Round 41 Whipped Cream Theater

There is something that eludes my understanding. No, it's not the black-op semi-draft or whatever it's called. People are free to pack whoever, and while there's some information asymmetry going on with people who knew and who did not know, that's part of the game. Sometimes there's rounds with tons of knowledge up front - looking at draft rounds - and sometimes it's a complete mystery who is where by day 24 except for abandons and the random giffed-too-fast-or-too-much-outing. That is entirely within normal variance. By no means was this an alliance, people who're claiming it was one or that there was one never played DC or, more likely, have their memories coloured.

It's... Well, we'll get there when we do. You have to suffer through some ramblings first. No apologies.

Usual pack, this time fast after a thoroughly meh last round. Landed some decent people: MrTonks and the threepack of MvH/Scratch/zooj. As far as realm placement lottery goes, this is decidedly decent. BigBell and Allegorical went fast, MvH went medium-fast, Gothia and Scratch QC'd a Dwarf, Rio had RL dictate he couldn't go fast on account of being over the Atlantic for most of the first twelve hours, MrTonks explored a Vampire and zooj... Well, we rigged him a nice Lizzie. Would've probably been some decently fun stuff.

Except for some weird-ass Nomad (#14 SoFar SoGood SoWhat! / King Titus) hitting zooj from 465a on like... 4.9k DP? Like what the actual hell? Perhaps that is rich, coming from someone who did a sim specifically to take down people last round - with a realmie and which incidentally led to the first known loc of the round, but hey - but there's a distinct difference between aiming to hit people on 780a+ who look to be as greedy as possible for a QC or random 700a attackers. Moreover, that Nomad could've probably eaten tons of smaller bots for more prestige, probably more land, and just a better setup for later. But okay, fine, OOP is a wild time... And then zooj gets doubled by a sim that could 100 % hit larger than 650a if it was a takedown sim... Except it was also someone who continued to hit along?

That is what eludes understanding. This focus on the immediate and the flashy. Immediate gratification. A small example, one that took zooj out of contention for fun this round - though hanging on very adequately as a Lizardfolk and even finding hits on bots until very late in the round - but emblematic of the round.

Anyway, we chugged along, and missed Disco in #8 (I'm not gay but ops are ops) having the OP to break Allegorical. Eagle-eyed viewers will have already spotted the problem, but to spell it out: there was one dedicated ops guy - yours truly on DE - and early on, we just didn't have the ops strength to get everyone, not with allegorical going the usual no spywiz, BB not having a lot of spare mana, and Gothia/Scratch had spies coming in later but not immediately. It's the downside of the strat as we did it, and while taking ops was fine after that, it also meant we were very poorly situated if blops were to start flying because we had very little punching power ourselves.

Aaaand then day 4. We got warred, along with every other FA it seemed... Except #1 never went after our Fast Attackers? Even though Allegorical had no WGs and BB had like... 60 % of where #6 was because corners had to be cut. We eventually got warred by #5, who did actually target our FAs. At that point, though, it was looking more like they were going after Kobolds. Oh, how wrong that was.

To not to put too fine a point on it and to speed up because the rest of the realm story is simple (BB died, unconverted, Gothia had some fun last two weeks, more on that later): #5's target selection was decidedly strange. Time after time, they optically hit up the arguable second place in the race after #6's runaway realm. BB wasn't quite there, but it was early enough that things were fluid. #9's Vǎrkolak - 0/0, completely harmless (SlyPimp) wasn't really targeted, at least, but then they went after #4, with someone deciding that the suicidal-keeping-#6-in-check Fast Attacker with full WG protection was a good FB target. Seemingly a rogue blopper, as Burning never triggered, but I did snipe some in the blops server on this. To quote directly: "Hanlon['s Razor] is a very strong predictor, but at some point, there is no effective distinction between between the two sides in that maxim."

