Round 40

Round 40
Winner 🥇
Player:	Rury
Dominion:	I can cook using an Air Fryer!
Race:	Kobold
Second 🥈
Name:	Chunk
Dominion:	Summertime Thadness
Race:	Human
Third 🥉
Name:	Robert
Dominion:	Squidworth
Race:	Merfolk
General
Changes:	Round 40/Changes
Valhalla:	Link

Top 100 Results

Round 40 top 100

Round 40 - Realm #2 Win Story

This is Erix.

I played The Dominion of I can stop peeing mid-stream (#2), and I’ve been tasked with writing our round-win story. This is from my perspective, but largely reflects the views of our pack. I hope you enjoy the read- it’s a long one (that’s what she said). Going into the round, we hoped to be here, but this is definitely not the way we thought it would happen. After winning last draft round, our regular packmate, Poige, wanted to take a break, so we were recruiting for a 5th spot. Fortunately Mithrandir was interested in joining, so it was a pretty quick addition.

Placement

Since the placement process had been changed to prevent multiple large packs from landing together, we hadn’t had much luck in placement, so we weren’t terribly optimistic about it. Once we actually got placed, our fears were realized and upon initial viewing our realm only had 1 person aside from our pack (Alison/ineq) to have ever played a full round.

Mithrandir was interested in playing Icekin converter and Volv was back and forth between playing Human converter and Merfolk attacker, so with those two on more proven builds we assumed those would be our best shots at a win. Since the realm appeared to be lacking in support, we thought it might be more advantageous for Rury and I to play as fast attackers, with the thought process being that if we also went slow we’d have no control over the round, which would really make our slower builds have a much more difficult time.

Rury had come up with a Kobold sim that he was really excited about, and was taking like a 3 week vacation late in the round, so playing something fast and burning out by mid round worked really well for his schedule. I bounced around for a while between the other fast attacking races. Anyone that knows me knows I don’t duplicate races, so it seemed like I was forced into playing liz, as I hadn’t played a full OD round with them. I had played FW (when Ivetza won in my realm), Lyc (when Poige won in my realm), and halfer (when I stopped Wurst from running away as his Liz- the 2nd draft round).

However, Rury had played a really strong early-round Lyc the previous round, before dying off like day 3-4 (I guess he overslept and didn’t train dp or something?), so he suggested it to me. Since I didn’t want to have to sim, I figured I’d go for it. Not an ideal race for pushing sui op, but it’ll work! Manno came in clutch and was up for ops as Sylvan.

I think about 24 hours before oop, we had a new member of the realm, Warpig. He wanted to play fast attacker too, so chose Liz. With another fast attacker joining the group, Volv had his decision made easier and elected to go with the human build, since ops were going to be a severe issue. He committed to running decent ratios and towers oop to help Manno out.

So that was our starting lineup:

• Manno as Sylvan Ops
• Rury as Kobold fast attacker
• Volv as slower converting human (and backup ops)
• Mith as converting Icekin
• Erix as Lyc fast attacker
• Warpig as liz fast attacker
• Alison as DE slow attacker

Then a few new people who weren’t in discord.

Days 1-5 (oop):

The hour we all came out of protection wasn’t ideal.

2024-06-15 00:12:10 Sun Yang & The 23 Chinese Swimmers (#1) invaded fellow dominion I can outrun a black pepper snake 🐍 (#2) and captured 58 land

Alison made a hit on a bot, but aside from that it was pretty quiet, as all 3 of our fast attackers had delayed hits. I was attacking at +13 and my pack found me a decent hit while I was out coaching baseball on a Saturday morning.

