Editing Round 33

{{Round_finish
 | round = 33
 | round_id = 48

 | winner_player = [[User:Rio|Rio]]
 | winner_dominion = Thou ist werewolf notteth swearwolf!
 | winner_race = Lycanthrope

 | second_player = [[User:Wurstmeyer|Wurstmeyer]]
 | second_dominion =  Witch King
 | second_race = Nox

 | third_player = [[User:Faith|Faith]]
 | third_dominion = Azog
 | third_race = Goblin
}}

== Top 100 Results ==

[[Round 33 Top 100 Finishers|Round 33 top 100]] 

== Round 33 - Realm #1 Win Story ==

===The Beginning===
After much discussion over playing fast/slow, even a bunch of converters, we settled on going 4 do-or-die fast attackers and one explorer for ops support (Oment). 

We went with:
* Me (Rio)- Lyc (Thou ist werewolf notteth swearwolf!)
* Allegorical - Liz (Thou shall not murder draftees)
* Gothia - FW (You shall have no other games before Dom)
* BigBell - Spirit (Thou Shalt Not Share Info Ops)
* Oment - Kobold (Remember The No Ares Friday, To Keep It Holy)

Allegorical delayed hitting, coming out larger, the rest hit at OOP. I came OOP on 720 land with 56 GNs and hit a 75% bot on 542 land.

For the +12 hit, I was probably top OP and had a few options. The Nomad in #5 (DanTheMan) had hit for a lot of acres oop and then 9 houred for more so would be the largest attacker with incoming.  Other options were the two delayed attacking Lycs (#4 - The GOAT/Ivetza and #6 - Unknown/mdk). I checked both early and looked hittable but focused on the nomad. I couldn't tell if he was someone experienced who could be trouble later or someone who just wanted to hit for loads of land, but given his size 12 hours out, I didn't want to take a chance with him so hit him for what would be my first Hit of the Day. (47a)

After that, for the next few hits, I targeted larger explorers either taking HotD or 2nd/3rd largest so made good land and converts each time. On day 3 we noticed a big OP push by #6 Merfolk (Psychic Giraffe/mris). Realm 11 were looking strongest at this point and he could have taken out #11 FW (Strong Bad/cerbrus87) but he did nothing and ended up hitting relatively small instead.

Early fast attackers in contention and realm/race composition:
* #1 (us) Lyc/Liz/FW/Spirit
* #2 FW
* #4 Lyc/Liz/Halfer
* #6 Lyc/halfer/Spirit x2
* #9 Spirit
* #11 FW/Liz

Of these, my pack, Ivetza in #4, mdk and one of their Spirits (L0v3/nate) in #6, and cerbrus and Dave (The Cheat, Lizardfolk) in #11 were looking the best. #11 were strongest and went heavy protection against blops, so looked to be planning for war. I pushed 250 wiz, 225 spies and 30 or so FH for decent protection. Mdk went small protection and Ivetza went basically zero protection. #2 FW (Vinnderella/Vinn) and #9 Spirit (I see your Schwartz is as big as mine/Bobbo) were not far behind.

===Wars, or the lack thereof===

No wars happened at all so #11 slowed down for nothing and fell back while #4/#6 got back into the fight. With no wars declared, I did my first Scavenger pump and hit Nate's Spirit on day 4. I had different options but decided the spirit was looking good and wanted to isolate pairings if possible. At a similar time Ivetza managed a big hit on Bobbo, which launched him back up again.

Day 6: I did another spec OP pump and this time caught out The Cheat. They had been starting to fade but a Liz and FW pairing were still dangerous so this set them back. The FW stuck around for a while at times training decent OP but we didn't hear from the Liz again. They started out the strongest but really faded after investing so much into blops protection. Early day 8, the FW hit into our realm while I was mid recording of the podcast so my phone started blowing up as he was open to me. BB was also on that episode so messaged that he'd keep talking while the pack told me exactly what to send and I hit during the recording. Allegorical doubled shortly after.

