.<br /> Bandit calmly: &quot; Okay, deep breaths, team…”<br /> <br /> [Later – The Strategy Table]<br /> The Realm places a mini flag where Dantheman’s castle used to be. The team is quiet.<br /> Muffin: “It’s frustrating. But maybe this is better than feeding out.”<br /> Bingo: “Yeah… I still like Dantheman. He’s just not ready for this quest.”<br /> Bandit: “Even in games, sometimes teammates mess up. What matters is how we move forward.”<br /> [Cutaway – Strategy Map Wall]<br /> Realm 9: “Liz and Lyc”<br /> Realm 12: “Liz and Halfer”<br /> Realm 2 or 8: “Possible Jmercs Realm (Don’t poke the bear)”<br /> Muffin (thinking): “Lots of strong realms out there. We’ll have to be smart.”<br /> <br /> [Closing Scene – The Backyard]<br /> They put away the game pieces, but leave Dantheman’s helmet on the table, like a little tribute.<br /> Bluey (smiling): “Next round, we stick together. No sauce. No slips.”<br /> Bingo: “And no yelling!”<br /> Titus (off-screen): “I HEARD THAT!”<br /> Everyone laughs.<br /> [End Theme Plays]<br /> &lt;/blockquote&gt;<br /> &lt;blockquote&gt;<br /> Title: “Winton's Big Hit”<br /> Episode Length: 7 minutes<br /> <br /> [Opening Scene – The Backyard]<br /> Muffin, Bingo, Snickers, and Winton are gathered around a massive hand-drawn board on the grass. It’s a fantasy game called “Open Dominion.”<br /> In the background, a hand-drawn picture of Bluey can be seen, with him under a table asleep, never forgotten.<br /> Snickers: “The Feeders are open again! We can take their land!”<br /> Muffin: “Only if we work together. No rogue missions!”<br /> Winton (excited): “Let me try this time! I’ve got a plan!”<br /> They all look at him doubtfully.<br /> Bingo: “Are you sure? Last time you… accidentally conquered your realm.”<br /> Winton gulps. “I’m ready. This time, I brought a map.”<br /> Bandit (walking by with a rake): “Ooh, a big strategy day, huh?”<br /> <br /> [Scene – Imagination Realm Begins]<br /> The backyard transforms into a sprawling, magical battlefield with glowing paths and giant scrolls. Winton becomes General Winton, a brave but chaotic tactician, transforming into a go-kart.<br /> Narrator (Snickers): “There was tension in the Realm. Without Winton doing well, the realm was doomed.”<br /> The team is gathered around a war table (made from an old door). A giant 50m scroll floats, marked &quot;Restraining Order.&quot;<br /> Bluey (serious): “That scroll says Winton can’t go near Realm #3…”<br /> Winton: “I’m not going near. I’m going through!”<br /> <br /> [Scene – The Big Move]<br /> Winton charges toward the map’s center. Dramatic music plays (hummed by Bingo). A die is thrown.<br /> Snickers (gasping): “Winton’s hit! Realm 3 is falling! Look!”<br /> Winton’s little cardboard sword lights up (with a battery-powered fairy light). Land tiles flip over dramatically.<br /> Bingo: “Winton just took 61 tiles from Daniel Michael DeVito Jr.! That’s our biggest hit ever!”<br /> <br /> [Scene – The Celebration]<br /> The Realm erupts into cheers. Confetti (leaves) flies through the air. Snickers does a spin.<br /> Bluey: “We’re streaking! We’re streaking up the leaderboard!”<br /> Bandit (as Wizard Judge): “Victory declared! No chance of retaliation! Realm 3... is toast!”<br /> Winton beams with pride.<br /> <br /> [Scene – Quiet Moment by the Tower]<br /> Snickers and Winton sit on the steps of the Feeder Tower (a large upside-down laundry basket).<br /> Winton: “I didn’t think I could do it…”<br /> Snickers (smiling): “Well, you broke a 50m restraining scroll, but it was heroic.”<br /> Winton: “Does this mean I’m a real Winner now?”<br /> Snickers: “You’ve always been one.”<br /> &lt;/blockquote&gt;<br /> <br /> =A Fast Start=<br /> During the Draft Podcast, we were told that our team looked scary on paper — but also like a prime candidate for drama and early abandonments. Naturally, we laughed it off. And then… came OOP.<br /> <br /> <br /> Dan made his first hit and, just two hours later, dropped Midas. Alarm bells rang. We had Damdred call him up, and Dan told us — cheerfully, we might add — that he was out drinking with a buddy, had cast Midas, and trained rats. Then he vanished again, apparently blackout drunk.<br /> After no training the whole evening and night as a small acres lyc attacker his round was sadly over. And since he nearly had no dp incoming and he needed every draftee for dp we figured he would be more likely to feed than to be of help. Oopsie.<br /> <br /> <br /> Sly: OOP for us went well, if a bit uneventful, until we realized Dan was inactive. I got my hit pretty early on, Damdred’s Orc got 3 hits, Wurst made a solid hit. The real fireworks came with our second hits, which set the tone really for the rest of the round. Wurst had the great idea to try to catch some larger doms with the 9-hour capability of Gobbo (with spec OP from OOP), and did just that to great effect. Sizz also made a nice first hit, and my Spirit managed a player hit for my second hit.<br /> <br /> <br /> 2025-04-06 09:59:52 Victorious on the battlefield, Winton, 1 year, violating 50m restraining order (#4) conquered 61 land from Daniel Michael DeVito Jr. (#3).<br /> <br /> <br /> This hit ended up being really important IMO because 3 Dwarf (Chunk) looked very strong later in the round, and we ended up feeling the need to fireball him later.<br /> <br /> <br /> 2025-04-07 11:00:24 Bluey, indicted, pulled Val Kilmer's plug (#4) has been abandoned by its ruler.<br /> <br /> <br /> &lt;blockquote&gt; Title: &quot;Timeout Trouble&quot;<br /> Episode Length: 7 minutes<br /> <br /> [Opening Scene – The Backyard]<br /> Bluey and Bingo are playing a game called Realm Defenders. They’re wearing capes and holding cardboard swords. Their dog dad, Bandit, is helping build a cardboard “Feeder Tower.”<br /> Bluey: “We have to protect the Realm! The Feeders are under attack!”<br /> Bingo: “Quick, activate the Information Ops!”<br /> Bandit (in a silly villain voice): “Mwahaha! I’m Lord Leaky! I’m going to mess up your whole system!”<br /> [Scene – Imagination Transition]<br /> Suddenly, the cardboard world transforms into a grand fantasy realm. The sky darkens. Sir Dantheman (Bluey) rides a flying dragon, while Knight Marcos (a significant, proud pup character) patrols the skies.<br /> Narrator (Bluey): “Last week, the Realm faced a terrible betrayal…”<br /> [Flashback Sequence]<br /> Marcos swoops down and scolds Dantheman for falling asleep on dragon duty.<br /> Marcos (sternly): “How can you guard the Realm if you’re snoring in the clouds, Dantheman?! You’re letting us all down!”<br /> Dantheman looks hurt and droops his ears.<br /> [Scene – Present Day in the Realm]<br /> Suddenly, the Realm wakes up to a shock.<br /> Bingo (gasps): “Knight Marcos is in... TIMEOUT?!”<br /> Everyone in the Realm runs around in a frenzy—the Feeder Tower wobbles. The cardboard guards panic.<br /> Bandit (as Rulekeeper): “A message from the Rules Committee! Knight Marcos has been… information sharing without the Info Ops!”<br /> Bluey: “He did hits on the Feeders without telling anyone?!”<br /> Bingo (confused): “But… that’s against the Realm Code!”<br /> Bandit: “He’s going to permanent timeout, I’m afraid.”<br /> [Scene – The Realm Meeting Circle]<br /> The defenders gather around. Dantheman (Bluey) stands up.<br /> Bluey: “Even if Marcos was mean, he was still part of the Realm. And now we’ve lost two knights…”<br /> Bingo: “What do we do now?”<br /> Bandit (kindly): “Sometimes people break the rules, even if they didn’t mean to. But rules help keep the Realm safe for everyone.”<br /> Bluey (thoughtful): “I guess… even heroes need to follow the rules.”<br /> [Scene – Return to Backyard Reality]<br /> The cardboard Realm is a little quiet now. Two of the knight costumes lie empty on the ground.<br /> Bluey: “We’ll keep playing. And make sure everyone knows the rules next time.”<br /> Bingo: “Yeah. And maybe we give Dantheman a nap break once in a while.”<br /> Bandit (smiling): “Good thinking, Realm Defenders.”<br /> <br /> [Closing Shot]<br /> Bluey and Bingo tape a little scroll to the Feeder Tower that says:<br /> “Realm Code: Always Share Info. Never Yell. Take Naps.”<br /> They laugh and run off into a new adventure.<br /> [End Theme Plays]<br /> &lt;/blockquote&gt;<br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> &lt;blockquote&gt;<br /> Title: &quot;Muffin's Move&quot;<br /> Episode Length: 7 minutes<br /> <br /> [Opening Scene – The Living Room]<br /> Bluey, Bingo, Snickers, Winton, and Muffin are huddled around a “Strategy Mat” made of blankets, board game tiles, and cereal box castles. Bandit’s lounging nearby with a cup of coffee, casually observing.<br /> Muffin (pacing): “Okay, we’ve got a situation… Atilla the Lizard just took a HUGE bite out of Realm 6!”<br /> Bluey (pointing at the map): “Look at all that land! Is he trying to win everything?!”<br /> Winton: “He might’ve left his back door open…”<br /> Snickers: “But your army is only… 12 stronger than his defense. If he invests—”<br /> Muffin (cutting in): “I know! That’s why we have to plan. Now!”<br /> Bandit (smiling): “Wow. Someone's serious about Realm Defense today.”<br /> <br /> [Scene – Imagination Realm Begins]<br /> The house becomes a vast command center in the clouds. Muffin is General Muffinia, sitting in a floating throne surrounded by glowing blue war maps. Everyone is in fantasy gear—Snickers with spy goggles, Winton with scrolls, Bingo with a logic wand, and Bandit as the Realm Historian.<br /> Narrator (Muffin): “It was a day of long councils. Atilla the Lizard had taken land—too much land—and left his realm exposed.”<br /> Bingo: “We need to calculate our magic force again.”<br /> Winton: “Plus or minus twelve points… If he even sneezes on defense, we’re doomed.”<br /> Snickers: “We’ve been running numbers for four hours. We’re out of juice!”<br /> Bandit (helpfully): “Want me to bring some juice?”<br /> Muffin: “No! There’s no time for juice!”<br /> <br /> [Sudden Twist – The Scroll Alert Sounds]<br /> The glowing scroll on the wall flashes red. Everyone gasps.<br /> Bluey: “The Big Lizard—he’s been HIT! By the Joy of Magic Realm!”<br /> Winton: “That Realm is like... the wizard kings! How did they sneak through?!”<br /> Snickers: “Atilla left even less defense than we thought!”<br /> Muffin’s eyes glow. She stands up dramatically.<br /> Muffin (epically): “There’s no more waiting. It’s time.”<br /> She slams her hand onto the glowing red INVADE button.<br /> <br /> [Scene – The Invasion]<br /> Fireworks explode from the clouds. A glowing number “72” appears above Muffinia’s flying castle. The land flips colors from green to pink.<br /> Bandit (amazed): “Seventy-two?! That’s huge!”<br /> Bingo: “We’ve never hit that much before!”<br /> Snickers (whispering): “It’s Muffin’s moment…”<br /> Muffin (grinning): “I told you I was good at this game.”<br /> <br /> [Closing Scene – Backyard]<br /> The kids remove their capes and gently stack their fantasy pieces in a box. Muffin holds onto her “72 Land Token” and smiles.<br /> Winton: “So… now what?”<br /> Muffin (proudly): “Now I rest. My part of the tale… is over.”<br /> Bandit (chuckling): “That’s one way to go out. With a bang.”<br /> Bluey: “She’ll never let us forget it.”<br /> Muffin: “You're right! I won’t!”<br /> Everyone laughs.<br /> [End Theme Plays]<br /> &lt;/blockquote&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;blockquote&gt;<br /> Title: &quot;Just One More Hit&quot;<br /> Episode Length: 7 minutes<br /> <br /> [Opening Scene – The Dining Room Table]<br /> Everyone’s back at work: game pieces, paper flags, and dice cover the table. Muffin’s wearing a homemade “72” medal around her neck.<br /> Bingo (drawing with a marker): “We’re so close to the top of the leaderboard!”<br /> Snickers: “But Realm 9 is still out there… with way too many draftees.”<br /> Winton (nervous): “Draftees are scary…”<br /> Bandit (adjusting his glasses): “That’s why you’ll need everyone.”<br /> Bluey (grinning): “Well, let’s do it together.”<br /> <br /> [Scene – Imagination Realm Begins]<br /> A fantasy orchestral swell plays. The dining table transforms into a sky-battleship deck, with everyone dressed in sleek black stealth armor. A glowing silhouette of Al-twixander the Great looms in the clouds, made of stacked dice and popcorn armor.<br /> Narrator (Bingo): “There were a lot of great attacks this round. So many, we couldn’t even name them all…”<br /> [Cut to dreamy flash scenes of Snickers spinning into action, Bingo casting lightning, and Winton tiptoeing across a trap-laden bridge.]<br /> Narrator: “But today’s story… is about making magic together.”<br /> <br /> [Scene – The Strategy Bridge]<br /> Bandit and Frisky are scanning the horizon from a tall crow’s nest (a stepladder with tinsel).<br /> Frisky (pointing): “There! Al-twixander The Great! Too many draftees, not enough troops!”<br /> Bandit (to the team): “He doesn’t know we can reach him. But it’ll take everyone.”<br /> Bingo: “Are we sure this’ll work?”<br /> Snickers: “Only if we stab, stab, stab!”<br /> Everyone stares.<br /> Snickers (shrugging): “What? That’s the plan!”<br /> <br /> [Scene – The Assassination Run]<br /> The lights dim to “night mode.” Sneaky music plays. Each kid takes a turn “striking” on the board with chopsticks, plucking tokens from Al-twixander’s stacks.<br /> Muffin (whispering): “Go now, before he notices!”<br /> Snickers: “Slice!”<br /> Bingo: “Zap!”<br /> Winton (giggling): “Poke!”<br /> With each move, the tower of popcorn armor crumbles.<br /> Bandit (dramatically): “And then… came Winton.”<br /> <br /> [Scene – Victory Shot]<br /> Winton steps forward, his cardboard sword now upgraded with stickers. A golden glow surrounds him.<br /> Narrator (Bluey): “Victorious on the battlefield, Winton, age 1, violating the 50m restraining scroll, conquered 112 lands from Al-twixander the Great.”<br /> BOOM! Glitter explodes (cut-up paper confetti). The board erupts in cheers.<br /> Muffin: “That’s our biggest hit yet!”<br /> Snickers: “We’re on top!”<br /> Bingo: “Just one more hit!”<br /> Everyone starts chanting softly: “One more hit… one more hit…”<br /> <br /> [Closing Scene – The Couch Fort]<br /> They gather inside a couch fort they’ve turned into “Realm HQ.” Muffin hands Winton a tiny sticker that says “112.”<br /> Juane: “We wouldn’t have done it without everyone.”<br /> Bandit (smiling): “That’s the thing about magic—it’s better when it’s shared.”<br /> Winton: “What do we do now?”<br /> Snickers: “Easy. Just… one more hit!”<br /> Everyone laughs and dives into a pile of cushions.<br /> [End Theme Plays]<br /> &lt;/blockquote&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;blockquote&gt;<br /> Title: &quot;Frosty Loves to Give&quot;<br /> Episode Length: 7 minutes<br /> <br /> [Opening Scene – The Treehouse]<br /> Bluey, Bingo, Muffin, Winton, and Snickers are in the treehouse with a stack of maps, glittery flags, and juice boxes. A paper scroll marked “Realm 9” hangs on the wall with doodles of a snowman in armor.<br /> Snickers: “We’ve been watching Realm 9 for hours. All they do is wander around exploring!”<br /> Winton: “Train, train, train... That’s all we do!”<br /> Muffin (tapping the scroll): “That’s Frosty Franco. The Wanderer.”<br /> Bandit (off-screen, watering plants): “Sounds like a generous sort of Realm.”<br /> Unicorse: “Too generous…”<br /> <br /> [Scene – Imagination Realm Begins]<br /> The treehouse transforms into a frosty mountaintop keep with snowy battlements. Realm 9 is a glowing glacier fortress, guarded by Frosty Franco, a snowman general in a shimmering parka, riding a polar llama.<br /> Narrator (Muffin): “Frosty loved to give. She gave him land, draftees, and peace of mind.”<br /> Snickers (in a hood): “She has so many draftees…”<br /> Winton (twirling a snowflake-shaped sword): “But no troops. And no defense…”<br /> Frisky (pulling down a telescope): “It’s time.”<br /> <br /> [Scene – Hit Planning Table]<br /> The team gathers around a magical snow-globe war table. Winton and Snickers draw up the plan with snow-dust markers.<br /> Bingo: “What if Frosty suddenly does train them?”<br /> Bandit (now appearing as the Ice Wizard): “Even if he trains… it could still be too late.”<br /> Suddenly, the glowing globe flashes red.<br /> Snickers: “He trained the draftees!”<br /> Winton: “But… look! No walls!”<br /> Muffin: “He made it easier! He gave us everything!”<br /> Bandit: “Some realms just… love to give.”<br /> <br /> [Scene – The Hit]<br /> Winton and Snickers sled down a glittery avalanche path, snowblades out. No traps. No guards. Just open land.<br /> Winton: “We don’t even need to stab!”<br /> Snickers (grinning): “Let’s stab anyway. For good measure.”<br /> They poke gently at the snow gates with toy icicle swords. Poof! Frosty’s fortress flips over, revealing Winton and Snickers’ colors.<br /> Narrator: “Frosty Franco was hit not once… not twice. By Winton and Snickers. And again the next day.”<br /> <br /> [Scene – Quiet Aftermath]<br /> Back in the treehouse, everyone’s sipping juice. Winton holds a “Double Victory” badge. A snowman flag quietly droops.<br /> Winton: “I kinda feel bad for Realm 9…”<br /> Muffin: “Me too. But they were asking for it.”<br /> Bluey: “Sometimes... you must hit before they freeze you.”<br /> Snickers: “Thanks for the land, Frosty!”<br /> Bandit (smiling): “It’s never fun picking on someone… but sometimes the Realm needs brave choices.”<br /> <br /> [Closing Scene – Realm Memorial Wall]<br /> They hang Frosty’s Realm 9 flag next to others, marked “Biggest Giver.”<br /> Bingo: “Do you think he’ll rebuild?”<br /> Winton: “I hope so.”<br /> Muffin (with a wink): “If he does… We’ll be watching.”<br /> Everyone laughs.<br /> [End Theme Plays]<br /> &lt;/blockquote&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;blockquote&gt;<br /> Title: &quot;Snickers Rises, Muffin Falls&quot;<br /> Episode Length: 7 minutes<br /> <br /> [Opening Scene – The Strategy Table at Sunset]<br /> The kids are gathered again in the living room, their game board fuller, filled with bright flags and marker paths. Muffin is lying on a pillow, a juice box beside her, looking drained.<br /> Muffin (sighing): “I thought I was safe. I had the perfect spread…”<br /> Snickers (checking the scrolls): “Wreckage is on the move again.”<br /> Bandit (stroking his beard): “Realm 6… tricky business.”<br /> Winton: “He couldn’t hit us. But he could hit Muffin…”<br /> <br /> [Scene – Imagination Realm Begins]<br /> The room transforms into a glowing twilight battlefield. Muffin sits in a tall garden tower, decorated with pink and purple shields. Realm 6, Wreckage, is a sneaky, smoke-shrouded mechbeast creeping along the edges of the map.<br /> Narrator (Muffin): “Wreckage couldn’t face our three-headed hydra… but he could bite at the smallest head…”<br /> Snickers: “He waited for her to go offline.”<br /> Bingo: “She thought I could protect her. I thought I could too…”<br /> The Realm glows with soft lights as Muffin waves goodbye for the night, her castle gates gently closing.<br /> <br /> [Scene – The Fall of Muffin]<br /> Late at night, the glowing scroll flashes red.<br /> Bandit (as the Realm Historian): “Realm 7… has been hit.”<br /> Bingo (shouting): “What?! But she was barely a 75% target! There were better hits!”<br /> Winton: “He picked her anyway…”<br /> Narrator (Snickers): “And with that… Muffin fell.”<br /> Muffin’s castle darkens. Her banners roll up into the wind.<br /> <br /> [Scene – Rising Hope]<br /> The next morning, Winton and Bingo are hard at work. A new list of targets glows on the map.<br /> Snickers: “We climb now. Together.”<br /> Bandit: “Sometimes leaders fall. But others rise.”<br /> [Montage – a series of cheerful “Hit of the Day” moments: Snickers using a sparkle cannon, Bingo solving a riddle wall, Winton swinging down on a vine to press the INVASION rune.]<br /> Narrator: “And the Realm kept rising. Hit by hit. Step by step.”<br /> <br /> [Closing Scene – The Memory Wall]<br /> The team hangs Muffin’s Realm 7 banner beside Frosty Franco’s and Al-twixander’s.<br /> Muffin (smiling from the couch): “I may be out. But I’m proud of you lot.”<br /> Snickers: “You got us started.”<br /> Winton: “We’ll finish it.”<br /> Bandit: “That’s the Realm way.”<br /> Everyone raises juice boxes in a toast.<br /> All: “Just one more hit!”<br /> [End Theme Plays]<br /> &lt;/blockquote&gt;<br /> <br /> <br /> Sly: The early hits were extremely important for our speed. We kept finding solid player hits for all 3 of our main fast attackers. Things were going well, until we encountered our first challenger: Wreckage (Bobbo), the Goblin in 6. Extra was a bit low on DP, but we managed to immediately retaliate with Sizz’s Lizardfolk. Damdred also managed to make a huge hit on one of our fast competitors, the halfling in realm 2.<br /> <br /> <br /> 2025-04-07 21:59:57 Wreckage (#6) invaded fellow dominion Unicorse, death row, vexatious litigation (#4) and captured 65 land.<br /> <br /> <br /> 2025-04-08 08:14:25 Victorious on the battlefield, Bingo, life without parole, decapitating Calypso (#4) conquered 66 land from Wreckage (#6).<br /> <br /> <br /> 2025-04-08 20:01:29 Victorious on the battlefield, Muffin, grand larceny, 20 years (#4) conquered 72 land from The greatest joy of magic lies in searching for it (#2).<br /> <br /> <br /> Wurst: Contenders for our FA were: #2 Halfer (Disco), #6 Goblin (Bobbo), #9 Lyc and Liz ( SugarJon and HighLow) as well as our main contender #12 Halfling and Lizard (Erix and P@cz). We stayed in the lead with Damdred even taking out #2 Halfer with his Orc. Sizz Liz kept along and smacked #6 Goblin. Sly’s Spirit was getting in position to take over under my cover but had to push quite an inefficient build to do so.<br /> <br /> =The First Challenger=<br /> Sly: As always, my advice is to look big, as big as possible when playing FA. Even though we were barely out of the gate, we were making big moves and our amazing ops team helped us track everything. Wurst got a massive hit on the lead 9 Gobbo, Twix (Soup), who had yet to convert—and who was far from finished having a say in the round. I also then delayed a hit on an explorer in 9 Frosty Franco (who had huge drafts stacked) so that Wurst could follow, giving him back to back large hits.<br /> <br /> <br /> 2025-04-10 15:59:37 Victorious on the battlefield, Winton, 1 year, violating 50m restraining order (#4) conquered 112 land from Al-twixander The Great (#9).<br /> <br /> <br /> 2025-04-11 02:59:39 Victorious on the battlefield, Snickers, 6 months, Overdue DVD Rentals (#4) conquered 97 land from Frosty Franco (#9).<br /> <br /> <br /> 2025-04-11 03:00:15 Victorious on the battlefield, Winton, 1 year, violating 50m restraining order (#4) conquered 74 land from Frosty Franco (#9).<br /> <br /> <br /> Wurst: After those takedowns, Damdred’s Orc fell a bit behind. The Revenge hit from Wreckage on Damdred sealed his fate sadly.<br /> <br /> <br /> 2025-04-13 06:34:34 Wreckage (#6) invaded fellow dominion Muffin, grand larceny, 20 years (#4) and captured 69 land.<br /> <br /> <br /> Sly: We were confused by this as Wreckage had pushed huge OP and had much better hits available for more land, but in a classic MERF-realm fashion, desire for revenge outweighed pure improvement/winning chances. Team mcgeeal became an enemy, and we would later exact payment.<br /> <br /> <br /> Our goal was to finish winning the fast race as soon as possible. Main threats a week in appeared to be 12 Halfer Ulysses (Erix), 9 Lyc (Sugarjon), and Wreckage still training high OP. There were a lot of second tier guys too hanging around still.<br /> <br /> <br /> &lt;blockquote&gt;<br /> Title: &quot;The Wars&quot;<br /> Episode Length: 7 minutes<br /> <br /> [Opening Scene – The Realm Council Tent (Backyard Fort)]<br /> The kids are inside a giant blanket tent labeled “REALM HQ.” A globe made of a beach ball spins on a cereal box pedestal. War plans are taped to the walls, each marked with colored stickers and notes like “blops low” and “Snare time?”<br /> Snickers (peeking at a scroll): “There are barely any easy hits left…”<br /> Winton: “Bingo and I… we’re done unless we do something big.”<br /> Muffin (ripping open a juice box): “It’s time… for WAR.”<br /> Bandit (off-screen, doing laundry): “Ooh. That escalated.”<br /> <br /> [Scene – Imagination Realm Begins]<br /> The tent transforms into a battlefield tent on a stormy cliffside. Lightning flashes behind massive banners as the kids don armor. Realm 4 stands united: Snickers with a tactical visor, Bingo with a magical spear, Winton in his glowing cart-armor, and Muffin with a crown tilted sideways.<br /> Narrator (Muffin): “Realm 8 had no real threats. Small blops, scattered troops. They were the target.”<br /> Winton: “Let’s hit ‘I Wish We Came Up With a Better Name’!”<br /> Everyone groans.<br /> Snickers: “Worst realm name ever.”<br /> Bingo: “Let’s rename it after we win!”<br /> <br /> [Scene – The Declaration]<br /> Bandit (as Realm Herald): “War has been declared!”<br /> [Cut to global montage: clocks, candles, phones lighting up.]<br /> Narrator: “Across every time zone, Realm 4 struck as one.”<br /> Kids across the yard slam INVASION buttons. Colored lights flash on the war board.<br /> BOOM.<br /> A giant “126 LAND CAPTURED” banner explodes in sparkles above Winton’s head.<br /> Bandit (reading aloud): “Victorious on the battlefield… Winton, age 1, violating a 50m restraining scroll (#4), conquered 126 land from I Wish We Came Up With a Better Name (#8).”<br /> Winton (floating with pride): “That’s my biggest hit ever!”<br /> Snickers: “We’re back, baby!”<br /> <br /> [Scene – The Turn]<br /> Muffin pauses. Her smile fades as the sky grows red.<br /> Bingo: “Uh-oh…”<br /> Snickers: “It’s Realm 6…”<br /> Winton: “They’re declaring war on us?!”<br /> Narrator (Muffin): “But it wasn’t about Winton. It was about me… and Frisky.”<br /> [Cut to Realm 6: dark, oily clouds, and shadowy blasters marked with “Chaos Ink.” Wreckage smirks.]<br /> Bandit (as Oracle): “They come not to stop Winton… but to sink Muffin… and fireball Frisky.”<br /> <br /> [Scene – The Struggle]<br /> [Montage: Muffin’s realm flickering. Her banner drops. She rebuilds a boat only for it to be sunk again. Frisky casts wild, chaotic spells, fury in his eyes.]<br /> Narrator: “Muffin held on for days. But it wasn’t enough…”<br /> Bandit (sadly): “Realm 4 still stood… but Muffin was barely standing.”<br /> Muffin (exhausted, lying on her beanbag): “I think… I’m out.”<br /> Frisky (eyes glowing): “Then they’re next.”<br /> <br /> [Closing Scene – The Storm Breaks]<br /> Realm HQ is quiet. Winton’s flag is raised high. Frisky silently sharpens a glitter-stick wand. The others sit around the war table, eyes on Realm 6.<br /> Bingo: “We won the battle.”<br /> Snickers: “But the real war… is coming.”<br /> Bandit (from the doorway): “Be sure to save. And hydrate.”<br /> Everyone: “Yes, Bandit!”<br /> [Slow fade as dramatic music plays. The wind blows across the war board.]<br /> To be continued...<br /> [End Theme Plays]<br /> &lt;/blockquote&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;blockquote&gt;<br /> Title: &quot;The Halfling's Gambit&quot;<br /> Episode Length: 7 minutes<br /> <br /> [Opening Scene – The Back Patio War Table]<br /> Realm 4 sits in silence. Juice boxes untouched. The snack pile, untouched. Everyone stares at a massive paper cutout marked Eric the Halfling (#12), with angry eyebrows and sticky notes reading &quot;BLOCKS GROWTH,&quot; &quot;MAX OFFENSE,&quot; and “HATES FUN.”