WARFRAME

Draft Round baby! As always, there's a tl;dr at the end for those who don't like to read, but if you want to read the tale of probably the most hilarious, worst-performing realm I've ever experienced, then strap yourself in!

WEEK 0 - THE DRAFT CAPTAIN OF THE TITANIC

I was a team captain for this draft, and at the outset I felt like I got a really good selection of players. Jboy, King Jota and Mithrandir had all been right at the top of my list of picks if I had the chance to get them, and through sheer luck with two other captains fighting over Mith with vetoes, I was able to get a great starting line-up of attackers.

For blackoppers, my first pick of Unfather was vetoed by Wurstmeyer, which actually really undermined my strategy more than anyone likely realised. Unfather had pitched me a really interesting idea before the draft and I wanted him on board with it. Instead he went to big ol' hydra head himself, Peabrain, where he wasn't able to use the strategy anyway because Peabrain drafted a bunch of war-skittish players.

In sheer spite for his veto, I vetoed Wurstmeyer back, then watched bemused as Unfather stayed on the board for a full round. I then picked up AgFx and jmerc as blackoppers, mainly because I hadn't played with them before.

I was also last to pick in the draft, and realised with mounting horror as the end approached that this meant I was going to end up with tsuki "thelastvegan" - a player who was by all accounts pretty insufferable. Fortunately, sands came to my rescue and snapped him up first. I felt like I'd won the lottery. I ended up with mcgeeal, but I'd have picked him first in the last round if I'd had the option anyway, having played with him the previous round.

Luckily for sands, tsuki had a meltdown just before r33 ended and accused fett of deliberately disabling invasion right as he was about to invade, as though it was some intervention designed specifically to fuck him in particular, and quit the game.

Jboy had also earmarked a few players which I was able to snag, picking up exrio and OMGnoob. Jboy figured exrio could be a potential dark horse as a fast attacker and OMGnoob would be good blops support.

Before the round began, we held a poll for what our theme should be, which as it turns out, is the worst way you can go about picking a theme. There were some good options, but somehow "Character Movie" won the poll. I didn't even know what that theme suggestion meant, let alone how it won. While we were trying to figure it out, Jota chimed in to say he hadnt understood how the poll worked and had voted incorrectly, and wanted to redo his votes. So we let him, and lo and behold, his suggestion then won the poll. And it was "Video Games". At least I understood that one, but as themes go, it was fairly on the nose.

So it goes. I was WARFRAME in realm #4, the Nox and Monarch, and I finished on 6,511 acres. Here is my roundfail.

WEEK 1 - PANDEMONIUM

Despite my draft plans, both jmerc and OMGnoob ended up in attacker roles rather than blackops roles. Jmerc, knowing he had unpredictable availability, was set up as an early nuclear missile to take out another fast attacker in the first days, before falling back into a blackops support role.

OMGnoob started out by saying he wanted to go deconverting spirit to blopper, then when everyone expressed alarm, he swung round to deconverting dwarf to blopper. When we actually started the round it was with some surprise that I realised he'd gone Orc. Did that mean he planned to go deconverting Orc to blopper? It was a bit like watching someone play Russian Roulette with themselves, except every chamber was loaded.

King Jota, Mithrandir and jboy all had solid starts, and alongside jmerc 'the ticking bomb' we seemed to be in a good early position. Looking around, the main threats were the firewalker in #1, Murica! Fuck Yeah! (Bobbo); another fw, Better Call Saul (SlyPimp) in #6; and yet another firewalker in #5, A Sky Full of Stars (Justin), who looked a bit like he was doing something similar to what jmerc was doing. Of the three threats, Bobbo was in the best position because he also had a strong lyc, John Hancock (Ivetza). Bad news.

We were a man down right out of the gate when exrio, tipped to be our dark horse fast attacker, fell at the first hurdle:

2023-03-19 13:08:26 Victorious on the battlefield, Breath Of Fire (#4) conquered 29 land from The Kinslayer (#7).

2023-03-19 13:59:37 Sir James Clark R00s (Mulla) (#9) invaded fellow dominion Breath Of Fire (#4) and captured 46 land.

Meanwhile, I was grappling with Chunk's fancy tracker sheet that Mithrandir had started teaching us to use - CopyOps - which kept spitting out all sorts of crazy outputs for Nox. It was my first time using it, so I kept thinking I was screwing something up, but whenever Mith would double check it for me, it turned out it was the sheet. While I was in protection it would project that I had 3k incoming acres, for example. Or somehow detect my intense loathing of Forest Havens and set me up with negative 200 of them. Out of protection, things got more dangerous when I realised that if I used the same sheet repeatedly for updates, it would start creeping in extra dp for me that I didn't have. A dangerous quirk! It was doing the same thing for AgFx, but we noticed the discrepancy early and before either of us got caught out.

It worked great for tracking other ops, as long as you used a fresh sheet each time.

On the second day, our realm got murdered. We knew we had scary op with jmerc, but that did not dissuade some players!

