Round 51 Win Story

2026-09-28T01:06:07Z

104.22.86.238:

'''Realm 10 - Round 51 Win Story'''

[[Round 51|← Round 51]]

See also: [[https://wiki.opendominion.net/wiki/Round_51_Note_From_Sly a Note from Sly on the round controversy]]

== Soundcheck (Realm Composition and Pre-Round Planning) ==

=== How we got here (written by Gabbe) ===

Charles asked me to write the start of this, so here goes.

Charles is the winner, so I think it's only right that I write a bit about him. My first impression of him was back in Round 49. He was feeding a bunch, and some guy came into the Discord and flamed him for it. That seemed like an asshole move to pull on a new player. My impression was: ok, this guy is new, he kinda sucks, but what can you expect?

Then Charles randomed into our realm in the tester. He was very vocal and super eager to learn, basically the perfect person you want as the new guy at your office or in a game: active, hardworking and willing to learn. Funnily enough, he had zero ego. That might come as a shock to some people, but that was my impression(at the time 🙂). Throughout the tester we had a lot of chats and discussions about the nature of an FA and what to think about. It was a nice round, and I thought that if this guy kept picking things up, he'd be good. He's basically a sponge, without any negative connotation.

With some of the absolute strongest names in strategy around him in Mris, Mdk and Jboy, I think Charles has learned a lot. Being around minds like Sly's has added a lot of knowledge too, I'm sure.

It's not often a guy comes in, plays three rounds and wins. But super activity like his, plus guidance from people with several realm wins under their belt, gave the absolute best conditions for it to happen.

This pack goes back a long way, all the way to beta round 13. The lineup has changed a lot over the years, with people coming and going. Mris, is the one constant who's never left. Over the years it's included names like Pasi/Soc, Sarmis, Nate and KongB, and now the amazing lineup we had this round. All amazing players.

I came back last round after six years away. It wasn't meant to be a serious comeback. I didn't have time to play properly, and I'd actually agreed to pack with two real-life friends. Then mris, who had already talked mdk into playing, asked why the three of us didn't just come pack with him and mdk and chill. When one of the guys dropped out for lack of time, we needed a fifth, so I asked jboy, who I'd played with in a draft round. Before that round there was a test round. mris, jboy, neruht and I packed together, and that's where we met Charles.

I didn't have much time, so I ran a kobold converter but deconverted fast. The bigger problem that round was ops. We barely had any, and we're convinced it would have been a very different round if we had.

Although I had no time to play Round 50 for real, I did have a few hours every night. From the end of June I spent them number-crunching OOP through hour 72 and simming to break every number I could.

So going into Round 51 we made a rule: we're not playing unless we have proper ops, but if we do we are going for the win.

Mris decided to run a Dark Elf farming XP on a shrine strat built around ops, which covered NA hours. That left Euro time. We talked about inviting neruht, but he's in almost the same timezone as mris, so we'd still be mostly blind during EU hours. We needed EU or Asia ops.

That's where Charles came in. He messaged me saying he'd tried FA in the tester and SA/converter in Round 50, and was thinking of just randoming this time as an ops player. He wanted to learn by watching what everyone else was doing. I put it to the others: "He's a super active guy and always willing to listen and learn. I think he'll be a good fit."

=== The realm, roles, and the sims ===

Then the realms were assigned, and we landed an insane random realm. We got neruht and his brother hytt, two amazingly active ops players who are always around and great people all round. We got Adam. I didn't know much about him, but I knew he had strong black ops knowledge and had played with some of the top black ops people, so that side was covered. We landed with Sly again, a great veteran with real insight and a really good grasp of the game. Then we got luckier still and landed slz my real life friend, who'd been in our pack last round, as well as Sizzler who had been great in the test round and m4nus who jboy knew from before –a '''full realm''' of very solid, active players. slz is Euro, and the round started in EU-preferred hours, so I asked him straight away if he could cover ops for the first 12 hours. We tried to get Sly onto a lycanthrope, but he had flights to catch. Charles had been quiet. He really didn't want to ops, but he was ready to take one for the team for a spot in the pack. I didn't want him on ops either if I could avoid it, because with his activity I knew he'd be a bigger asset as an FA. He was talking about some slow dwarf, and I wasn't a fan. So when he showed interest in lyc, I jumped on it.