<br /> Snickers: “He’s getting closer. He’s… training to max.”<br /> Bingo (nervously): “He’s not even going after the Feeders anymore. Just us.”<br /> Winton: “But why us?”<br /> Muffin: “Not us. You two. Especially… Snickers.”<br /> Bandit (off-screen, pouring tea): “Ooh. Sounds like a vendetta.”<br /> <br /> [Scene – Imagination Realm Begins]<br /> The backyard explodes into a stormy twilight battlefield. Eric the Halfling appears as a shadowy, half-sized knight on a massive mech-mount, draped in scrolls that say “YOU SHALL NOT GROW.”<br /> Narrator (Winton): “Eric’s mission was clear. Stop Realm 4. Stop growth. Stop… Snickers.”<br /> Snickers: “We can’t hide anymore. It’s send or be sent on.”<br /> Everyone looks at each other.<br /> Bandit (in dramatic cloak): “Then let the Breaking begin.”<br /> <br /> [Scene – The Breaking Moment]<br /> Alarms ring across the paper map. Tokens begin flying. Flags flip. Everyone is launching troops.<br /> Snickers braces himself, standing alone on the front line.<br /> Winton: “He’s going for you.”<br /> Snickers (resolute): “Let him. I’ll take him down with me.”<br /> Narrator (Muffin): “Snickers made a choice. He knew the round was ending for him. But he could stop Eric.”<br /> [Slow-motion montage – Snickers and Eric clash on the table. Dice thrown. Markers scribbled. Stickers fly. Both realms lose land. Eric takes damage… but Snickers is wounded beyond recovery.]<br /> Bandit: “Snickers has fallen.”<br /> <br /> [Scene – Realm 4 Emergency Council]<br /> Everyone regroups. The board is chaotic. Some flags are missing. Snickers lies back on a pillow, juice box straw barely held in his mouth.<br /> Winton: “We need a new plan.”<br /> Muffin: “Bingo… It’s time.”<br /> Bingo nods and climbs onto the map like a gladiator in disguise, holding a scroll labeled “SUICIDE THREAT (False).”<br /> Narrator (Bingo): “I would be the bait. The decoy. The noise.”<br /> Bandit: “Classic Realm Maneuver… The Great Fakeout.”<br /> Muffin: “While Eric watches Bingo… we launch Winton.”<br /> <br /> [Scene – Winton's Rise Begins]<br /> Winton’s castle glows. Flags shoot into the air. His toy sword pulses with light.<br /> Winton: “I’ll carry it. All of it.”<br /> Snickers: “You better. My round’s over. But yours… has just begun.”<br /> Bingo (grinning): “Let’s make it count.”<br /> <br /> [Closing Scene – Realm 4 Banner Wall]<br /> They hang Snickers’ realm token on the wall next to Muffin’s. Eric’s symbol flickers below them, marked “Target.”<br /> Bandit: “Sometimes you have to make hard calls in the Realm. Give something up… to get something greater.”<br /> Muffin: “It’s all eggs in the Winton basket now.”<br /> Snickers: “Just one more hit.”<br /> Everyone: “One more hit!”<br /> [End Theme Plays]<br /> &lt;/blockquote&gt;<br /> <br /> =The Thorn in my Side=<br /> Sly: Wust continued to make very solid hits in his bid to run. Sizz and I managed to keep up militarily, but Wurst’s land lead would prove decisive. I dropped huge temples to catch 6 Merfolk, Deep Six (InternetFett) as well, who I thought looked very good and would be annoying later in the round if not dealt with.<br /> <br /> <br /> 2025-04-13 18:59:49 Victorious on the battlefield, Winton, 1 year, violating 50m restraining order (#4) conquered 94 land from 🧟HIGANSTOLDAWIN HIGANTE GI TULI ANG DWENDE🧟 (#10).<br /> <br /> <br /> 2025-04-16 04:45:52 Victorious on the battlefield, Winton, 1 year, violating 50m restraining order (#4) conquered 92 land from Aaron Hernandez (#5).<br /> <br /> <br /> 2025-04-16 18:14:17 Victorious on the battlefield, Winton, 1 year, violating 50m restraining order (#4) conquered 95 land from The greatest joy of magic lies in searching for it (#2).<br /> <br /> <br /> 2025-04-18 18:59:58 Victorious on the battlefield, Snickers, 6 months, Overdue DVD Rentals (#4) conquered 112 land from Deep Six (#6).<br /> <br /> <br /> Wurst: Two weeks in, I had a pretty massive lead — but hadn’t fully pulled the trigger yet.<br /> 12 Halfer was still a constant thorn in our side, and 6 Gobbo kept overtraining OP after every hit.<br /> <br /> I dropped some specs to hit Zar’s Human in #8 — the hit landed clean. Then I realized: if we can snare him, I can go back-to-back. So we pulled the team together and, for the first time this round, coordinated a snare to set up the double tap.<br /> <br /> <br /> On the first send, I was technically hittable by a suicide from Erix. But we figured it was worth the gamble — Sly and Sizzler would bite chunks out of him in return, and maybe even me. Plus, our broader plan was to get Sly into the lead, so the risk felt justified.<br /> Erix didn’t bite. Yet…<br /> <br /> <br /> 2025-04-21 07:59:54 Victorious on the battlefield, Winton, 1 year, violating 50m restraining order (#4) conquered 146 land from I wish we came up with a better theme (#8).<br /> <br /> <br /> 2025-04-22 01:51:53 ̶T̶h̶e̶ ̶F̶a̶i̶r̶y̶ ̶G̶a̶r̶d̶e̶n̶ Unicorse #1 (#4) has declared WAR on I wish you didn't (#8).<br /> <br /> <br /> 2025-04-22 04:15:12 Victorious on the battlefield, Winton, 1 year, violating 50m restraining order (#4) conquered 126 land from I wish we came up with a better theme (#8).<br /> <br /> <br /> Wurst: Once I moved out of Erix’s range, he set his sights on our top contender: Sly’s Spirit.<br /> <br /> <br /> From the sidelines, I had to watch as Sly got dragged deeper and deeper into the DP spiral. With his inefficient build, he didn’t have the staying power to outlast Erix in a slow game. So, Sly made the call: switched back to OP, took a suicide hit from Erix, and hit him right back.<br /> Unfortunately, that wasn’t the end of it.<br /> <br /> <br /> Erix barely stayed within 75%, and his Lizard was quietly massing solid OP too. The pressure kept mounting, slowing Sly down further. Eventually, he had to throw in the towel and deconvert — joining our growing Blop squad for the late game.<br /> <br /> <br /> Sly: Erix played it really well, despite his goal being obvious to us in slowing Wurst and/or myself down specifically. There were times when he dropped specs and I thought he was surely hitting me, but he didn’t. The difficulty for me in this phase of the round was that personally I wanted to just keep hitting and not defend him, forcing him to trade ASAP, thereby removing him as a threat which would enable either Wurst or I to run earlier. But before Wurst was out of his range, the issue would be that we’d find him a hit, but him going OOR of the halfer would mean it would free Erix up to hit me without Wurst being able to benefit. So we had this back and forth where I’d make a call saying I wasn’t going to defend him, then Wurst finding a hit prompting me to push huge spec DP asap to defend him so that Wurst could hit.<br /> <br /> <br /> Ultimately it all worked out, though I think I probably mishandled this situation—but give credit to Erix where it’s due. Erix ended up suiciding me after I was already dead (they wanted to be sure, fair enough I guess), but in so doing he ended up feeding both of the very nice looking dwarves… Oh, realm 6 also tried to snare me but I was online and barely got the AC cast off.<br /> <br /> <br /> 2025-04-23 04:59:28 Ulysses STACKED Grant (#12) invaded fellow dominion Snickers, 6 months, Overdue DVD Rentals (#4) and captured 194 land.<br /> <br /> <br /> 2025-04-23 05:11:46 Victorious on the battlefield, Snickers, 6 months, Overdue DVD Rentals (#4) conquered 138 land from Ulysses STACKED Grant (#12).<br /> <br /> <br /> &lt;blockquote&gt;<br /> Title: &quot;Revenge&quot;<br /> Episode Length: 11 minutes<br /> <br /> [Opening Scene – Dusk in the Realm HQ (Backyard Treehouse)]<br /> The team is quiet. The sun is low. Juice boxes are half-empty. A photo of Frisky (with angry eyebrows scribbled on) sits atop a pile of hit reports.<br /> Muffin: “He hurt Frisky…”<br /> Snickers: “Realm 6… Mcgeal… He didn’t just hit our Realm. He hit our heart.”<br /> Winton (adjusting a cardboard restraining scroll): “And now… It’s our turn.”<br /> Bandit (somberly, from a camping chair): “Sometimes the Realm gives... gifts. This one’s called revenge.”<br /> <br /> [Scene – Imagination Realm Begins]<br /> The yard shifts into the Crimson Wastes—Realm 6’s territory. McGeal, now styled as Keel-Haul, a bloated Lycanthrope general, devours glitter-cake tokens under a war tent.<br /> Narrator (Muffin): “Keel-Haul was greedy. Blind. He didn’t see it coming.”<br /> Bluey (whispering): “He was like the fat kid from Matilda. Just… eating land.”<br /> Bingo: “But this cake? It was ours.”<br /> <br /> [Scene – War Council at Midnight]<br /> All the Realm 4 characters are suited up.<br /> Unicorse in a glitter chariot.<br /> Muffin, war paint on.<br /> Snickers, dual markers drawn.<br /> Dishes, wearing a fake Winton mustache and foam armor.<br /> Mackenzie, riding a plush battle sheep.<br /> And at the front—Frisky, a cloak of fury blowing in the wind.<br /> Frisky (glowing red): “He left his castle open. We snare until he’s empty.”<br /> Muffin: “You know what that means…”<br /> Everyone in unison: “It’s Winton Time.”<br /> <br /> [Scene – The Hit of Hits]<br /> They surround McGeal’s stronghold with markers. One by one, snaring him. His defense crumbles—dice scatter.<br /> Bandit (shouting from the Feeder Tower): “He's at ZERO!”<br /> Winton (tearing his scroll): “No restraining order can hold me now!”<br /> [The music swells. Winton charges in slow motion. A massive “261 LAND” appears in glowing red numbers above his head.]<br /> BOOM.<br /> Narrator (Snickers):<br /> “Victorious on the battlefield, Winton, age 1, violating the 50m restraining order (#4), conquered 261 land from Keel-Haul, Lycanthrope (#6)... 195.62%.”<br /> <br /> [Scene – The Aftermath]<br /> Realm 6’s flag falls. A single slice of glitter-cake is left behind. Frisky quietly steps forward and picks it up.<br /> Frisky (biting it): “Tastes like justice.”<br /> Muffin: “Revenge…”<br /> Snickers: “…it’s not for everyone.”<br /> Winton: “But sometimes, it’s exactly what you need.”<br /> <br /> [Closing Scene – Realm 4 Hilltop]<br /> Everyone watches the sunset together, sitting on cushions and looking over the game board.<br /> Bandit (gently): “It’s not always about winning. It’s about sticking up for your friends. That’s what makes a realm strong.”<br /> Snickers: “Also stabbing. The stabbing helped.”<br /> [Everyone laughs.]<br /> [The camera pans to the hit wall—Muffin, Snickers, Frisky, Bingo, and Winton. At the top, a new sign: REIGN OF REALM 4]<br /> [End Theme Plays]<br /> &lt;/blockquote&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;blockquote&gt; Episode: &quot;The One That Got Away&quot;<br /> Episode Length: 11 minutes (Epilogue Episode)<br /> <br /> <br /> [ Scene – Twilight at the Feeder Tower]<br /> Everyone is gathered in the soft evening light. The battlefield board contains notes, empty juice boxes, and worn flags. Winton looks proud. Muffin is half-asleep. Frisky is sharpening a popsicle stick with intense focus.<br /> Snickers (quietly): “This round was one for the record books…”<br /> Winton (grinning): “Back-to-back hits. Dwight. Ho Chi…”<br /> Bandit (with a soft smile): “And every round has one you wish you could take back.”<br /> Muffin: “It’s time to talk about… the mistake.”<br /> <br /> [Scene – Flashback: The Ho Chi Hit]<br /> [Quick cuts: scrolls flashing, dice rolls, Winton tracking a strange movement across Realm 9.]<br /> Narrator (Muffin): “He was just… wandering around. No Ares spell. No defense. … open.”<br /> Snickers: “Was he afk? Was he testing us?”<br /> Winton: “We didn’t know. But we had to hit.”<br /> BOOM!<br /> Victorious on the battlefield, Winton, 1 year, violating the 50m restraining order (#4), conquered 199 land from Ho Chi Minh Mochi (#9).<br /> Bandit: “But just as the cheers rang out…”<br /> <br /> [Scene – Decision at the Council Table]<br /> The group sits in the strategy tent, chalking up hits on the scroll walls. Muffin slams down a red marker.<br /> Muffin: “Only one left who can stop us. Jboy.”<br /> Snickers: “Then let’s hit Realm 12 again.”<br /> Winton: “Let’s go now.”<br /> <br /> [Scene – The Fireball War Begins]<br /> [Montage of dramatic spellcasting, plushies flying through the air as magical fireballs, land numbers changing, fake flame graphics.]<br /> Narrator (Winton): “We started too fast. We forgot one thing…”<br /> Frisky: “The barren land…”<br /> Bluey (panicked): “We didn’t account for the gryphon nests!”<br /> [Cut to Bingo’s castle on the edge of the map, blinking slowly.]<br /> Snickers: “Wait—wasn’t Bingo abandoning?”<br /> Muffin: “He was. For a holiday…”<br /> <br /> [Scene – The Sad Hit]<br /> [Quiet, emotional tone. The Realm watches as Bingo’s castle gets taken. A little &quot;Gone Fishin'&quot; sign falls off his door.]<br /> Bandit (softly): “He didn’t make it out in time.”<br /> Snickers: “But I hope he and his family had an awesome trip.”<br /> [They place a “VACAY HIT” sticker on Bingo’s realm.]<br /> <br /> [Scene – Desperation and Dwarves]<br /> Suddenly, Realm 8’s Dwarf appears, slamming a foam hammer on Jboy’s land.<br /> Narrator (Muffin): “Hope came from the mountains…”<br /> Frisky: “But if we didn’t stop Jboy, he’d take revenge.”<br /> Muffin: “So we had to snare him.”<br /> <br /> [Scene – The Great Night Snare]<br /> [Clock hands spinning. The stars come out. The kids take turns holding the snare with cardboard scrolls.]<br /> Narrator (Snickers): “It was our toughest snare ever.”<br /> Muffin: “Bingo was gone. Psy was asleep. Everyone was tired.”<br /> Winton: “And then… Mackenzie woke up.”<br /> [Cut to Mackenzie yawning and placing a full deck of “Spy Strength” cards on the table.]<br /> Frisky: “He saved us.”<br /> [Frisky and Mackenzie fist bump.]<br /> Bandit (smiling): “It takes a Realm. And sometimes… an early alarm clock.”<br /> <br /> [Closing Scene – Sunrise Over the Realm]<br /> The group watches the sun rise from the Feeder Tower. They tape Bingo’s photo on the Realm Wall with a note:<br /> “Friends leave sometimes. But the memories stay forever.”<br /> Snickers: “The round is almost over…”<br /> Winton: “But I’ll remember all of it.”<br /> Muffin: “Even the mistake?”<br /> Winton: “Especially the mistake.”<br /> Bandit: “Because that’s how we learn. And next time…”<br /> All: “One more hit.”<br /> [Final pan over the Realm Board, covered in flags, scrolls, and names—Winton, Muffin, Frisky, Snickers, Bingo, and more.]<br /> [End Theme Plays]<br /> &lt;/blockquote&gt;<br /> <br /> =Running Away=<br /> Wurst: #6 had warred us earlier in the round, targeting our Lyc Explorer (Psychosophy) and Sly — probably thinking back then they had better odds to win the round than a spec-heavy Goblin like me.<br /> <br /> <br /> But now? It was payback time.<br /> <br /> <br /> McGeal, their Lyc Explorer, was greedily expanding without proper spy coverage. So we did what we did before. <br /> <br /> Hit someone (#12 Merf), push OP, snare for a back to back (#6 Lyc).<br /> <br /> With those 2 hits I now had a massive land lead and could build up a ton of DM.<br /> <br /> <br /> At this point, new contenders started popping up.<br /> Realm 9 Goblin Al-Twix (Soup), a converting Goblin, was able to force me into some DP. But he lacked the numbers to grow further within my range. We actually considered his OP overtraining a hidden blessing — it made efficient races in other realms hesitate to send under him. <br /> <br /> <br /> 2025-04-27 14:51:10 I'm thinking about it... (#4) has declared WAR on And now you know (#6).<br /> <br /> <br /> 2025-04-27 19:12:50 Victorious on the battlefield, Winton, 1 year, violating 50m restraining order (#4) conquered 261 land from Keel-Haul (#6).<br /> <br /> <br /> Then came #3 Dwarf — suddenly a real threat with solid 5:4 and a growing mod push. We saw he was gearing up for a fast acre grab, so we decided to hit him preemptively. Some good old-fashioned fireball spam later, and he never really recovered.<br /> Another one off the board.<br /> <br /> <br /> 2025-04-29 19:58:15 Unicorse and his humble servants (#4) has declared WAR on We’re too old for this shit! (#3).<br /> <br /> =Twin Goblins, and Realm 12=<br /> <br /> <br /> Wurst: #9 Goblin Al-Twix brought in backup: his smaller Goblin buddy Ho-Chi (Tidnab) was edging into my range. Looked like they were setting up a classic pincer.<br /> I kept an eye on him and noticed he didn’t cast AC. So i pumped op and the tick before he was hittable, I dumped gem, ore, and lumber into my forge and pushed OP. Broke him AC off — by just 0.1% OP.<br /> Later, Tidnab told me they knew I was coming the next tick and planned to bounce me.<br /> <br /> Well... you’ve got to wake up earlier to catch an old fox.<br /> <br /> <br /> 2025-05-02 01:28:22 Victorious on the battlefield, Winton, 1 year, violating 50m restraining order (#4) conquered 253 land from Dwight D. EisenPOWER (#12).<br /> <br /> <br /> 2025-05-02 18:01:44 Victorious on the battlefield, Winton, 1 year, violating 50m restraining order (#4) conquered 199 land from Ho Chi Minh Mochi (#9).<br /> <br /> <br /> Elated by that slick hit, we made a blunder:<br /> We declared war on #12 at literally the worst possible moment.<br /> <br /> <br /> Their Nomad and Human looked like the most threatening endgame contenders — but they hadn’t made a hit in ages therefore sitting on low peasants, dimnishing our fireball damage. Also Sizzler just deconverted hours ago, leaving no op threat versus them.<br /> <br /> They reacted immediately and mutualed.<br /> Jboy, the Nomad, dropped mass GN + Temples and started ramping OP with noone really close to limit him now since i was oor. <br /> <br /> Our big explorers managed to stay safe by anticipating the spike, but Sizz couldnt get enough dp in in time. Knowing he’d feed at least once, he slammed the Abandon button — and we tried to delay the incoming hit with a snare but that didn’t work because Jboy precast his racial and ac well in advance. <br /> <br /> Jboy slapped him for an 85% mutual war hit and had the OP to 9h him again. Big misplay on our part.<br /> <br /> <br /> But just when things looked bleak — #8 Dwarf (Harm) came out of nowhere and whacked Jboy with a clean 100% hit. Left himself open for a retal, but it gave us an opening.<br /> Jboy was still our biggest threat. We had to stop the 9h.<br /> <br /> <br /> The blop pack tried something i thought impossible — snaring him for nine freaking hours. It came down to the wire several times, but someone always logged in with just enough spy power to keep the snare alive and denying him the 9h. <br /> What looked like a disaster... turned into a pretty sweet turnaround.<br /> <br /> <br /> 2025-05-02 19:58:53 Unicorse and his loyal subjects (#4) has declared WAR on ABS-olutely I do (#12).<br /> <br /> <br /> 2025-05-02 20:59:13 We'll get you, and your little dogs too! (#12) has declared WAR on Unicorse and his loyal subjects (#4).<br /> <br /> <br /> 2025-05-03 20:59:03 James 6. PACK (#12) invaded fellow dominion Bingo, life without parole, decapitating Calypso (#4) and captured 226 land.<br /> <br /> <br /> 2025-05-03 21:44:24 I wish I had a rabbit in a hat with a bat (#8) invaded James 6. PACK (#12) and captured 245 land.<br /> <br /> <br /> 2025-05-05 05:07:58 The Ancient Library has been destroyed and rebuilt by Realm (#4).<br /> <br /> <br /> 2025-05-05 06:00:27 Bingo, life without parole, decapitating Calypso (#4) has been abandoned by its ruler.<br /> <br /> =Final Phase: Snares Galore, and Realm 7=<br /> Sly: We felt comfortable (maybe except for Wurst) going into the final phase of the round. Yes, 7 looked very strong, but I felt they were simply too far behind at this point to pose a serious danger without EXCESSIVE feeding, which seemed nearly impossible since everyone had been forced to defend Wurst’s OP already.<br /> <br /> <br /> We started a gameplan of making a snare hit on a realm, then having Wurst leave the guard for a war BF into the same realm afterwards, then rejoining guard. It worked well.<br /> <br /> <br /> 2025-05-05 21:30:26 Can't skip leg day when you have no legs!!! &lt;3 Unicorse (#4) has declared WAR on Don't even think about it (#5).<br /> <br /> <br /> 2025-05-06 04:59:08 Victorious on the battlefield, Winton, 1 year, violating 50m restraining order (#4) conquered 273 land from Timothy Tebowington (#5).<br /> <br /> <br /> 2025-05-07 04:59:10 Victorious on the battlefield, Winton, 1 year, violating 50m restraining order (#4) conquered 213 land from Tony Dickerson (#5).<br /> Final Episode Title: &quot;Revenge Redux&quot;<br /> <br /> <br /> &lt;blockquote&gt;Episode Length: 11 minutes (Season Finale)<br /> <br /> <br /> [Opening Scene – Realm Wall of Fame (Treehouse Loft)]<br /> The kids are taping up stickers of their biggest hits. Winton’s name is everywhere—each one labeled like Pokémon cards:<br /> Dwight D. Eisenhower – 253 Land<br /> Ho Chi Minh Mochi – 199 Land<br /> Donald Pump – 157 Land<br /> Keel-Haul – 261 Land<br /> Muffin: “There’s just one spot left.”<br /> Winton (grinning): “Time to finish it.”<br /> Snickers: “Final revenge…”<br /> Bandit (off-screen, sipping a juice pouch): “You better make it count.”<br /> <br /> [Scene – Imagination Realm Begins]<br /> Realm HQ transforms into a storm-charged war tower. Scrolls fly through the air. Lightning flashes over Realm 6, where Keel-Haul (McGeal) hides behind a fortress of bloated spellbooks and draftee tokens.<br /> Narrator (Frisky, yelling from a lightning tower):<br /> “McGeal was once our greatest donor. But now… we bring final revenge!”<br /> Everyone: “WAR ON 6!!”<br /> [Flags fall. Lightning shoots from glitter wands. Snaring scrolls fly.]<br /> <br /> [Scene – The Snare and the Problem]<br /> Frisky, Muffin, and Snickers assassinate McGeal’s draftees like precision surgeons—dice roll. Markers fly.<br /> Bandit (as Chaos Clerk): “He’s still barely safe!”<br /> Winton (frustrated): “I’m at 5:4. I can’t send more offense!”<br /> Muffin: “Then it’s over—he’s safe!”<br /> Snickers (suddenly alert): “Wait… what if you release something else?”<br /> Winton: “You mean… spy AND wiz?!”<br /> Snickers: “You’ll be weak. But fast.”<br /> Winton nods. Dramatic music swells.<br /> <br /> [Scene – The Genius Play]<br /> Winton rips up a spell scroll labeled “SPY” and tosses it into the air. He spins, taps his marker twice, and scribbles “FREE WIZARD” on the board.<br /> Bandit: “No one’s ever done this before…”<br /> Narrator (Muffin): “In that moment… the math clicked.”<br /> BOOM!<br /> Victorious on the battlefield, Winton, age 1, violating the 50m restraining order (#4), conquered 316 land from Keel-Haul, Lycanthrope (#6)… 195.62%.<br /> <br /> [Scene – The Tower of Hits]<br /> A massive holographic sticker rises above Realm HQ:<br /> WINTON – 316 LAND – “THE FINISHER”<br /> Confetti (ripped tissues), music (Bingo beatboxing), and a long, proud silence as they look over their map.<br /> Frisky (quietly): “That’s it. He sealed the round.”<br /> Muffin (smiling): “He did.”<br /> <br /> &lt;/blockquote&gt;<br /> <br /> <br /> Sly: We went back to realm 6’s well yet again, and this hit required a ton of effort and coordination on our part to make happen as the margins were extremely tight.<br /> <br /> <br /> 2025-05-11 00:41:08 GI Joes are for kids. OD is a game for cartoon dogs. (#4) has declared WAR on Cobra Rising (#6).<br /> <br /> <br /> 2025-05-11 00:50:38 Victorious on the battlefield, Winton, 1 year, violating 50m restraining order (#4) conquered 316 land from Keel-Haul (#6).<br /> <br /> <br /> 2025-05-12 00:37:46 Victorious on the battlefield, Winton, 1 year, violating 50m restraining order (#4) conquered 231 land from Skidmark (#6).<br /> <br /> <br /> We warred realm 7 for the first time as they were the clear late-round threat, doing damage anywhere and everywhere we could with the army of explorers at our disposal. They had a bunch of possible threats: a strong Orc (kongb), Icekin (Lud), up-and-coming WE (Faith), and a Nomad (mdk) who I was concerned would BF into Wurst’s range and then pump GN/temps to limit him while the Orc/Icer hit under us. I thought it was curious at the time that they decided to use the Orc to push 5:4 OP, which effectively meant he would never send again unless he left a ton of OP home. The Icekin basically did the opposite, training enough DP to at times defend Wurst fully and kept hitting with the OP he had. Personally I would’ve been more afraid of the opposite.<br /> <br /> We calculated that Wurst only needed one more BF to be clear of their future 8k finisher Gobbo explorer Dark Mines (Gorgh).<br /> <br /> <br /> 2025-05-13 15:35:26 GI Joes are for kids. OD is a game for cartoon dogs. (#4) has declared WAR on There can be no peace (#7).<br /> <br /> 2025-05-17 02:58:34 Victorious on the battlefield, Winton, 1 year, violating 50m restraining order (#4) conquered 230 land from Barack SWOLEbama (#12).<br /> <br /> <br /> And that was it! Wurst was the inevitable winner.<br /> <br /> =Wurst's Acknowledgements=<br /> <br /> Damdred – You really put together one hell of a team and led with unwavering dedication. You stayed a true captain till the end—always motivating, fully engaged, and spreading that energy to every one of us. Thank you for an incredibly fun round.<br /> <br /> <br /> Dan – As someone in our realm said: “Easiest round win ever for you” 😅. Just kidding. We liked having you around as our mascot, and I’d still always pack with you. :*<br /> <br /> <br /> Sly – What a joy it was to pack with you. Great understanding of the game, great tactical awareness. And when I hit a low point, you were the one who pulled me out of the mud.<br /> <br /> <br /> Sizzler – My OG. I was so happy when I saw your registration and couldn’t believe my luck when Damdred drafted you. It’s always great playing with you. Your ability to read the board and to always remain calm helped me a lot. <br /> <br /> <br /> DaveTheGoliath – Someone I hadn’t played with before, and I totally fell in love with your style. Proactive, engaged, smart and a joy to talk to. Youre everything one could wish fron a packmate!<br /> <br /> <br /> Psychosophy – Thank you! I think in a way, you’re the one who sacrificed the most for this win. #6 disbanded 500 spies—you retrained 1,000. You could’ve pushed your exploring advantage, but instead, you decided to go heavy on ops eating tons of blops during our wars. Once again, it was a great pleasure to play with you. Your zealotism against McGeal after their first war on us was a constant source of joy.<br /> <br /> <br /> Cosula – Feels like you’re a packmate now, with how often we land together! You also went beyond your limits and played a tremendous round. Always there when it mattered—and always ready to throw some fireballs!<br /> <br /> <br /> Extravadanza – Oh boy. I often forgot you’re a new player because you showed such a great understanding of the game and insane activity. And your meme game even won you Meme of the Round. I hope we play again in the future—it was a pleasure.<br /> <br /> <br /> Dishness – Also a new player who immediately understood how the game works. You became a full-fledged member of the blop division in no time and needed little to no guidance.<br /> <br /> <br /> This win was 100% a team win. The amount of activity, engagement, and support everyone in this group brought was something I’ve never experienced before. One person missing and we wouldnt have done it. A big heartfelt thank you to all of you.<br /> <br /> <br /> {{Round_nav<br /> | round = 44<br /> | previous_round = 43<br /> | next_round = 45<br /> }}</div>