It started to appear as though the 3 lycs were the front runners. We all took slightly different approaches. Ivetza had initially started with no mods and was initially behind. Mdk had made well timed big hits and started pushing DMs and OP specs first. I started with OP mods, particularly temples and held off on DMs focusing on homes instead. Ivetza and I had some schools, while mdk had none.

Behind us, Vinn and Bobbo typically sent once all 3 Lycs were out while my realm would send whenever suited them as they knew what my hitting plans were and could plan accordingly.

That meant that this whole time, our fast attacking squad were quietly going about their business. Allegorical was usually about 5th or 6th placed amongst fast attackers, Gothia about 8th and BigBell about 10th. They all managed to leverage my slight OP advantage to keep hitting routinely with about 5k less DP than the other attackers. While other fast attackers were dropping back, they remained in the picture until there were around 7 left in contention, with three hangers-on:

* #1 Lyc/Liz/FW
* #2 FW
* #4 Lyc
* #6 Lyc
* #9 Spirit

The hangers-on were BigBell, #4 Halfer (La hanta esta muy loca/Rompar), and Nate.

I was slowly edging away from the other Lycs, and we had also acquired the Armada on day 8, so nobody could try to sink without warning, but on day 9, Gothia made a big mistake. We'd been updating top OP numbers frequently. He'd seen one set posted a few hours before sending but hadn't noticed an updated number including spec OP from mdk and sent out way too light. I tried pumping up some OP and threatening a spec push to hold mdk off but couldn't put enough together so Gothia had to eat the hit.  It briefly brought him back up to similar size as me but I was still ahead in numbers.

Mdk's luck reversed on his next hit.  He went for an ares drop but his target cast in time so mdk bounced.  What made it worse for him was that he took enough DP off so that I could hit the target even with Ares later that day, so the big advantage swung back to me.

With mdk hitting Gothia, Gothia was dropping back and soon decided to deconvert. He made a couple more EG hits, followed by some BFs before releasing some unneeded DP (his all in was huge) and restructuring his dom for exploring - while remaining top 10 overall. At the same time, our spirit (BigBell) and #6 spirit (nate) gave up on playing fast and switched to mostly elite training but that meant falling back.

This left us with 6 fast attackers remaining in five realms: myself and allegorical, Vinn on his FW, Ivetza and mdk on their Lycs, and Bobbo on his Spirit.

===Culling the herd===
Bobbo had been hanging in with an almost entirely SW/Geist strat but his pop was suffering so he started taking risks. I managed to catch him out when he had some PKs out on an attack and then I was able to follow up the next day hitting him all in. He released OP shortly after. Vinn then took himself out of the race by trying to send at the same time as me and getting hit by mdk. That took him out of my range but he sent again immediately and this time got hit by both Lycs and Allegorical. Vinn had played well up to that point, so it was a shame to see it all come crashing down. He was in our realm last round and his previous pack landed with us again this round so things could have been different if he was with us again too. 

With Vinn and Bobbo both down, it left us with just 4 fast attackers left. 3 Lycs and a Liz. I had the lead with a 1 or 2 hit advantage at around 3.4k, then the other 2 lycs in the middle (around 3.2k) and allegorical 1 or 2 hits further back (around 2.9k).

At this point, we'd all just hit whenever we could as gobbo converters had all started their bot-hitting charge below us. My next hit was on #3 lyc (Asanka456) who was mid convert. After my previous hits, I had left a bunch of barren swamps and mountains, and stocked plat. I trained a bunch of garous and built as many GNs and temples as I could all at once and managed to catch him out. I had been frustratingly close to most of the explorers in range (including top exploring #8 Lyc - Art Vandelay/lamb - but he fully invested all his resources into walls and drafted up to stay just safe.)

I was then left with under 10 targets in range so started pushing heavy DMs. I had held off for a while then went from 0 to 600 within a handful of hits plus DBs. It took a couple days of training but eventually I managed to get the #5 kobbo (Ashlands of Mordor/Sloxxor). We had taken CSes on all the other explorers but based on fairly recent spy ops, I was about 5k short on the others.

