Twinkle Twinkle Little Centaur R29
The round I signed for the draft (the first ever in OD), hoping to learn from the vets in the group. I was in the group that consisted of InternetFett, ZachSmack, FearLucien, and somewhat funnily, mostly people I've landed with before (Lamb, Sharkey - r26, Allegorical -r27, MeeSAX - r28, Xermaxm - Spell Test Round). We're then joined by Sly, Neophyte, Gorgh, and Rush2008 who randomed into our realm. After going through some theme ideas, we eventually decided to mix nursery rhymes and units from the races we're not playing to confuse people a little. Zach did choose a unit from the race he's playing for extra confusion.
I went with Nox this time as it had balanced numbers op/dp wise, as well as the nice end round potential with -50% casualties reduction on Liches. I made a sim that came out on 650 acres and Fett improved it to 666 acres with some Diamond Mines at the start. The round started on 1 am my time and I set my alarm wrongly (to 1 pm lol) but fortunately I woke up like 15 minutes before hour change and managed to find two hits. I was going to sit and train afterwards, but Dogwater (#11) suicided (and bounced) on Zach so me and a few other realmies hit him for easy acres. Some people were quick to cry foul play (because the playerbase was apparently that rotten), but the Rules Committee then stated that the player was simply new and didn't know what he's doing to clear up the issue.
I was able to make a few non bot hits afterwards, although I was almost cucked by the lack of boats on one instance as I wasn't used to having a lot of spec OP at the start. I missed a juicy target because of it and had to settle on a smaller one, so that's another lesson learned for my noob ass. At least prior to that hit, we as the realm had a blast killing the draftees of #8 Kobold, Reclining Lotus with Margot Robbie, to allow Zach made a big hit on him. Things got a little annoying when #8 Firewalker, The Butter Churner with Alison Brie starting to sit and train a lot of op to threaten the top guys until he got sunk by other realms. I was hitting mostly cavern bots at some point to get some schools, eventually making a little too many of them. Unfortunately, this was also the point where our fast attackers died and the realm got a little quieter.
Around day 31, I reached top 10 for the first time ever in my dominion history(!) after hitting #8 kobbo, but just as I thought that the round was starting to look quite promising, it turned sour pretty fast. #4 Dwarf, Desolation, to be referred as DickSolution from this point, was starting to pump a lot of op and stall the round for the rest of us while the top dogs of his realm were in the runaway positions. I couldn't keep up with his training so I had to wait for him to send before I could do so myself, and it took like almost a bloody week for that every time. Even then, I had to hit a relatively small target to avoid getting into their Lycanthrope's (Shaggy) range, until he was fed a few more times by others to the point I don't have to worry about him anymore because he's too big. Until the end of the round, I couldn't really do much, even getting cucked of a 6k finish (only 1 hit away) because that dick decided to sit on the final day, which made me hesitated to make a hit despite finding an easy target. I call collusion!
All things considered, I still managed to reach personal best finish, so it's actually a decent round compared to the previous ones. It could have gone much better, or worse, as I also had my luck in avoiding getting hit early in the round.
I'd like to thank my realmies for all the help, advices, and ops. The draft group was quite fun and it's a good learning experience. It'd be interesting to have another one in the future, and hopefully it wouldn't result in another brutal runaways like this round. As always, thank you for reading.