Sly http://wiki.opendominion.net/index.php?title=Round_44_TraditionalStory&diff=2353 2025-06-05T17:38:10Z

<p>Sly: Created page with &quot;== Round 44 - Realm #4 Win Story, Traditional Version == === Draft Round Team &amp; Races === Wurst: Damdred and I thought we had good chances to win the FA setup if we get the r...&quot;</p> <hr /> <div>== Round 44 - Realm #4 Win Story, Traditional Version ==<br /> <br /> === Draft Round Team &amp; Races ===<br /> Wurst: Damdred and I thought we had good chances to win the FA setup if we get the right draftpicks. We also thought that **SNARE** is broken with a 5+ blop pack and that a draft round potentially secures us such a setup. Hence we picked a couple of strong FA (Dan (Lyc), Sizz (Liz), Me (Goblin)) and added 2 strong midspeed players (Sly (Spirit), Damdred (Orc)) that were supposed to use our runaway position to secure the endgame.<br /> We topped that with the amazing explorer/bloppers (DaveTheGoliath, Psychosophy , Cosula, Extravadanza). We also picked KingTitus who wanted to attack I think. <br /> Then we had Dishess in our realm randomed. A buddy of Damdred who joined the blopsquad. <br /> Few words about my strat. <br /> <br /> The plan was to play a Wolfrider (WR) OOP attacker — using GN to offset WR’s high cost. I started with a high GN Lyc sim that Rio made a few rounds ago and tweaked it for my needs. But my tweaks left me with about 600 draftees at OOP that I didn’t actually need for DP.<br /> That caught my attention.<br /> <br /> Then I remembered what MDK told me last round: “The way to win with Goblins is Raiders.” To which I — always the reflective gentleman — replied: “Forget Goblins, they suck.”<br /> The result after adding massive raiders at +0? An OOP attacker that gave up its 9-hour, but broke any DP sheet at +9. I’d hoped for a massive opener — and Chunk didn’t disappoint: a clean 125% hit gave me a solid land lead. I used the surplus in drafts to push 1:1 elite/raider mix and would pivot from it once I either run or need to push 5:4 for our mid speed races.<br /> <br /> === A Fast Start ===<br /> During the Draft Podcast, we were told that our team looked scary on paper — but also like a prime candidate for drama and early abandonments. Naturally, we laughed it off. And then… came OOP.<br /> Dan made his first hit and, just two hours later, dropped Midas. Alarm bells rang. We had Damdred call him up, and Dan told us — cheerfully, we might add — that he was out drinking with a buddy, had cast Midas, and trained rats. Then he vanished again, apparently blackout drunk. <br /> After no training the whole evening and night as a small acres lyc attacker his round was sadly over. And since he nearly had no dp incoming and he needed every draftee for dp we figured he would be more likely to feed than to be of help. Oopsie. <br /> <br /> Sly: OOP for us went well, if a bit uneventful, until we realized Dan was inactive. I got my hit pretty early on, Damdred’s Orc got 3 hits, Wurst made a solid hit. The real fireworks came with our second hits, which set the tone really for the rest of the round. Wurst had the great idea to try to catch some larger doms with the 9-hour capability of Gobbo (with spec OP from OOP), and did just that to great effect. Sizz also made a nice first hit, and my Spirit managed a player hit for my second hit.<br /> <br /> 2025-04-06 09:59:52 Victorious on the battlefield, Winton, 1 year, violating 50m restraining order (#4) conquered 61 land from Daniel Michael DeVito Jr. (#3).<br /> <br /> This hit ended up being really important IMO because 3 Dwarf (Chunk) looked very strong later in the round, and we ended up feeling the need to fireball him later.<br /> <br /> 2025-04-07 11:00:24 Bluey, indicted, pulled Val Kilmer's plug (#4) has been abandoned by its ruler.<br /> <br /> The early hits were extremely important for our speed. We kept finding solid player hits for all 3 of our main fast attackers. Things were going well, until we encountered our first challenger: Wreckage (Bobbo), the Goblin in 6. Extra was a bit low on DP, but we managed to immediately retaliate with Sizz’s Lizardfolk. Damdred also managed to make a huge hit on one of our fast competitors, the halfling in realm 2.<br /> <br /> 2025-04-07 21:59:57 Wreckage (#6) invaded fellow dominion Unicorse, death row, vexatious litigation (#4) and captured 65 land.<br /> 2025-04-08 08:14:25 Victorious on the battlefield, Bingo, life without parole, decapitating Calypso (#4) conquered 66 land from Wreckage (#6).<br /> 2025-04-08 20:01:29 Victorious on the battlefield, Muffin, grand larceny, 20 years (#4) conquered 72 land from The greatest joy of magic lies in searching for it (#2).<br /> <br /> Wurst: Contenders for our FA were: #2 Halfer (Disco), #6 Goblin (Bobbo), #9 Lyc and Liz ( SugarJon and HighLow) as well as our main contender #12 Halfling and Lizard (Erix and P@cz). We stayed in the lead with Damdred even taking out #2 Halfer with his Orc. Sizz Liz kept along and smacked #6 Goblin. Sly’s Spirit was getting in position to take over under my cover but had to push quite an inefficient build to do so. <br /> <br /> === The First Challenger ===<br /> Sly: As always, my advice is to look big, as big as possible when playing FA. Even though we were barely out of the gate, we were making big moves and our amazing ops team helped us track everything. Wurst got a massive hit on the lead 9 Gobbo, Twix (Soup), who had yet to convert—and who was far from finished having a say in the round. I also then delayed a hit on an explorer in 9 Frosty Franco (who had huge drafts stacked) so that Wurst could follow, giving him back to back large hits.<br /> <br /> 2025-04-10 15:59:37 Victorious on the battlefield, Winton, 1 year, violating 50m restraining order (#4) conquered 112 land from Al-twixander The Great (#9).<br /> 2025-04-11 02:59:39 Victorious on the battlefield, Snickers, 6 months, Overdue DVD Rentals (#4) conquered 97 land from Frosty Franco (#9).<br /> 2025-04-11 03:00:15 Victorious on the battlefield, Winton, 1 year, violating 50m restraining order (#4) conquered 74 land from Frosty Franco (#9). <br /> <br /> Wurst: After those takedowns, Damdred’s Orc fell a bit behind. The Revenge hit from Wreckage on Damdred sealed his fate sadly. <br /> <br /> 2025-04-13 06:34:34 Wreckage (#6) invaded fellow dominion Muffin, grand larceny, 20 years (#4) and captured 69 land.<br /> <br /> Sly: We were confused by this as Wreckage had pushed huge OP and had much better hits available for more land, but in a classic MERF-realm fashion, desire for revenge outweighed pure improvement/winning chances. Team mcgeeal became an enemy, and we would later exact payment. Our goal was to finish winning the fast race as soon as possible. Main threats a week in appeared to be 12 Halfer Ulysses (Erix), 9 Lyc (Sugarjon), and Wreckage still training high OP. There were a lot of second tier guys too hanging around still.<br /> <br /> === The Thorn in my Side ===<br /> Sly: Wust continued to make very solid hits in his bid to run. Sizz and I managed to keep up militarily, but Wurst’s land lead would prove decisive. I dropped huge temples to catch 6 Merfolk, Deep Six (InternetFett) as well, who I thought looked very good and would be annoying later in the round if not dealt with.<br /> <br /> 2025-04-13 18:59:49 Victorious on the battlefield, Winton, 1 year, violating 50m restraining order (#4) conquered 94 land from 🧟HIGANSTOLDAWIN HIGANTE GI TULI ANG DWENDE🧟 (#10).<br /> 2025-04-16 04:45:52 Victorious on the battlefield, Winton, 1 year, violating 50m restraining order (#4) conquered 92 land from Aaron Hernandez (#5).<br /> 2025-04-16 18:14:17 Victorious on the battlefield, Winton, 1 year, violating 50m restraining order (#4) conquered 95 land from The greatest joy of magic lies in searching for it (#2).<br /> 2025-04-18 18:59:58 Victorious on the battlefield, Snickers, 6 months, Overdue DVD Rentals (#4) conquered 112 land from Deep Six (#6).<br /> <br /> Wurst: Two weeks in, I had a pretty massive lead — but hadn’t fully pulled the trigger yet. 12 Halfer was still a constant thorn in our side, and 6 Gobbo kept overtraining OP after every hit. I dropped some specs to hit Zar’s Human in #8 — the hit landed clean. Then I realized: if we can snare him, I can go back-to-back. So we pulled the team together and, for the first time this round, coordinated a snare to set up the double tap.<br /> On the first send, I was technically hittable by a suicide from Erix. But we figured it was worth the gamble — Sly and Sizzler would bite chunks out of him in return, and maybe even me. Plus, our broader plan was to get Sly into the lead, so the risk felt justified. Erix didn’t bite. Yet…<br /> <br /> 2025-04-21 07:59:54 Victorious on the battlefield, Winton, 1 year, violating 50m restraining order (#4) conquered 146 land from I wish we came up with a better theme (#8).<br /> 2025-04-22 01:51:53 ̶T̶h̶e̶ ̶F̶a̶i̶r̶y̶ ̶G̶a̶r̶d̶e̶n̶ Unicorse #1 (#4) has declared WAR on I wish you didn't (#8).<br /> 2025-04-22 04:15:12 Victorious on the battlefield, Winton, 1 year, violating 50m restraining order (#4) conquered 126 land from I wish we came up with a better theme (#8). <br /> <br /> Wurst: Once I moved out of Erix’s range, he set his sights on our top contender: Sly’s Spirit. From the sidelines, I had to watch as Sly got dragged deeper and deeper into the DP spiral. With his inefficient build, he didn’t have the staying power to outlast Erix in a slow game. So, Sly made the call: switched back to OP, took a suicide hit from Erix, and hit him right back.<br /> <br /> Unfortunately, that wasn’t the end of it. Erix barely stayed within 75%, and his Lizard was quietly massing solid OP too. The pressure kept mounting, slowing Sly down further. Eventually, he had to throw in the towel and deconvert — joining our growing Blop squad for the late game.<br /> <br /> Sly: Erix played it really well, despite his goal being obvious to us in slowing Wurst and/or myself down specifically. There were times when he dropped specs and I thought he was surely hitting me, but he didn’t. The difficulty for me in this phase of the round was that personally I wanted to just keep hitting and not defend him, forcing him to trade ASAP, thereby removing him as a threat which would enable either Wurst or I to run earlier. But before Wurst was out of his range, the issue would be that we’d find him a hit, but him going OOR of the halfer would mean it would free Erix up to hit me without Wurst being able to benefit. So we had this back and forth where I’d make a call saying I wasn’t going to defend him, then Wurst finding a hit prompting me to push huge spec DP asap to defend him so that Wurst could hit.<br /> <br /> Ultimately it all worked out, though I think I probably mishandled this situation—but give credit to Erix where it’s due. Erix ended up suiciding me after I was already dead (they wanted to be sure, fair enough I guess), but in so doing he ended up feeding both of the very nice looking dwarves… Oh, realm 6 also tried to snare me but I was online and barely got the AC cast off.<br /> <br /> 2025-04-23 04:59:28 Ulysses STACKED Grant (#12) invaded fellow dominion Snickers, 6 months, Overdue DVD Rentals (#4) and captured 194 land.<br /> 2025-04-23 05:11:46 Victorious on the battlefield, Snickers, 6 months, Overdue DVD Rentals (#4) conquered 138 land from Ulysses STACKED Grant (#12).<br /> <br /> === Running Away ===<br /> Wurst: #6 had warred us earlier in the round, targeting our Lyc Explorer (Psychosophy) and Sly — probably thinking back then they had better odds against them than against a spec-heavy Goblin like me. But now? It was payback time.<br /> <br /> McGeal, their Lyc Explorer, was greedily expanding without proper spy coverage. So we did what we do best — the classic sequence: Hit someone, push OP, snare, go again. With that, and the hit on #12’s Merfolk earlier, I now had a massive land lead and could build up a ton of DM. At this point, new contenders started popping up. #9 Goblin Al-Twix (Soup), a converting Goblin, was able to force me into some DP. But he lacked the numbers to grow into my range. We actually considered his OP overtraining a hidden blessing — it made efficient races in other realms hesitate to send under him. So thanks for that, Soup.<br /> <br /> 2025-04-27 14:51:10 I'm thinking about it... (#4) has declared WAR on And now you know (#6).<br /> 2025-04-27 19:12:50 Victorious on the battlefield, Winton, 1 year, violating 50m restraining order (#4) conquered 261 land from Keel-Haul (#6).<br /> <br /> Then came #3 Dwarf — suddenly a real threat with solid 5:4 and a growing mod push. We saw he was gearing up for a fast acre grab, so we decided to hit him preemptively. Some good old-fashioned fireball spam later, and he never really recovered. Another one off the board.<br /> <br /> 2025-04-29 19:58:15 Unicorse and his humble servants (#4) has declared WAR on We’re too old for this shit! (#3).<br /> <br /> === Twin Goblins, and Realm 12 ===<br /> Wurst: #9 Goblin Al-Twix brought in backup: his smaller Goblin buddy Ho-Chi (Tidnab) was edging into my range. Looked like they were setting up a classic pincer. I kept an eye on him and noticed he didn’t cast AC. So i pumped op and the tick before he was hittable, I dumped gem, ore, and lumber into my forge and pushed OP. Broke him AC off — by just 0.1% OP. Later, Tidnab told me they knew I was coming the next tick and planned to bounce me. Well... you’ve got to wake up earlier to catch an old fox.<br /> <br /> 2025-05-02 01:28:22 Victorious on the battlefield, Winton, 1 year, violating 50m restraining order (#4) conquered 253 land from Dwight D. EisenPOWER (#12).<br /> 2025-05-02 18:01:44 Victorious on the battlefield, Winton, 1 year, violating 50m restraining order (#4) conquered 199 land from Ho Chi Minh Mochi (#9).<br /> <br /> Elated by that slick hit, we made a blunder: We declared war on #12 at literally the worst possible moment. Their Nomad and Human looked like the most threatening endgame contenders — but they hadn’t made a hit in ages therefore sitting on low peasants, diminishing our fireball damage. Also Sizzler just deconverted hours ago, leaving no op threat versus them.<br /> <br /> They reacted immediately. They mutualed. Jboy, the Nomad, dropped mass GN + Temples and started ramping OP. Our big explorers managed to stay safe by anticipating the spike, but Sizz was toast. Knowing he’d feed at least once, he slammed the Abandon button — and we tried to delay the incoming hit with a snare.<br /> <br /> Didn’t work. Jboy slapped him for an 85% mutual war hit and had the OP to 9h him again. Absolutely brutal. Big misplay on our part. But just when things looked bleak — #8 Dwarf (Harm) came out of nowhere and whacked Jboy with a clean 100% hit. Left himself open for a retal, but it gave us an opening. Jboy was still our biggest threat. We had to stop the 9h.<br /> <br /> Enter: the Blop Pack. We tried something nuts — snaring him for nine freaking hours. It came down to the wire several times, but someone always logged in with just enough spy power to keep the snare alive. What looked like a disaster... turned into a pretty sweet turnaround.<br /> <br /> 2025-05-02 19:58:53 Unicorse and his loyal subjects (#4) has declared WAR on ABS-olutely I do (#12).<br /> 2025-05-02 20:59:13 We'll get you, and your little dogs too! (#12) has declared WAR on Unicorse and his loyal subjects (#4). <br /> 2025-05-03 20:59:03 James 6. PACK (#12) invaded fellow dominion Bingo, life without parole, decapitating Calypso (#4) and captured 226 land.<br /> 2025-05-03 21:44:24 I wish I had a rabbit in a hat with a bat (#8) invaded James 6. PACK (#12) and captured 245 land.<br /> 2025-05-05 05:07:58 The Ancient Library has been destroyed and rebuilt by Realm (#4).<br /> 2025-05-05 06:00:27 Bingo, life without parole, decapitating Calypso (#4) has been abandoned by its ruler.<br /> <br /> === Final Phase: Snares Galore, and Realm 7 ===<br /> Sly: We felt comfortable (maybe except for Wurst) going into the final phase of the round. Yes, 7 looked very strong, but I felt they were simply too far behind at this point to pose a serious danger without EXCESSIVE feeding, which seemed nearly impossible since everyone had been forced to defend Wurst’s OP already. We started a gameplan of making a snare hit on a realm, then having Wurst leave the guard for a war BF into the same realm afterwards, then rejoining guard. It worked well.<br /> <br /> 2025-05-05 21:30:26 Can't skip leg day when you have no legs!!! &lt;3 Unicorse (#4) has declared WAR on Don't even think about it (#5).<br /> 2025-05-06 04:59:08 Victorious on the battlefield, Winton, 1 year, violating 50m restraining order (#4) conquered 273 land from Timothy Tebowington (#5).<br /> 2025-05-07 04:59:10 Victorious on the battlefield, Winton, 1 year, violating 50m restraining order (#4) conquered 213 land from Tony Dickerson (#5).<br /> <br /> We went back to realm 6’s well yet again, and this hit required a ton of effort and coordination on our part to make happen as the margins were extremely tight.<br /> <br /> 2025-05-11 00:41:08 GI Joes are for kids. OD is a game for cartoon dogs. (#4) has declared WAR on Cobra Rising (#6).<br /> 2025-05-11 00:50:38 Victorious on the battlefield, Winton, 1 year, violating 50m restraining order (#4) conquered 316 land from Keel-Haul (#6).<br /> 2025-05-12 00:37:46 Victorious on the battlefield, Winton, 1 year, violating 50m restraining order (#4) conquered 231 land from Skidmark (#6).<br /> <br /> Sly: We warred realm 7 for the first time as they were the clear late-round threat, doing damage anywhere and everywhere we could with the army of explorers at our disposal. They had a bunch of possible threats: a strong Orc (kongb), Icekin (Lud), up-and-coming WE (Faith), and a Nomad (mdk) who I was concerned would BF into Wurst’s range and then pump GN/temps to limit him while the Orc/Icer hit under us. I thought it was curious at the time that they decided to use the Orc to push 5:4 OP, which effectively meant he would never send again unless he left a ton of OP home. The Icekin basically did the opposite, training enough DP to at times defend Wurst fully and kept hitting with the OP he had. At the time I was more afraid of the opposite, but Lud explained:<br /> <br /> :''“We considered but it was an issue of dp and time -- if I pushed 5:4 I was pretty trivially hittable because IE turtle sucks. And same with orc dp sucking. Orc couldn't get safe himself, and if he pushed for hits he would either be hittable, but more likely we thought wurst would just 9h hit me in reply. And even in extended trades we thought any land lead would be insurmountable given the # hits required to match his land lead as it was around day 40. So even though orc was much stronger, he and the nomad were the only ones that could safely push op while in range.”''<br /> <br /> Fair enough, and perhaps the right conclusion in hindsight considering I didn’t think Wurst’s land lead was surmountable either way. We calculated that Wurst only needed one more BF to be clear of their future 8k finisher Gobbo explorer Dark Mines (Gorgh).<br /> <br /> 2025-05-13 15:35:26 GI Joes are for kids. OD is a game for cartoon dogs. (#4) has declared WAR on There can be no peace (#7).<br /> 2025-05-17 02:58:34 Victorious on the battlefield, Winton, 1 year, violating 50m restraining order (#4) conquered 230 land from Barack SWOLEbama (#12).<br /> <br /> And that was it! Wurst was the inevitable winner.<br /> <br /> === Wurst’s Acknowledgements ===<br /> Damdred – You really put together one hell of a team and led with unwavering dedication. You stayed a true captain till the end—always motivating, fully engaged, and spreading that energy to every one of us. Thank you for an incredibly fun round.<br /> Dan – As someone in our realm said: “Easiest round win ever for you” 😅. Just kidding. We liked having you around as our mascot, and I’d still always pack with you. :*<br /> Sly – What a joy it was to pack with you. Great understanding of the game, great tactical awareness. And when I hit a low point, you were the one who pulled me out of the mud.<br /> Sizzler – My OG. I was so happy when I saw your registration and couldn’t believe my luck when Damdred drafted you. It’s always great playing with you. Your ability to read the board and to always remain calm helped me a lot.<br /> DaveTheGoliath – Someone I hadn’t played with before, and I totally fell in love with your style. Proactive, engaged, smart and a joy to talk to. Youre everything one could wish fron a packmate!<br /> Psychosophy – Thank you! I think in a way, you’re the one who sacrificed the most for this win. #6 disbanded 500 spies—you retrained 1,000. You could’ve pushed your exploring advantage, but instead, you decided to go heavy on ops eating tons of blops during our wars. Once again, it was a great pleasure to play with you. Your zealotism against McGeal after their first war on us was a constant source of joy.<br /> Cosula – Feels like you’re a packmate now, with how often we land together! You also went beyond your limits and played a tremendous round. Always there when it mattered—and always ready to throw some fireballs!<br /> Extravadanza – Oh boy. I often forgot you’re a new player because you showed such a great understanding of the game and insane activity. And your meme game even won you Meme of the Round. I hope we play again in the future—it was a pleasure.<br /> Dishness – Also a new player who immediately understood how the game works. You became a full-fledged member of the blop division in no time and needed little to no guidance.<br /> This win was 100% a team win. The amount of activity, engagement, and support everyone in this group brought was something I’ve never experienced before. One person missing and we wouldnt have done it. A big heartfelt thank you to all of you.</div>