New player mcgeeal found himself a bit light on dp and a bit high on land:

2023-03-20 00:04:59 Dessert 🦅 (playt0i) (#7) invaded fellow dominion Billy the Wizard: Rocket Broomstick Racing (#4) and captured 53 land.

And once the sharks smelled blood, the "you're in the Town Crier" effect kicked in.

2023-03-20 00:14:09 Shut the f— up and let me die in peace (Rio) (#6) invaded fellow dominion Billy the Wizard: Rocket Broomstick Racing (#4) and captured 48 land.

2023-03-20 01:14:27 Sir James Clark R00s (Mulla) (#9) invaded fellow dominion Billy the Wizard: Rocket Broomstick Racing (#4) and captured 47 land.

Using jmerc as cover, Mithrandir sent out light to hit Oment and paid a heavy cost:

2023-03-20 02:59:19 Victorious on the battlefield, Grand Theft Auto (#4) conquered 31 land from The Cake Troll (Oment) (#2).

2023-03-20 05:42:28 Peanut Butter & Benelli (Yami) (#7) invaded fellow dominion Grand Theft Auto (#4) and captured 48 land.

2023-03-20 06:00:27 Better Call Saul! (SlyPimp) (#6) invaded fellow dominion Grand Theft Auto (#4) and captured 46 land.

2023-03-20 06:04:36 Vescere bracis meis (Gothia) (#5) invaded fellow dominion Grand Theft Auto (#4) and captured 42 land.

2023-03-20 11:59:30 Crushing Cold Budweisers and Punching Commies (Erix) (#1) invaded fellow dominion Grand Theft Auto (#4) and captured 35 land.

Oment held a grudge for that hit the entire round, and after it was all over would later comment that it was his sincere pleasure to hit into our realm three times. He suggested that we had sims that were "too smart" for our players and that we died faster than anyone he'd ever seen. Hey, maybe we'll get our own wiki page for the achievement.

Speaking of dying, this round was the first time in SIX ROUNDS that I ate a hit:

2023-03-20 06:23:12 Adolf Hitmerf (DanTheMan) (#9) invaded fellow dominion WARFRAME (#4) and captured 60 land.

This seemed an unwise hit when there were much better targets, and required Dan sending werewolves to break me, but you can't play this game defending against every player's potential daft decisions. I'm sure Oment would back me up on that one.

Nazi-killer jmerc decided it was time to launch his nuclear missile and collected his scalp:

2023-03-20 06:54:15 Victorious on the battlefield, Ninja Gaiden (#4) conquered 59 land from Adolf Hitmerf (#9).

In keeping with OD tradition, once again DanTheMan's round was ended by a blackopper. A few hours later, the firewalker in #7 cemented his fate. It was another 'inglourious' end for Dan.

2023-03-20 12:59:52 Dessert 🦅 (playt0i) (#7) invaded Adolf Hitmerf (#9) and captured 47 land.

Unfortunately jmerc then got targeted by the halfer in #10, who it seemed made a tactical decision to hit jmerc rather than the disgraced fuhrer himself (who had better landtypes).

2023-03-20 06:58:47 Glass Half Full or Half Empty? (bigchris27) (#10) invaded fellow dominion Ninja Gaiden (#4) and captured 42 land.

When the dust settled, I was just furious that having been hit for the first time in over six rounds, the gif situation was so dire. Warframe gifs? Bad. And you can't gif nazis because discord won't allow it. An absolute let-down on all fronts.

If all of the above looks like a poor start for realm #4, well, it was. We were down several of our key attackers, and two blackoppers including me had taken hits. But from what I could see in the crier, there were fires and smoking ruins everywhere. It was absolute pandemonium. Teenagers stumbling out of their crashed ferraris on every street corner.

Ah, draft rounds.

By the end of day 4, it seemed everyone knew where we were. Either they'd taken an educated guess based on the monarch being a blackops-ready Nox... or they'd cast a single clear sight on mcgeeal and looked at his rulername. Which was... mcgeeal. Whoops!

War declarations and blackops went live, and this much anticipated moment was met with total silence and a bit of confusion from the playerbase. I'd been banging the drum of war and hyping it up with absolutely no intention of declaring - and apparently so had Merf - so it was funny to see so many dominions with their tiny number of FHs and Energy Mirrors granting them insane protection levels against... thin air. Paper bogeymen. Hah, suckers! It had meant my realm was able to risk running zero protection for a scintilla of extra efficiency but it didn't really help since most of our attacker dudes got smashed out of the gates. Only jboy, Jota and empoy were able to make hits safely and grow, but they weren't able to keep pace with the top guys.

We had a few blackoppers (me, agfx, mcgeeal), but much less than I'd planned for with jmerc and OMGnoob both going attackers, and three blackoppers vs top op with the standard 30 FHs is just pointless. So we went through the motions of building high towers as a deception, and to give the appearance of having stingers if anyone warred us, but our ratios were all on the low side. The plan was to slowly bring blops online in time for the Wonder wars.