At this point, usually the other two Lycs would hit after me or while I was mid-building and they were now significantly behind in land, pop, DMs, and efficiency. I'd been deliberately leaving them alone, not trying to press them with OP but instead looking to grow and let them grow as they created a buffer between myself and converters below.

After my hit, mdk started to pump big OP and was pinning most people including allegorical home.  I decided it was better to have the extra support so I delayed training OP until smithies were maxed again which gave mdk a hitting window. He took the opportunity by hitting a deconverted Rompar, which then freed allegorical to hit the other #6 Spirit (Hyakki Hyagyō/Hanzogod666).

Then on day 19 some pivotal moments occurred. While mdk had managed a hit, Ivetza had missed his window. He was second top OP considering his temples, and the only person threatening me on a full send, but with my pop advantage I knew I could close in on safely hitting him. Allegorical had pumped OP specs after his previous hit with hopes of making another one right away. I could cover the two Lycs easily if either went for him so we checked a few targets. There were some semi-inactive players but they would be too much of a stretch. Then we looked at a fairly low NW Troll - again a stretch, but took a rev and saw ares was down so he hit immediately. The troll then appeared to look to farm out as he was locked not long after.

Then it got interesting. Ivetza had been pressuring me, going garous and OP specs but he was running out of draftees. I had done about 12 hours of garous up to 3pm and realised if I did 3 hours of specs (plus take plat DB for more) I could hit Ivetza all in and possibly be safe from both him and mdk (who had started training again).

In short: Ivetza was in a bad spot and basically had 4 options:
* 1. Hit a fat gobbo converter (#3 King of the Hill/DavetheGoliath) which would need barely any WW. He would then still likely (but not definitely) eat the hit from me.
* 2. Release all OP and try to defend me.
* 3. Hope that between his and mdk's training, they could prevent me from making the all in hit safely.
* 4. Suicide allegorical and take the hit from me.

If I was in his spot at this stage I would have gone for option 4 so allegorical decided to leave most of his barren land un-built and rezoned a little to cover his buildings if he did eat the semi sui.

That's what happened. He put a pretty sizeable hit (190a) on allegorical and took a slightly larger one (197a) from me - I covered the send without any WW needed by about 4k, so no risk of forcing a bounce.

Despite the preparation, this pretty much took both allegorical and Ivetza out of the race. Ivetza was then in danger of being hit all in the following day unless he trained DP through the night. He didn't manage to and I found an hour that I could hit him with a 3-5k buffer defending both other Lycs. There was a slight danger that Ivetza could sui-raze me so mdk could hit me the same hour I sent but Oment calc'd it'd be just short.

With those 2 hits plus land DB, I was then 4.8k acres with 800+ land to build. Mdk was 3.8k and Ivetza made a BF to rejoin range around 3.7k before releasing OP. 2 explorers were the only others in range.

When we took ops on mdk we saw he'd stopped training, had FG and Ares on but not Midas. Although it might have meant he was stocking plat and forgot Midas, Oment suggested he may be abandoning which turned out to be the case. Ivetza recently had been my main OP threat, but mdk looked to have more longevity and was probably my bigger rival through the round.

Ivetza was sat in 3rd place with good prestige and a fair amount of WWs so was in an okay position to start his transition, but we didn't hear from him again.

===The run away===

Once I'd finished building, I figured I would have a long training process so stocked plat until smithies were maxed and then trained pure Garous.  I started at 46k pop with more homes incoming and keep investment adding 100 or so per hour to max pop.  That meant holding a steady 45k+ pop for a while.  Even the top threats just outside range hadn't topped 40k yet and were miles behind in stats.