Optics matter in any online close-knit community game, and the GTC and high communication only increase that. If someone can look at the GTC, and see you go after realm competition to the runaway realm three wars in a row, some people are going to find justification for their preconceived notions that there is alliance play involved. They wouldn't assume other targeting even though the proof was there for anyone to see with CSes and half a brain, which, more than just occasionally, is about a quarter brain too much for the histrionic hardcore anti-blops crowd. Truth be told, until the war with #4, it looked like you were on a quest to post-emptively take revenge on Rury by burninating every Kobold in the game! (Which is a sentiment a bunch of people will share - the Kobold bit, not the Rury bit, see toi's reasoning why he didn't want to go Kobold for one.)

Personally, I took (take!) issue with frying soup because it's putting your thumb on the scale when it really doesn't need to be put on there. This is perhaps a quirk of how my regular pack plays - we are averse to upsetting balance when we're not in the race. We've skipped wars for that reason in the past. The quote above was in that context, and (probably rightly?) not well received, and I left the server in disgrace and a bit of annoyance.

As one last point on #5 - that war frying and electrocuting #12's UD the first time also fell under that thumb-on-scale. Later ones are excused. You all know why.

Anyway, speaking of Wurst, talk about instant, flashy, gratification. Just completed a marvelous conversion that was making everyone vulnerable, out of range of the Halfer and ready to chase him down, and then... He hit too large. I'm sorry, what? Again, instant gratification of hitting larger over staying out of range - and that wasn't hard, anything 85 % and under was safe IIRC and pretty much everyone 85 % and under was hittable too except for the random suuuuper overdefended explorers - and now there was that Halfer threatening to bounce him out of range. It looked possible, but apparently, toi had a baby right at this time (congrats on the broken nights!) and zigged (trained MTs?) when zagging (staying full SM/Defenders) was needed, so that never appeared. Touch lucky, but it also spelled the end for Wurst's UD eventually. Low turtle in runaway range is just an issue, we've all seen it time and again.

And then the last day. Yes, it was kingmaking. We knew that. Gothia had hung on very nicely until #7 just stormed past on the back of techs and Golden Throne, and was still a solid threat to anyone even if 7 was more of one. Spotted the raze when it happened, tagged Gothia that 7 was doing a raze-hit, and the rest, well, is the currently third largest hit in the history of the round. On the topic of whether or not he should, well... To quote the two relevant lines from pack chat: "Do you want to Kingmaker," sent at 8 minutes to the hour, and "It's your call," sent at 3 minutes to the hour. Honestly not even sure it would've happened if #7 hadn't left the gap.

Anyway, that's the round, but this isn't over. Because this is a decidedly negative story... Well, there's some shoutouts to make.

To a certain Merfolk: reading the building explains the building, and with WPAs being open info nowadays, everyone could tell that your adding WGs did absolutely nothing in the war you had.

To GPC: Keep your f%$(%ing hands off the blops balance for a few rounds. (Exception for the DE spell, that on current Mastery numbers is just broken and waiting for an explorer win with very little possible counterplay.) Small adjustments fine in a bit, overhauls keep 'em out. This extends to Shadow League too. And if the rumours about war come to fruition - you know the ones - unkindly go sit on the nearest Bad Dragon item without lubricant, kthxbai.

To the pre-round scaremongering on Spirit: Outside of the obvious-to-anyone-with-a-sense-of-history oversight on cas reduction on BFs (which shouldn't be a thing, as neither Spirit v2 nor Legacy Dark Elf had that in immortality form), managing to coup an emergency nerf says a ton about where this game is going, and it's no place good. Thanks for that.

To the anti-blop crowd: Maybe your points would have more power when even a fifth of you lot actually put in the work to defend your Doms outside of sinking - which you assiduously do. There are counterplay issues with some blops, but all your yammering has managed to do is create the strongest ever blops that are also the most easily defended / mitigated on the Wiz side of things - and that is a feature, not a bug.

And on that note, have a great day everyone!