Sly http://wiki.opendominion.net/index.php?title=Round_30&diff=1317 2022-09-03T19:09:45Z

<p>Sly: </p> <hr /> <div>{{Round_finish<br /> | round = 30<br /> | round_id = 44<br /> <br /> | winner_player = Ivetza<br /> | winner_dominion = Little 👻👻👻 army (#5)<br /> | winner_race = Spirit<br /> <br /> | second_player = Jcinnz<br /> | second_dominion = Alotta Fagina🌮 (#8)<br /> | second_race = Human<br /> <br /> | third_player = Almezo<br /> | third_dominion = Float like a Bee, Sting like a Bee (#2)<br /> | third_race = Human<br /> }}<br /> <br /> <br /> Round 30 started on the 10th of July 2022 and ended on the 25th of August 2022.<br /> <br /> == Round Win Story ==<br /> <br /> I apologize in advance for my realm's lack of attentiveness in keeping track of our round, but I'll do my best to recount the events as best as I can remember them along with some notes from the crier and realm discord. - Sly<br /> <br /> This round gives Spirit their third win, but technically it's their first win since previous Spirit wins were the legacy version of the race which was very similar to Undead. This round was also probably the strongest Human has ever been and we see this with two top 3 finishes from them.<br /> <br /> <br /> '''Pre-round'''<br /> <br /> Like usual, I randomed into a realm I wasn't too certain about and didn't have any significant expectations for the round. But there were some very nice surprises throughout and we ended up having a very active and supportive team, an advantage which gave us the edge at a few critical moments I believe.<br /> <br /> We had a 3-pack of Ivetza, Gipsa, and Rompar and the eclectic 5-pack of Erix, MannoWrath, Sarmis, Volv, and squarewave. The notable randoms were myself, Templeman (who achieved his highest finish yet), and Vovin. <br /> <br /> I knew it would likely be a better round for slow attacking, but how competitive the strategy could be would depend on Erix's (Magnum) ability to prevent any fast runaways.<br /> <br /> From the 5-pack, Erix was our only pure fast race as FW, Manno (Kermit) wanted to convert as WE, Sarmis (The Smallest Yellow Crayon) ended up converting DE, Volv (Miss Piggy) went for a fast Nomad, and squarewave (Wargasm) tried a slow attacking Nox.<br /> <br /> From the BGs, Ivetza (Little 👻👻👻 army) ran a fast Spirit, Gipsa (Spy x Family) ran a slow attacking Nomad, and Rompar (Ferrets eat parrots like carrots) tried a more efficient Dwarf.<br /> <br /> I (here we go again) was leaning towards Spirit prior to realm assignment but ended up going Orc due to how insanely cheap their OP is, and this is the first round they had 3-point turtle on BBs. Templeman (Fozzie Bear) was happy to get ops for us as a Merfolk, and Vovin (Consider it Mutual) played a Nox attacker. So we had a wide variety of strategies on the board with no overarching plan on how to secure control of the round and win, but we were going to have fun nonetheless.<br /> <br /> <br /> '''Early Round'''<br /> <br /> I attacked out of the gate first with 3 bot hits. Gipsa had bounced on his first hit but ended up making 4 successful invasions afterwards, then 9-houred accordingly which rocketed him up. Erix's first hit came at the expense of a DE in realm 4, which squarewave followed up on--but this resulted in him being doubled by 4's strongest attackers. It wasn't ideal as they looked like one of the main threats to try to make a runaway out of their FW.<br /> <br /> <br /> 2022-07-10 17:59:42 Snowflake Melter (#4) invaded fellow dominion Wargasm (#5) and captured 45 land.&lt;br&gt;<br /> 2022-07-10 18:58:23 Hide the pain (#4) invaded fellow dominion Wargasm (#5) and captured 41 land. <br /> <br /> <br /> Despite the big early hits, we rolled on. Ivetza's first hit came on an Undead in 7 just 2 ticks later, so we were all up and running. And yet, at the start of Day 2, a nightmare scenario unfolded. Erix made a nice hit, but Dumb (#10) suicided him seemingly out of nowhere. We had mostly missed him and assumed he didn't have as much sendable OP as the other top attackers--an oversight looking back since he had waited a full 26 hours before making his second hit. Additionally, a new player who found us off an Instagram ad had gone inactive and ended up feeding 2 of our main threats.<br /> <br /> <br /> 2022-07-11 00:29:20 Rent seeking behavior (#7) invaded fellow dominion Sakarra (#5) and captured 50 land.&lt;br&gt;<br /> 2022-07-11 00:39:37 Pickle Rick (#10) invaded fellow dominion Sakarra (#5) and captured 45 land.&lt;br&gt;<br /> 2022-07-11 02:03:25 Dumb (#10) invaded fellow dominion Magnum (#5) and captured 55 land.<br /> <br /> <br /> Ivetza, Gipsa, and I took smaller bot hits and Erix recovered with a second sizable invasion. All things considered, we didn't look in terrible shape but it was going to be a dogfight. Poor squarewave took another lesson in checking top OP and gave some additional land to some competitors again:<br /> <br /> <br /> 2022-07-12 11:58:01 Scary Terry (#10) invaded fellow dominion Wargasm (#5) and captured 54 land.&lt;br&gt;<br /> 2022-07-12 11:58:51 Birdperson (#10) invaded fellow dominion Wargasm (#5) and captured 45 land.&lt;br&gt;<br /> 2022-07-12 12:52:19 Queen Bee (#2) invaded fellow dominion Wargasm (#5) and captured 44 land.<br /> <br /> <br /> More early misplays: Erix had a hit on Dumb and bounced due to a mistype, and a few others had previously bounced due to not asking someone to double check the math. But from here on out, we became pretty focused in on doing what we needed to do.<br /> <br /> The first significant moment of the round came as realm 10 declared war on realm 4, trying to take down Snowflake Melter #4 (DanTheMan) and Hide the pain (Wurstmeyer). Snowflake had been rolling early with his largest competitor being Pickle Rick in 10 (Bobbo). Hide the pain #4 had started pushing massive 5:4 OP, I guess trying to allow Snowflake space to run. But I think it was probably far too early to do this as there were simply too many dominions who were still a threat, and that ended up proving itself true.<br /> <br /> Snowflake made a hit on the WE in realm 10 and left himself open to be hit by Erix, assuming that we would just wait for 10 to hit and then be able to make a safer hit on one of them if they suicided him. But to us, Snowflake appeared to be the largest threat at the time, and him getting home safely yet again on another large hit (with Wurst r/ring to push huge temps and 5:4 as Nomad) was not an option.<br /> <br /> <br /> 2022-07-15 14:59:35 Snowflake Melter (#4) conquered 69 land from Squanchy (#10).&lt;br&gt;<br /> 2022-07-15 15:59:54 Magnum (#5) invaded Snowflake Melter (#4) and captured 114 land.&lt;br&gt;<br /> 2022-07-15 16:55:44 Pickle Rick (#10) invaded Magnum (#5) and captured 70 land.&lt;br&gt;<br /> 2022-07-15 16:57:53 Birdperson (#10) invaded Magnum (#5) and captured 71 land.&lt;br&gt;<br /> 2022-07-15 17:59:53 King Flippy Nips (#10) invaded Snowflake Melter (#4) and captured 104 land.&lt;br&gt;<br /> 2022-07-15 18:53:55 Hide the pain (#4) conquered 117 land from King Flippy Nips (#10).<br /> <br /> <br /> Realm 10 may have felt like they gained a lasting advantage, and they did appear to win out the exchange. But their builds weren't set up for longer-term success (even Birdperson, [bigchris27/allegorical] wasn't going to be capable of running in our estimation). Their best long-term threat was pretty clearly King Flippy Nips (InternetFett), and nobody saw the OP Volv had pushed until it was too late:<br /> <br /> <br /> 2022-07-15 23:58:30 Miss Piggy (#5) invaded King Flippy Nips (#10) and captured 97 land.<br /> <br /> <br /> Volv was triple-tapped, including by 7's DE (Nate), but the suicide on the Nomad in 10 was well-timed after seeing how annoying Wurst was with his Nomad in 4.<br /> <br /> <br /> 2022-07-16 00:10:25 A result of genetics (#7) invaded Miss Piggy (#5) and captured 63 land. [Nate's first larger hit]<br /> <br /> <br /> All the while, Ivetza was flying under the radar but keeping up nicely as Spirit. He didn't have a very efficient build at the time, but it ended up serving him well. 10's war on 4 ended without more fireworks, but then they re-declared...<br /> <br /> <br /> '''Mid Round'''<br /> <br /> With the first week over, a critical moment in the round came. 5:4 OPs were holding several large attackers from going all out, but not most of us in realm 5. Players like me who were efficient and smaller knew we wouldn't likely be targets of the suicides, so we just kept hitting--and so did Ivetza, despite being just a little smaller than some of the larger attackers at the time.<br /> <br /> Erix was one of several who started pushing 5:4 while the rest of us went on a bot-hitting spree for about 4 days. Then, another pivotal moment. Snowflake, who hadn't sent since the 18th, suicided A result of genetics #7 (Nate). This kicked off a series of invasions that ended up putting us in a prime position to compete for the round.<br /> <br /> <br /> 2022-07-21 09:11:35 A result of genetics (#7) conquered 80 land from The Grean Peace Party (#0).&lt;br&gt;<br /> 2022-07-21 13:59:48 Snowflake Melter (#4) invaded A result of genetics (#7) and captured 128 land.&lt;br&gt;<br /> 2022-07-21 14:06:12 Magnum (#5) invaded Snowflake Melter (#4) and captured 116 land.&lt;br&gt;<br /> 2022-07-21 14:17:07 Little 👻👻👻 army (#5) invaded Snowflake Melter (#4) and captured 92 land.&lt;br&gt;<br /> 2022-07-21 14:41:38 Pickle Rick (#10) invaded Magnum (#5) and captured 100 land.&lt;br&gt;<br /> 2022-07-21 14:57:46 Birdperson (#10) invaded Magnum (#5) and captured 92 land.&lt;br&gt; <br /> 2022-07-21 15:52:48 King Flippy Nips (#10) invaded Snowflake Melter (#4) and captured 99 land.&lt;br&gt;<br /> 2022-07-21 22:04:32 A result of genetics (#7) invaded Snowflake Melter (#4) and captured 77 land.<br /> <br /> <br /> So now realm 4 was pretty much toast, 2 wasn't involved enough to keep up, 10 had benefitted but we knew we could overtake them in the long-run, and 7 were still scary but had suffered a setback. We still needed to deal with Pickle Rick, and the Spirit of Rent seeking behavior #7 (mris) was starting to look very strong too.<br /> <br /> Quite a few bot hits later, 10 declared war on 7 on the 25th, though I don't think they had a lot of success as the DE wasn't sinkable and resilience prevented much lasting damage on the Spirit.<br /> <br /> More bot hits, mostly.<br /> <br /> The FW of Queen Bee #2 (Peabrain) fell too far behind and sent out unsafely:<br /> <br /> <br /> 2022-07-27 00:18:48 A result of genetics (#7) invaded Queen Bee (#2) and captured 143 land.&lt;br&gt;<br /> 2022-07-27 00:29:21 Pickle Rick (#10) invaded Queen Bee (#2) and captured 133 land.&lt;br&gt;<br /> 2022-07-27 02:55:48 Little 👻👻👻 army (#5) conquered 113 land from Queen Bee (#2). [We had to wake Ivetza up; the first of a few times]<br /> <br /> <br /> Ivetza was no longer under the radar, but was able to keep up with the top 2 attackers' hits. 10 only had 5:4 to threaten with and it was more of an idle threat by this time. Genetics looked impossible to challenge with a better build and potentially a better race than Ivetza's Spirit, but all of the top doms hovered roughly around 120k OP/DP.<br /> <br /> The top doms started hitting explorers, but a battle over the round win with 7 was inevitable. 7 had an advantage after Pickle Rick drained too many of his peasants trying to keep up as FW in that they essentially had a 2v1 against us, with all 3 races very happy to trade acres too. Rent seeking was on a knife's edge with his DP, but so was Ivetza for some of this part of the round. A silent battle of two Spirits began. But then, something very strange happened:<br /> <br /> <br /> 2022-07-31 06:27:05 A result of genetics (#7) invaded Losing my wife and kids in Las Vegas (#6) and captured 160 land.<br /> <br /> <br /> Sly — 07/31/2022<br /> ''you hitting him same hour?''<br /> ''i dont understand why he left himself open?''<br /> <br /> As Rio said on the podcast, apparently Genetics had assumed Rent seeking would cover him, but Ivetza could hit Genetics without sending virtually any DP the next tick:<br /> <br /> <br /> 2022-07-31 07:36:17 Victorious on the battlefield, Little 👻👻👻 army (#5) conquered 226 land from A result of genetics (#7).<br /> <br /> <br /> This was the beginning of the end for everyone else. Rent seeking was pushing 5:4 but as a Spirit who is already slightly behind, it was a little desperate and not going to be effective against Ivetza. Still, Genetics the DE looked amazing and it wasn't clear whether Nate or Ivetza was better positioned. But Rent seeking then allowed himself to get hit by Ivetza with only a suicide to retaliate. We assassinated his drafts assuming he wanted to push more spec OP, though he still got the suicide off on Ivetza.<br /> <br /> <br /> 2022-08-01 00:15:10 Victorious on the battlefield, Little 👻👻👻 army (#5) conquered 204 land from Rent seeking behavior (#7).&lt;br&gt;<br /> 2022-08-01 01:18:26 Rent seeking behavior (#7) invaded fellow dominion Little 👻👻👻 army (#5) and captured 313 land.&lt;br&gt;<br /> 2022-08-01 01:38:01 Birdperson (#10) invaded Rent seeking behavior (#7) and captured 228 land.&lt;br&gt;<br /> 2022-08-01 01:59:21 Pickle Rick (#10) invaded Rent seeking behavior (#7) and captured 213 land.&lt;br&gt;<br /> 2022-08-01 01:59:52 Been There Drone That (#2) invaded Rent seeking behavior (#7) and captured 188 land.<br /> <br /> <br /> I decided against hitting as I felt like I was in a great spot and could afford to wait this mess out a bit longer. Rent seeking could've retaliated on me safely too if I'd joined in. Instead, he hit me all in (I had AC off because it was such a stretch of a sui for him):<br /> <br /> <br /> 2022-08-01 13:01:05 Rent seeking behavior (#7) invaded fellow dominion here we go again (#5) and captured 151 land.&lt;br&gt;<br /> 2022-08-01 13:02:59 Victorious on the battlefield, Little 👻👻👻 army (#5) conquered 180 land from Rent seeking behavior (#7).&lt;br&gt;<br /> 2022-08-01 13:18:35 Victorious on the battlefield, here we go again (#5) conquered 232 land from Rent seeking behavior (#7).&lt;br&gt;<br /> 2022-08-01 13:59:39 Birdperson (#10) invaded Rent seeking behavior (#7) and captured 171 land.&lt;br&gt;<br /> 2022-08-01 13:59:46 Pickle Rick (#10) invaded Rent seeking behavior (#7) and captured 163 land.&lt;br&gt;<br /> 2022-08-01 13:59:53 A result of genetics (#7) invaded Wandering Souls (#4) and captured 160 land.<br /> <br /> <br /> Okay, not ideal for me but also not all bad, and great for Ivetza as 10 were still clinging on only really posing a significant threat to Rent seeking and not us. Rent seeking climbed back up near Ivetza's range and pushed more 5:4...<br /> <br /> <br /> '''Final Stages'''<br /> <br /> A few explorer hits later, we arrived at somewhat of an arms race. Genetics wanted to push out into the lead while Rent seeking wanted to threaten to jump into Ivetza's range to suicide. I decided our best course of action was for me to simply hit Rent all in to prevent him from even threatening Ivetza, which wouldn't take long since Rent wasn't training much DP.<br /> <br /> At one point Rent seeking had explored some acres to just barely get into range which I caught, but we made sure Ivetza had the DP to cover. I closed in on having the OP to break Rent, and according to Rio on the podcast, they realized I was going to hit Rent so he took his DB without thinking. But his DB was keeping him out of Ivetza's range. We actually had an internal debate about whether or not I should still be the one to hit Rent as it would've given me a massive amount of land, but ultimately Ivetza made the call to hit Rent himself. It worked out in the end:<br /> <br /> <br /> 2022-08-05 00:59:55 Victorious on the battlefield, Little 👻👻👻 army (#5) conquered 203 land from Rent seeking behavior (#7).<br /> <br /> <br /> Rent's round was over from there and it was a straight fight for the win. It still looked like Genetics would be a huge pain to overcome, even now, and we noticed the Gnome of Rest and Ricklaxation #3 (Rury) starting to look quite strong. Rury said he saw me as a threat and hit me instead of Rent (despite Rent being like 800 acres larger):<br /> <br /> <br /> 2022-08-05 22:59:40 Rest and Ricklaxation (#3) invaded fellow dominion here we go again (#5) and captured 223 land.<br /> <br /> <br /> But the fight was really between Ivetza and Nate. Just as we assumed it would be a long and hard fight, another mistake from 7. Bobbo got hit all in, maybe AC drop? I don't recall, but it didn't matter. I guess Nate assumed Rent would cover him or that his DP covered Ivetza, but hitting at the start of the hour allowed Ivetza to fully, safely smash Genetics with his PKs (though he took quite some time to wake up).<br /> <br /> <br /> 2022-08-06 00:00:38 A result of genetics (#7) invaded Pickle Rick (#10) and captured 205 land.&lt;br&gt;<br /> 2022-08-06 00:58:25 Victorious on the battlefield, Little 👻👻👻 army (#5) conquered 274 land from A result of genetics (#7).<br /> <br /> <br /> From there it was certain that Ivetza would win. Genetics fought for second place and probably did the right thing in trying to hold down Rury's Gnome:<br /> <br /> <br /> 2022-08-10 15:59:20 Rest and Ricklaxation (#3) invaded Wandering Souls (#4) and captured 205 land.&lt;br&gt;<br /> 2022-08-10 23:59:56 A result of genetics (#7) invaded Rest and Ricklaxation (#3) and captured 231 land.&lt;br&gt;<br /> 2022-08-11 00:06:04 Victorious on the battlefield, Little 👻👻👻 army (#5) conquered 275 land from A result of genetics (#7).<br /> <br /> <br /> And his other future-top-5 competitors as well, hitting Genetics 3-4 more times after Genetics hit the up-and-comers.<br /> <br /> Ivetza closed out the round by hitting the top 3 out-of-realm explorers to ensure Templeman finished as the largest explorer.<br /> <br /> <br /> Some shoutouts from me:<br /> <br /> Manno, awesome realm names. WE wasn't the best race this round but you still did well and were a great teammate. Templeman was always getting ops for anyone and everyone, even with being a competitive explorer. Erix was super active and played FW attacker very well to make sure the rest of us had a shot. Gipsa played pretty well as Nomad and probably tanked a hit or 2 so that someone else didn't have to lol. Sarmis had an interesting converting strategy and was essential for getting wiz ops on Genetics. And of course congratulations again to Ivetza, well played.<br /> <br /> Finally a quote from Ivetza in the discord:&lt;br&gt;<br /> ''Thanks all! A nice team win! @Erix you crazy mf, @Sly you deserve a bigger finish, @Templeman my favourite ops bitz please pack with us next round 😂, @Volv i hope you smash them good in SL, @vovin after all those years you are still the N1 nublette in dominion, @Gipsa you will pay for that call at 2 am. in the night, @rompar Glory Glory Man Utd, @MannoWrath woodies need a boost!''<br /> <br /> <br /> == Rounds ==<br /> <br /> {{Round_nav<br /> | round = 30<br /> | previous_round = 29<br /> | next_round = 31<br /> }}</div>

Sly http://wiki.opendominion.net/index.php?title=Round_30&diff=1316 2022-09-03T19:06:42Z