2024-06-15 13:16:48 Victorious on the battlefield, I can stop peeing mid-stream (#2) conquered 40 land from OnlyMoms: 3 mana for a limited time offer 🍆 (#11)

Then Rury and Warpig sent a few hours later:

2024-06-15 21:59:17 Victorious on the battlefield, I can cook using an Air Fryer! (#2) conquered 53 land from Diego Armando Maradona (#1)

2024-06-15 22:59:45 Victorious on the battlefield, I can read braille without being blind (#2) conquered 51 land from The Sappiest Place on Earth (#8)

After the first day, aside from the trauma of Mith getting hit oop, the rest of us were doing decent. In the 24 hour-oop scouting of other realms, we looked to be one of the only realms with multiple fairly strong fast attackers; the others being the pair of lizardfolk in realm 3 (jboy and Bobbo), a couple kobolds in 12, and a scattering of other attackers. Clearly most everyone leaned into the slow play, so our realm composition started looking pretty good.

The +24 and +36 hits went smoothly for Rury and I, but unfortunately Warpig bounced on his +36, which obviously was going to set him back a bit.

Then:

2024-06-16 23:59:50 I'm not lovin' it (#8) invaded fellow dominion I can read braille without being blind (#2) and captured 54 land

Injury got added to insult, a bounce and getting hit in the first 48 hours. Not great.

Meanwhile, Rury was making pretty massive hits:

2024-06-16 21:59:49 Victorious on the battlefield, I can cook using an Air Fryer! (#2) conquered 70 land from Chocolate Fwudge (#7)

And since the field appeared to be very light in terms of other competitors, we were able to check pretty much everyone, and I decided to make a risky send:

2024-06-17 01:58:33 Victorious on the battlefield, I can stop peeing mid-stream (#2) conquered 63 land from I'm not lovin' it (#8)

Rury followed his big hit up with:

2024-06-17 19:59:56 Victorious on the battlefield, I can cook using an Air Fryer! (#2) conquered 63 land from Resistance is futile. (#3)

So now we had hit two of the top competitors, in a field that was already fairly light to begin with. In the meantime the other Liz in 3 was looking fairly strong and then he did this:

2024-06-18 14:59:18 Engage! (#3) invaded Too kewl for skewl (#9) and captured 107 land

We had built up decent WGs and wizards in preparation for day 4, given that it looked pretty clearly like we were the top attackers, though I guess others maybe thought otherwise? Well, regardless, the building and training set me back offensively so I had to skip a hit. Since I had skipped a hit, I was built up and ready to go, and even though there were better targets we didn’t really want the one of the top competitors to get away with such a massive hit:

2024-06-18 15:59:03 Victorious on the battlefield, I can stop peeing mid-stream (#2) conquered 65 land from Engage! (#3)

We debated having both of us hit Engage, but didn’t want to pile drive him, just slow him down a little. Instead Rury went for his own massive hit:

2024-06-18 19:59:58 Victorious on the battlefield, I can cook using an Air Fryer! (#2) conquered 89 land from Too kewl for skewl (#9)

Day 5 came and we both kept growing. We were feasting on the spirit in 11 and Kobolds in 12, who had quickly slid into chaos.

We cracked the top 10 by end of day 5:

Top 10 Largest Dominions

1. noone - 1798
2. High Tides and Good Vibes - 1728
3. the - 1694
4. Sand & Castle on the Beach - 1670
5. I can stop peeing mid-stream - 1661
6. Your mom's onlyfans is unkobelievabold🌶🥵 - 1635
7. Nothing is possible - TOYOTA - 1633
8. Think likewise. - 1611
9. I can cook using an Air Fryer! - 1610
10. Green Goblin 🍦 - 1597
    

Still no wars came. I don’t really know why we weren’t warred and it doesn’t really matter why, but it was nice it didn’t happen. By now (from our perspective) it looked pretty clear that we were going to runaway, as there was only the halfling in 8 (disco) and the lizardfolk in 3 that had any real strength at all, and both Rury and I were tracking to the same pace as runaways from previous rounds- but we knew we had to play it smart and couldn’t get ahead of ourselves. It was best to just keep growing, no reason to try and crush anyone with insane op. Not yet at least.

Days 6-10 (preparing to run):

By day 6, both Rury and I were pretty firmly the top 2 attackers, being larger, stronger, and a higher population than any of the others by a decent margin, but we just wanted to grow. However the landscape was one of very few targets. Not many attackers were in range, and for right now, the explorers had sufficient defense. There was a spirit who just kept sending though. He was coming back into range, and even though I had hit him twice already, I didn’t mind trying for a third. I needed to grow, shame be damned!