The rest of the week wasn't as disastrous for us, but we still ate a few hits here and there, with AgFx and his dedication to a good night's sleep costing him a double tap towards the end of the week. It was always ever only a matter of time before a normal person's sleep routine killed him. A queue actions option would be nice and friendly.

By the time the dust settled on the opening week, it was clear we were pretty fucked and were not going to be a realm of any major importance.

WEEK 2 - CHASING THE DRAGON

With the theatrics of teenagers in ferraris out of the way, the real carnage began. First it started with #5 flexing their muscles and targeting their competitors directly.

2023-03-25 07:58:11 princeps tuus in alio arce 🍄 (#5) has declared WAR on Manifest Destiny (#9).

The war bonus seemed to be enough for them to make their first hit, smashing Blopert E. Lee (Cronel).

2023-03-26 09:59:51 Te futueo et caballum tuum (#5) invaded Blopert E. Lee (#9) and captured 74 land.

And then Sir Francis Drizzy (MacTheMeek) (#9) dropped the ball:

2023-03-27 02:57:44 Te futueo et caballum tuum (Wurstmeyer) (#5) invaded Sir Francis Drizzy (#9) and captured 94 land.

Our very own OMGNoob gets all-inned:

2023-03-26 18:59:40 John Hancock 🇺🇸 vs Tennessee Jack 🇺🇸 (#1) invaded Twisted Metal (#4) and captured 60 land.

And then, a gear shift for the round:

2023-03-27 13:57:24 princeps tuus in alio arce 🍄 (#5) has declared WAR on Scratch off lotto tickets and a pack of Marlboro (#1).

It's always good to see the top realm directly challenging their competitors. The war went pretty badly for #1; I thought Eric's squad of fast attackers were going to be extremely vulnerable to blackops after his draft selection - he seemed to be at the mercy of randoms in that regard. But it was a very Erixy team. #5 just fucked them up, sank the halfer (Erix) and fireballed the shit out of them.

At this stage, #9 decided to step in and do some blops damage to #5 directly.

2023-03-28 05:55:03 Strength In Numbers (#9) has declared WAR on princeps tuus in alio arce 🍄 (#5).

Meanwhile my realm was engaged in the most shambolic Wonder take-down in OD history. Right as we were all lined up and ready to take it down, Jota (who had committed 11k op) sent out and hit a target instead, and for the life of me I could not rustle up 11k damage from anyone else to make up the shortfall. 14 people in the realm and apparently only three blackoppers including me and one attacker (jmerc) were capable of doing anything. It was exasperating. We left the Wonder at less than 50% hp, which meant it was now in very real danger of getting sniped. It looked like #1 was already cycloning away when the ranks updated but, as we'd suspected, they'd been going for the Fountain where we'd been after the Horn. Which we'd chosen specifically because it was the less likely of the two target Wonders people would assume we were going for, to try and reduce the chance of being sniped. If we hadn't, #1 would have sniped us there and then. And we would have absolutely deserved it.

The next day, miraculously, it still hadn't fallen. Our focus on the Horn worked out massively in our favour. We began trying to set up a second attempt at a take-down. I was busy at work, so exrio did most of the organising this time. Here's a... lightly dramatised account of the Wonder take-down. An exclusive insight into the smooth operation that was our realm.

11:25

exrio: Alright BITCHES. This is how it's gonna go down. Blackoppers! Do your wind noodle thing with the Wonder. Sling those noodles at high speed. Attackers! At 11:30 server time ON THE DOT, you send out at the Wonder! We need every last bit of op here to make sure we take this Wonder, so there's no room for error! Are we all agreed?

Everyone: Aye aye!

Agfx: I spent all my mana on revenge blops earlier muahahahaha! ...but now I can't cyclone

Rush: classic agfx

Agfx: But never fear, I have trained one single minion, a mighty imp, to DEMOLISH this Wonder muahahahaha

Rush: Well he's going to be at a bit of a disadvantage without any boats to get him there

Agfx: Muahahaha indee- wait, boats?

Agfx: Noooooooooooooo

11:28

Jmerc: Still the Horn right?

Rush: Yep

11:29

Jmerc: wait, I forgot my troops arent back until next tick

Rush: AAAAHHHH

Jmerc: sorry lol just noticed

Rush: @everyone STOP

Jmerc: I was like, where all my LIZMEN at!

11:30

Jboy: gogogogo

Rush: no dont go!

Rush: @everyone DO NOT SEND

exrio: AW SHIT, MOTHAFUCKA

GJ: I am here

exrio: ABORT BITCHES

11:31

exrio: No one is appearing in the TC, we are ok...

Rush: I need a lie down

Jmerc: my bad everyone

exrio: Alright new plan is to send at the tick. Let's send at 12:01

Everyone: Aye aye!

GJ: Although... can I send before the tick?