<p>Sly: </p> <hr /> <div>{{Round_finish<br /> | round = 30<br /> | round_id = 44<br /> <br /> | winner_player = Ivetza<br /> | winner_dominion = Little 👻👻👻 army (#5)<br /> | winner_race = Spirit<br /> <br /> | second_player = Jcinnz<br /> | second_dominion = Alotta Fagina🌮 (#8)<br /> | second_race = Human<br /> <br /> | third_player = Almezo<br /> | third_dominion = Float like a Bee, Sting like a Bee (#2)<br /> | third_race = Human<br /> }}<br /> <br /> <br /> Round 30 started on the 10th of July 2022 and ended on the 25th of August 2022.<br /> <br /> == Round Win Story ==<br /> <br /> I apologize in advance for my realm's lack of attentiveness in keeping track of our round, but I'll do my best to recount the events as best as I can remember them along with some notes from the crier and realm discord. - Sly<br /> <br /> This round gives Spirit their third win, but technically it's their first win since previous Spirit wins were the legacy version of the race which was very similar to Undead. This round was also probably the strongest Human has ever been and we see this with two top 3 finishes from them.<br /> <br /> <br /> '''Pre-round'''<br /> <br /> Like usual, I randomed into a realm I wasn't too certain about and didn't have any significant expectations for the round. But there were some very nice surprises throughout and we ended up having a very active and supportive team, an advantage which gave us the edge at a few critical moments I believe.<br /> <br /> We had a 3-pack of Ivetza, Gipsa, and Rompar and the eclectic 5-pack of Erix, MannoWrath, Sarmis, Volv, and squarewave. The notable randoms were myself, Templeman (who achieved his highest finish yet), and Vovin. <br /> <br /> I knew it would likely be a better round for slow attacking, but how competitive the strategy could be would depend on Erix's (Magnum) ability to prevent any fast runaways.<br /> <br /> From the 5-pack, Erix was our only pure fast race as FW, Manno (Kermit) wanted to convert as WE, Sarmis (The Smallest Yellow Crayon) ended up converting DE, Volv (Miss Piggy) went for a fast Nomad, and squarewave (Wargasm) tried a slow attacking Nox.<br /> <br /> From the BGs, Ivetza (Little 👻👻👻 army) ran a fast Spirit, Gipsa (Spy x Family) ran a slow attacking Nomad, and Rompar (Ferrets eat parrots like carrots) tried a more efficient Dwarf.<br /> <br /> I (here we go again) was leaning towards Spirit prior to realm assignment but ended up going Orc due to how insanely cheap their OP is, and this is the first round they had 3-point turtle on BBs. Templeman (Fozzie Bear) was happy to get ops for us as a Merfolk, and Vovin (Consider it Mutual) played a Nox attacker. So we had a wide variety of strategies on the board with no overarching plan on how to secure control of the round and win, but we were going to have fun nonetheless.<br /> <br /> <br /> '''Early Round'''<br /> <br /> I attacked out of the gate first with 3 bot hits. Gipsa had bounced on his first hit but ended up making 4 successful invasions afterwards, then 9-houred accordingly which rocketed him up. Erix's first hit came at the expense of a DE in realm 4, which squarewave followed up on--but this resulted in him being doubled by 4's strongest attackers. It wasn't ideal as they looked like one of the main threats to try to make a runaway out of their FW.<br /> <br /> <br /> 2022-07-10 17:59:42 Snowflake Melter (#4) invaded fellow dominion Wargasm (#5) and captured 45 land.&lt;br&gt;<br /> 2022-07-10 18:58:23 Hide the pain (#4) invaded fellow dominion Wargasm (#5) and captured 41 land. <br /> <br /> <br /> Despite the big early hits, we rolled on. Ivetza's first hit came on an Undead in 7 just 2 ticks later, so we were all up and running. And yet, at the start of Day 2, a nightmare scenario unfolded. Erix made a nice hit, but Dumb (#10) suicided him seemingly out of nowhere. We had mostly missed him and assumed he didn't have as much sendable OP as the other top attackers--an oversight looking back since he had waited a full 26 hours before making his second hit. Additionally, a new player who found us off an Instagram ad had gone inactive and ended up feeding 2 of our main threats.<br /> <br /> <br /> 2022-07-11 00:29:20 Rent seeking behavior (#7) invaded fellow dominion Sakarra (#5) and captured 50 land.&lt;br&gt;<br /> 2022-07-11 00:39:37 Pickle Rick (#10) invaded fellow dominion Sakarra (#5) and captured 45 land.&lt;br&gt;<br /> 2022-07-11 02:03:25 Dumb (#10) invaded fellow dominion Magnum (#5) and captured 55 land.<br /> <br /> <br /> Ivetza, Gipsa, and I took smaller bot hits and Erix recovered with a second sizable invasion. All things considered, we didn't look in terrible shape but it was going to be a dogfight. Poor squarewave took another lesson in checking top OP and gave some additional land to some competitors again:<br /> <br /> <br /> 2022-07-12 11:58:01 Scary Terry (#10) invaded fellow dominion Wargasm (#5) and captured 54 land.&lt;br&gt;<br /> 2022-07-12 11:58:51 Birdperson (#10) invaded fellow dominion Wargasm (#5) and captured 45 land.&lt;br&gt;<br /> 2022-07-12 12:52:19 Queen Bee (#2) invaded fellow dominion Wargasm (#5) and captured 44 land.<br /> <br /> <br /> More early misplays: Erix had a hit on Dumb and bounced due to a mistype, and a few others had previously bounced due to not asking someone to double check the math. But from here on out, we became pretty focused in on doing what we needed to do.<br /> <br /> The first significant moment of the round came as realm 10 declared war on realm 4, trying to take down Snowflake Melter #4 (DanTheMan) and Hide the pain (Wurstmeyer). Snowflake had been rolling early with his largest competitor being Pickle Rick in 10 (Bobbo). Hide the pain #4 had started pushing massive 5:4 OP, I guess trying to allow Snowflake space to run. But I think it was probably far too early to do this as there were simply too many dominions who were still a threat, and that ended up proving itself true.<br /> <br /> Snowflake made a hit on the WE in realm 10 and left himself open to be hit by Erix, assuming that we would just wait for 10 to hit and then be able to make a safer hit on one of them if they suicided him. But to us, Snowflake appeared to be the largest threat at the time, and him getting home safely yet again on another large hit (with Wurst r/ring to push huge temps and 5:4 as Nomad) was not an option.<br /> <br /> <br /> 2022-07-15 14:59:35 Snowflake Melter (#4) conquered 69 land from Squanchy (#10).&lt;br&gt;<br /> 2022-07-15 15:59:54 Magnum (#5) invaded Snowflake Melter (#4) and captured 114 land.&lt;br&gt;<br /> 2022-07-15 16:55:44 Pickle Rick (#10) invaded Magnum (#5) and captured 70 land.&lt;br&gt;<br /> 2022-07-15 16:57:53 Birdperson (#10) invaded Magnum (#5) and captured 71 land.&lt;br&gt;<br /> 2022-07-15 17:59:53 King Flippy Nips (#10) invaded Snowflake Melter (#4) and captured 104 land.&lt;br&gt;<br /> 2022-07-15 18:53:55 Hide the pain (#4) conquered 117 land from King Flippy Nips (#10).<br /> <br /> <br /> Realm 10 may have felt like they gained a lasting advantage, and they did appear to win out the exchange. But their builds weren't set up for longer-term success (even Birdperson, [bigchris27/allegorical] wasn't going to be capable of running in our estimation). Their best long-term threat was pretty clearly King Flippy Nips (InternetFett), and nobody saw the OP Volv had pushed until it was too late:<br /> <br /> <br /> 2022-07-15 23:58:30 Miss Piggy (#5) invaded King Flippy Nips (#10) and captured 97 land.<br /> <br /> <br /> Volv was triple-tapped, including by 7's DE (Nate), but the suicide on the Nomad in 10 was well-timed after seeing how annoying Wurst was with his Nomad in 4.<br /> <br /> <br /> 2022-07-16 00:10:25 A result of genetics (#7) invaded Miss Piggy (#5) and captured 63 land. [Nate's first larger hit]<br /> <br /> <br /> All the while, Ivetza was flying under the radar but keeping up nicely as Spirit. He didn't have a very efficient build at the time, but it ended up serving him well. 10's war on 4 ended without more fireworks, but then they re-declared...<br /> <br /> <br /> '''Mid Round'''<br /> <br /> With the first week over, a critical moment in the round came. 5:4 OPs were holding several large attackers from going all out, but not most of us in realm 5. Players like me who were efficient and smaller knew we wouldn't likely be targets of the suicides, so we just kept hitting--and so did Ivetza, despite being just a little smaller than some of the larger attackers at the time.<br /> <br /> Erix was one of several who started pushing 5:4 while the rest of us went on a bot-hitting spree for about 4 days. Then, another pivotal moment. Snowflake, who hadn't sent since the 18th, suicided A result of genetics #7 (Nate). This kicked off a series of invasions that ended up putting us in a prime position to compete for the round.<br /> <br /> <br /> 2022-07-21 09:11:35 A result of genetics (#7) conquered 80 land from The Grean Peace Party (#0).&lt;br&gt;<br /> 2022-07-21 13:59:48 Snowflake Melter (#4) invaded A result of genetics (#7) and captured 128 land.&lt;br&gt;<br /> 2022-07-21 14:06:12 Magnum (#5) invaded Snowflake Melter (#4) and captured 116 land.&lt;br&gt;<br /> 2022-07-21 14:17:07 Little 👻👻👻 army (#5) invaded Snowflake Melter (#4) and captured 92 land.&lt;br&gt;<br /> 2022-07-21 14:41:38 Pickle Rick (#10) invaded Magnum (#5) and captured 100 land.&lt;br&gt;<br /> 2022-07-21 14:57:46 Birdperson (#10) invaded Magnum (#5) and captured 92 land.&lt;br&gt; <br /> 2022-07-21 15:52:48 King Flippy Nips (#10) invaded Snowflake Melter (#4) and captured 99 land.&lt;br&gt;<br /> 2022-07-21 22:04:32 A result of genetics (#7) invaded Snowflake Melter (#4) and captured 77 land.<br /> <br /> <br /> So now realm 4 was pretty much toast, 2 wasn't involved enough to keep up, 10 had benefitted but we knew we could overtake them in the long-run, and 7 were still scary but had suffered a setback. We still needed to deal with Pickle Rick, and the Spirit of Rent seeking behavior #7 (mris) was starting to look very strong too.<br /> <br /> Quite a few bot hits later, 10 declared war on 7 on the 25th, though I don't think they had a lot of success as the DE wasn't sinkable and resilience prevented much lasting damage on the Spirit.<br /> <br /> More bot hits, mostly.<br /> <br /> The FW of Queen Bee #2 (Peabrain) fell too far behind and sent out unsafely:<br /> <br /> <br /> 2022-07-27 00:18:48 A result of genetics (#7) invaded Queen Bee (#2) and captured 143 land.&lt;br&gt;<br /> 2022-07-27 00:29:21 Pickle Rick (#10) invaded Queen Bee (#2) and captured 133 land.&lt;br&gt;<br /> 2022-07-27 02:55:48 Little 👻👻👻 army (#5) conquered 113 land from Queen Bee (#2). [We had to wake Ivetza up; the first of a few times]<br /> <br /> <br /> Ivetza was no longer under the radar, but was able to keep up with the top 2 attackers' hits. 10 only had 5:4 to threaten with and it was more of an idle threat by this time. Genetics looked impossible to challenge with a better build and potentially a better race than Ivetza's Spirit, but all of the top doms hovered roughly around 120k OP/DP.<br /> <br /> The top doms started hitting explorers, but a battle over the round win with 7 was inevitable. 7 had an advantage after Pickle Rick drained too many of his peasants trying to keep up as FW in that they essentially had a 2v1 against us, with all 3 races very happy to trade acres too. Rent seeking was on a knife's edge with his DP, but so was Ivetza for some of this part of the round. A silent battle of two Spirits began. But then, something very strange happened:<br /> <br /> <br /> 2022-07-31 06:27:05 A result of genetics (#7) invaded Losing my wife and kids in Las Vegas (#6) and captured 160 land.<br /> <br /> <br /> Sly — 07/31/2022<br /> ''you hitting him same hour?''<br /> ''i dont understand why he left himself open?''<br /> <br /> As Rio said on the podcast, apparently Genetics had assumed Rent seeking would cover him, but Ivetza could hit Genetics without sending virtually any DP the next tick:<br /> <br /> <br /> 2022-07-31 07:36:17 Victorious on the battlefield, Little 👻👻👻 army (#5) conquered 226 land from A result of genetics (#7).<br /> <br /> <br /> This was the beginning of the end for everyone else. Rent seeking was pushing 5:4 but as a Spirit who is already slightly behind, it was a little desperate and not going to be effective against Ivetza. Still, Genetics the DE looked amazing and it wasn't clear whether Nate or Ivetza was better positioned. But Rent seeking then allowed himself to get hit by Ivetza with only a suicide to retaliate. We assassinated his drafts assuming he wanted to push more spec OP, though he still got the suicide off on Ivetza.<br /> <br /> <br /> 2022-08-01 00:15:10 Victorious on the battlefield, Little 👻👻👻 army (#5) conquered 204 land from Rent seeking behavior (#7).&lt;br&gt;<br /> 2022-08-01 01:18:26 Rent seeking behavior (#7) invaded fellow dominion Little 👻👻👻 army (#5) and captured 313 land.&lt;br&gt;<br /> 2022-08-01 01:38:01 Birdperson (#10) invaded Rent seeking behavior (#7) and captured 228 land.&lt;br&gt;<br /> 2022-08-01 01:59:21 Pickle Rick (#10) invaded Rent seeking behavior (#7) and captured 213 land.&lt;br&gt;<br /> 2022-08-01 01:59:52 Been There Drone That (#2) invaded Rent seeking behavior (#7) and captured 188 land.<br /> <br /> <br /> I decided against hitting as I felt like I was in a great spot and could afford to wait this mess out a bit longer. Rent seeking could've retaliated on me safely too if I'd joined in. Instead, he hit me all in (I had AC off because it was such a stretch of a sui for him):<br /> <br /> <br /> 2022-08-01 13:01:05 Rent seeking behavior (#7) invaded fellow dominion here we go again (#5) and captured 151 land.&lt;br&gt;<br /> 2022-08-01 13:02:59 Victorious on the battlefield, Little 👻👻👻 army (#5) conquered 180 land from Rent seeking behavior (#7).&lt;br&gt;<br /> 2022-08-01 13:18:35 Victorious on the battlefield, here we go again (#5) conquered 232 land from Rent seeking behavior (#7).&lt;br&gt;<br /> 2022-08-01 13:59:39 Birdperson (#10) invaded Rent seeking behavior (#7) and captured 171 land.&lt;br&gt;<br /> 2022-08-01 13:59:46 Pickle Rick (#10) invaded Rent seeking behavior (#7) and captured 163 land.&lt;br&gt;<br /> 2022-08-01 13:59:53 A result of genetics (#7) invaded Wandering Souls (#4) and captured 160 land.<br /> <br /> <br /> Okay, not ideal for me but also not all bad, and great for Ivetza as 10 were still clinging on only really posing a significant threat to Rent seeking and not us. Rent seeking climbed back up near Ivetza's range and pushed more 5:4...<br /> <br /> <br /> '''Final Stages'''<br /> <br /> A few explorer hits later, we arrived at somewhat of an arms race. Genetics wanted to push out into the lead while Rent seeking wanted to threaten to jump into Ivetza's range to suicide. I decided our best course of action was for me to simply hit Rent all in to prevent him from even threatening Ivetza, which wouldn't take long since Rent wasn't training much DP.<br /> <br /> At one point Rent seeking had explored some acres to just barely get into range which I caught, but we made sure Ivetza had the DP to cover. I closed in on having the OP to break Rent, and according to Rio on the podcast, they realized I was going to hit Rent so he took his DB without thinking. But his DB was keeping him out of Ivetza's range. We actually had an internal debate about whether or not I should still be the one to hit Rent as it would've given me a massive amount of land, but ultimately Ivetza made the call to hit Rent himself. It worked out in the end:<br /> <br /> <br /> 2022-08-05 00:59:55 Victorious on the battlefield, Little 👻👻👻 army (#5) conquered 203 land from Rent seeking behavior (#7).<br /> <br /> <br /> Rent's round was over from there and it was a straight fight for the win. It still looked like Genetics would be a huge pain to overcome, even now, and we noticed the Gnome of Rest and Ricklaxation #3 (Rury) starting to look quite strong. Rury said he saw me as a threat and hit me instead of Rent (despite Rent being like 800 acres larger):<br /> <br /> <br /> 2022-08-05 22:59:40 Rest and Ricklaxation (#3) invaded fellow dominion here we go again (#5) and captured 223 land.<br /> <br /> <br /> But the fight was really between Ivetza and Nate. Just as we assumed it would be a long and hard fight, another mistake from 7. Bobbo got hit all in, maybe AC drop? I don't recall, but it didn't matter. I guess Nate assumed Rent would cover him or that his DP covered Ivetza, but hitting at the start of the hour allowed Ivetza to fully, safely smash Genetics with his PKs (though he took quite some time to wake up).<br /> <br /> <br /> 2022-08-06 00:00:38 A result of genetics (#7) invaded Pickle Rick (#10) and captured 205 land.&lt;br&gt;<br /> 2022-08-06 00:58:25 Victorious on the battlefield, Little 👻👻👻 army (#5) conquered 274 land from A result of genetics (#7).<br /> <br /> <br /> From there it was certain that Ivetza would win. Genetics fought for second place and probably did the right thing in trying to hold down Rury's Gnome:<br /> <br /> <br /> 2022-08-10 15:59:20 Rest and Ricklaxation (#3) invaded Wandering Souls (#4) and captured 205 land.&lt;br&gt;<br /> 2022-08-10 23:59:56 A result of genetics (#7) invaded Rest and Ricklaxation (#3) and captured 231 land.&lt;br&gt;<br /> 2022-08-11 00:06:04 Victorious on the battlefield, Little 👻👻👻 army (#5) conquered 275 land from A result of genetics (#7).<br /> <br /> <br /> And his other future-top-5 competitors as well, hitting Genetics 3-4 more times after Genetics hit the up-and-comers.<br /> <br /> Ivetza closed out the round by hitting the top 3 out-of-realm explorers to ensure Templeman finished as the largest explorer.<br /> <br /> <br /> Some shoutouts from me:<br /> <br /> Manno, awesome realm names. WE wasn't the best race this round but you still did well and were a great teammate. Templeman was always getting ops for anyone and everyone, even with being a competitive explorer. Erix was super active and played FW attacker very well to make sure the rest of us had a shot. Gipsa played pretty well as Nomad and probably tanked a hit or 2 so that someone else didn't have to lol. Sarmis had an interesting converting strategy and was essential for getting wiz ops on Genetics. And of course congratulations again to Ivetza, well played.<br /> <br /> <br /> == Rounds ==<br /> <br /> {{Round_nav<br /> | round = 30<br /> | previous_round = 29<br /> | next_round = 31<br /> }}</div>

Sly http://wiki.opendominion.net/index.php?title=Round_30&diff=1315 2022-09-03T19:05:26Z

<p>Sly: </p> <hr /> <div>{{Round_finish<br /> | round = 30<br /> | round_id = 44<br /> <br /> | winner_player = Ivetza<br /> | winner_dominion = Little 👻👻👻 army (#5)<br /> | winner_race = Spirit<br /> <br /> | second_player = Jcinnz<br /> | second_dominion = Alotta Fagina🌮 (#8)<br /> | second_race = Human<br /> <br /> | third_player = Almezo<br /> | third_dominion = Float like a Bee, Sting like a Bee (#2)<br /> | third_race = Human<br /> }}<br /> <br /> <br /> Round 30 started on the 10th of July 2022 and ended on the 25th of August 2022.<br /> <br /> == Round Win Story ==<br /> <br /> I apologize in advance for my realm's lack of attentiveness in keeping track of our round, but I'll do my best to recount the events as best as I can remember them along with some notes from the crier and realm discord. - Sly<br /> <br /> This round gives Spirit their third win, but technically it's their first win since previous Spirit wins were the legacy version of the race which was very similar to Undead. This round was also probably the strongest Human has ever been and we see this with two top 3 finishes from them.<br /> <br /> <br /> '''Pre-round'''<br /> <br /> Like usual, I randomed into a realm I wasn't too certain about and didn't have any significant expectations for the round. But there were some very nice surprises throughout and we ended up having a very active and supportive team, an advantage which gave us the edge at a few critical moments I believe.<br /> <br /> We had a 3-pack of Ivetza, Gipsa, and Rompar and the eclectic 5-pack of Erix, MannoWrath, Sarmis, Volv, and squarewave. The notable randoms were myself, Templeman (who achieved his highest finish yet), and Vovin. <br /> <br /> I knew it would likely be a better round for slow attacking, but how competitive the strategy could be would depend on Erix's (Magnum) ability to prevent any fast runaways.<br /> <br /> From the 5-pack, Erix was our only pure fast race as FW, Manno (Kermit) wanted to convert as WE, Sarmis (The Smallest Yellow Crayon) ended up converting DE, Volv (Miss Piggy) went for a fast Nomad, and squarewave (Wargasm) tried a slow attacking Nox.<br /> <br /> From the BGs, Ivetza (Little 👻👻👻 army) ran a fast Spirit, Gipsa (Spy x Family) ran a slow attacking Nomad, and Rompar (Ferrets eat parrots like carrots) tried a more efficient Dwarf.<br /> <br /> I (here we go again) was leaning towards Spirit prior to realm assignment but ended up going Orc due to how insanely cheap their OP is, and this is the first round they had 3-point turtle on BBs. Templeman (Fozzie Bear) was happy to get ops for us as a Merfolk, and Vovin (Consider it Mutual) played a Nox attacker. So we had a wide variety of strategies on the board with no overarching plan on how to secure control of the round and win, but we were going to have fun nonetheless.<br /> <br /> <br /> '''Early Round'''<br /> <br /> I attacked out of the gate first with 3 bot hits. Gipsa had bounced on his first hit but ended up making 4 successful invasions afterwards, then 9-houred accordingly which rocketed him up. Erix's first hit came at the expense of a DE in realm 4, which squarewave followed up on--but this resulted in him being doubled by 4's strongest attackers. It wasn't ideal as they looked like one of the main threats to try to make a runaway out of their FW.<br /> <br /> <br /> 2022-07-10 17:59:42 Snowflake Melter (#4) invaded fellow dominion Wargasm (#5) and captured 45 land.&lt;br&gt;<br /> 2022-07-10 18:58:23 Hide the pain (#4) invaded fellow dominion Wargasm (#5) and captured 41 land. <br /> <br /> <br /> Despite the big early hits, we rolled on. Ivetza's first hit came on an Undead in 7 just 2 ticks later, so we were all up and running. And yet, at the start of Day 2, a nightmare scenario unfolded. Erix made a nice hit, but Dumb (#10) suicided him seemingly out of nowhere. We had mostly missed him and assumed he didn't have as much sendable OP as the other top attackers--an oversight looking back since he had waited a full 26 hours before making his second hit. Additionally, a new player who found us off an Instagram ad had gone inactive and ended up feeding 2 of our main threats.<br /> <br /> <br /> 2022-07-11 00:29:20 Rent seeking behavior (#7) invaded fellow dominion Sakarra (#5) and captured 50 land.&lt;br&gt;<br /> 2022-07-11 00:39:37 Pickle Rick (#10) invaded fellow dominion Sakarra (#5) and captured 45 land.&lt;br&gt;<br /> 2022-07-11 02:03:25 Dumb (#10) invaded fellow dominion Magnum (#5) and captured 55 land.<br /> <br /> <br /> Ivetza, Gipsa, and I took smaller bot hits and Erix recovered with a second sizable invasion. All things considered, we didn't look in terrible shape but it was going to be a dogfight. Poor squarewave took another lesson in checking top OP and gave some additional land to some competitors again:<br /> <br /> <br /> 2022-07-12 11:58:01 Scary Terry (#10) invaded fellow dominion Wargasm (#5) and captured 54 land.&lt;br&gt;<br /> 2022-07-12 11:58:51 Birdperson (#10) invaded fellow dominion Wargasm (#5) and captured 45 land.&lt;br&gt;<br /> 2022-07-12 12:52:19 Queen Bee (#2) invaded fellow dominion Wargasm (#5) and captured 44 land.<br /> <br /> <br /> More early misplays: Erix had a hit on Dumb and bounced due to a mistype, and a few others had previously bounced due to not asking someone to double check the math. But from here on out, we became pretty focused in on doing what we needed to do.<br /> <br /> The first significant moment of the round came as realm 10 declared war on realm 4, trying to take down Snowflake Melter #4 (DanTheMan) and Hide the pain (Wurstmeyer). Snowflake had been rolling early with his largest competitor being Pickle Rick in 10 (Bobbo). Hide the pain #4 had started pushing massive 5:4 OP, I guess trying to allow Snowflake space to run. But I think it was probably far too early to do this as there were simply too many dominions who were still a threat, and that ended up proving itself true.<br /> <br /> Snowflake made a hit on the WE in realm 10 and left himself open to be hit by Erix, assuming that we would just wait for 10 to hit and then be able to make a safer hit on one of them if they suicided him. But to us, Snowflake appeared to be the largest threat at the time, and him getting home safely yet again on another large hit (with Wurst r/ring to push huge temps and 5:4 as Nomad) was not an option.<br /> <br /> <br /> 2022-07-15 14:59:35 Snowflake Melter (#4) conquered 69 land from Squanchy (#10).&lt;br&gt;<br /> 2022-07-15 15:59:54 Magnum (#5) invaded Snowflake Melter (#4) and captured 114 land.&lt;br&gt;<br /> 2022-07-15 16:55:44 Pickle Rick (#10) invaded Magnum (#5) and captured 70 land.&lt;br&gt;<br /> 2022-07-15 16:57:53 Birdperson (#10) invaded Magnum (#5) and captured 71 land.&lt;br&gt;<br /> 2022-07-15 17:59:53 King Flippy Nips (#10) invaded Snowflake Melter (#4) and captured 104 land.&lt;br&gt;<br /> 2022-07-15 18:53:55 Hide the pain (#4) conquered 117 land from King Flippy Nips (#10).<br /> <br /> <br /> Realm 10 may have felt like they gained a lasting advantage, and they did appear to win out the exchange. But their builds weren't set up for longer-term success (even Birdperson, [bigchris27/allegorical] wasn't going to be capable of running in our estimation). Their best long-term threat was pretty clearly King Flippy Nips (InternetFett), and nobody saw the OP Volv had pushed until it was too late:<br /> <br /> <br /> 2022-07-15 23:58:30 Miss Piggy (#5) invaded King Flippy Nips (#10) and captured 97 land.<br /> <br /> <br /> Volv was triple-tapped, including by 7's DE (Nate), but the suicide on the Nomad in 10 was well-timed after seeing how annoying Wurst was with his Nomad in 4.<br /> <br /> <br /> 2022-07-16 00:10:25 A result of genetics (#7) invaded Miss Piggy (#5) and captured 63 land. [Nate's first larger hit]<br /> <br /> <br /> All the while, Ivetza was flying under the radar but keeping up nicely as Spirit. He didn't have a very efficient build at the time, but it ended up serving him well. 10's war on 4 ended without more fireworks, but then they re-declared...<br /> <br /> <br /> '''Mid Round'''<br /> <br /> With the first week over, a critical moment in the round came. 5:4 OPs were holding several large attackers from going all out, but not most of us in realm 5. Players like me who were efficient and smaller knew we wouldn't likely be targets of the suicides, so we just kept hitting--and so did Ivetza, despite being just a little smaller than some of the larger attackers at the time.<br /> <br /> Erix was one of several who started pushing 5:4 while the rest of us went on a bot-hitting spree for about 4 days. Then, another pivotal moment. Snowflake, who hadn't sent since the 18th, suicided A result of genetics #7 (Nate). This kicked off a series of invasions that ended up putting us in a prime position to compete for the round.<br /> <br /> <br /> 2022-07-21 09:11:35 A result of genetics (#7) conquered 80 land from The Grean Peace Party (#0).&lt;br&gt;<br /> 2022-07-21 13:59:48 Snowflake Melter (#4) invaded A result of genetics (#7) and captured 128 land.&lt;br&gt;<br /> 2022-07-21 14:06:12 Magnum (#5) invaded Snowflake Melter (#4) and captured 116 land.&lt;br&gt;<br /> 2022-07-21 14:17:07 Little 👻👻👻 army (#5) invaded Snowflake Melter (#4) and captured 92 land.&lt;br&gt;<br /> 2022-07-21 14:41:38 Pickle Rick (#10) invaded Magnum (#5) and captured 100 land.&lt;br&gt;<br /> 2022-07-21 14:57:46 Birdperson (#10) invaded Magnum (#5) and captured 92 land.&lt;br&gt; <br /> 2022-07-21 15:52:48 King Flippy Nips (#10) invaded Snowflake Melter (#4) and captured 99 land.&lt;br&gt;<br /> 2022-07-21 22:04:32 A result of genetics (#7) invaded Snowflake Melter (#4) and captured 77 land.<br /> <br /> <br /> So now realm 4 was pretty much toast, 2 wasn't involved enough to keep up, 10 had benefitted but we knew we could overtake them in the long-run, and 7 were still scary but had suffered a setback. We still needed to deal with Pickle Rick, and the Spirit of Rent seeking behavior #7 (mris) was starting to look very strong too.<br /> <br /> Quite a few bot hits later, 10 declared war on 7 on the 25th, though I don't think they had a lot of success as the DE wasn't sinkable and resilience prevented much lasting damage on the Spirit.<br /> <br /> More bot hits, mostly.<br /> <br /> The FW of Queen Bee #2 (Peabrain) fell too far behind and sent out unsafely:<br /> <br /> <br /> 2022-07-27 00:18:48 A result of genetics (#7) invaded Queen Bee (#2) and captured 143 land.&lt;br&gt;<br /> 2022-07-27 00:29:21 Pickle Rick (#10) invaded Queen Bee (#2) and captured 133 land.&lt;br&gt;<br /> 2022-07-27 02:55:48 Little 👻👻👻 army (#5) conquered 113 land from Queen Bee (#2). [We had to wake Ivetza up; the first of a few times]<br /> <br /> <br /> Ivetza was no longer under the radar, but was able to keep up with the top 2 attackers' hits. 10 only had 5:4 to threaten with and it was more of an idle threat by this time. Genetics looked impossible to challenge with a better build and potentially a better race than Ivetza's Spirit, but all of the top doms hovered roughly around 120k OP/DP.<br /> <br /> The top doms started hitting explorers, but a battle over the round win with 7 was inevitable. 7 had an advantage after Pickle Rick drained too many of his peasants trying to keep up as FW in that they essentially had a 2v1 against us, with all 3 races very happy to trade acres too. Rent seeking was on a knife's edge with his DP, but so was Ivetza for some of this part of the round. A silent battle of two Spirits began. But then, something very strange happened:<br /> <br /> <br /> 2022-07-31 06:27:05 A result of genetics (#7) invaded Losing my wife and kids in Las Vegas (#6) and captured 160 land.<br /> <br /> <br /> Sly — 07/31/2022<br /> you hitting him same hour?<br /> i dont understand why he left himself open?<br /> <br /> As Rio said on the podcast, apparently Genetics had assumed Rent seeking would cover him, but Ivetza could hit Genetics without sending virtually any DP the next tick:<br /> <br /> <br /> 2022-07-31 07:36:17 Victorious on the battlefield, Little 👻👻👻 army (#5) conquered 226 land from A result of genetics (#7).<br /> <br /> <br /> This was the beginning of the end for everyone else. Rent seeking was pushing 5:4 but as a Spirit who is already slightly behind, it was a little desperate and not going to be effective against Ivetza. Still, Genetics the DE looked amazing and it wasn't clear whether Nate or Ivetza was better positioned. But Rent seeking then allowed himself to get hit by Ivetza with only a suicide to retaliate. We assassinated his drafts assuming he wanted to push more spec OP, though he still got the suicide off on Ivetza.<br /> <br /> <br /> 2022-08-01 00:15:10 Victorious on the battlefield, Little 👻👻👻 army (#5) conquered 204 land from Rent seeking behavior (#7).&lt;br&gt;<br /> 2022-08-01 01:18:26 Rent seeking behavior (#7) invaded fellow dominion Little 👻👻👻 army (#5) and captured 313 land.&lt;br&gt;<br /> 2022-08-01 01:38:01 Birdperson (#10) invaded Rent seeking behavior (#7) and captured 228 land.&lt;br&gt;<br /> 2022-08-01 01:59:21 Pickle Rick (#10) invaded Rent seeking behavior (#7) and captured 213 land.&lt;br&gt;<br /> 2022-08-01 01:59:52 Been There Drone That (#2) invaded Rent seeking behavior (#7) and captured 188 land.<br /> <br /> <br /> I decided against hitting as I felt like I was in a great spot and could afford to wait this mess out a bit longer. Rent seeking could've retaliated on me safely too if I'd joined in. Instead, he hit me all in (I had AC off because it was such a stretch of a sui for him):<br /> <br /> <br /> 2022-08-01 13:01:05 Rent seeking behavior (#7) invaded fellow dominion here we go again (#5) and captured 151 land.&lt;br&gt;<br /> 2022-08-01 13:02:59 Victorious on the battlefield, Little 👻👻👻 army (#5) conquered 180 land from Rent seeking behavior (#7).&lt;br&gt;<br /> 2022-08-01 13:18:35 Victorious on the battlefield, here we go again (#5) conquered 232 land from Rent seeking behavior (#7).&lt;br&gt;<br /> 2022-08-01 13:59:39 Birdperson (#10) invaded Rent seeking behavior (#7) and captured 171 land.&lt;br&gt;<br /> 2022-08-01 13:59:46 Pickle Rick (#10) invaded Rent seeking behavior (#7) and captured 163 land.&lt;br&gt;<br /> 2022-08-01 13:59:53 A result of genetics (#7) invaded Wandering Souls (#4) and captured 160 land.<br /> <br /> <br /> Okay, not ideal for me but also not all bad, and great for Ivetza as 10 were still clinging on only really posing a significant threat to Rent seeking and not us. Rent seeking climbed back up near Ivetza's range and pushed more 5:4...<br /> <br /> <br /> '''Final Stages'''<br /> <br /> A few explorer hits later, we arrived at somewhat of an arms race. Genetics wanted to push out into the lead while Rent seeking wanted to threaten to jump into Ivetza's range to suicide. I decided our best course of action was for me to simply hit Rent all in to prevent him from even threatening Ivetza, which wouldn't take long since Rent wasn't training much DP.<br /> <br /> At one point Rent seeking had explored some acres to just barely get into range which I caught, but we made sure Ivetza had the DP to cover. I closed in on having the OP to break Rent, and according to Rio on the podcast, they realized I was going to hit Rent so he took his DB without thinking. But his DB was keeping him out of Ivetza's range. We actually had an internal debate about whether or not I should still be the one to hit Rent as it would've given me a massive amount of land, but ultimately Ivetza made the call to hit Rent himself. It worked out in the end:<br /> <br /> <br /> 2022-08-05 00:59:55 Victorious on the battlefield, Little 👻👻👻 army (#5) conquered 203 land from Rent seeking behavior (#7).<br /> <br /> <br /> Rent's round was over from there and it was a straight fight for the win. It still looked like Genetics would be a huge pain to overcome, even now, and we noticed the Gnome of Rest and Ricklaxation #3 (Rury) starting to look quite strong. Rury said he saw me as a threat and hit me instead of Rent (despite Rent being like 800 acres larger):<br /> <br /> <br /> 2022-08-05 22:59:40 Rest and Ricklaxation (#3) invaded fellow dominion here we go again (#5) and captured 223 land.<br /> <br /> <br /> But the fight was really between Ivetza and Nate. Just as we assumed it would be a long and hard fight, another mistake from 7. Bobbo got hit all in, maybe AC drop? I don't recall, but it didn't matter. I guess Nate assumed Rent would cover him or that his DP covered Ivetza, but hitting at the start of the hour allowed Ivetza to fully, safely smash Genetics with his PKs (though he took quite some time to wake up).<br /> <br /> <br /> 2022-08-06 00:00:38 A result of genetics (#7) invaded Pickle Rick (#10) and captured 205 land.&lt;br&gt;<br /> 2022-08-06 00:58:25 Victorious on the battlefield, Little 👻👻👻 army (#5) conquered 274 land from A result of genetics (#7).<br /> <br /> <br /> From there it was certain that Ivetza would win. Genetics fought for second place and probably did the right thing in trying to hold down Rury's Gnome:<br /> <br /> <br /> 2022-08-10 15:59:20 Rest and Ricklaxation (#3) invaded Wandering Souls (#4) and captured 205 land.&lt;br&gt;<br /> 2022-08-10 23:59:56 A result of genetics (#7) invaded Rest and Ricklaxation (#3) and captured 231 land.&lt;br&gt;<br /> 2022-08-11 00:06:04 Victorious on the battlefield, Little 👻👻👻 army (#5) conquered 275 land from A result of genetics (#7).<br /> <br /> <br /> And his other future-top-5 competitors as well, hitting Genetics 3-4 more times after Genetics hit the up-and-comers.<br /> <br /> Ivetza closed out the round by hitting the top 3 out-of-realm explorers to ensure Templeman finished as the largest explorer.<br /> <br /> <br /> Some shoutouts from me:<br /> <br /> Manno, awesome realm names. WE wasn't the best race this round but you still did well and were a great teammate. Templeman was always getting ops for anyone and everyone, even with being a competitive explorer. Erix was super active and played FW attacker very well to make sure the rest of us had a shot. Gipsa played pretty well as Nomad and probably tanked a hit or 2 so that someone else didn't have to lol. Sarmis had an interesting converting strategy and was essential for getting wiz ops on Genetics. And of course congratulations again to Ivetza, well played.<br /> <br /> <br /> == Rounds ==<br /> <br /> {{Round_nav<br /> | round = 30<br /> | previous_round = 29<br /> | next_round = 31<br /> }}</div>