Lyc doesn't suit my playstyle anyway, so I was never going to run it myself. I'd already made the lyc sim, because the plan had been for mdk to run it. But mdk was on vacation during OOP and for a couple of days after. We were worried he'd miss spec drop or wouldn't be able to hit when it mattered, so we'd already moved him to the Firewalker I was originally meant to play. With Charles on lyc, I went straight back and changed my Lizard sim. It went from a potential runner to a torpedo, whose job was taking out threats so mdk or Charles could run.

mdk's sim we made super, super greedy: low mods, big alchemies and homes. It sat right on the edge of DP, turtling as many salas as possible. It was purely economy-based, so we knew that if it survived the first 36 hours and got its hits in, it would be a beast.

The lyc and Lizard ran higher mods. The lyc sim was the safe one, always keeping enough DP. The Lizard pushed high OP on minimal DP. I'd gone through all the ops we had from the tester and the last two rounds, so I knew roughly what every top dominion had for OP and DP in the first 72 hours. I simmed all three out to at least 48 hours past protection: the Lizard pushing high OP with minimal DP; the lyc with nice OP but always "safe" DP using mods; and the FW running big salas and a big-population economy, as greedy as possible.

For the rest of the realm we would have 3 Demon explorers getting ops, jboy doing a Gnome converter, 3 crazy Dark Elf converters played by mris Sly and slz, Sizz doing a Demon attacker, and m4nus playing his Troll.

=== Opening hits, and getting hit ===

When the round started, we saw Joe Riogan (Disco) running the same sim he'd run in the tester and again in Round 50. He'd executed it better every time, and this time he had a great OOP with a huge hit. We looked for a big explorer to hit instead, but nobody was big enough to justify leaving Disco alone. I already knew he'd be a problem. This was his third run of the same sim, he'd got stronger each time, and his OOP was crazy good.

So I hit him, 12 hours out, for 48 acres. In my opinion it didn't kill him, but he decided to opt out right there. It must have sucked to have an OOP that good and then get hit 12 hours later. In the same opening hits, Charles got an easy one on a DE in realm 4 for 35 acres, and mdk followed him into the same target for 33.

The BGs in realm 2 had pretty strong sims early on. I'd been greedy in the first 12 hours. Going reptiles for the big 12-hour hit lowered my DP, and I probably oversent a bit too. On top of that I was asleep, with my training timed only so the offensive units arrived for my hits. I didn't have any defence trickling in beforehand, which would probably have saved me. We foolishly assumed they'd want to hit at 12 hours out. Instead Thorfinn, the Firewalker in 2, sat and built up his OP. Love in Oklahoma (MERF, the lyc in 7), was bigger than me with less DP, but I'd just landed a huge hit, so Thorfinn made a good hit on me at hour 20.

If I hadn't been greedy and had trained lizards at 4am, I think they'd have covered me. I needed about 100 to be safe. Even though my dom was seen as a burn-and-die torpedo, it could have run if it kept landing hits. But Charles and mdk were the clearer runners and the stronger long-term doms. Either way, I took Thorfinn's hit, and LOVE got off free.

That hit hurt, and it exposed a flaw in how we'd set things up. All three FAs were hitting on the same tick, so there was nobody home to cover anyone. Charles spotted it before the hit even landed and asked if we should stagger, since it made no sense having four of us out at once. mris later admitted that in hindsight we should have put the third FA on a delay when we added him.

The frustrating part was that Thorfinn had a better target. LOVE was top OP, sitting super low on DP, with better land types for him. We thought it was insane for him not to hit the lyc. But I'd just landed a huge hit, and he came for me instead.

It could have been worse. I lost less than an hour of plat in troops, and if you're going to get hit, that's not a bad time for it. Charles, with huge OP incoming, offered to stagger instead.

Meanwhile, the question was whether Charles could punish the lyc in 7. mdk had Charles about 8 short on the chart with his 515 draftees, and said even a small lumber invest would get him there.

=== The 24-hour hits and the night after ===

Going into the 24-hour hits, the pack was busy with both builds and targets.

mdk was rezoning his plains into GTs and building caverns for homes. mdk had himself at about 13.7k/13.7k at 36 hours, which he called depressing. He knew he needed to start having top OP soon and force others onto defence.