After just 12 hours or so of training, Gothia spotted that one of the three doms in range - #11 The Ugly One/Thors Bjørn, DM/Mason exploring Goblin - could be hittable if he didn't train for next 2 hours. He had FG on for another 5, so I switched from pure Garous to adding Scavs (in order to max my 5:4 - it meant more WWs could be left home). He didn't train in those hours so I managed to hit for another 400 acres or so putting me far out of range of everyone but lamb in #8.

Speaking of this guy. What an absolute douche. He was the epitome of a thorn in my side. If I didn't spend plat at the top of every hour, he would blast all his spy strength on me stealing.  I was making 180k plat per hour or so.  He'd steal maybe 30 to 40k of that and lose 15 to 20k worth of spies for his trouble. 

I'd have done the same if I were him. 

He also took to swarming and earthquaking me every 6 hours, so purely to deter him, I trained up additional spies and wiz.  After a couple of swarm attempts losing 10 wizards pre fail, those then stopped.

He did also do me a favour. After the hit on Thors Bjørn, I released my 5.5k Scavengers so my OP dropped significantly. That could have given people a window to jump into range but because he kept pressing DP, everyone stayed far out.

My strategy was to build plenty of homes and some GT since I had so many hills to use. I peaked at just about 60k in population, which was about 20k more than second tier attackers. I also still had lots of room to spare in Keep so despite a massive amount of training, managed to hang onto pop above 50k for a long time. It took me about 2 days to get my OP close to what Art was defending by which point people were no longer safe to enter range.

Prior to mdk's abandonment, he had been training OP for a while and with me out of range of everyone, Ivetza releasing OP and allegorical having his OP and DP spent, it left a giant void for top OP outside of me. Some of the converted goblins (particularly Azog in #5 - Faith) started to try to fill that void. Usually overtraining is OP and undertraining DP is a classic converter mistake, but in this unexpected circumstance, it ended up being a good move.

Players were starting to line up outside at 74.XX% range - both attackers and explorers. Those explorers were unsafe by something between 30k and 60k. Attackers would be unsafe by 80k+ if they sent within my range and most were either hittable all in or just barely safe where it would still be squeaky bum time for them depending on how training matched up. 

After 3.5 days of training almost exclusively Garous, it looked like a couple of explorers (#10 Thing - Rush2008, Merfolk - and Thors Bjorn) might enter range either with a DB or exploring. Both were easily hittable so I started to add more WWs into the mix in case after I hit someone made a massive hit into my range.

Then bizarrely, Duck Pond Simulator #11 (Mithrandir), who had BFd to land just outside my range, decided to 9 hour and land squarely inside it. Despite the massive DP lamb had been training, he was keeping his buffer pretty small so when Mithrandir sent being about 10k below that DP all in, he must not have realised he'd be hittable. I knew he'd be training all shams until close to when his land came in so I trained 3 hours of ratmen to help boost my 5:4 to make the hit.

After that mistake, I presumed that nobody would be foolish enough to do the same thing as him and blindly enter range on less all in DP than lamb. That meant either sitting for a long time or having to look towards multiple BFs to rack up a land lead.

At the time, the gobbo in #3 (The Smurfs/Chunk) had been building huge suicidal OP for a while: well over 5:4 and occasionally over 4:3. He had been sunk for his troubles but was soon to have enough docks to send it again, though continued OP training and some Floods pushed that back. I was very borderline on having enough DP to defend him if I left guard and sent (morale would have even made a difference) so switched from garous to WW for a number of hours in order to close off that gap in case he pushed further sui.

Then a few things happened. Firstly, Chunk unloaded a semi-sui on BigBell, hitting him for 215a. BB could not catch a break this round, though he had provided quality entertainment when he bounced #2 Goblin - GoldErix and the Three Bears/Erix - in the dying seconds of the war bonus with a release. Then Erix hit Chunk with an even larger semi-sui for 241a, which then meant Witch King in #5 (Wurstmeyer, playing a Nox) could make a hit on Erix for 217a and come flying deep into my range. 