Sly http://wiki.opendominion.net/index.php?title=Round_30&diff=1314 2022-09-03T19:02:32Z

<p>Sly: </p> <hr /> <div>{{Round_finish<br /> | round = 30<br /> | round_id = 44<br /> <br /> | winner_player = Ivetza<br /> | winner_dominion = Little 👻👻👻 army (#5)<br /> | winner_race = Spirit<br /> <br /> | second_player = Jcinnz<br /> | second_dominion = Alotta Fagina🌮 (#8)<br /> | second_race = Human<br /> <br /> | third_player = Almezo<br /> | third_dominion = Float like a Bee, Sting like a Bee (#2)<br /> | third_race = Human<br /> }}<br /> <br /> <br /> Round 30 started on the 10th of July 2022 and ended on the 25th of August 2022.<br /> <br /> == Round Win Story ==<br /> <br /> I apologize in advance for my realm's lack of attentiveness in keeping track of our round, but I'll do my best to recount the events as best as I can remember them along with some notes from the crier and realm discord. - Sly<br /> <br /> This round gives Spirit their third win, but technically it's their first win since previous Spirit wins were the legacy version of the race which was very similar to Undead. This round was also probably the strongest Human has ever been and we see this with two top 3 finishes from them.<br /> <br /> <br /> '''Pre-round'''<br /> <br /> Like usual, I randomed into a realm I wasn't too certain about and didn't have any significant expectations for the round. But there were some very nice surprises throughout and we ended up having a very active and supportive team, an advantage which gave us the edge at a few critical moments I believe.<br /> <br /> We had a 3-pack of Ivetza, Gipsa, and Rompar and the eclectic 5-pack of Erix, MannoWrath, Sarmis, Volv, and squarewave. The notable randoms were myself, Templeman (who achieved his highest finish yet), and Vovin. <br /> <br /> I knew it would likely be a better round for slow attacking, but how competitive the strategy could be would depend on Erix's (Magnum) ability to prevent any fast runaways.<br /> <br /> From the 5-pack, Erix was our only pure fast race as FW, Manno (Kermit) wanted to convert as WE, Sarmis (The Smallest Yellow Crayon) ended up converting DE, Volv (Miss Piggy) went for a fast Nomad, and squarewave (Wargasm) tried a slow attacking Nox.<br /> <br /> From the BGs, Ivetza (Little 👻👻👻 army) ran a fast Spirit, Gipsa (Spy x Family) ran a slow attacking Nomad, and Rompar (Ferrets eat parrots like carrots) tried a more efficient Dwarf.<br /> <br /> I (here we go again) was leaning towards Spirit prior to realm assignment but ended up going Orc due to how insanely cheap their OP is, and this is the first round they had 3-point turtle on BBs. Templeman (Fozzie Bear) was happy to get ops for us as a Merfolk, and Vovin (Consider it Mutual) played a Nox attacker. So we had a wide variety of strategies on the board with no overarching plan on how to secure control of the round and win, but we were going to have fun nonetheless.<br /> <br /> <br /> '''Early Round'''<br /> <br /> I attacked out of the gate first with 3 bot hits. Gipsa had bounced on his first hit but ended up making 4 successful invasions afterwards, then 9-houred accordingly which rocketed him up. Erix's first hit came at the expense of a DE in realm 4, which squarewave followed up on--but this resulted in him being doubled by 4's strongest attackers. It wasn't ideal as they looked like one of the main threats to try to make a runaway out of their FW.<br /> <br /> <br /> 2022-07-10 17:59:42 Snowflake Melter (#4) invaded fellow dominion Wargasm (#5) and captured 45 land.<br /> 2022-07-10 18:58:23 Hide the pain (#4) invaded fellow dominion Wargasm (#5) and captured 41 land. <br /> <br /> <br /> Despite the big early hits, we rolled on. Ivetza's first hit came on an Undead in 7 just 2 ticks later, so we were all up and running. And yet, at the start of Day 2, a nightmare scenario unfolded. Erix made a nice hit, but Dumb (#10) suicided him seemingly out of nowhere. We had mostly missed him and assumed he didn't have as much sendable OP as the other top attackers--an oversight looking back since he had waited a full 26 hours before making his second hit. Additionally, a new player who found us off an Instagram ad had gone inactive and ended up feeding 2 of our main threats.<br /> <br /> <br /> 2022-07-11 00:29:20 Rent seeking behavior (#7) invaded fellow dominion Sakarra (#5) and captured 50 land.<br /> 2022-07-11 00:39:37 Pickle Rick (#10) invaded fellow dominion Sakarra (#5) and captured 45 land.<br /> 2022-07-11 02:03:25 Dumb (#10) invaded fellow dominion Magnum (#5) and captured 55 land.<br /> <br /> <br /> Ivetza, Gipsa, and I took smaller bot hits and Erix recovered with a second sizable invasion. All things considered, we didn't look in terrible shape but it was going to be a dogfight. Poor squarewave took another lesson in checking top OP and gave some additional land to some competitors again:<br /> <br /> <br /> 2022-07-12 11:58:01 Scary Terry (#10) invaded fellow dominion Wargasm (#5) and captured 54 land.<br /> 2022-07-12 11:58:51 Birdperson (#10) invaded fellow dominion Wargasm (#5) and captured 45 land.<br /> 2022-07-12 12:52:19 Queen Bee (#2) invaded fellow dominion Wargasm (#5) and captured 44 land.<br /> <br /> <br /> More early misplays: Erix had a hit on Dumb and bounced due to a mistype, and a few others had previously bounced due to not asking someone to double check the math. But from here on out, we became pretty focused in on doing what we needed to do.<br /> <br /> The first significant moment of the round came as realm 10 declared war on realm 4, trying to take down Snowflake Melter #4 (DanTheMan) and Hide the pain (Wurstmeyer). Snowflake had been rolling early with his largest competitor being Pickle Rick in 10 (Bobbo). Hide the pain #4 had started pushing massive 5:4 OP, I guess trying to allow Snowflake space to run. But I think it was probably far too early to do this as there were simply too many dominions who were still a threat, and that ended up proving itself true.<br /> <br /> Snowflake made a hit on the WE in realm 10 and left himself open to be hit by Erix, assuming that we would just wait for 10 to hit and then be able to make a safer hit on one of them if they suicided him. But to us, Snowflake appeared to be the largest threat at the time, and him getting home safely yet again on another large hit (with Wurst r/ring to push huge temps and 5:4 as Nomad) was not an option.<br /> <br /> <br /> 2022-07-15 14:59:35 Snowflake Melter (#4) conquered 69 land from Squanchy (#10).<br /> 2022-07-15 15:59:54 Magnum (#5) invaded Snowflake Melter (#4) and captured 114 land.<br /> 2022-07-15 16:55:44 Pickle Rick (#10) invaded Magnum (#5) and captured 70 land.<br /> 2022-07-15 16:57:53 Birdperson (#10) invaded Magnum (#5) and captured 71 land.<br /> 2022-07-15 17:59:53 King Flippy Nips (#10) invaded Snowflake Melter (#4) and captured 104 land.<br /> 2022-07-15 18:53:55 Hide the pain (#4) conquered 117 land from King Flippy Nips (#10).<br /> <br /> <br /> Realm 10 may have felt like they gained a lasting advantage, and they did appear to win out the exchange. But their builds weren't set up for longer-term success (even Birdperson, [bigchris27/allegorical] wasn't going to be capable of running in our estimation). Their best long-term threat was pretty clearly King Flippy Nips (InternetFett), and nobody saw the OP Volv had pushed until it was too late:<br /> <br /> <br /> 2022-07-15 23:58:30 Miss Piggy (#5) invaded King Flippy Nips (#10) and captured 97 land.<br /> <br /> <br /> Volv was triple-tapped, including by 7's DE (Nate), but the suicide on the Nomad in 10 was well-timed after seeing how annoying Wurst was with his Nomad in 4.<br /> <br /> <br /> 2022-07-16 00:10:25 A result of genetics (#7) invaded Miss Piggy (#5) and captured 63 land. [Nate's first larger hit]<br /> <br /> <br /> All the while, Ivetza was flying under the radar but keeping up nicely as Spirit. He didn't have a very efficient build at the time, but it ended up serving him well. 10's war on 4 ended without more fireworks, but then they re-declared...<br /> <br /> <br /> '''Mid Round'''<br /> <br /> With the first week over, a critical moment in the round came. 5:4 OPs were holding several large attackers from going all out, but not most of us in realm 5. Players like me who were efficient and smaller knew we wouldn't likely be targets of the suicides, so we just kept hitting--and so did Ivetza, despite being just a little smaller than some of the larger attackers at the time.<br /> <br /> Erix was one of several who started pushing 5:4 while the rest of us went on a bot-hitting spree for about 4 days. Then, another pivotal moment. Snowflake, who hadn't sent since the 18th, suicided A result of genetics #7 (Nate). This kicked off a series of invasions that ended up putting us in a prime position to compete for the round.<br /> <br /> <br /> 2022-07-21 09:11:35 A result of genetics (#7) conquered 80 land from The Grean Peace Party (#0)<br /> 2022-07-21 13:59:48 Snowflake Melter (#4) invaded A result of genetics (#7) and captured 128 land.<br /> 2022-07-21 14:06:12 Magnum (#5) invaded Snowflake Melter (#4) and captured 116 land.<br /> 2022-07-21 14:17:07 Little 👻👻👻 army (#5) invaded Snowflake Melter (#4) and captured 92 land.<br /> 2022-07-21 14:41:38 Pickle Rick (#10) invaded Magnum (#5) and captured 100 land. <br /> 2022-07-21 14:57:46 Birdperson (#10) invaded Magnum (#5) and captured 92 land. <br /> 2022-07-21 15:52:48 King Flippy Nips (#10) invaded Snowflake Melter (#4) and captured 99 land.<br /> 2022-07-21 22:04:32 A result of genetics (#7) invaded Snowflake Melter (#4) and captured 77 land.<br /> <br /> <br /> So now realm 4 was pretty much toast, 2 wasn't involved enough to keep up, 10 had benefitted but we knew we could overtake them in the long-run, and 7 were still scary but had suffered a setback. We still needed to deal with Pickle Rick, and the Spirit of Rent seeking behavior #7 (mris) was starting to look very strong too.<br /> <br /> Quite a few bot hits later, 10 declared war on 7 on the 25th, though I don't think they had a lot of success as the DE wasn't sinkable and resilience prevented much lasting damage on the Spirit.<br /> <br /> More bot hits, mostly.<br /> <br /> The FW of Queen Bee #2 (Peabrain) fell too far behind and sent out unsafely:<br /> <br /> <br /> 2022-07-27 00:18:48 A result of genetics (#7) invaded Queen Bee (#2) and captured 143 land.<br /> 2022-07-27 00:29:21 Pickle Rick (#10) invaded Queen Bee (#2) and captured 133 land.<br /> 2022-07-27 02:55:48 Little 👻👻👻 army (#5) conquered 113 land from Queen Bee (#2). [We had to wake Ivetza up; the first of a few times]<br /> <br /> <br /> Ivetza was no longer under the radar, but was able to keep up with the top 2 attackers' hits. 10 only had 5:4 to threaten with and it was more of an idle threat by this time. Genetics looked impossible to challenge with a better build and potentially a better race than Ivetza's Spirit, but all of the top doms hovered roughly around 120k OP/DP.<br /> <br /> The top doms started hitting explorers, but a battle over the round win with 7 was inevitable. 7 had an advantage after Pickle Rick drained too many of his peasants trying to keep up as FW in that they essentially had a 2v1 against us, with all 3 races very happy to trade acres too. Rent seeking was on a knife's edge with his DP, but so was Ivetza for some of this part of the round. A silent battle of two Spirits began. But then, something very strange happened:<br /> <br /> <br /> 2022-07-31 06:27:05 A result of genetics (#7) invaded Losing my wife and kids in Las Vegas (#6) and captured 160 land.<br /> <br /> <br /> Sly — 07/31/2022<br /> you hitting him same hour?<br /> i dont understand why he left himself open?<br /> <br /> As Rio said on the podcast, apparently Genetics had assumed Rent seeking would cover him, but Ivetza could hit Genetics without sending virtually any DP the next tick:<br /> <br /> <br /> 2022-07-31 07:36:17 Victorious on the battlefield, Little 👻👻👻 army (#5) conquered 226 land from A result of genetics (#7).<br /> <br /> <br /> This was the beginning of the end for everyone else. Rent seeking was pushing 5:4 but as a Spirit who is already slightly behind, it was a little desperate and not going to be effective against Ivetza. Still, Genetics the DE looked amazing and it wasn't clear whether Nate or Ivetza was better positioned. But Rent seeking then allowed himself to get hit by Ivetza with only a suicide to retaliate. We assassinated his drafts assuming he wanted to push more spec OP, though he still got the suicide off on Ivetza.<br /> <br /> <br /> 2022-08-01 00:15:10 Victorious on the battlefield, Little 👻👻👻 army (#5) conquered 204 land from Rent seeking behavior (#7).<br /> 2022-08-01 01:18:26 Rent seeking behavior (#7) invaded fellow dominion Little 👻👻👻 army (#5) and captured 313 land.<br /> 2022-08-01 01:38:01 Birdperson (#10) invaded Rent seeking behavior (#7) and captured 228 land.<br /> 2022-08-01 01:59:21 Pickle Rick (#10) invaded Rent seeking behavior (#7) and captured 213 land.<br /> 2022-08-01 01:59:52 Been There Drone That (#2) invaded Rent seeking behavior (#7) and captured 188 land.<br /> <br /> <br /> I decided against hitting as I felt like I was in a great spot and could afford to wait this mess out a bit longer. Rent seeking could've retaliated on me safely too if I'd joined in. Instead, he hit me all in (I had AC off because it was such a stretch of a sui for him):<br /> <br /> <br /> 2022-08-01 13:01:05 Rent seeking behavior (#7) invaded fellow dominion here we go again (#5) and captured 151 land.<br /> 2022-08-01 13:02:59 Victorious on the battlefield, Little 👻👻👻 army (#5) conquered 180 land from Rent seeking behavior (#7).<br /> 2022-08-01 13:18:35 Victorious on the battlefield, here we go again (#5) conquered 232 land from Rent seeking behavior (#7).<br /> 2022-08-01 13:59:39 Birdperson (#10) invaded Rent seeking behavior (#7) and captured 171 land.<br /> 2022-08-01 13:59:46 Pickle Rick (#10) invaded Rent seeking behavior (#7) and captured 163 land.<br /> 2022-08-01 13:59:53 A result of genetics (#7) invaded Wandering Souls (#4) and captured 160 land.<br /> <br /> <br /> Okay, not ideal for me but also not all bad, and great for Ivetza as 10 were still clinging on only really posing a significant threat to Rent seeking and not us. Rent seeking climbed back up near Ivetza's range and pushed more 5:4...<br /> <br /> <br /> '''Final Stages'''<br /> <br /> A few explorer hits later, we arrived at somewhat of an arms race. Genetics wanted to push out into the lead while Rent seeking wanted to threaten to jump into Ivetza's range to suicide. I decided our best course of action was for me to simply hit Rent all in to prevent him from even threatening Ivetza, which wouldn't take long since Rent wasn't training much DP.<br /> <br /> At one point Rent seeking had explored some acres to just barely get into range which I caught, but we made sure Ivetza had the DP to cover. I closed in on having the OP to break Rent, and according to Rio on the podcast, they realized I was going to hit Rent so he took his DB without thinking. But his DB was keeping him out of Ivetza's range. We actually had an internal debate about whether or not I should still be the one to hit Rent as it would've given me a massive amount of land, but ultimately Ivetza made the call to hit Rent himself. It worked out in the end:<br /> <br /> <br /> 2022-08-05 00:59:55 Victorious on the battlefield, Little 👻👻👻 army (#5) conquered 203 land from Rent seeking behavior (#7).<br /> <br /> <br /> Rent's round was over from there and it was a straight fight for the win. It still looked like Genetics would be a huge pain to overcome, even now, and we noticed the Gnome of Rest and Ricklaxation #3 (Rury) starting to look quite strong. Rury said he saw me as a threat and hit me instead of Rent (despite Rent being like 800 acres larger):<br /> <br /> <br /> 2022-08-05 22:59:40 Rest and Ricklaxation (#3) invaded fellow dominion here we go again (#5) and captured 223 land.<br /> <br /> <br /> But the fight was really between Ivetza and Nate. Just as we assumed it would be a long and hard fight, another mistake from 7. Bobbo got hit all in, maybe AC drop? I don't recall, but it didn't matter. I guess Nate assumed Rent would cover him or that his DP covered Ivetza, but hitting at the start of the hour allowed Ivetza to fully, safely smash Genetics with his PKs (though he took quite some time to wake up).<br /> <br /> <br /> 2022-08-06 00:00:38 A result of genetics (#7) invaded Pickle Rick (#10) and captured 205 land.<br /> 2022-08-06 00:58:25 Victorious on the battlefield, Little 👻👻👻 army (#5) conquered 274 land from A result of genetics (#7).<br /> <br /> <br /> From there it was certain that Ivetza would win. Genetics fought for second place and probably did the right thing in trying to hold down Rury's Gnome:<br /> <br /> <br /> 2022-08-10 15:59:20 Rest and Ricklaxation (#3) invaded Wandering Souls (#4) and captured 205 land.<br /> 2022-08-10 23:59:56 A result of genetics (#7) invaded Rest and Ricklaxation (#3) and captured 231 land.<br /> 2022-08-11 00:06:04 Victorious on the battlefield, Little 👻👻👻 army (#5) conquered 275 land from A result of genetics (#7).<br /> <br /> <br /> And his other future-top-5 competitors as well, hitting Genetics 3-4 more times after Genetics hit the up-and-comers.<br /> <br /> Ivetza closed out the round by hitting the top 3 out-of-realm explorers to ensure Templeman finished as the largest explorer.<br /> <br /> <br /> Some shoutouts from me:<br /> <br /> Manno, awesome realm names. WE wasn't the best race this round but you still did well and were a great teammate. Templeman was always getting ops for anyone and everyone, even with being a competitive explorer. Erix was super active and played FW attacker very well to make sure the rest of us had a shot. Gipsa played pretty well as Nomad and probably tanked a hit or 2 so that someone else didn't have to lol. Sarmis had an interesting converting strategy and was essential for getting wiz ops on Genetics. And of course congratulations again to Ivetza, well played.<br /> <br /> <br /> == Rounds ==<br /> <br /> {{Round_nav<br /> | round = 30<br /> | previous_round = 29<br /> | next_round = 31<br /> }}</div>

Sly http://wiki.opendominion.net/index.php?title=Round_30&diff=1313 2022-09-03T19:00:29Z