GJ: I mean 11:59:50. Wanna get those troops home early

Exrio: ...Alright even newer new plan, everyone sends at 12:00 and GJ goes early

Jmerc: I'm just walking through traffic, as long as I dont get hit by a car I should be good to go

Rush: What the... after all this jmerc even if you do get hit by a car I still expect you to send at this wonder

Jmerc: I brought some apples, I'm going to feed some horses on the way home

Rush: This man's gonna get his phone eaten by a horse right before we need to send

exrio: I'll blame the horse if we dont get this Wonder

11:58

exrio: Are we all here?

Rush: Where the everloving christ is Jota? @King Jota

GJ: I am just a button push away

Jmerc: I'm just standing completely still next to my new horse buddies so I dont miss it

jboy: @King Jota

11:59

Rush: @King Jota !!!

12:00

GJ: Damn I missed the tick

Jboy: @King Jota ready?

exrio: we need jota

Rush: Oh boy, someone sent, TC has lit up

Jboy: @everyone gogogogo

Jmerc: I didnt know we were holding I was just waiting for the tick change so I just sent

And then suddenly, sweet relief:

2023-03-28 12:00:48 The Horn of Plenty has been destroyed and rebuilt by A Link to the Past (#4).

In the end we didn't need the full op, some other realm must have done significant damage to it as well. But it was about as chaotic and stressful as a Wonder take-down goes. At least we got there in the end. And Jmerc didn't have his phone eaten by a horse either. Result. And although we didn't hear from him for a very long time afterwards, no one checked to see if he'd made it home without being hit by a car or trampled by a horse. It's jmerc, you know? He always turns up again eventually.

Taking stock of our realm, I was now the only blackopper in range of the #5 big liz - and just barely. AgFx was trailing by about 100 acres after getting double tapped by #5 and #10 a few days prior, but could potentially make up that distance in time for war and with solid dp. Mcgeeal unfortunately had taken too many hits and was out of contention. And that, friends, was the extent of our blackop capability. We needed to bring more firepower online, and that meant we needed empoy and Mith to take up the challenge.

Empoy, very straight forward, said he'd bring in towers and wiz, deconverted and did exactly that. Mith, the polar opposite, already a deconverted attacker, said he'd bring in towers and wiz, and would then bring in dp and diamond mines. Which would then prompt some good-natured ribbing and a repeat request that he bring in more wiz. Mith would agree, and then later when you checked his advisors, you'd see one ArchMage in the queue. Then there'd be more jokes, more requests for bringing in wiz, and then yet more prevarication in response. You see, Mith has an addiction. An addiction to efficiency. The idea of bringing in spywiz when his efficiency sheet was screaming "DONT LISTEN TO THEM, BUILD MORE DIAMOND MINES" was putting the man into crisis mode. It tore him in two. He was telling us one thing, anything we wanted to hear really, and then as soon as our backs were turned he was off snorting another line from Chunk's CopyOps sheet. It took literal days to get him to train any wiz, and he flat out ignored spies. The more pressure we applied, the more resistance we'd start to see. "what if top op has spiked, can we run another sweep first", "what if we lose our wonder?", "I need a bit more time man, you know I'm good for it" and "I just need a little dp bump, just one little bump, that's all, just to get me through the night, then I'll get those wiz I swear. Right after I finish building another 50 diamond mines."

The guy has a wizard as his discord icon. I say that's false advertising.

We gave Mith a 24-hour warning before we warred #5. If he still hadn't brought in spywiz by that point, #5 would eat him for breakfast. To his credit, he did finally relent and train some wiz at this stage - though it was still roughly half of what we'd asked him to train and we'd asked for the bare minimum. So he gave us half the bare minimum. And he still didn't train any spies. He would pay a high price for it all later.

Merf, sensing blood in the water (or smoke in the air) now that #5 were caught in a double war, declared and dogpiled onto #5.

2023-03-28 19:59:55 💋 (#8) has declared WAR on princeps tuus in alio arce 🍄 (#5).

Our plans to join the frey were just a day away. And then Wurst took a second bite of that Drizzy cherry.

2023-03-29 05:03:20 Te futueo et caballum tuum (#5) invaded Sir Francis Drizzy (#9) and captured 92 land.

Fuck.

Futueo would now escape my range and I'd have to scramble back into it, and I was already dicing with death against #1's op. I had to do some RECKLESS EXPLORATION and hope that they were in no position to break me without eating it from the #5 liz.

Up to this point, Jboy was in a good position despite being quite busy. He was kept afloat a few times thanks to Jota going out of his way to find targets for him, but he's a solid player that seems to exceed without much support anyway. His population was flagging however, and he was concerned that if we went to war with #5 it would keep him home and he wouldn't be able to grow. We decided to delay the war until I could get back into range and he could get his population into a better spot.

You may be noticing a pattern with all these delays. I was starting to think my realm didn't even want a war!

Perish the thought.

WEEK 3 - THE SNAILS FROM HELL

Despite all the delays we were on course to war #5 and burn the liz, when they surprised us by warring us first.

2023-04-01 01:01:28 princeps tuus in alio arce 🍄 (#5) has declared WAR on Horn Hero: Rock Hard Legends (#4).