We got updated ops, calculated out how much he could do with a wall pump and ratio release, and sent. I didn’t count on an offensive spec release though. It never had even crossed my mind. The guy was sending damn near every 12 hours and had already been hit like 5 times, there’s NO WAY he would release op to bounce me. But alas…

2024-06-21 02:59:27 Sadly, the forces of I can stop peeing mid-stream (#2) were beaten back by OnlyMoms: 3 mana for a limited time offer 🍆 (#11).

His clever little release definitely ruined my night, as I was about to go to sleep, but fortunately it now gave Rury a target:

2024-06-21 04:56:29 Victorious on the battlefield, I can cook using an Air Fryer! (#2) conquered 70 land from OnlyMoms: 3 mana for a limited time offer 🍆 (#11)

So Mr Spirit fed us anyway, but just cost himself some offense in the process. And put me in a sour mood. Fortunately I had pushed pretty decent op, so I turned it around with back to back hits:

2024-06-21 14:02:54 Victorious on the battlefield, I can stop peeing mid-stream (#2) conquered 69 land from Rule 2z: Thou Shalt Bar All Retiles in Code (#12)

2024-06-22 02:13:18 Victorious on the battlefield, I can stop peeing mid-stream (#2) conquered 80 land from Jarbadaba (#9)

And Rury followed it up with:

2024-06-22 04:39:18 Victorious on the battlefield, I can cook using an Air Fryer! (#2) conquered 96 land from Spearmint Chip (#7)

End of day 8:

Top 10 Largest Dominions

1. noone - 2265

2. I can cook using an Air Fryer! - 2264

3. High Tides and Good Vibes - 2202

4. I can stop peeing mid-stream - 2139

5. Nothing is possible - TOYOTA - 2048

6. Too kewl for skewl - 2017

7. Green Goblin 🍦 - 2011

8. Sand & Castle on the Beach - 1998

9. Your mom's onlyfans is unkobelievabold🌶🥵 - 1991

10. Think likewise. - 1981

I'm not lovin' it (#8) was 1875 acres and was the next largest attacker, so we were 2-3 attacks in front of him and had close to 2x the population. End of day 9 had Disco grow pretty quickly and make a push into the top 10 as well, but his population was still nowhere near ours. As long as we didn’t shoot ourselves in the foot with poor choices there wasn't much chance he was going to pull us back in, especially when he was alone and there were two of us. Since there were only a couple people we had to watch, it made things pretty straightforward. Grow as fast as we can and just make sure we defend a sui from one of the couple guys who were in range.

2024-06-23 08:10:55 Victorious on the battlefield, I can cook using an Air Fryer! (#2) conquered 108 land from Holy Masked Potatoes Batman! (#6)

2024-06-23 14:04:39 Victorious on the battlefield, I can stop peeing mid-stream (#2) conquered 112 land from Holy Masked Potatoes Batman! (#6)

2024-06-23 22:06:58 Victorious on the battlefield, I can cook using an Air Fryer! (#2) conquered 106 land from Jadzia, my beloved old friend! (#3)

2024-06-24 02:07:34 Victorious on the battlefield, I can stop peeing mid-stream (#2) conquered 89 land from Cant Afford Daniel Gafford (#5)

2024-06-25 11:59:07 Victorious on the battlefield, I can stop peeing mid-stream (#2) conquered 95 land from 󰨠A smooth sea never made a skilled mermaid 󰨠 (#3).