<p>Sly: </p> <hr /> <div>{{Round_finish<br /> | round = 30<br /> | round_id = 44<br /> <br /> | winner_player = Ivetza<br /> | winner_dominion = Little 👻👻👻 army (#5)<br /> | winner_race = Spirit<br /> <br /> | second_player = Jcinnz<br /> | second_dominion = Alotta Fagina🌮 (#8)<br /> | second_race = Human<br /> <br /> | third_player = Almezo<br /> | third_dominion = Float like a Bee, Sting like a Bee (#2)<br /> | third_race = Human<br /> }}<br /> <br /> <br /> Round 30 started on the 10th of July 2022 and ended on the 25th of August 2022.<br /> <br /> == Round Win Story ==<br /> <br /> I apologize in advance for my realm's lack of attentiveness in keeping track of our round, but I'll do my best to recount the events as best as I can remember them along with some notes from the crier and realm discord. - Sly<br /> <br /> This round gives Spirit their third win, but technically it's their first win since previous Spirit wins were the legacy version of the race which was very similar to Undead. This round was also probably the strongest Human has ever been and we see this with two top 3 finishes from them.<br /> <br /> <br /> '''Pre-round'''<br /> <br /> Like usual, I randomed into a realm I wasn't too certain about and didn't have any significant expectations for the round. But there were some very nice surprises throughout and we ended up having a very active and supportive team, an advantage which gave us the edge at a few critical moments I believe.<br /> <br /> We had a 3-pack of Ivetza, Gipsa, and Rompar and the eclectic 5-pack of Erix, MannoWrath, Sarmis, Volv, and squarewave. The notable randoms were myself, Templeman (who achieved his highest finish yet), and Vovin. <br /> <br /> I knew it would likely be a better round for slow attacking, but how competitive the strategy could be would depend on Erix's (Magnum) ability to prevent any fast runaways.<br /> <br /> From the 5-pack, Erix was our only pure fast race as FW, Manno (Kermit) wanted to convert as WE, Sarmis (The Smallest Yellow Crayon) ended up converting DE, Volv (Miss Piggy) went for a fast Nomad, and squarewave (Wargasm) tried a slow attacking Nox.<br /> <br /> From the BGs, Ivetza (Little 👻👻👻 army) ran a fast Spirit, Gipsa (Spy x Family) ran a slow attacking Nomad, and Rompar (Ferrets eat parrots like carrots) tried a more efficient Dwarf.<br /> <br /> I (here we go again) was leaning towards Spirit prior to realm assignment but ended up going Orc due to how insanely cheap their OP is, and this is the first round they had 3-point turtle on BBs. Templeman (Fozzie Bear) was happy to get ops for us as a Merfolk, and Vovin (Consider it Mutual) played a Nox attacker. So we had a wide variety of strategies on the board with no overarching plan on how to secure control of the round and win, but we were going to have fun nonetheless.<br /> <br /> <br /> '''Early Round'''<br /> <br /> I attacked out of the gate first with 3 bot hits. Gipsa had bounced on his first hit but ended up making 4 successful invasions afterwards, then 9-houred accordingly which rocketed him up. Erix's first hit came at the expense of a DE in realm 4, which squarewave followed up on--but this resulted in him being doubled by 4's strongest attackers. It wasn't ideal as they looked like one of the main threats to try to make a runaway out of their FW.<br /> <br /> <br /> ''2022-07-10 17:59:42 Snowflake Melter (#4) invaded fellow dominion Wargasm (#5) and captured 45 land.<br /> 2022-07-10 18:58:23 Hide the pain (#4) invaded fellow dominion Wargasm (#5) and captured 41 land.'' <br /> <br /> <br /> Despite the big early hits, we rolled on. Ivetza's first hit came on an Undead in 7 just 2 ticks later, so we were all up and running. And yet, at the start of Day 2, a nightmare scenario unfolded. Erix made a nice hit, but Dumb (#10) suicided him seemingly out of nowhere. We had mostly missed him and assumed he didn't have as much sendable OP as the other top attackers--an oversight looking back since he had waited a full 26 hours before making his second hit. Additionally, a new player who found us off an Instagram ad had gone inactive and ended up feeding 2 of our main threats.<br /> <br /> <br /> ''2022-07-11 00:29:20 Rent seeking behavior (#7) invaded fellow dominion Sakarra (#5) and captured 50 land.<br /> 2022-07-11 00:39:37 Pickle Rick (#10) invaded fellow dominion Sakarra (#5) and captured 45 land.<br /> 2022-07-11 02:03:25 Dumb (#10) invaded fellow dominion Magnum (#5) and captured 55 land.''<br /> <br /> <br /> Ivetza, Gipsa, and I took smaller bot hits and Erix recovered with a second sizable invasion. All things considered, we didn't look in terrible shape but it was going to be a dogfight. Poor squarewave took another lesson in checking top OP and gave some additional land to some competitors again:<br /> <br /> <br /> ''2022-07-12 11:58:01 Scary Terry (#10) invaded fellow dominion Wargasm (#5) and captured 54 land.<br /> 2022-07-12 11:58:51 Birdperson (#10) invaded fellow dominion Wargasm (#5) and captured 45 land.<br /> 2022-07-12 12:52:19 Queen Bee (#2) invaded fellow dominion Wargasm (#5) and captured 44 land.''<br /> <br /> <br /> More early misplays: Erix had a hit on Dumb and bounced due to a mistype, and a few others had previously bounced due to not asking someone to double check the math. But from here on out, we became pretty focused in on doing what we needed to do.<br /> <br /> The first significant moment of the round came as realm 10 declared war on realm 4, trying to take down Snowflake Melter #4 (DanTheMan) and Hide the pain (Wurstmeyer). Snowflake had been rolling early with his largest competitor being Pickle Rick in 10 (Bobbo). Hide the pain #4 had started pushing massive 5:4 OP, I guess trying to allow Snowflake space to run. But I think it was probably far too early to do this as there were simply too many dominions who were still a threat, and that ended up proving itself true.<br /> <br /> Snowflake made a hit on the WE in realm 10 and left himself open to be hit by Erix, assuming that we would just wait for 10 to hit and then be able to make a safer hit on one of them if they suicided him. But to us, Snowflake appeared to be the largest threat at the time, and him getting home safely yet again on another large hit (with Wurst r/ring to push huge temps and 5:4 as Nomad) was not an option.<br /> <br /> <br /> ''2022-07-15 14:59:35 Snowflake Melter (#4) conquered 69 land from Squanchy (#10).<br /> 2022-07-15 15:59:54 Magnum (#5) invaded Snowflake Melter (#4) and captured 114 land.<br /> 2022-07-15 16:55:44 Pickle Rick (#10) invaded Magnum (#5) and captured 70 land.<br /> 2022-07-15 16:57:53 Birdperson (#10) invaded Magnum (#5) and captured 71 land.<br /> 2022-07-15 17:59:53 King Flippy Nips (#10) invaded Snowflake Melter (#4) and captured 104 land.<br /> 2022-07-15 18:53:55 Hide the pain (#4) conquered 117 land from King Flippy Nips (#10).''<br /> <br /> <br /> Realm 10 may have felt like they gained a lasting advantage, and they did appear to win out the exchange. But their builds weren't set up for longer-term success (even Birdperson, [bigchris27/allegorical] wasn't going to be capable of running in our estimation). Their best long-term threat was pretty clearly King Flippy Nips (InternetFett), and nobody saw the OP Volv had pushed until it was too late:<br /> <br /> <br /> ''2022-07-15 23:58:30 Miss Piggy (#5) invaded King Flippy Nips (#10) and captured 97 land.''<br /> <br /> <br /> Volv was triple-tapped, including by 7's DE (Nate), but the suicide on the Nomad in 10 was well-timed after seeing how annoying Wurst was with his Nomad in 4.<br /> <br /> <br /> ''2022-07-16 00:10:25 A result of genetics (#7) invaded Miss Piggy (#5) and captured 63 land.'' [Nate's first larger hit]<br /> <br /> <br /> All the while, Ivetza was flying under the radar but keeping up nicely as Spirit. He didn't have a very efficient build at the time, but it ended up serving him well. 10's war on 4 ended without more fireworks, but then they re-declared...<br /> <br /> <br /> '''Mid Round'''<br /> <br /> With the first week over, a critical moment in the round came. 5:4 OPs were holding several large attackers from going all out, but not most of us in realm 5. Players like me who were efficient and smaller knew we wouldn't likely be targets of the suicides, so we just kept hitting--and so did Ivetza, despite being just a little smaller than some of the larger attackers at the time.<br /> <br /> Erix was one of several who started pushing 5:4 while the rest of us went on a bot-hitting spree for about 4 days. Then, another pivotal moment. Snowflake, who hadn't sent since the 18th, suicided A result of genetics #7 (Nate). This kicked off a series of invasions that ended up putting us in a prime position to compete for the round.<br /> <br /> <br /> ''2022-07-21 09:11:35 A result of genetics (#7) conquered 80 land from The Grean Peace Party (#0)<br /> 2022-07-21 13:59:48 Snowflake Melter (#4) invaded A result of genetics (#7) and captured 128 land.<br /> 2022-07-21 14:06:12 Magnum (#5) invaded Snowflake Melter (#4) and captured 116 land.<br /> 2022-07-21 14:17:07 Little 👻👻👻 army (#5) invaded Snowflake Melter (#4) and captured 92 land.<br /> 2022-07-21 14:41:38 Pickle Rick (#10) invaded Magnum (#5) and captured 100 land. <br /> 2022-07-21 14:57:46 Birdperson (#10) invaded Magnum (#5) and captured 92 land. <br /> 2022-07-21 15:52:48 King Flippy Nips (#10) invaded Snowflake Melter (#4) and captured 99 land.<br /> 2022-07-21 22:04:32 A result of genetics (#7) invaded Snowflake Melter (#4) and captured 77 land.''<br /> <br /> <br /> So now realm 4 was pretty much toast, 2 wasn't involved enough to keep up, 10 had benefitted but we knew we could overtake them in the long-run, and 7 were still scary but had suffered a setback. We still needed to deal with Pickle Rick, and the Spirit of Rent seeking behavior #7 (mris) was starting to look very strong too.<br /> <br /> Quite a few bot hits later, 10 declared war on 7 on the 25th, though I don't think they had a lot of success as the DE wasn't sinkable and resilience prevented much lasting damage on the Spirit.<br /> <br /> More bot hits, mostly.<br /> <br /> The FW of Queen Bee #2 (Peabrain) fell too far behind and sent out unsafely:<br /> <br /> <br /> ''2022-07-27 00:18:48 A result of genetics (#7) invaded Queen Bee (#2) and captured 143 land.<br /> 2022-07-27 00:29:21 Pickle Rick (#10) invaded Queen Bee (#2) and captured 133 land.<br /> 2022-07-27 02:55:48 Little 👻👻👻 army (#5) conquered 113 land from Queen Bee (#2).'' [We had to wake Ivetza up; the first of a few times]<br /> <br /> <br /> Ivetza was no longer under the radar, but was able to keep up with the top 2 attackers' hits. 10 only had 5:4 to threaten with and it was more of an idle threat by this time. Genetics looked impossible to challenge with a better build and potentially a better race than Ivetza's Spirit, but all of the top doms hovered roughly around 120k OP/DP.<br /> <br /> The top doms started hitting explorers, but a battle over the round win with 7 was inevitable. 7 had an advantage after Pickle Rick drained too many of his peasants trying to keep up as FW in that they essentially had a 2v1 against us, with all 3 races very happy to trade acres too. Rent seeking was on a knife's edge with his DP, but so was Ivetza for some of this part of the round. A silent battle of two Spirits began. But then, something very strange happened:<br /> <br /> <br /> ''2022-07-31 06:27:05 A result of genetics (#7) invaded Losing my wife and kids in Las Vegas (#6) and captured 160 land.''<br /> <br /> <br /> Sly — 07/31/2022<br /> you hitting him same hour?<br /> i dont understand why he left himself open?<br /> <br /> As Rio said on the podcast, apparently Genetics had assumed Rent seeking would cover him, but Ivetza could hit Genetics without sending virtually any DP the next tick:<br /> <br /> <br /> ''2022-07-31 07:36:17 Victorious on the battlefield, Little 👻👻👻 army (#5) conquered 226 land from A result of genetics (#7).''<br /> <br /> <br /> This was the beginning of the end for everyone else. Rent seeking was pushing 5:4 but as a Spirit who is already slightly behind, it was a little desperate and not going to be effective against Ivetza. Still, Genetics the DE looked amazing and it wasn't clear whether Nate or Ivetza was better positioned. But Rent seeking then allowed himself to get hit by Ivetza with only a suicide to retaliate. We assassinated his drafts assuming he wanted to push more spec OP, though he still got the suicide off on Ivetza.<br /> <br /> <br /> ''2022-08-01 00:15:10 Victorious on the battlefield, Little 👻👻👻 army (#5) conquered 204 land from Rent seeking behavior (#7).<br /> 2022-08-01 01:18:26 Rent seeking behavior (#7) invaded fellow dominion Little 👻👻👻 army (#5) and captured 313 land.<br /> 2022-08-01 01:38:01 Birdperson (#10) invaded Rent seeking behavior (#7) and captured 228 land.<br /> 2022-08-01 01:59:21 Pickle Rick (#10) invaded Rent seeking behavior (#7) and captured 213 land.<br /> 2022-08-01 01:59:52 Been There Drone That (#2) invaded Rent seeking behavior (#7) and captured 188 land.''<br /> <br /> <br /> I decided against hitting as I felt like I was in a great spot and could afford to wait this mess out a bit longer. Rent seeking could've retaliated on me safely too if I'd joined in. Instead, he hit me all in (I had AC off because it was such a stretch of a sui for him):<br /> <br /> <br /> ''2022-08-01 13:01:05 Rent seeking behavior (#7) invaded fellow dominion here we go again (#5) and captured 151 land.<br /> 2022-08-01 13:02:59 Victorious on the battlefield, Little 👻👻👻 army (#5) conquered 180 land from Rent seeking behavior (#7).<br /> 2022-08-01 13:18:35 Victorious on the battlefield, here we go again (#5) conquered 232 land from Rent seeking behavior (#7).<br /> 2022-08-01 13:59:39 Birdperson (#10) invaded Rent seeking behavior (#7) and captured 171 land.<br /> 2022-08-01 13:59:46 Pickle Rick (#10) invaded Rent seeking behavior (#7) and captured 163 land.<br /> 2022-08-01 13:59:53 A result of genetics (#7) invaded Wandering Souls (#4) and captured 160 land.''<br /> <br /> <br /> Okay, not ideal for me but also not all bad, and great for Ivetza as 10 were still clinging on only really posing a significant threat to Rent seeking and not us. Rent seeking climbed back up near Ivetza's range and pushed more 5:4...<br /> <br /> <br /> '''Final Stages'''<br /> <br /> A few explorer hits later, we arrived at somewhat of an arms race. Genetics wanted to push out into the lead while Rent seeking wanted to threaten to jump into Ivetza's range to suicide. I decided our best course of action was for me to simply hit Rent all in to prevent him from even threatening Ivetza, which wouldn't take long since Rent wasn't training much DP.<br /> <br /> At one point Rent seeking had explored some acres to just barely get into range which I caught, but we made sure Ivetza had the DP to cover. I closed in on having the OP to break Rent, and according to Rio on the podcast, they realized I was going to hit Rent so he took his DB without thinking. But his DB was keeping him out of Ivetza's range. We actually had an internal debate about whether or not I should still be the one to hit Rent as it would've given me a massive amount of land, but ultimately Ivetza made the call to hit Rent himself. It worked out in the end:<br /> <br /> <br /> ''2022-08-05 00:59:55 Victorious on the battlefield, Little 👻👻👻 army (#5) conquered 203 land from Rent seeking behavior (#7).''<br /> <br /> <br /> Rent's round was over from there and it was a straight fight for the win. It still looked like Genetics would be a huge pain to overcome, even now, and we noticed the Gnome of Rest and Ricklaxation #3 (Rury) starting to look quite strong. Rury said he saw me as a threat and hit me instead of Rent (despite Rent being like 800 acres larger):<br /> <br /> <br /> ''2022-08-05 22:59:40 Rest and Ricklaxation (#3) invaded fellow dominion here we go again (#5) and captured 223 land.''<br /> <br /> <br /> But the fight was really between Ivetza and Nate. Just as we assumed it would be a long and hard fight, another mistake from 7. Bobbo got hit all in, maybe AC drop? I don't recall, but it didn't matter. I guess Nate assumed Rent would cover him or that his DP covered Ivetza, but hitting at the start of the hour allowed Ivetza to fully, safely smash Genetics with his PKs (though he took quite some time to wake up).<br /> <br /> <br /> ''2022-08-06 00:00:38 A result of genetics (#7) invaded Pickle Rick (#10) and captured 205 land.<br /> 2022-08-06 00:58:25 Victorious on the battlefield, Little 👻👻👻 army (#5) conquered 274 land from A result of genetics (#7).''<br /> <br /> <br /> From there it was certain that Ivetza would win. Genetics fought for second place and probably did the right thing in trying to hold down Rury's Gnome:<br /> <br /> <br /> ''2022-08-10 15:59:20 Rest and Ricklaxation (#3) invaded Wandering Souls (#4) and captured 205 land.<br /> 2022-08-10 23:59:56 A result of genetics (#7) invaded Rest and Ricklaxation (#3) and captured 231 land.<br /> 2022-08-11 00:06:04 Victorious on the battlefield, Little 👻👻👻 army (#5) conquered 275 land from A result of genetics (#7).<br /> ''<br /> <br /> And his other future-top-5 competitors as well, hitting Genetics 3-4 more times after Genetics hit the up-and-comers.<br /> <br /> Ivetza closed out the round by hitting the top 3 out-of-realm explorers to ensure Templeman finished as the largest explorer.<br /> <br /> <br /> Some shoutouts from me:<br /> <br /> Manno, awesome realm names. WE wasn't the best race this round but you still did well and were a great teammate. Templeman was always getting ops for anyone and everyone, even with being a competitive explorer. Erix was super active and played FW attacker very well to make sure the rest of us had a shot. Gipsa played pretty well as Nomad and probably tanked a hit or 2 so that someone else didn't have to lol. Sarmis had an interesting converting strategy and was essential for getting wiz ops on Genetics. And of course congratulations again to Ivetza, well played.<br /> <br /> <br /> == Rounds ==<br /> <br /> {{Round_nav<br /> | round = 30<br /> | previous_round = 29<br /> | next_round = 31<br /> }}</div>

Sly http://wiki.opendominion.net/index.php?title=Round_30&diff=1312 2022-09-03T18:58:34Z

<p>Sly: </p> <hr /> <div>{{Round_finish<br /> | round = 30<br /> | round_id = 44<br /> <br /> | winner_player = Ivetza<br /> | winner_dominion = Little 👻👻👻 army (#5)<br /> | winner_race = Spirit<br /> <br /> | second_player = Jcinnz<br /> | second_dominion = Alotta Fagina🌮 (#8)<br /> | second_race = Human<br /> <br /> | third_player = Almezo<br /> | third_dominion = Float like a Bee, Sting like a Bee (#2)<br /> | third_race = Human<br /> }}<br /> <br /> <br /> Round 30 started on the 10th of July 2022 and ended on the 25th of August 2022.<br /> <br /> == Round Win Story ==<br /> <br /> I apologize in advance for my realm's lack of attentiveness in keeping track of our round, but I'll do my best to recount the events as best as I can remember them along with some notes from the crier and realm discord. - Sly<br /> <br /> This round gives Spirit their third win, but technically it's their first win since previous Spirit wins were the legacy version of the race which was very similar to Undead. This round was also probably the strongest Human has ever been and we see this with two top 3 finishes from them.<br /> <br /> <br /> '''Pre-round'''<br /> <br /> Like usual, I randomed into a realm I wasn't too certain about and didn't have any significant expectations for the round. But there were some very nice surprises throughout and we ended up having a very active and supportive team, an advantage which gave us the edge at a few critical moments I believe.<br /> <br /> We had a 3-pack of Ivetza, Gipsa, and Rompar and the eclectic 5-pack of Erix, MannoWrath, Sarmis, Volv, and squarewave. The notable randoms were myself, Templeman (who achieved his highest finish yet), and Vovin. <br /> <br /> I knew it would likely be a better round for slow attacking, but how competitive the strategy could be would depend on Erix's (Magnum) ability to prevent any fast runaways.<br /> <br /> From the 5-pack, Erix was our only pure fast race as FW, Manno (Kermit) wanted to convert as WE, Sarmis (The Smallest Yellow Crayon) ended up converting DE, Volv (Miss Piggy) went for a fast Nomad, and squarewave (Wargasm) tried a slow attacking Nox.<br /> <br /> From the BGs, Ivetza (Little 👻👻👻 army) ran a fast Spirit, Gipsa (Spy x Family) ran a slow attacking Nomad, and Rompar (Ferrets eat parrots like carrots) tried a more efficient Dwarf.<br /> <br /> I (here we go again) was leaning towards Spirit prior to realm assignment but ended up going Orc due to how insanely cheap their OP is, and this is the first round they had 3-point turtle on BBs. Templeman (Fozzie Bear) was happy to get ops for us as a Merfolk, and Vovin (Consider it Mutual) played a Nox attacker. So we had a wide variety of strategies on the board with no overarching plan on how to secure control of the round and win, but we were going to have fun nonetheless.<br /> <br /> <br /> '''Early Round'''<br /> <br /> I attacked out of the gate first with 3 bot hits. Gipsa had bounced on his first hit but ended up making 4 successful invasions afterwards, then 9-houred accordingly which rocketed him up. Erix's first hit came at the expense of a DE in realm 4, which squarewave followed up on--but this resulted in him being doubled by 4's strongest attackers. It wasn't ideal as they looked like one of the main threats to try to make a runaway out of their FW.<br /> <br /> <br /> 2022-07-10 17:59:42 Snowflake Melter (#4) invaded fellow dominion Wargasm (#5) and captured 45 land.<br /> 2022-07-10 18:58:23 Hide the pain (#4) invaded fellow dominion Wargasm (#5) and captured 41 land. <br /> <br /> <br /> Despite the big early hits, we rolled on. Ivetza's first hit came on an Undead in 7 just 2 ticks later, so we were all up and running. And yet, at the start of Day 2, a nightmare scenario unfolded. Erix made a nice hit, but Dumb (#10) suicided him seemingly out of nowhere. We had mostly missed him and assumed he didn't have as much sendable OP as the other top attackers--an oversight looking back since he had waited a full 26 hours before making his second hit. Additionally, a new player who found us off an Instagram ad had gone inactive and ended up feeding 2 of our main threats.<br /> <br /> <br /> 2022-07-11 00:29:20 Rent seeking behavior (#7) invaded fellow dominion Sakarra (#5) and captured 50 land.<br /> 2022-07-11 00:39:37 Pickle Rick (#10) invaded fellow dominion Sakarra (#5) and captured 45 land.<br /> 2022-07-11 02:03:25 Dumb (#10) invaded fellow dominion Magnum (#5) and captured 55 land.<br /> <br /> <br /> Ivetza, Gipsa, and I took smaller bot hits and Erix recovered with a second sizable invasion. All things considered, we didn't look in terrible shape but it was going to be a dogfight. Poor squarewave took another lesson in checking top OP and gave some additional land to some competitors again:<br /> <br /> <br /> 2022-07-12 11:58:01 Scary Terry (#10) invaded fellow dominion Wargasm (#5) and captured 54 land.<br /> 2022-07-12 11:58:51 Birdperson (#10) invaded fellow dominion Wargasm (#5) and captured 45 land.<br /> 2022-07-12 12:52:19 Queen Bee (#2) invaded fellow dominion Wargasm (#5) and captured 44 land.<br /> <br /> <br /> More early misplays: Erix had a hit on Dumb and bounced due to a mistype, and a few others had previously bounced due to not asking someone to double check the math. But from here on out, we became pretty focused in on doing what we needed to do.<br /> <br /> The first significant moment of the round came as realm 10 declared war on realm 4, trying to take down Snowflake Melter #4 (DanTheMan) and Hide the pain (Wurstmeyer). Snowflake had been rolling early with his largest competitor being Pickle Rick in 10 (Bobbo). Hide the pain #4 had started pushing massive 5:4 OP, I guess trying to allow Snowflake space to run. But I think it was probably far too early to do this as there were simply too many dominions who were still a threat, and that ended up proving itself true.<br /> <br /> Snowflake made a hit on the WE in realm 10 and left himself open to be hit by Erix, assuming that we would just wait for 10 to hit and then be able to make a safer hit on one of them if they suicided him. But to us, Snowflake appeared to be the largest threat at the time, and him getting home safely yet again on another large hit (with Wurst r/ring to push huge temps and 5:4 as Nomad) was not an option.<br /> <br /> <br /> 2022-07-15 14:59:35 Snowflake Melter (#4) conquered 69 land from Squanchy (#10).<br /> 2022-07-15 15:59:54 Magnum (#5) invaded Snowflake Melter (#4) and captured 114 land.<br /> 2022-07-15 16:55:44 Pickle Rick (#10) invaded Magnum (#5) and captured 70 land.<br /> 2022-07-15 16:57:53 Birdperson (#10) invaded Magnum (#5) and captured 71 land.<br /> 2022-07-15 17:59:53 King Flippy Nips (#10) invaded Snowflake Melter (#4) and captured 104 land.<br /> 2022-07-15 18:53:55 Hide the pain (#4) conquered 117 land from King Flippy Nips (#10).<br /> <br /> <br /> Realm 10 may have felt like they gained a lasting advantage, and they did appear to win out the exchange. But their builds weren't set up for longer-term success (even Birdperson, [bigchris27/allegorical] wasn't going to be capable of running in our estimation). Their best long-term threat was pretty clearly King Flippy Nips (InternetFett), and nobody saw the OP Volv had pushed until it was too late:<br /> <br /> <br /> 2022-07-15 23:58:30 Miss Piggy (#5) invaded King Flippy Nips (#10) and captured 97 land.<br /> <br /> <br /> Volv was triple-tapped, including by 7's DE (Nate), but the suicide on the Nomad in 10 was well-timed after seeing how annoying Wurst was with his Nomad in 4.<br /> <br /> <br /> 2022-07-16 00:10:25 A result of genetics (#7) invaded Miss Piggy (#5) and captured 63 land. [Nate's first larger hit]<br /> <br /> <br /> All the while, Ivetza was flying under the radar but keeping up nicely as Spirit. He didn't have a very efficient build at the time, but it ended up serving him well. 10's war on 4 ended without more fireworks, but then they re-declared...<br /> <br /> <br /> '''Mid Round'''<br /> <br /> With the first week over, a critical moment in the round came. 5:4 OPs were holding several large attackers from going all out, but not most of us in realm 5. Players like me who were efficient and smaller knew we wouldn't likely be targets of the suicides, so we just kept hitting--and so did Ivetza, despite being just a little smaller than some of the larger attackers at the time.<br /> <br /> Erix was one of several who started pushing 5:4 while the rest of us went on a bot-hitting spree for about 4 days. Then, another pivotal moment. Snowflake, who hadn't sent since the 18th, suicided A result of genetics #7 (Nate). This kicked off a series of invasions that ended up putting us in a prime position to compete for the round.<br /> <br /> <br /> 2022-07-21 09:11:35 A result of genetics (#7) conquered 80 land from The Grean Peace Party (#0)<br /> 2022-07-21 13:59:48 Snowflake Melter (#4) invaded A result of genetics (#7) and captured 128 land.<br /> 2022-07-21 14:06:12 Magnum (#5) invaded Snowflake Melter (#4) and captured 116 land.<br /> 2022-07-21 14:17:07 Little 👻👻👻 army (#5) invaded Snowflake Melter (#4) and captured 92 land.<br /> 2022-07-21 14:41:38 Pickle Rick (#10) invaded Magnum (#5) and captured 100 land. <br /> 2022-07-21 14:57:46 Birdperson (#10) invaded Magnum (#5) and captured 92 land. <br /> 2022-07-21 15:52:48 King Flippy Nips (#10) invaded Snowflake Melter (#4) and captured 99 land.<br /> 2022-07-21 22:04:32 A result of genetics (#7) invaded Snowflake Melter (#4) and captured 77 land.<br /> <br /> <br /> So now realm 4 was pretty much toast, 2 wasn't involved enough to keep up, 10 had benefitted but we knew we could overtake them in the long-run, and 7 were still scary but had suffered a setback. We still needed to deal with Pickle Rick, and the Spirit of Rent seeking behavior #7 (mris) was starting to look very strong too.<br /> <br /> Quite a few bot hits later, 10 declared war on 7 on the 25th, though I don't think they had a lot of success as the DE wasn't sinkable and resilience prevented much lasting damage on the Spirit.<br /> <br /> More bot hits, mostly.<br /> <br /> The FW of Queen Bee #2 (Peabrain) fell too far behind and sent out unsafely:<br /> <br /> <br /> 2022-07-27 00:18:48 A result of genetics (#7) invaded Queen Bee (#2) and captured 143 land.<br /> 2022-07-27 00:29:21 Pickle Rick (#10) invaded Queen Bee (#2) and captured 133 land.<br /> 2022-07-27 02:55:48 Little 👻👻👻 army (#5) conquered 113 land from Queen Bee (#2). [We had to wake Ivetza up; the first of a few times]<br /> <br /> <br /> Ivetza was no longer under the radar, but was able to keep up with the top 2 attackers' hits. 10 only had 5:4 to threaten with and it was more of an idle threat by this time. Genetics looked impossible to challenge with a better build and potentially a better race than Ivetza's Spirit, but all of the top doms hovered roughly around 120k OP/DP.<br /> <br /> The top doms started hitting explorers, but a battle over the round win with 7 was inevitable. 7 had an advantage after Pickle Rick drained too many of his peasants trying to keep up as FW in that they essentially had a 2v1 against us, with all 3 races very happy to trade acres too. Rent seeking was on a knife's edge with his DP, but so was Ivetza for some of this part of the round. A silent battle of two Spirits began. But then, something very strange happened:<br /> <br /> <br /> 2022-07-31 06:27:05 A result of genetics (#7) invaded Losing my wife and kids in Las Vegas (#6) and captured 160 land.<br /> <br /> <br /> Sly — 07/31/2022<br /> you hitting him same hour?<br /> i dont understand why he left himself open?<br /> <br /> As Rio said on the podcast, apparently Genetics had assumed Rent seeking would cover him, but Ivetza could hit Genetics without sending virtually any DP the next tick:<br /> <br /> <br /> 2022-07-31 07:36:17 Victorious on the battlefield, Little 👻👻👻 army (#5) conquered 226 land from A result of genetics (#7).<br /> <br /> <br /> This was the beginning of the end for everyone else. Rent seeking was pushing 5:4 but as a Spirit who is already slightly behind, it was a little desperate and not going to be effective against Ivetza. Still, Genetics the DE looked amazing and it wasn't clear whether Nate or Ivetza was better positioned. But Rent seeking then allowed himself to get hit by Ivetza with only a suicide to retaliate. We assassinated his drafts assuming he wanted to push more spec OP, though he still got the suicide off on Ivetza.<br /> <br /> <br /> 2022-08-01 00:15:10 Victorious on the battlefield, Little 👻👻👻 army (#5) conquered 204 land from Rent seeking behavior (#7).<br /> 2022-08-01 01:18:26 Rent seeking behavior (#7) invaded fellow dominion Little 👻👻👻 army (#5) and captured 313 land.<br /> 2022-08-01 01:38:01 Birdperson (#10) invaded Rent seeking behavior (#7) and captured 228 land.<br /> 2022-08-01 01:59:21 Pickle Rick (#10) invaded Rent seeking behavior (#7) and captured 213 land.<br /> 2022-08-01 01:59:52 Been There Drone That (#2) invaded Rent seeking behavior (#7) and captured 188 land.<br /> <br /> <br /> I decided against hitting as I felt like I was in a great spot and could afford to wait this mess out a bit longer. Rent seeking could've retaliated on me safely too if I'd joined in. Instead, he hit me all in (I had AC off because it was such a stretch of a sui for him):<br /> <br /> <br /> 2022-08-01 13:01:05 Rent seeking behavior (#7) invaded fellow dominion here we go again (#5) and captured 151 land.<br /> 2022-08-01 13:02:59 Victorious on the battlefield, Little 👻👻👻 army (#5) conquered 180 land from Rent seeking behavior (#7).<br /> 2022-08-01 13:18:35 Victorious on the battlefield, here we go again (#5) conquered 232 land from Rent seeking behavior (#7).<br /> 2022-08-01 13:59:39 Birdperson (#10) invaded Rent seeking behavior (#7) and captured 171 land.<br /> 2022-08-01 13:59:46 Pickle Rick (#10) invaded Rent seeking behavior (#7) and captured 163 land.<br /> 2022-08-01 13:59:53 A result of genetics (#7) invaded Wandering Souls (#4) and captured 160 land.<br /> <br /> <br /> Okay, not ideal for me but also not all bad, and great for Ivetza as 10 were still clinging on only really posing a significant threat to Rent seeking and not us. Rent seeking climbed back up near Ivetza's range and pushed more 5:4...<br /> <br /> <br /> '''Final Stages'''<br /> <br /> A few explorer hits later, we arrived at somewhat of an arms race. Genetics wanted to push out into the lead while Rent seeking wanted to threaten to jump into Ivetza's range to suicide. I decided our best course of action was for me to simply hit Rent all in to prevent him from even threatening Ivetza, which wouldn't take long since Rent wasn't training much DP.<br /> <br /> At one point Rent seeking had explored some acres to just barely get into range which I caught, but we made sure Ivetza had the DP to cover. I closed in on having the OP to break Rent, and according to Rio on the podcast, they realized I was going to hit Rent so he took his DB without thinking. But his DB was keeping him out of Ivetza's range. We actually had an internal debate about whether or not I should still be the one to hit Rent as it would've given me a massive amount of land, but ultimately Ivetza made the call to hit Rent himself. It worked out in the end:<br /> <br /> <br /> 2022-08-05 00:59:55 Victorious on the battlefield, Little 👻👻👻 army (#5) conquered 203 land from Rent seeking behavior (#7).<br /> <br /> <br /> Rent's round was over from there and it was a straight fight for the win. It still looked like Genetics would be a huge pain to overcome, even now, and we noticed the Gnome of Rest and Ricklaxation #3 (Rury) starting to look quite strong. Rury said he saw me as a threat and hit me instead of Rent (despite Rent being like 800 acres larger):<br /> <br /> <br /> 2022-08-05 22:59:40 Rest and Ricklaxation (#3) invaded fellow dominion here we go again (#5) and captured 223 land.<br /> <br /> <br /> But the fight was really between Ivetza and Nate. Just as we assumed it would be a long and hard fight, another mistake from 7. Bobbo got hit all in, maybe AC drop? I don't recall, but it didn't matter. I guess Nate assumed Rent would cover him or that his DP covered Ivetza, but hitting at the start of the hour allowed Ivetza to fully, safely smash Genetics with his PKs (though he took quite some time to wake up).<br /> <br /> <br /> 2022-08-06 00:00:38 A result of genetics (#7) invaded Pickle Rick (#10) and captured 205 land.<br /> 2022-08-06 00:58:25 Victorious on the battlefield, Little 👻👻👻 army (#5) conquered 274 land from A result of genetics (#7).<br /> <br /> <br /> From there it was certain that Ivetza would win. Genetics fought for second place and probably did the right thing in trying to hold down Rury's Gnome:<br /> <br /> <br /> 2022-08-10 15:59:20 Rest and Ricklaxation (#3) invaded Wandering Souls (#4) and captured 205 land.<br /> 2022-08-10 23:59:56 A result of genetics (#7) invaded Rest and Ricklaxation (#3) and captured 231 land.<br /> 2022-08-11 00:06:04 Victorious on the battlefield, Little 👻👻👻 army (#5) conquered 275 land from A result of genetics (#7).<br /> <br /> <br /> And his other future-top-5 competitors as well, hitting Genetics 3-4 more times after Genetics hit the up-and-comers.<br /> <br /> Ivetza closed out the round by hitting the top 3 out-of-realm explorers to ensure Templeman finished as the largest explorer.<br /> <br /> <br /> Some shoutouts from me:<br /> <br /> Manno, awesome realm names. WE wasn't the best race this round but you still did well and were a great teammate. Templeman was always getting ops for anyone and everyone, even with being a competitive explorer. Erix was super active and played FW attacker very well to make sure the rest of us had a shot. Gipsa played pretty well as Nomad and probably tanked a hit or 2 so that someone else didn't have to lol. Sarmis had an interesting converting strategy and was essential for getting wiz ops on Genetics. And of course congratulations again to Ivetza, well played.<br /> <br /> <br /> == Rounds ==<br /> <br /> {{Round_nav<br /> | round = 30<br /> | previous_round = 29<br /> | next_round = 31<br /> }}</div>