Their target was the spyless Mithrandir, who they started snaring - but from Mith's account, they took their sweet time. Despite having about 9 people on spy blops, they took about two minutes to take him down from full wizard strength to under 25%, and Mithrandir reacted fast enough to login and recast Ares. But Wurst's army of snails were unrelenting, and simply began a marathon 12-hour snare, bringing him down to 0% strength each tick. Despite gaining upwards of 12% strength from resilience every tick, his lack of spies meant #5 were doing about 1.9 snare damage each pop with zero fails. Mith had made it easy for them.

This opened a whole discussion about whether or not snare is meant to be a surprise attack, and deserves to fail if the aggressors are so slow that their target has time to login and recast Ares before they can take his wiz str to under 25%, or if this sort of marathon grind should be possible even if the defender acts fast but doesnt have any spy defences. With the dust settled a bit, I can see both sides of the argument, but it was discussed on the podcast a fair bit so I won't get into again now. But regardless of what you think, Mith was quite demoralised. From a purely player experience perspective, the marathon snare grind is like being sat in front of a freight train you know is going to hit you for 12 hours (or indefinitely), and you can't do anything about it and no one can help you. And that's even after reacting lighting quick to recast. It sucks. Afterwards, we had to talk Mith out of outright abandoning.

Of course, if he'd listened to my infinite wisdom the fifteen or so times I asked him to train spywiz, there would have been a very different outcome. The snare would have failed, and several blackoppers including me would move into range within 16 hours of the war, and we'd have lit the liz on fire. Before it became clear the dreaded permasnare was back to haunt us, this is what we thought the outcome would be. We thought the war was about to go very badly for wurst and his snail army.

But instead, this happened:

2023-04-01 13:27:56 Te futueo et caballum tuum (#5) invaded fellow dominion Grand Theft Auto (#4) and captured 117 land.

And then Eric came pelting over to pour some salt on the wound:

2023-04-01 13:33:41 Crushing Cold Budweisers and Punching Commies (#1) invaded fellow dominion Grand Theft Auto (#4) and captured 120 land.

It was quite the whirlwind for Mith. Annihilated as a fast attacker, then annihilated as a spywiz-defenceless explorer in just two weeks. He took a back to back tour of two of the worst experiences OD has to offer. At least he had Disneyworld to look forward to.

Wurst and his heinous snail thugs weren't done with us though. The smaller players in #5 (but still potentially big threats later), like their troll and goblin, had an absolute feast with one of our mute and unresponsive randoms, Mad Clap (Cloud Panda), who would just constantly send out underdefended, as well as jmerc who had been inactive for so long that he was now starving and losing troops every tick.

2023-04-02 08:58:19 Vescere bracis meis (Gothia) (#5) invaded fellow dominion Mad Clap (#4) and captured 98 land.

2023-04-02 09:26:56 Dethklok's Delectably Dangerous Danishes (Chunk) (#2) invaded fellow dominion Mad Clap (#4) and captured 82 land.

2023-04-02 23:44:24 Semper Ubi Sub Ubi (Swamp Fox) (#5) invaded fellow dominion Ninja Gaiden (#4) and captured 89 land.

And once again the snails got behind the controls of another freight train, snared jboy, and started rolling inevitably towards us as his Ares ticked down. Rather than feed the liz again, jboy released his garous and deconverted. #5's snails from hell had quietly slain another one of us.

We expected them to take the Wonder next, but they just cancelled the war.

But they did not quite move on either. Apparently Wurst would not be satisfied until he had invaded or neutered each and every one of us, because the next evening I noticed I was getting revved like crazy by one of his loyal snails. This confused me, since when I calced my defence, I still thought I had just enough even without Ares, and was defending his incoming. Until Mith pointed out that the war bonus was still active.

I had forgotten about that change.

The lingering war bonus plus an Ares drop gave Wurst enough op to hit me.

I had 1 hour left on my Ares, but I decided not to recast right away and see if I could instigate a bounce. I walk on the wild side, I laugh in the face of danger, etc. I waited for the tick change, then waited 5 seconds before recasting. 7 seconds after the tick, they revved me. Damn snails, I should have known they'd be slow. Being so slow was actually part of the genius of their evil. Everything they did took forever, but it still fucked you in the end.

But with my Ares at 12 again, they lost interest and squelched off back to the underworld. It had been a close call regardless. Had their eager revs not tipped me off, I might not have been so vigilant on my recast.

But did #5 move on? Did they bollocks. It may have taken them two days, but they sat in wait, like the snails they are, and seized their opportunity. And of course it was us again.

2023-04-05 08:06:43 Te futueo et caballum tuum (#5) invaded fellow dominion Galactic Civilizations (Empoy) (#4) and captured 129 land.

Empoy had let his Ares drop and #5 did not let the opporunity go to waste.

Realm #5 needed another hit desperately, so they got straight on it:

2023-04-06 06:22:22 tardius quam cochlea 🐌 (#5) has declared WAR on Birthday parties and monster trucks (#1).