Charles's big question was docks. War couldn't be declared until Day 4, so we had 48 hours before anyone could start killing boats. So he should work out how many garou and WW he would have and have at least that many docks. That came to roughly 4,500 troops, or close to 50 docks. Later that evening Charles's boats read 59/58. He was self-sunk, if only barely.

mdk then ran through the threat board. The lyc in 2 had garbage OP, the Lizard in 4 (allegorical) looked slow, and the Lizard in 9 was spamming chams.The only thing stopping us from pulling way ahead was the goblin Norm (Scratch) or Oklahoma(Merf)

Target hunting started around 8pm. I thought the orc in 9 looked juicy. mdk lined up a nomad, Suutei tsai.

The problem was LOVE. Very few dominions had over 10k OP, and none of them could send until we did, but LOVE had mdk on full send by just 30 points. My call was that nobody could send before we did, Charles settled on the orc in 9, Stevinn Wright (HighLow).

Then Charles sent early. I grumbled that he'd just let everyone else send the same hour as him, until he explained his kids were going crazy. Fair enough.

A few minutes later LOVE finally sent. It was a big hit off top OP, and he took 56 acres from Eddie Merfy in realm 9 (lamb), more than either of ours. With LOVE out, he was no longer home to threaten mdk, so mdk could send more. Charles took 42 acres from Stevinn Wright, the orc in 9.

LOVE took 56 acres from Eddie Merfy (#9).

mdk took 42 acres from Suutei tsai, the nomad in 3, 41 seconds after LOVE's hit.

The best part was that nobody else sent that hour except LOVE.

With three FAs we could stagger OP pushes and force everyone onto defence. I had 1good OP paid with my plat bonus still available, so if we all pushed, who was going to stop Charles? I said it at the time: this felt a lot better than last round.

While the rest of us slept, Mdk kept a solo vigil and reported what he saw. When you're running on barely any sleep, waking up to condensed, easy-to-read info like this is super helpful:

LOVE''':''' getting very close to self-sinking on boats.

The goblin, Norm Mithdonald''':''' trained defence hard to be able to send, with a GN boost coming. Mdk suspected Norm would send but couldn't defend against Mdk's OP push. If it forced Norm to slam shamans, that was a win for us. Fast gobs can be strong, so '''Mdk '''kept an eye on him.

The top OP''':''' with the gob out, LOVE was the only one outside our realm with real OP.

When I got back online, Adam cleared ops on the top OP for us, and we scouted for targets. LOVE's draftees stopped me from hitting him. Instead we found Eddie Merfy, the troll LOVE had hit at 24 hours: I sent it all and took 51 acres. It was another huge hit. So far pretty much every hit I'd made was at 100%, which is admittedly easier when you've just been hit yourself haha

Day 2: the 36-hour hits

Charles kept hitting on the dot: 0 hours, 12, 24, and at 36 he took 42 acres from Raining on the Rock (#7). Two hours later Sizz double-tapped the same target for 44.

mdk had to stagger. He was working that day, in and out of cases, and could only hop on his phone for a few minutes at a time. When he got his window, jboy grabbed fresh ops on the merfolk Eddie IzZard (#9): he took 66 acres, and had to return to work.

I doubled and took 59 acres.

The only one home who might follow was Norm. Then I realised Norm was in the merfolk's realm, which was hilarious

That made two big hits back to back, 12 hours apart, and I'd sat 8 hours to line them up. I'd just gained about 200 acres and was still tiny in our realm. I honestly think an earlier cham push I did helped a lot. That extra 1k DP kept me safe long enough to find the hit. Charles warned me not to overdo the chams: 400–600 was perfect, in his view. That was a quip, since I'd told him something similar back in the tester when Charles played lizzie.

Charles was making more docks and spies before black ops opened in 16 hours, because he didn't want to be caught on low docks or a bad SPA like some of last roun

That afternoon the talk turned to economy. mdk would be at 14.4k peasants once he'd built,. We discussed and made the point that getting hit early doesn't matter much, as long as you hit big yourself. I'd hit for 100 and been hit for 50 so just ~20 acres behind what others had gained

mdk was deciding what to build with his incoming land, and I pushed him to go all docks on his water, which would take him to 84. At that many docks you become almost impossible to sink for a long while in the roundWe discussed rax and he agreed he wouldn't go alchs until we were running. The sim had so many alchs, and that's exactly what made it so good. We were both really happy with it. But it had struggled during the first 24h

Then the threat board again. In mdk's view the lycs in 2 were already dead, leaving the lyc in 7 and the gob in 9. The merfolk in 1 (Sharkey) was falling behind. We had to kill off the last one to three FAs before anyone could relax.