End of day 10:

Top 10 Largest Dominions

1. I can cook using an Air Fryer! - 2900

2. I can stop peeing mid-stream - 2581

3. noone - 2567

4. High Tides and Good Vibes - 2477

5. Too kewl for skewl - 2350

6. Nothing is possible - TOYOTA - 2303

7. Green Goblin 🍦 - 2246

8. I'm not lovin' it - 2215

9. Your mom's onlyfans is unkobelievabold🌶🥵 - 2192

10. Salamanderberry - 2162

Days 11-20:

By now the stupid halfling is still just barely keeping up and becoming a little annoying. Rury is 1.5 hits in front of me and is running away, but I can’t seem to shake this halfling. Which then means I have to defend him, and I know firsthand how good halfling can be at hamstringing a potential runner. So as Lyc I’m having to train a lot more defense than I want to. If I can just keep hitting hopefully I can get away.

Maybe if we can get a little collusion…

2024-06-26 04:59:59 Victorious on the battlefield, I can cook using an Air Fryer! (#2) conquered 115 land from Jadzia, my beloved old friend! (#3)

2024-06-26 11:06:04 Victorious on the battlefield, I can stop peeing mid-stream (#2) conquered 110 land from Jadzia, my beloved old friend! (#3)

After this furious feasting on explorers, we were pretty massive. However, there was like four different humans all playing essentially the same strategy (the human convert from Lud and Poige the previous round) and we were worried about how that would look. The human in #11, My spearmen put the tip in... your mom (Fett), was already starting to convert and sitting at 74% my size. He also wasn’t in the guard and just hit a wonder:

2024-06-27 17:09:35 My spearmen put the tip in... your mom (#11) has attacked the Ancient Library (#11)

2024-06-27 17:56:51 I can stop peeing mid-stream (#2) invaded fellow dominion My spearmen put the tip in... your mom (#11) and captured 102 land

Sure, it was a BF on like day 11, but we wanted to hurt the humans any way we could. We knew they’d be trouble later.

Disco was a thorn in my side, since he was able to just barely keep up and stay in my 75% range, but his window of relevance was rapidly closing, and Rury was rolling… Over the next 36 hours Realm 8 was just about to fall out of our story:

2024-06-28 09:09:38 Victorious on the battlefield, I can cook using an Air Fryer! (#2) conquered 140 land from Nothing is possible - TOYOTA (#8)

2024-06-28 09:59:47 Sadly, the forces of I'm not lovin' it (#8) were beaten back by Resistance is futile. (#3)

2024-06-29 15:11:19 I can stop peeing mid-stream (#2) invaded fellow dominion Think likewise. (#8) and captured 120 land

2024-06-29 16:00:22 Nothing is possible - TOYOTA (#8) has been abandoned by its ruler

2024-06-29 18:00:20 I'm not lovin' it (#8) has been abandoned by its ruler

From this point it was completely game-over on all fast attackers. We had successfully runaway and there was nothing anyone could do about it. But with that, obviously comes all the problems associated with it. Our slower guys would be targeted, we’d have to quickly pivot into efficiency to have any hope of surviving, but we’d also have to try and keep growing to stretch out the lead. Also at about this time, we welcome a couple new faces and names into the realm discord as well as capturing GMM, which would prove to be pretty useful for our top end-game threat, Mith’s Icekin. OMGnoob (who joined late and hadn’t shown up in discord yet) started making an appearance in our realm channel along with his great ops support. Also the other pack of all new players showed up as well. Their 3 pack is one guy who didn’t join discord, kdubs, and our MVP, MumbleNGrumble. Their pack are guys who played DC and were just starting off in OD, but joined disc at an absolutely crucial time for us in the round, and made a massive difference.

Ending day 20:

Top 10 Largest Dominions

1. I can stop peeing mid-stream - 4259

2. I can cook using an Air Fryer! - 4248

3. noone - 4022

4. High Tides and Good Vibes - 3766

5. Too kewl for skewl - 3551

6. whats the name - 3239

7. Holy Complications! - 3232

8. Got Too Much Milk If Anything - 3119

9. Full Nil - 3115

10. Wolfeschlegelsteinhausenbergerdorff - 3096

In case you were wondering, 4k acres at the end of day 20 had only been achieved by 5 attackers between rounds 27-39 (and possibly ever, but since I didn’t play in the older rounds I can’t verify that info).