2023-04-06 06:52:19 Te futueo et caballum tuum (#5) invaded Eating a big mac and driving my F550 on highway (Craghack) (#1) and captured 144 land.

I can only assume lightning bolts enabled this one. I didn't check, but it's the only thing that makes sense to me with the war dec and the hit being same tick.

And with that, Wurst flew out of my range again.

The whole time I'd been in his range I'd made a point of being as much of a thorn in his side as I could. I kept him permaswarmed, threw a bunch of quakes, and at one point I was stealing food from him every single tick, forcing him to trade to avoid starvation multiple times. I'd plague him before his land came in to slow his population growth spike, and steal as much lumber as I could to slow his construction.

I have no idea how much this disrupted him really. Probably not much. But as far as I could tell, I was the only one actively going after his resources with any persistence.

Having left our Wonder intact, #5 then went back to #1 for seconds - because they had the Fountain of Youth.

2023-04-06 06:22:22 tardius quam cochlea 🐌 (#5) has declared WAR on Birthday parties and monster trucks (#1).

They were obviously never going to hold it though. Not with Eric being Eric.

WEEK 4 - DEAD RISING

People had been talking up the spirit in #6 (Rio) as the next Big Scary, and he eventually had what I thought was his brief moment in the sun. He sent out in range of the liz, as if goading him, and Wurst didn't let it go unpunished:

2023-04-09 09:59:59 Shut the f— up and let me die in peace (#6) invaded S O L A R Q U E S T (#0) and captured 107 land.

2023-04-09 13:19:05 Te futueo et caballum tuum (#5) invaded Shut the f— up and let me die in peace (#6) and captured 154 land.

This then led to a suicide, which was countered by the liz's lieutennant goblin:

2023-04-09 21:28:41 Shut the f— up and let me die in peace (#6) invaded Te futueo et caballum tuum (#5) and captured 237 land.

2023-04-09 21:34:17 Semper Ubi Sub Ubi (#5) invaded Shut the f— up and let me die in peace (#6) and captured 182 land.

And the murican vultures in #1 were never ones to let a good rotting carcass go to waste:

2023-04-09 21:51:07 Eating a big mac and driving my F550 on highway (#1) invaded Shut the f— up and let me die in peace (#6) and captured 155 land.

This hit signalled the end of the road for Wurst. His snail trail had finally dried up, and the snails from hell were vanquished.

Shortly after all this, realm #2 decided they wanted a Wonder, and set in motion a chain of events that would ultimately see them as caretakers of the Horn for about five minutes until they passed ownership over to realm #3, who had now emerged as the top threat with their goblin, Apollo (Almezo), converting on massive acres and well ahead of anyone else.

We had planned to take the Horn back off #2, but #3's declaration forced us to delay an hour to discuss what we wanted to do. I knew it was going to be next to impossible to coordinate our lot to take a Wonder out from under #3's nose - activity from a bunch of our players had dropped off a cliff, we had a mix of low sendable op and some decent cyclone potential, but #3 could probably chain hit it and take it down a lot easier than we could.

Still, you've got to try eh?

2023-04-11 18:56:35 The Horn of Plenty has been destroyed and rebuilt by Horny Bakers (#2).

2023-04-11 19:00:20 Bakers vs Gamers (#2) has CANCELED war against Quake (#4).

2023-04-11 19:46:03 Great Vengeance and Furious Anger (#3) has declared WAR on Horny Bakers (#2).

2023-04-11 20:24:23 Just Cause 3 (#4) has declared WAR on Declaring on Your Neighbors? Rude (#2).

Fortunately, #8 and #9 decided this was a good moment to war #3, which would at least run interference and cause some distraction.

2023-04-12 05:59:58 Not for the Innocent (#8) has declared WAR on Great Vengeance and Furious Anger (#3).

2023-04-12 06:10:47 World War III (#9) has declared WAR on Great Vengeance and Furious Anger (#3).

Meanwhile, Eric and Wurst were doing their eternal battle thing again and fighting over a Wonder that neither side was willing to let the other keep.

2023-04-12 04:51:08 The Fountain of Youth has been destroyed and rebuilt by tardius quam cochlea 🐌 (#5).

2023-04-12 04:51:23 tardius quam cochlea 🐌 (#5) has CANCELED war against There’s oil in that fountain! (#1).

2023-04-12 11:00:08 https://youtu.be/ZUzq8Gd5e_w (#1) has declared WAR on tardius quam cochlea 🐌 (#5).

I'm not going to chronicle all of it. Suffice to say, they played Wonder tennis long into the round's sunset. Some say they're still out there squabbling over that Wonder to this day.

Our Wonder war ended a bit more conclusively. #3 took the Horn from #2, then #2 took the Horn from #3, then we took the Horn from #2, and sensibly everyone agreed that the Horn should remain in #4 for the rest of the round. Mainly I think #3 decided it wasnt worth it since in the middle of it they ended up at war with not only #2, but #8 and #9 as well, and had other pressing concerns without coming after us for it.