I asked the realm to bear with us and keep their dominions nicely over-defended for another day or two. We didn't know exactly what top OP was, and it sucks getting hit when you believed you were safe. It especially sucks when your realm is feeding as you are trying to run.The three FAs were slowly choking the others out, and after that everyone in the realm could explore much more easily.

== Accelerando (The Fast Attacking Race) ==

The fast race had narrowed significantly, and we were confident we would end up dominating the round at this point, but still had some work to do.

Charles planned one more non-home build to push the 60-hour marker, and then mdk and I could take hour 72 by storm. mdk suggested setting up to snare the lyc in 7. Our opsers were already training spies for when stealing and draftee assassination opened: neruht and hytt at 200 spies, Adam too, and Sizz up to 100 spy/wiz.

By evening I was bigger than mdk, by two acres counting incoming, gloating commenced Sly said he should have gone FA so we would’ve had four. I told him it would have been epic, and reminded him I'd told him I had a good lyc sim for him before the round.

Right at hour change and still on his 12-hour train, Charles tripled Eddie IzZard for 48 acres. He hit at the start of the tick because he knew others would hit him 100% otherwise. The merf was heavy on caverns so itt was great for him,

The scav drop night, and the FW

At 2am server time, LOVE finally sent again. He took 48 acres from the spirit Boolong (#3).

mdk went straight to "Ok now is the time to make our play."

With his army out, LOVE was down on op The question was whether we could hit him when his land came in and his mods dropped. mdk calced him, he couldn't reach. I could get there, but it probably wasn't safe. Then an idea came to me: why doesn't Charles just scav-drop him? Charles had 700 draftees and 90k plat. Mdk agreed.

There was one problem. It was the middle of the night and Charles was asleep. We had to wake him before :30 in case his automations fired and trained something that ruined the plan. mris had his WhatsApp and started calling. jboy joked that there's no sleep in dom. Sly called it his trial by fire. When Charles came on, his first question was "Why you wake me now lol." His automations had gone off hours ago, so that worry was dispelled. The plan was to train nothing yet, then drop scavs 9 hours before the hit.

That started the debate about how Mdk and I should play it. Mdk wanted to go spec defence, because what good is OP if a second-tier dom hits you? My view was that we had to keep pressure on LOVE so he couldn't stack draftees. He either trains defence against Mdk and me, or stacks to defend against Charles.

Jboy asked whether we could guarantee a hit if LOVE did stack, and warned us not to get so fixated that we missed other safe hits. ((Jboy turned out to be right, but not in the way anyone expected: the scav drop ended up opening an even bigger target)).

In the end we split roles. mdk realised he'd land a huge hit regardless: big op close to 14k peasants,, ready to follow if Charles got him. I had good OP and kept pushing lizards and GNs to force LOVE and the lycs in 2 onto defence.

LOVE had dropped rats, as expected. Charles could produce 583 scavs, about OP.

That meant waking Charles again. He didn't want to swap his resources and asked if he could keep them for emergency forges. mdk wasn't having it: "Dump lumber please.." Boats were checked too. Charles had 48 free boats, and jboy and mris agreed that was enough.

mdk had been clear that the instructions needed to be simple: lumber to plat, max scavs, and leave ore out of it, because it's easy to mess up half asleep. But then, somebody said to trade ore anyway! Charles, half asleep, converted his ore to plat too and realised with a minute to go: "Ffs I fucked it up." mdk: "lol I told you guys don't tell ore. He's half asleep."

Then came the big question: did Charles actually have LOVE? mdk first thought the lyc might be safe, and I saw the opposite. mdk's diagnosis for the confusion was that I was sleep-deprived. He recalced and had Charles winning by about 100 with LOVE on full draftees.