I haven't mentioned him yet, as for most of the round, Wurst did not have spectacular OP, but was consistently managing to get hits off bots and all the ridiculously underdefended players (including a few in my own realm) along the way.  He was way outside my range for ages but checking the secondary top OP updates, he always seemed to be behind the goblins on OP even after temples, but kept finding hits. It's often that kind of luck with targets that turns someone non-threatening into a contender (my early round targets are what kept me on top of other Lycs).

Unbeknownst to him, the chain of events that Chunk had created whereby I trained WW rather than all garous meant that by luck, Wurst would be safe in my range all in by about 2k with our training. I had something like 345k 5:4 plus temps, and his OP/DP by comparison was something like 230k/270k. He should also thank lamb who was back with repeated blops on me slightly stunting my OP.

With Wurst safe by the skin of his teeth, I switched training back towards the BF plan. There were a multitude of targets. My garou only OP at the time was north of 300k and a bunch of 70%+ explorers were around 250k to 270k after temples so I had my pick. Between retraining garous and WW converts gained, my OP only dropped slightly on the first few hits so if explorers didn't hammer out DP, I could keep feeding. I made 4 BF hits in a row back-to-back (390, 352, 310, 290) for a total of 1,342 acres. That combined with a few DBs meant I'd be building for almost 3 days straight.

Unbelievably, Wurst was given yet another cheap hit at around the same time as my final BF - this time by Mithrandir. He would still be out of range, but only just. Then just 24 hours later he managed to hit again - this time with a spec pump - on Nate, who, like most Spirits, found himself unable to stay safe all in this round. This hit brought him deep into my range again, and due to reduced build costs, he'd be finished before me and get a jump on training.

So we found ourselves sat in a battle. Me on 7.3k land, Wurst on 5.8k land. Me on 80k pop, Wurst on 65k pop. Me with slightly higher combined mil, but without turtle on my garous. Him with cheaper and more efficient troops.

In terms of training, the best case for me would be Wurst training just DP allowing me to go all OP. Failing that, the next best thing would be him training all OP as he'd have no hope of sending it, and while he might slowly close the gap on my all in if both of us were training elites, I could always easily hit him with just a few WWs and he could even open himself up to more hits by others lower down. Worst thing for me would have been him mixing his training immediately as he could probably get a quick hit in (even a BF) before I would be ready to respond.

He did go for the all OP option which was great for me, so I just matched on DP with WWs. I could do a few hours of ratmen for a rapid boost which put me out of reach so then I went to garous for a while and ended up covering his all out DP by 15k or so in garous only while he went back to DP.

He then changed tact, and started to push massive OP (and using DB for more temples), then started stocking draftees and plat with FG on. This was the scariest part as there were a couple of scenarios where if he committed to it, he could have gotten close to my all in with some big OP specs.

Instead, he saw I was matching training against him and had some draftees myself so he ended up releasing his draft stock, and training all DP for a while. He got close to defending my garou only send on his all out DP but not quite (not to mention if he sent before me, I could easily send a load of WWs along anyway). It was clear that Wurst needed support but Faith needed targets to be able to help. Luckily he found some over the course of a week, all from #10. 

When he landed and built, he'd have an even larger population than me, but thankfully he decided to let his smithies fade in favour of Masons, so much that his training potential was nowhere near as good and he was miles behind both of us regardless of what he did.

===The chase is on... And off... And on again.===
So then began a time of me toying with the Nox and the Goblin. I would keep switching between OP/DP letting them get close to my all in DP one day just to shut the door on them, or let them get close to safely sending, just to go heavy OP again. The idea being to delay both of them from growing for as long as I could while they sat far below me. Oment and Gothia were both in range of them (Oment remained in range all the way) so we used the two of them to harass both in #5 with constant swarms and earthquakes and also meant between them we could keep constant info ops up without me wasting mana or spies. They also had poor spies themselves, though Faith had excellent Wizards, leading to assassins dying in droves trying to get my ops.