In preparation for the war, AgFx had finally built his one boat in for his one single minion.

AgFx: Muahahaha, my minion is finally ready to unleash hell on these foolhardy cake bakers in #2! I can already sense that they are quaking in their boots!

Rush: I dont think the game will let you send just one unit btw, they changed it after people kept spamming the TC with one-unit sends for the lols

Agfx: Muahaha- wait, what?

Agfx: Noooooooooooooo

We had just one abandon in realm #4. Jota's death was a quick one. I don't have notes on the hits so here's the short version: he sent out while we were fighting over the Horn, got hit, and concluded his round was over because the prestige loss was too great. We convinced him to hit the Horn to recoup the lost prestige and he agreed, and the next thing we knew he sent out and hit a bot instead, which left him open to getting smashed by Apollo. He thought he was safe having seen a dom on similar dp to him send out, but didnt realise that dom had bottomfed.

2023-04-14 22:59:49 Apollo (#3) invaded fellow dominion Diablo (#4) and captured 164 land.

Jota, for the second time, concluded his round was over. He helped us take down the Horn, clicked abandon, and that was the end of him. Another one bites the dust.

We fielded some accusations of COLLUSION (it was at the time widely believed that Apollo was mris, a former packmate of Jota's) but I still don't believe Jota would deliberately feed anyone, nor that mris would illicitly arrange to have someone feed him.

WEEK 5 - HOUSTON, WE HAVE A PROBLEM

The last war where I thought we could make a meaningful difference without constantly feeding the competition was when #3 went after #8, and #8 went mutual because that's just what Merf does. I figured there were only a few of us in range of Apollo, so as long as I just played babysitter and watched everyone's dp like a hawk, we could still do some dogpile blackops damage to the top threat. So, I took us to war and that's exactly what we did. Two days in, I noticed Mithrandier was skirting very close to the edge of safe dp, and comparing Apollo's incoming I projected that Apollo, if he kept training op for another 6 ticks, without Mithrandier training dp, would break him. I also noticed that Mith had Fools' Gold on for another 8 hours... he was asleep.

Concerned, I cancelled the war, thinking that as long as Apollo didn't chain op he should be fine despite the lingering war bonus, but I wasn't willing to risk his acres for longer than that when the margins were getting so close. Fortunately Apollo switched to training dp.

Phew. At last, I thought, a war that we haven't ballsed up.

Five hours after I cancelled the war, mcgeeal popped up in discord to announce he had accidentally explored into Apollo's range. And he would be in Apollo's range, while the war bonus was active, for approximately four hours.

Well. There was always the small chance they might not notice him.

2023-04-19 15:59:43 Apollo (#3) invaded fellow dominion Billy the Wizard: Rocket Broomstick Racing (#4) and captured 201 land.

Balls.

I probably should have taken more care to look out for the newbie potentially coming into Apollo's range. Instead I'd only thought to check up on those who were currently in his range.

At this point I made a pledge that I wasn't going to take the realm into any more wars where we could potentially feed acres to the top threats. From now on, we were a reformed realm. No more feeding!

WEEK 6 - CAN'T CATCH A BREAK

Meanwhile, Mithrandir didn't care at all about my pledge and was going on all the rides at Disneyworld instead of casting Ares:

2023-04-21 18:57:49 Apollo (#3) invaded fellow dominion Grand Theft Auto (#4) and captured 252 land.

There wasn't even a fecking war bonus active to let him off the hook on that one!

Until Apollo got taken down by all the wars, our realm had fed him about 60% of all of the acres he gained from attacking.

By this point, I was genuinely annoyed. In a fit of pique I declared to the realm that we were officially in chaos mode and were going into permanent war - and if they didn't like it, now was the time to dethrone me! I figured if our dead attackers and our pure explorers weren't going to look after themselves, it shouldn't continue to dampen the rounds of our only active players - which by this point was pretty much our bloppers. And bloppers like war.

I told myself I'd at least be smart and pick our target wisely. I chose Peabrain's draft pack, realm #10, after scoping them out and rating them as a low threat to us - even while at war. Low on blops potential, low on attack threat potential. They had also avoided war all round, which is like a red rag to a bull as far as any blopper is concerned. In spite of everything, in spite of all of our many failures, I still somehow had the confidence to dare to dream that we could cakewalk this one and it would be worth it for the infamy boost.

Realm #10 had some slight advance warning of our intention to war, since I posted a message about it in the main discord by accident and watched in horror as Unfather, who had been drafted by Peabrain posted the eyes emoji. At this point though, it was just par for the course that everything we did would unfold in a shambles. Fuck it, I warred them anyway - earlier than planned - and it seemed like Unfather wasn't able to raise the alarm in time, because our target, their goblin ChickenFriedRice (LraE) didn't have EM up.

The war was mostly uneventful and a good source of infamy, and I finally felt like we might actually be able to relax and enjoy the round. Then Empoy dropped his Ares and we managed to feed the one realm I thought was totally harmless:

2023-04-22 09:34:54 Spit or Swallow? (#10) invaded fellow dominion Galactic Civilizations (#4) and captured 180 land.