Sly warned us not to write off realm 2. Their FW had 15% GN, the lycs could be strong behind that cover, and Thorfinn was bringing in OP. Sly also rebuilt his top OP sheet so it worked on mobile. It showed the top three OP in the game were all us, summed it up as a 3v1v1.

Mris and then Sly pointed out that the biggest dom in the game was hittable, the FW Wanker (#8),The FW was worth 178 acres to Charles against 130 from LOVE. jboy and Charles leaned toward the FW, since it was bigger and LOVE was pinned anyway.

mdk was firm: the FW only made sense if he could double him. Otherwise we kill the lyc. "40 land means nothing" compared with taking out a threat. I backed him on one point: I could only keep LOVE pinned while Charles stayed home. If Charles went out and LOVE trained all his draftees as rats, I couldn't get him.

The final ops settled it mdk admitted he'd miscounted them, sleep-deprived. So LOVE was safe for now. Charles joked that I could raze him.

jboy told Charles not to pretend to be sad, because he knew Charles wanted the FW hit all along.

The FW then made it easy. He explored and spent plat that tick, and his morale was at 96%, which dropped his DP Charles sent. He took 90 acres, gained 76 prestige, converted 1

jboy: "you're stealing the show." Charles thanked mris for the 3am wake-up call and told him to ring any time a hit like that came up.

mdk wanted to follow, but was short by less than 100 OP. That left LOVE pinned, and Thorfinn now had spec OP incoming we needed to watch closely. The new plan was to save SS to sink Thorfinn and let me all-in LOVE. I

=== The war with realm 2, and the LOVE trade ===

The war with realm 2 actually was because a small slip. The tick Charles hit the FW, he didn't get his rat training in, even though I'd told him to. It's a stressful situation, and he was new to this. In hindsight he was probably safe, because they would have needed a raze to get him. But with 200 acres incoming, we didn't want to risk it.

Realm 2 had been a thorn from the start. They hit us three times before any war existed: Rusla took 60 acres from Sly at hour 9, Thorfinn took 50 from me at hour 20, and Thorfinn took 40 from M4nus at hour 36. M4nus didn't even notice his until hour 68: "I forgot this. I'm going to get an early revenge!!!!!!"

We declared at hour 72 and sank Thorfinn straight away. On the wizard front, my plan had been to stay undefended if war came to us. With no wizards I'd be the easy, juicy fireball target, and that would hopefully steer people away from mdk and Charles. That's obviously a bit silly when you're the ones declaring war, but we hadn't expected to be the ones going there, haha. Charles had skipped wizards too, to put everything into (failing) smashing LOVE, so sadly he got fireballed straight away. mdk was well protected and came through fine.

At hour 75 I hit LOVE for 80 acres. By then I was clearly top OP, and LOVE was the only one who could trade with me. I decided to take that trade, since that was my job in this pack. To his credit, he had played it smart and had pushed scavs back on me. If he'd gone rats, like the lycs in 2 he would just have eaten the hit with no way to hit back. Six hours later he retaliated and took 64 acres back.

The plan was for mdk to double LOVE right there. mdk couldn't be hit all-in as FW, and after our earlier talk he had enough docks that he couldn't be sunk. His weak spot was that he had zero spies, and realm 2 snared him, so LOVE got away. In hindsight he said he should have pre-cast or amped ares. Still, the trade did its job. By hour 93 Charles was 100 acres ahead of LOVE, which is a big lead that early in the round.

=== Killing Floki ===

Floki (Ivetza), the lyc in 2. He pushed to around 31k OP and became the biggest threat on the board. So we FBed him down to about 6k peasants and snared him to zero wizard strength so he could never get Ares back up. Early on day 5 mdk landed a hit for 81 acres. Sizz summed up the channel: "What a team!" Charles then took a last war hit on Floki for 78 just before we canceled at the start of day 6. Ivetza had tried to suicide a bot in order to feed the competition and had his locked by the Rules Committee.

=== LOVE's last stand(written by Charles) ===

With the war over we switched to deterrence. The three FAs staggered their OP so LOVE and the Lizard in 4 could never train freely. On day 7 Charles full-sent into AAAA, a DE in LOVE's realm, for 76, and ate a fireball storm in return. His wizard guilds and reflect held. Charles: "its one verry very mad DE."