Others eventually decided to do them a favour, so Wurst was able to hit #10 human and Faith was able to hit #10 nox. I had some help as well though as #2 dorf (Rury) who was looking dangerous himself doubled the hit on the #10 human and would land in my range with not quite enough all in DP so I got an unexpected EG hit too. The joy was short-lived as Rury decided to send out again immediately. He tried to defend, but his ratios weren't good so #5 declared wars minutes before he got home, LB'd his castle and Wurst made the hit. I couldn't stop it so instead responded with another BF which would keep Wurst low down in my range.

However, the war declaration between #5 and #2 meant that Wurst would be able to close in on a deconverted Erix. He was getting close to making the send when Erix let Ares slip so the war hit was even safer. I took to BFs again and this time Wurst copied so we each did 2. I had decided to rejoin EG for the final phase of the game, while Wurst elected to stay in just the RG.

So we found ourselves sitting and training again on various amounts of land to build. I was around 9.3k, Wurst around 8.6k and Faith hanging on at 7.1k. Wurst could still feasibly catch me either by hitting me or getting 2 more BFs than me so increasing the land gap was important. Faith kept training 5:4 OP but as I started to up my mods and do additional ratmen, he was nowhere near my all in and would be starting to leave sketchy DP if he went for me. In short, I wasn't worried about him.

Faith built all his land, while Wurst and I left some land barren. For a while, my plan had been to hit Wurst if he were to BF (I'd hit all the easy targets enough that everyone was now either well defended or in guard protection). I just needed to make sure the conditions were right. 

That meant:
* 1. Wurst nearly full sending on a BF
* 2. I could be in EG so if Faith hit me, I would still not get into someone else's range. I didn't want to mess around with anyone else's full sui outside my range.
* 3. Neither of #5 could double me after the first hit with them both having sent once already.
* 4. Faith being on questionable DP vs others below on a full send would leave him open.

It didn't take long for this all to happen. Wurst made his BF and it was just a question of when to hit. Faith and myself had DP coming in later but we figured it's best to force him to send early so he'd be exposed before his mass DP arrived so I sent the hour after. Morale and not full Swamp helped by knocking off about 8k DP all told. Faith then sent the hour after that and we just sat and waited.

We knew that at least 2 people could hit him: #7 Sylvan (Strong Wind/Virchue) who had been rising rapidly at the end and Rury who could manage an easy semi-sui and may want to given how much they'd hit him. When Realm 5 declared war and attempted to sink Virchue, we thought that maybe nobody would but then Chunk showed up and planted a big hit first. Since Chunk was the one who inadvertently helped #5 into their strong position to begin with I was pretty happy.  Virchue quickly followed but Rury held off (probably to keep Faith in my range and on a leash as one more hit would keep him out). Loads of other massive hits swung at each other for one of the [[Records|biggest TC melees]] in OD history.

==== The Carnage ====

2023-03-05 12:59:09 Witch King (#5) invaded Endless Circle (#3) and captured 176 land. 

2023-03-05 13:59:26 Victorious on the battlefield, Thou ist werewolf notteth swearwolf! (#1) conquered 495 land from Witch King (#5). <-- Second largest ever OD hit, for just under an hour.

2023-03-05 14:59:18 Azog (#5) invaded fellow dominion Thou ist werewolf notteth swearwolf! (#1) and captured 647 land. <-- Largest ever OD hit by 286a after generation.

2023-03-05 18:59:58 The Smurfs (#3) invaded Azog (#5) and captured 465 land. <-- Would've been #4 largest, now only #6.

2023-03-05 19:04:50 Strong Wind (#7) invaded Azog (#5) and captured 429 land.	

2023-03-05 19:30:50 The Nomad (#5) invaded The Smurfs (#3) and captured 398 land. 	

2023-03-05 19:44:22 Dexter's Laboratory (#3) invaded The Nomad (#5) and captured 325 land.

2023-03-05 22:07:12 Little Fett Riding Hood (#2) invaded The Smurfs (#3) and captured 345 land. 	