I quietly shelved all plans for permanent chaos war and instead just focused on staying ahead of Poseidon (mris) #3, who was flying up in the Swarm ranks. This meant for the last week or so of the game, because mris just would not relent, that half the playerbase ended up swarmed by one of us. He was fully blop teched up so had a +50% refresh advantage on me, so I was forced to work around his swarm targets and hit a mix of people in #3 (who he obviously couldn't target), players outside his range (he was smaller than me) and 'batteries', as I started referring to them after one round where I clocked in over 10,000 swarm hours; basically players with no defence that you could always rely on to juice up your ranks. It was enough to keep the margin between us consistent and secure my one and only (and favourite!) rank.

WEEK 7 - EXPLORERS ON THE MENU

I haven't mentioned the roundwinner, Shut the f— up and let me die in peace (Rio) very much in this roundfail. But that was because our realm had very little interaction with him. He didn't even hit Mithrandir, who proved very popular with all the other big boys all round, that's how well he flew under the radar. I had also mistakenly assumed his round had come to a close after his collision with Wurst, so by the time he was eating all of the top explorers in the final week, he was already leaps and bounds ahead of everyone. Never underestimate the power of a spirit to bounce back.

This crazy exchange cemented Rio's second roundwin in a row:

2023-04-26 00:00:06 Semper Ubi Sub Ubi (Swamp Fox) (#5) invaded 7 Gallons of Calpol (dayvinho) (#11) and captured 507 land.

2023-04-26 02:59:54 Bored (mdk) (#7) invaded Semper Ubi Sub Ubi (#5) and captured 364 land.

2023-04-26 03:59:53 Shut the f— up and let me die in peace (Rio) (#6) invaded Bored (#7) and captured 363 land.

2023-04-26 07:31:01 You Wanted the Best (Rury) (#8) invaded Shut the f— up and let me die in peace (#6) and captured 426 land.

2023-04-26 10:00:34 I am the one who knocks (Robert) (#6) invaded You Wanted the Best (#8) and captured 313 land.

2023-04-26 11:25:23 Bored (#7) invaded I hide in plain sight, same as you (#6) and captured 215 land.

2023-04-28 13:53:07 Shut the f— up and let me die in peace (#6) invaded Liefanthrope Erikson (Saccora) (#9) and captured 381 land.

After mdk miscalculated that others would hold Rio back after hitting Swamp Fox, and Rio hit him, he tried to follow in Rio's footsteps with the hit on Saccora to keep pace. But Saccora was ready for him, and released spies at just the right time, causing him to bounce.

2023-04-28 04:59:55 Liefanthrope Erikson (#9) fended off an attack from Bored (#7).

Mdk immediately hit the abandon button...

2023-04-29 05:00:18 Bored (#7) has been abandoned by its ruler.

...and opened up a world of pain for the explorers in Rio's range. Rio was no longer constrained by anyone, and had free reign to feast on their exposed underbellies. An explorer massacre began. With no one in range to keep him in check, Rio was able to ignore the general rule of thumb that no one suicides an explorer, and break them with his 5:4.

2023-04-30 05:52:55 Shut the f— up and let me die in peace (#6) invaded Heaven's On Fire (Asanka) (#8) and captured 415 land.

2023-04-30 17:08:49 Shut the f— up and let me die in peace (#6) invaded 7 Gallons of Calpol (dayvinho) (#11) and captured 390 land.

2023-05-02 16:59:52 Shut the f— up and let me die in peace (#6) invaded Almost Human (Zedijar) (#8) and captured 310 land.

2023-05-04 06:55:34 Shut the f— up and let me die in peace (#6) invaded Make Friends With Your Nightmares (Vovin) (#7) and captured 281 land.

No one could touch him. He had not a care in the world. He even joined the Shadow League, the absolute cheek. I sent AgFx in after to get him with some fireballs, just for the luls.

Honestly, even as an explorer myself, it is still satisfying to see pure efficiency explorers get rekt. If you aren't a blopsplorer, I can shed no tears for your demise.

Despite all the invasions, by the end of the round there was a shocking 19(!) players at over 7k.

Congratulations to Rio and realm #6 on a round well played! You can read his roundwin story here.

EPILOGUE

In spite of our failings, I like to think realm #4 had an enjoyable round. I've been in a few realms where players will lash out at their teammates when the round goes badly for them, but there was no trace of animosity in our realm no matter how bad things got, so I don't really have anything but praise for my drafted amigos this round: they were all a pleasure to play with and I'd draft them again in a future draft round in a heartbeat. Just not all of them together. I think the fatal flaw in my draft pack composition was that I picked too many wildcards: players that are high-risk, high-reward performers in the right circumstances. The mix of too many of them together just proved too volatile.

A captain has to go down with his ship though, even when he's stationed on the Titanic. So I salute you realm #4, as we all drown together.

Until next time!

TL;DR

This round in a nutshell: https://imgur.com/a/tXbJIJd