That list is:

Rio’s Lyc (4464) Round 33

Nate’s Liz (4222) Round 31

Ivetza’s Spirit (4086) Round 30

Nate’s FW (4584) Round 29

Bobbo’s Halfer (4231) Round 28

Considering every single one of those dominions won their respective rounds, this was a good sign. With Rury at 4248 and myself at 4259, we are the first ever realm-mates (attacking or exploring) to reach that size by that day. The chance that we would both make it, though, was slim. Rury was stronger than me as he had some land incoming and more op, so he was far more likely to pull away. Lyc isn't an amazing race to play blocker with, but dang it, we were going to try.

Days 21-35:

The funny thing about a runaway is how it changes the way others should play. Defense required is considerably more than it normally would be and explorers need to be cognizant of massive op (and temple) pushes. Since there hasn’t been a true early runaway in a few rounds, I think some people may have forgotten that. Additionally, we took a different approach to this. Rury had been pretty spec heavy (even for a Kobold). We had such a ridiculous lead and there were two of us, which gave us an interesting idea. What if our Kobold released his specs, got fully built up, and then retrained into elites from an insanely large population? We still had the mindset of playing with house money, so yolo, right?

Rury did exactly that and sat for a few days, while pushing ridiculous op and max temples. I played goblin whack-a-mole, hitting goblins all-in four times in a row. Meanwhile Warpig was able to pull himself up from his bounce-hit early in the round and climbed all the way to 6th by the end of day 22. Volv had taken a very tech heavy build so was quite a ways behind the other humans, but had just converted. Mith was done converting and looked pretty strong, but I had grown a little too large to protect him:

2024-07-07 17:03:06 Victorious on the battlefield, I can outrun a black pepper snake 🐍 (#2) conquered 105 land from As long as you love me (#0)

2024-07-07 17:59:56 Think likewise. (#8) invaded fellow dominion I can outrun a black pepper snake 🐍 (#2) and captured 165 land

An unfortunate turn of events for sure. I’d need to be more careful going forward. Also that goblin had ridiculous offense for his size, so I don’t think we had seen him until it was too late. The four different humans were all converted and starting to move. We still had the offense to all-in them, much to 7's surprise:

2024-07-09 20:01:05 Victorious on the battlefield, Spearmint Chip (#7) conquered 199 land from 󰨠A smooth sea never made a skilled mermaid 󰨠 (#3)

2024-07-10 08:05:08 I can cook using an Air Fryer! (#2) invaded fellow dominion Spearmint Chip (#7) and captured 188 land

Net gains, right? At this point we’d now pumped the brakes on two of the humans, but #13 and #4 were still unscathed, as was the Sylvan in #7 who had been growing a ton. Once the land came in from Rury’s last send, there were only a couple explorers in his range. He was playing Kobold, though. We didn’t know what it would look like if he had to sit very long, so we had to try and find a hit. We had seen that Soup in realm 13 had been frequently recasting Ares with only a couple ticks left, so we tried to rally the troops and put together a snare campaign.

We didn’t have a ton of blops power, but we thought there might be a chance to make it happen:

2024-07-11 16:01:23 I can eat a dozen donuts and still have room for another (#2) has declared WAR on Pray Harder: Eat Well (#13)

We had briefly discussed my docks/boat situation a couple hours beforehand. I had built a decent number of docks, but they weren’t in yet. Almost as soon as we declared I started getting sunk. Fortunately I already had a potential target lined up (not the hit I wanted, but a back-up easy hit just in case I got sunk), so I had to quickly make a move:

2024-07-11 16:59:29 Victorious on the battlefield, I can stop peeing mid-stream (#2) conquered 179 land from Jadzia, my beloved old friend! (#3)

As far as the snare campaign, we ran the numbers and thought it would be possible, if we could just get a couple more attempts, so mumble messaged his packmates and had them throw their SS into it, and then:

2024-07-11 19:04:12 Victorious on the battlefield, I can cook using an Air Fryer! (#2) conquered 241 land from High Tides and Good Vibes (#13)

The plan worked!