2023-03-05 22:27:11 This is from Mathilda (#6) invaded The Smurfs (#3) and captured 381 land. <-- MactheMeek had sat for a week on max temples and max GN, leading to this hit out of nowhere.

2023-03-05 22:30:27 Go go Power Rangers (#3) invaded This is from Mathilda (#6) and captured 233 land. 

2023-03-05 22:33:08 Watcher in the Water (#5) invaded The Smurfs (#3) and captured 268 land. 	

2023-03-05 22:35:54 Khazad-dûm (#5) invaded This is from Mathilda (#6) and captured 202 land. 	

2023-03-05 22:52:51 One-Armed Bass Player (#10) invaded This is from Mathilda (#6) and captured 192 land. 	
	
2023-03-05 23:20:43 Ib and Little Mristina (#2) invaded This is from Mathilda (#6) and captured 182 land. 	

2023-03-06 00:58:38 Bob Sacamano (#8) invaded This is from Mathilda (#6) and captured 165 land. 

=== The final bit===

When land came in, it ended with me on 9.7k, Wurst on 8.5k, Faith on 7.6k and Virchue on 7.3k. There were still a few days left but all of them would be stuck under me for a while and unless anything drastic happened, I could just sit until the end.  We all built either all or most of our land and mass trained but there was no more movement until the final hours. Virchue BFed to try and get third, but Faith followed on the same guy, while myself and Wurst didn't move as we already had 1st and 2nd set.

And that was that.

===Acknowledgements===

Early fast attackers.  It was a good, interesting mix of people and fun competition early on.  I was happy to find out that it was cerb and dave in #11 as I drafted them both before learning that, and they both showed good potential.

Vinn had a good showing early on as did Bobbo. Rompar (another draftmate) and nate were also in the mix but hits on them set them back.

The two lycs (mdk and Ivetza) were for sure the main competition. Any of us could have taken it but I had the luck needed to get the edge.  It was definitely interesting playing almost in a symbiotic way where we knew that we should stay out of each other's way if we wanted to stay ahead of gob converters. Was really good from both of them.

After the fast attackers were done, it was all #5 for me. Faith did a nice job of helping to launch Wurstmeyer up and they seemed to hold everyone else up. Fun competition and I'm just glad things played out as they did.  Hard to say they made mistakes but there were a few things that they did that I was glad of (and would have done differently if roles were reversed).

The pack as ever were fantastic. We knew most of us wouldn't make it to the end but everyone did what they could and stuck around to talk over strategy throughout. Definitely a hive-mind making the decisions. Having Oment as a top explorer in range the whole time was a massive benefit in particular.

Allegorical and Gothia deconverted before becoming food for others and managed to avoid getting hit after deconverts. The Allegorical baited send is what set me running properly too which worked out in the end.

BigBell just kept on with the bad luck, taking semi suicides and the brunt of black ops in our short lived wars. Him bouncing Erix was fun, though.

The rest of the realm pitched in too. Particularly mention to Unfather as we've landed together 4 times I think now and he keeps getting better and doing whatever is needed for the realm.

A bit unfortunate that Unfather, Freeze and SlyD weren't ever able to get large enough to benefit from my position but still had solid rounds. Margoose and dayvinho finished strong as well. Took a few hits early each but held off anyone late on which was key. LraE too went the whole round unscathed for a decent Liz explorer finish, and Maximus just quietly chipped away with his sylvan.

We had a couple awful realmies though. One of them was completely silent and would just constantly get hit feeding the competition. He was the better one of the two.

The other one sucked in every possible way.  Would argue over basic game mechanics.  Would say the game is  bugged because they didn't read something properly.  Would demand ops on someone then blind send and bounce on someone else.  Would be told not to send until their DP came in then send anyway and get hit within minutes.  We tried.  We really, really tried repeatedly and throughout.  Eventually we realised why sometimes they'd only respond to certain people even though we were all saying the same thing.  At some point they'd apparently blocked half the realm on discord.



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