Sly http://wiki.opendominion.net/index.php?title=Round_30&diff=1311 2022-09-03T18:57:12Z

<p>Sly: Round 30 featured Ivetza&#039;s Spirit running away in the mid-round and securing the highest land finish ever recorded in OpenDominion.</p> <hr /> <div>{{Round_finish<br /> | round = 30<br /> | round_id = 44<br /> <br /> | winner_player = Ivetza<br /> | winner_dominion = Little 👻👻👻 army (#5)<br /> | winner_race = Spirit<br /> <br /> | second_player = Jcinnz<br /> | second_dominion = Alotta Fagina🌮 (#8)<br /> | second_race = Human<br /> <br /> | third_player = Almezo<br /> | third_dominion = Float like a Bee, Sting like a Bee (#2)<br /> | third_race = Human<br /> }}<br /> <br /> <br /> Round 30 started on the 10th of July 2022 and ended on the 25th of August 2022.<br /> <br /> == Round Win Story ==<br /> <br /> I apologize in advance for my realm's lack of attentiveness in keeping track of our round, but I'll do my best to recount the events as best as I can remember them along with some notes from the crier and realm discord. - Sly<br /> <br /> This round gives Spirit their third win, but technically it's their first win since previous Spirit wins were the legacy version of the race which was very similar to Undead. This round was also probably the strongest Human has ever been and we see this with two top 3 finishes from them.<br /> <br /> <br /> '''Pre-round'''<br /> <br /> Like usual, I randomed into a realm I wasn't too certain about and didn't have any significant expectations for the round. But there were some very nice surprises throughout and we ended up having a very active and supportive team, an advantage which gave us the edge at a few critical moments I believe.<br /> <br /> We had a 3-pack of Ivetza, Gipsa, and Rompar and the eclectic 5-pack of Erix, MannoWrath, Sarmis, Volv, and squarewave. The notable randoms were myself, Templeman (who achieved his highest finish yet), and Vovin. <br /> <br /> I knew it would likely be a better round for slow attacking, but how competitive the strategy could be would depend on Erix's (Magnum) ability to prevent any fast runaways.<br /> <br /> From the 5-pack, Erix was our only pure fast race as FW, Manno (Kermit) wanted to convert as WE, Sarmis (The Smallest Yellow Crayon) ended up converting DE, Volv (Miss Piggy) went for a fast Nomad, and squarewave (Wargasm) tried a slow attacking Nox.<br /> <br /> From the BGs, Ivetza (Little 👻👻👻 army) ran a fast Spirit, Gipsa (Spy x Family) ran a slow attacking Nomad, and Rompar (Ferrets eat parrots like carrots) tried a more efficient Dwarf.<br /> <br /> I (here we go again) was leaning towards Spirit prior to realm assignment but ended up going Orc due to how insanely cheap their OP is, and this is the first round they had 3-point turtle on BBs. Templeman (Fozzie Bear) was happy to get ops for us as a Merfolk, and Vovin (Consider it Mutual) played a Nox attacker. So we had a wide variety of strategies on the board with no overarching plan on how to secure control of the round and win, but we were going to have fun nonetheless.<br /> <br /> <br /> '''Early Round'''<br /> <br /> I attacked out of the gate first with 3 bot hits. Gipsa had bounced on his first hit but ended up making 4 successful invasions afterwards, then 9-houred accordingly which rocketed him up. Erix's first hit came at the expense of a DE in realm 4, which squarewave followed up on--but this resulted in him being doubled by 4's strongest attackers. It wasn't ideal as they looked like one of the main threats to try to make a runaway out of their FW.<br /> <br /> 2022-07-10 17:59:42 Snowflake Melter (#4) invaded fellow dominion Wargasm (#5) and captured 45 land.<br /> 2022-07-10 18:58:23 Hide the pain (#4) invaded fellow dominion Wargasm (#5) and captured 41 land. <br /> <br /> Despite the big early hits, we rolled on. Ivetza's first hit came on an Undead in 7 just 2 ticks later, so we were all up and running. And yet, at the start of Day 2, a nightmare scenario unfolded. Erix made a nice hit, but Dumb (#10) suicided him seemingly out of nowhere. We had mostly missed him and assumed he didn't have as much sendable OP as the other top attackers--an oversight looking back since he had waited a full 26 hours before making his second hit. Additionally, a new player who found us off an Instagram ad had gone inactive and ended up feeding 2 of our main threats.<br /> <br /> 2022-07-11 00:29:20 Rent seeking behavior (#7) invaded fellow dominion Sakarra (#5) and captured 50 land.<br /> 2022-07-11 00:39:37 Pickle Rick (#10) invaded fellow dominion Sakarra (#5) and captured 45 land.<br /> 2022-07-11 02:03:25 Dumb (#10) invaded fellow dominion Magnum (#5) and captured 55 land.<br /> <br /> Ivetza, Gipsa, and I took smaller bot hits and Erix recovered with a second sizable invasion. All things considered, we didn't look in terrible shape but it was going to be a dogfight. Poor squarewave took another lesson in checking top OP and gave some additional land to some competitors again:<br /> <br /> 2022-07-12 11:58:01 Scary Terry (#10) invaded fellow dominion Wargasm (#5) and captured 54 land.<br /> 2022-07-12 11:58:51 Birdperson (#10) invaded fellow dominion Wargasm (#5) and captured 45 land.<br /> 2022-07-12 12:52:19 Queen Bee (#2) invaded fellow dominion Wargasm (#5) and captured 44 land.<br /> <br /> More early misplays: Erix had a hit on Dumb and bounced due to a mistype, and a few others had previously bounced due to not asking someone to double check the math. But from here on out, we became pretty focused in on doing what we needed to do.<br /> <br /> The first significant moment of the round came as realm 10 declared war on realm 4, trying to take down Snowflake Melter #4 (DanTheMan) and Hide the pain (Wurstmeyer). Snowflake had been rolling early with his largest competitor being Pickle Rick in 10 (Bobbo). Hide the pain #4 had started pushing massive 5:4 OP, I guess trying to allow Snowflake space to run. But I think it was probably far too early to do this as there were simply too many dominions who were still a threat, and that ended up proving itself true.<br /> <br /> Snowflake made a hit on the WE in realm 10 and left himself open to be hit by Erix, assuming that we would just wait for 10 to hit and then be able to make a safer hit on one of them if they suicided him. But to us, Snowflake appeared to be the largest threat at the time, and him getting home safely yet again on another large hit (with Wurst r/ring to push huge temps and 5:4 as Nomad) was not an option.<br /> <br /> 2022-07-15 14:59:35 Snowflake Melter (#4) conquered 69 land from Squanchy (#10).<br /> 2022-07-15 15:59:54 Magnum (#5) invaded Snowflake Melter (#4) and captured 114 land.<br /> 2022-07-15 16:55:44 Pickle Rick (#10) invaded Magnum (#5) and captured 70 land.<br /> 2022-07-15 16:57:53 Birdperson (#10) invaded Magnum (#5) and captured 71 land.<br /> 2022-07-15 17:59:53 King Flippy Nips (#10) invaded Snowflake Melter (#4) and captured 104 land.<br /> 2022-07-15 18:53:55 Hide the pain (#4) conquered 117 land from King Flippy Nips (#10).<br /> <br /> Realm 10 may have felt like they gained a lasting advantage, and they did appear to win out the exchange. But their builds weren't set up for longer-term success (even Birdperson, [bigchris27/allegorical] wasn't going to be capable of running in our estimation). Their best long-term threat was pretty clearly King Flippy Nips (InternetFett), and nobody saw the OP Volv had pushed until it was too late:<br /> <br /> 2022-07-15 23:58:30 Miss Piggy (#5) invaded King Flippy Nips (#10) and captured 97 land.<br /> <br /> Volv was triple-tapped, including by 7's DE (Nate), but the suicide on the Nomad in 10 was well-timed after seeing how annoying Wurst was with his Nomad in 4.<br /> <br /> 2022-07-16 00:10:25 A result of genetics (#7) invaded Miss Piggy (#5) and captured 63 land. [Nate's first larger hit]<br /> <br /> All the while, Ivetza was flying under the radar but keeping up nicely as Spirit. He didn't have a very efficient build at the time, but it ended up serving him well. 10's war on 4 ended without more fireworks, but then they re-declared...<br /> <br /> <br /> '''Mid Round'''<br /> <br /> With the first week over, a critical moment in the round came. 5:4 OPs were holding several large attackers from going all out, but not most of us in realm 5. Players like me who were efficient and smaller knew we wouldn't likely be targets of the suicides, so we just kept hitting--and so did Ivetza, despite being just a little smaller than some of the larger attackers at the time.<br /> <br /> Erix was one of several who started pushing 5:4 while the rest of us went on a bot-hitting spree for about 4 days. Then, another pivotal moment. Snowflake, who hadn't sent since the 18th, suicided A result of genetics #7 (Nate). This kicked off a series of invasions that ended up putting us in a prime position to compete for the round.<br /> <br /> 2022-07-21 09:11:35 A result of genetics (#7) conquered 80 land from The Grean Peace Party (#0)<br /> 2022-07-21 13:59:48 Snowflake Melter (#4) invaded A result of genetics (#7) and captured 128 land.<br /> 2022-07-21 14:06:12 Magnum (#5) invaded Snowflake Melter (#4) and captured 116 land.<br /> 2022-07-21 14:17:07 Little 👻👻👻 army (#5) invaded Snowflake Melter (#4) and captured 92 land.<br /> 2022-07-21 14:41:38 Pickle Rick (#10) invaded Magnum (#5) and captured 100 land. <br /> 2022-07-21 14:57:46 Birdperson (#10) invaded Magnum (#5) and captured 92 land. <br /> 2022-07-21 15:52:48 King Flippy Nips (#10) invaded Snowflake Melter (#4) and captured 99 land.<br /> 2022-07-21 22:04:32 A result of genetics (#7) invaded Snowflake Melter (#4) and captured 77 land.<br /> <br /> So now realm 4 was pretty much toast, 2 wasn't involved enough to keep up, 10 had benefitted but we knew we could overtake them in the long-run, and 7 were still scary but had suffered a setback. We still needed to deal with Pickle Rick, and the Spirit of Rent seeking behavior #7 (mris) was starting to look very strong too.<br /> <br /> Quite a few bot hits later, 10 declared war on 7 on the 25th, though I don't think they had a lot of success as the DE wasn't sinkable and resilience prevented much lasting damage on the Spirit.<br /> <br /> More bot hits, mostly.<br /> <br /> The FW of Queen Bee #2 (Peabrain) fell too far behind and sent out unsafely:<br /> <br /> 2022-07-27 00:18:48 A result of genetics (#7) invaded Queen Bee (#2) and captured 143 land.<br /> 2022-07-27 00:29:21 Pickle Rick (#10) invaded Queen Bee (#2) and captured 133 land.<br /> 2022-07-27 02:55:48 Little 👻👻👻 army (#5) conquered 113 land from Queen Bee (#2). [We had to wake Ivetza up; the first of a few times]<br /> <br /> Ivetza was no longer under the radar, but was able to keep up with the top 2 attackers' hits. 10 only had 5:4 to threaten with and it was more of an idle threat by this time. Genetics looked impossible to challenge with a better build and potentially a better race than Ivetza's Spirit, but all of the top doms hovered roughly around 120k OP/DP.<br /> <br /> The top doms started hitting explorers, but a battle over the round win with 7 was inevitable. 7 had an advantage after Pickle Rick drained too many of his peasants trying to keep up as FW in that they essentially had a 2v1 against us, with all 3 races very happy to trade acres too. Rent seeking was on a knife's edge with his DP, but so was Ivetza for some of this part of the round. A silent battle of two Spirits began. But then, something very strange happened:<br /> <br /> 2022-07-31 06:27:05 A result of genetics (#7) invaded Losing my wife and kids in Las Vegas (#6) and captured 160 land.<br /> <br /> Sly — 07/31/2022<br /> you hitting him same hour?<br /> i dont understand why he left himself open?<br /> <br /> As Rio said on the podcast, apparently Genetics had assumed Rent seeking would cover him, but Ivetza could hit Genetics without sending virtually any DP the next tick:<br /> <br /> 2022-07-31 07:36:17 Victorious on the battlefield, Little 👻👻👻 army (#5) conquered 226 land from A result of genetics (#7).<br /> <br /> This was the beginning of the end for everyone else. Rent seeking was pushing 5:4 but as a Spirit who is already slightly behind, it was a little desperate and not going to be effective against Ivetza. Still, Genetics the DE looked amazing and it wasn't clear whether Nate or Ivetza was better positioned. But Rent seeking then allowed himself to get hit by Ivetza with only a suicide to retaliate. We assassinated his drafts assuming he wanted to push more spec OP, though he still got the suicide off on Ivetza.<br /> <br /> 2022-08-01 00:15:10 Victorious on the battlefield, Little 👻👻👻 army (#5) conquered 204 land from Rent seeking behavior (#7).<br /> 2022-08-01 01:18:26 Rent seeking behavior (#7) invaded fellow dominion Little 👻👻👻 army (#5) and captured 313 land.<br /> 2022-08-01 01:38:01 Birdperson (#10) invaded Rent seeking behavior (#7) and captured 228 land.<br /> 2022-08-01 01:59:21 Pickle Rick (#10) invaded Rent seeking behavior (#7) and captured 213 land.<br /> 2022-08-01 01:59:52 Been There Drone That (#2) invaded Rent seeking behavior (#7) and captured 188 land.<br /> <br /> I decided against hitting as I felt like I was in a great spot and could afford to wait this mess out a bit longer. Rent seeking could've retaliated on me safely too if I'd joined in. Instead, he hit me all in (I had AC off because it was such a stretch of a sui for him):<br /> <br /> 2022-08-01 13:01:05 Rent seeking behavior (#7) invaded fellow dominion here we go again (#5) and captured 151 land.<br /> 2022-08-01 13:02:59 Victorious on the battlefield, Little 👻👻👻 army (#5) conquered 180 land from Rent seeking behavior (#7).<br /> 2022-08-01 13:18:35 Victorious on the battlefield, here we go again (#5) conquered 232 land from Rent seeking behavior (#7).<br /> 2022-08-01 13:59:39 Birdperson (#10) invaded Rent seeking behavior (#7) and captured 171 land.<br /> 2022-08-01 13:59:46 Pickle Rick (#10) invaded Rent seeking behavior (#7) and captured 163 land.<br /> 2022-08-01 13:59:53 A result of genetics (#7) invaded Wandering Souls (#4) and captured 160 land.<br /> <br /> Okay, not ideal for me but also not all bad, and great for Ivetza as 10 were still clinging on only really posing a significant threat to Rent seeking and not us. Rent seeking climbed back up near Ivetza's range and pushed more 5:4...<br /> <br /> <br /> '''Final Stages'''<br /> <br /> A few explorer hits later, we arrived at somewhat of an arms race. Genetics wanted to push out into the lead while Rent seeking wanted to threaten to jump into Ivetza's range to suicide. I decided our best course of action was for me to simply hit Rent all in to prevent him from even threatening Ivetza, which wouldn't take long since Rent wasn't training much DP.<br /> <br /> At one point Rent seeking had explored some acres to just barely get into range which I caught, but we made sure Ivetza had the DP to cover. I closed in on having the OP to break Rent, and according to Rio on the podcast, they realized I was going to hit Rent so he took his DB without thinking. But his DB was keeping him out of Ivetza's range. We actually had an internal debate about whether or not I should still be the one to hit Rent as it would've given me a massive amount of land, but ultimately Ivetza made the call to hit Rent himself. It worked out in the end:<br /> <br /> 2022-08-05 00:59:55 Victorious on the battlefield, Little 👻👻👻 army (#5) conquered 203 land from Rent seeking behavior (#7).<br /> <br /> Rent's round was over from there and it was a straight fight for the win. It still looked like Genetics would be a huge pain to overcome, even now, and we noticed the Gnome of Rest and Ricklaxation #3 (Rury) starting to look quite strong. Rury said he saw me as a threat and hit me instead of Rent (despite Rent being like 800 acres larger):<br /> <br /> 2022-08-05 22:59:40 Rest and Ricklaxation (#3) invaded fellow dominion here we go again (#5) and captured 223 land.<br /> <br /> But the fight was really between Ivetza and Nate. Just as we assumed it would be a long and hard fight, another mistake from 7. Bobbo got hit all in, maybe AC drop? I don't recall, but it didn't matter. I guess Nate assumed Rent would cover him or that his DP covered Ivetza, but hitting at the start of the hour allowed Ivetza to fully, safely smash Genetics with his PKs (though he took quite some time to wake up).<br /> <br /> 2022-08-06 00:00:38 A result of genetics (#7) invaded Pickle Rick (#10) and captured 205 land.<br /> 2022-08-06 00:58:25 Victorious on the battlefield, Little 👻👻👻 army (#5) conquered 274 land from A result of genetics (#7).<br /> <br /> From there it was certain that Ivetza would win. Genetics fought for second place and probably did the right thing in trying to hold down Rury's Gnome:<br /> <br /> 2022-08-10 15:59:20 Rest and Ricklaxation (#3) invaded Wandering Souls (#4) and captured 205 land.<br /> 2022-08-10 23:59:56 A result of genetics (#7) invaded Rest and Ricklaxation (#3) and captured 231 land.<br /> 2022-08-11 00:06:04 Victorious on the battlefield, Little 👻👻👻 army (#5) conquered 275 land from A result of genetics (#7).<br /> <br /> And his other future-top-5 competitors as well, hitting Genetics 3-4 more times after Genetics hit the up-and-comers.<br /> <br /> Ivetza closed out the round by hitting the top 3 out-of-realm explorers to ensure Templeman finished as the largest explorer.<br /> <br /> <br /> Some shoutouts from me:<br /> <br /> Manno, awesome realm names. WE wasn't the best race this round but you still did well and were a great teammate. Templeman was always getting ops for anyone and everyone, even with being a competitive explorer. Erix was super active and played FW attacker very well to make sure the rest of us had a shot. Gipsa played pretty well as Nomad and probably tanked a hit or 2 so that someone else didn't have to lol. Sarmis had an interesting converting strategy and was essential for getting wiz ops on Genetics. And of course congratulations again to Ivetza, well played.<br /> <br /> <br /> == Rounds ==<br /> <br /> {{Round_nav<br /> | round = 30<br /> | previous_round = 29<br /> | next_round = 31<br /> }}</div>

Sly