However I still had a boat crisis and as soon as my troops were home, the spies came to destroy them all. 13 played it well and their human was able to send in my range, while I was boat limited. It was close, but the sinking of 1-2 boats at a time from like 5 different people was enough to barely protect him on a massive hit, smacking the vampire in 9 (ivetza).

Ivetza had been being fairly nasty and whining about collusion (wtf?) so then promptly sui’d in an act of rebellion, I guess?

Volv was first on the scene though:

2024-07-12 22:59:57 Summertime Thadness (#13) invaded fellow dominion Wolfeschlegelsteinhausenbergerdorff (#9) and captured 201 land

2024-07-12 23:12:21 Victorious on the battlefield, Wolfeschlegelsteinhausenbergerdorff (#9) conquered 147 land from Green Bush (#10)

2024-07-12 23:14:07 I can beat Donkey Kong Country 2 (#2) invaded fellow dominion Wolfeschlegelsteinhausenbergerdorff (#9) and captured 229 land

Mith also found a hit on the sui:

2024-07-12 23:23:08 Victorious on the battlefield, I can outrun a black pepper snake 🐍 (#2) conquered 140 land from Wolfeschlegelsteinhausenbergerdorff (#9)

...but promptly fed the other biggest threat:

2024-07-13 00:58:08 whats the name (#4) invaded fellow dominion I can outrun a black pepper snake 🐍 (#2) and captured 196 land

Not an ideal situation while I was being sunk, having the two humans who we hadn’t hit both making huge attacks, one hitting for swamps and the other hitting for mountains. This felt like the beginning of the end for me, but we had already made the decision that my finish didn’t matter, we wanted to push for the win for Rury.

2024-07-13 16:41:52 I can eat a dozen donuts and still have room for another (#2) has CANCELED war against Pray Harder: Eat Well (#13)

2024-07-13 22:41:50 Victorious on the battlefield, I can cook using an Air Fryer! (#2) conquered 228 land from High Tides and Good Vibes (#13)

After Rury’s 74% war expiring hit on soup, he continued to push a ton of offense, hoping to catch #4 Lyc explorer (wurst). Unfortunately wurst noticed the pump just in time, as Rury came up about 1k op short. If that hit had happened, this round would likely have had a much less stressful final week.

Mith bounced back from getting hit and made another massive hit on some FW. Volv was getting a little antsy as only 12 hours earlier he had been first on the scene to another great target, but didn’t have the mana for Crusade so had to watch all his competitors feast on a freebie. Not wanting to get left behind, he took a shot at the lizardfolk in #3 on a risky send. I was covering for him, so anyone that could hit him was in my range and would be easily hittable by me. The hope was obviously that he’d make it safely, since if he had he’d have been back in contention. Clearly realm 7 didn’t want that:

2024-07-14 18:02:40 Victorious on the battlefield, I can beat Donkey Kong Country 2 (#2) conquered 170 land from Engage! (#3)

2024-07-14 21:59:28 Spearmint Chip (#7) invaded fellow dominion I can beat Donkey Kong Country 2 (#2) and captured 234 land

2024-07-15 02:59:55 Victorious on the battlefield, I can stop peeing mid-stream (#2) conquered 211 land from Spearmint Chip (#7)

At the time I figured it probably wasn’t ideal for me to hit #7, as that human was behind the others (thanks to previously having been hit by us) and that #4 and #13 were more of a threat, but I wanted revenge! And I needed to grow, since sitting too long would kill me, and with Mith and Volv both eating hits it felt like our slow support might not be able to get relevant. We had a massive discussion on what to do once my troops came back in from this hit, and I feel like we made the wrong call.

The humans in 4 and 13 had made those big hits and were going to grow pretty quickly- so we were hoping one of them would get greedy and 9hr which would send them into Rury’s range. However, there’s no way either could defend me, so I had to do something with my offense to make them safe to send.

I could have hit the vampire in 6, as he was looking fairly strong and had sent 1 hour after me, but I would have left myself open to a sui from #4 human. We had no idea what to expect from him. He could have hit me and fed all the other slow guys, while knocking me back down a bit, which seemed like a worst case scenario. I didn’t have any other 75% targets, so if we wanted to open up the opportunity for one of the humans to 9hr I would have to BF. That’s what we elected to do, dropping the EG to hit some undead in 12.

Unfortunately none of the humans took the bait and they just sat there. So I BFed for nothing (other than a kind of small hit).

In reality the right call probably would have been for me to just sit. Or maybe hit the vamp and hope I didn’t get sui’d. But it is what it is. I wouldn’t make another 75% hit.

My job was pretty clear here. Just sit. It sucks to just sit as Lyc, as I had to perpetually defend 5:4 against significantly more efficient guys, with flex. So I committed the cardinal sin as Lyc and trained WWs. I had good op, no one could send in my range, but if I burned my population up with rats I’d die out way quicker.

I just needed everything to stop.

The reasons for this were twofold: Rury had just hit for close to 1000 acres and needed to spend a prolonged period building and retraining, and we needed our slow guys to come up. Particularly this meant Mith, as the slowness of Volv’s build combined with eating the hit just put him too far behind. It was ok for Icekin to be behind, as he could get much stronger, but for human it was just futile.

I sat for 5 days, alternating training WWs and Garous, as Mith made two hits and gained 750 acres. I was getting near the point of no-return and needed a little more life pumped into me, so I took a BF on the goblin in #9 (grapes). I had held out long enough that Mith was able to send a third time, on another substantial hit, and finally was big and strong enough to be relevant, thankfully. We needed that, to have someone as the support for Rury.

I was still trying to defend 5:4 from the humans who had become really strong, so it was about time for me tap out. I could either sui one of them or deconvert, and feeding the entire game didn’t seem advantageous to our realm. So I took another BF on grapes, then rejoined the EG so I could build and train ratios before dropping guard and releasing offense.

Days 30+

During this whole time Rury was sitting and training and building. He went NINE DAYS, SEVENTEEN MINUTES, AND FIFTY THREE SECONDS between hits.

By this time, the vampire threat in realm 6 had largely faded into obscurity and the Sylvan in 7 had grown a ton, but the top threats were still the human in 4 and the human in 13 (chunk). We had a hit lined up for Rury and we decided to try and sink Chunk to limit his sui-potential:

2024-07-22 14:59:27 It only smells bad half the time when I go (#2) has declared WAR on Nobody wins until those badger's balls are in my mouth! (#13)

Unfortunately we just didn’t have the spy strength to succeed. We knew going in that the number of ops available likely wouldn’t be sufficient, but we went for it anyway.

After about 8 hours being unable to fully limit Chunk, Rury decided to hit:

2024-07-22 22:59:43 Victorious on the battlefield, I can cook using an Air Fryer! (#2) conquered 244 land from Holy Masked Potatoes Batman! (#6)

Finally after a week and a half hiatus, he moved again.

This war with 13 was almost disastrous. We not only were unable to accomplish the goal we had set out for, but now Mith, our primary support for Rury, had to defend against a dwarf sui, as well as getting sunk. Once we were able to cancel it, we promptly did, and Mith was able to send again, hitting the troll in #12 (zar).

Shortly after that, we were double warred by #3 and #9 (definitely not ironic) who appeared to only be interested in blopping me for the ranks. Fortunately I had already released my offense a couple days prior and was just exploring and getting ops, so while it definitely slowed my growth down, it realistically didn’t matter. We promptly mutual warred 9 to give Rury and Mith the opportunity for war hits/BFs.

2024-07-25 20:12:12 The Dominion War (#3) has declared WAR on It only smells bad half the time when I go (#2)

2024-07-25 23:13:40 Death lyc (#9) has declared WAR on It only smells bad half the time when I go (#2)

2024-07-25 23:59:50 It only smells bad half the time when I go (#2) has declared WAR on Death lyc (#9)

Rury was already lining up for a hit on the vampire in 6, which would open up the game to grow again, but we also saw that the nox in 9 would make a really easy mutual war BF. But we also felt it was too early in the round for him to burn out all his offense, as the human in 4, Sylvan in 7, and human in 13 were all very strong and could make a mad dash for the top, if we didn’t keep them contained. So we’d just keep the option open for a little while.

2024-07-26 14:44:47 Victorious on the battlefield, I can cook using an Air Fryer! (#2) conquered 277 land from Holy Complications! (#6)

2024-07-27 14:37:22 Victorious on the battlefield, I can outrun a black pepper snake 🐍 (#2) conquered 217 land from Holy Contributing to the Delinquency of Minors! (#6)

The Sylvan in 7 had benefited from an insanely lucky 12 hour period, where a different Sylvan attacker decided he wasn’t terribly interested in defending himself against #7, so sent out in range and got himself hit, only to promptly send out again and got himself hit a second time— on perfect land types. This launched the Sylvan up to the top of the threats list, and we needed to make a move to put some distance between Rury and the Sylvan.

After sitting with mutual war active for 48 hours and seeing that the nox in 9 was blissfully about to explore into the sylvan's range on nowhere near enough dp, we figured it was time to go for broke and take the BF:

2024-07-28 21:58:23 Victorious on the battlefield, I can cook using an Air Fryer! (#2) conquered 243 land from Jarbadaba (#9)

2024-07-29 02:09:51 Syl's Rainbow Sorbet (#7) invaded Underdown Beach (#13) and captured 276 land

2024-07-29 02:58:45 whats the name (#4) invaded Syl's Rainbow Sorbet (#7) and captured 433 land

Still at war with 9, the hour before Rury was going to make this hit, a couple guys in 9 started a small snare campaign, which almost dropped Rury to the level where he couldn’t cast Howling.

Rury admits to having been enraged and reported it for abuse multiple times. To be fair, he’s out on vacation and has been camping for like a week, while trying to hold onto this round. You can’t blame the guy for being frustrated, even if there wasn’t any foul play.

Fortunately for us, 4 didn’t realize how low Rury’s wizard strength was and they didn’t finish the job:

2024-07-29 09:18:05 Victorious on the battlefield, I can cook using an Air Fryer! (#2) conquered 386 land from whats the name (#4)

Rury was open to a suicide from 4 human and chunk, but it made no logical sense that either would sui as there was no one in contention in either of those realms, aside themselves, so it would just be a lame move of kingmaking. It was still possible though:

2024-07-29 10:12:03 Summertime Thadness (#13) invaded Syl's Rainbow Sorbet (#7) and captured 391 land

The sui didn’t happen. Rury would get up over 9000. Mith kept pushing 5:4 op as an insurance policy to keep the humans under-guard.

It’s finally over.

Thank you to our realm-mates: Alison, Warpig, OMGnoob, kdubs, and Mumblengrumble. Some epic help and we wouldn’t be here without you.

Thank you to the pack:

Manno— always a champ with ops and charts, waking up lots of times in the middle of the night to help get Rury the info he needed to make the right plays

Volv— didn’t have the result he had hoped for, but instrumental with some clutch ops

Mith— got hit multiple times but still came on really strong late round. This guy is a beast

Rury— about time we got you a win. I was saying it all round, I didn’t care what happened to my dom, I wanted you to win. I’m so relieved we could make it happen. Back to back realm wins, and your 3rd in the last 9 rounds. You took a race that everyone said wouldn’t survive and made it happen. Only the 2nd dom ever to reach 6k acres in the first 28 days. You pulled some wild moves and they worked. An absolute clinic in fast attacking. Very impressive. Well played.

For myself- I’m now the first ever attacker to hit the 4k mark at day 20 to NOT win, so I guess I get to add that to my resume. I’m also now 2/2 in pack wins when I play Lyc. I also also will have my largest finish yet and got to show off some tactical awareness. I’ll have to put that on my resume too.

And lastly, thank you to all the experts who said there’s absolutely no way we’d win. It really provided a ton of inspiration for us to prove you wrong.

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