On day 8 mdk spotted a merfolk in 7 Here Comes the Rain Again (Esthera) with low SPA, about 1,200 draftees. With GNs coming in that tick, the whole realm stabbed draftees. Charles hit for 103. His read afterwards: "and now we have idea which top explorers are dropping… and the answer is they all will be 😄"

Day 10 was a huge day for us and it seemed like nothing could go wrong at this point. Charles hit the Icekin in 4 Scratch's Cat (Mithrandir), for 122, and just two minutes later M4nus landed the killshot on the Fountain of Youth: 17,354 damage after a cyclone barrage from the demons. Sly: "massive fucking hit on a competitive icer, and they get foy all within minutes." Charles and mdk both crossed about 70k OP with GN drops.

On day 11, after Charles had taken 133 off "Young Wife" in 4 overnight, LOVE did something nobody expected. He had looked abandoned all morning. Then he suicided a full WW send into jboy's teched gnome for 94. Sly: "this is deliberate." Charles all-inned LOVE for 109 that afternoon, and Sly called it: "FA race is officially over."

LOVE rebuilt, then suicided into jboy again on day 12 for 97, and mdk all-inned him that evening for 112. On day 13 mdk caught him on an Ares drop for 100 more, his third in a row. jboy: "3 in a row for oklahoma." mdk: "Why won't he just die." But he was indeed dead.

== Harmony (Midround Consolidation) ==

=== Day 13: Burnout, and a Kobold ===

So the FA race was over before the end of the second week of the round. We had a Liz in 4 that was pushing OP, but we knew this would be temporary. He de-converted two days later. I was chasing a large FWer for a few days here, but he kept being one step ahead of me. Anyway, after the FA race I was a little burned out. I felt exhausted and hits were getting harder to find.

I reached out to a realmie, Sly, who is a very experienced and very helpful vet. We were lucky to have him random in!

"I'm Losing momentum and motivation here, if You get 10 Mins. Could you see if there's any guys close I can hit. The Liz and FW tricks really took the steam out of my whistle"

Sly gave me one of his nifty inspirational pep talks and within minutes found an underdefended Kobold to hit. This hit almost reset me. I slept well that night and was onto bigger things the next day.

2026-08-21 16:48:41 Victorious on the battlefield, Britney Baby (#10) conquered 119 land from Shelter from the storm (#7).

The same night, LOVE finally abandoned. Gabbe had told the channel "he probably abandons in 27 minutes," and LOVE was gone at 22:06. Sizz: "nailed it." The next morning Thorfinn abandoned too. Both of realm 2's early thorns and LOVE were gone inside 24 hours.

=== Day 14: Calypso ===

Huge shoutout to neruht here.

At this stage I was ahead and feeling very confident, but because I'd hit 15 or so hours earlier my OP was diminished. Randomly, neruht decided to rev everyone in my range, five of them or so. I came onto my PC and had a look, thinking it was a wasted venture, but just making notes on when these guys dropped Ares.

Then I saw how close it was. neruht did the math: 1,005 draftees now, plus 348 incoming, minus 500 killed, left 853. One Fortnight Stand With Calypso (#5) was on 106,079.69 total defense, 2.35% vs temples, with his 16 phoenixes. I posted "we need to stab 500 so i worked out 15 stabs is enough, we have over 20 stabs here" in my broken, rushed, excited English.

But it was a weird timezone, and neruht didn't have any SS. Neither did Gabbe or I. Thankfully, after a bit of spam and pings, slz and hytt came on to save the day. This was all organised within 20 minutes at 06:00, which is midnight or later for the Americans. With one minute to the tick slz asked who we were stabbing, but we told him with plenty of seconds left and the hour change approached. Stabbing complete, we CS'd again, checked drafts, revved, I asked for one more rev, and action.

2026-08-22 09:02:00 Victorious on the battlefield, Britney Baby (#10) conquered 160 land from One Fortnight Stand With Calypso (#5).

Back to back, putting me so far ahead.

=== Day 16: The Wanker ===

A very interesting hit, and much harder than it seems.

After the earlier disappointment of not being able to hit the 8 FWer, because of the chance of someone coming into range to smack me, this hit was back on the cards. Since then, though, he had been massing DP. So the planning started. I stopped training, put Fool's Gold on in the middle of the day and drafted up. The beauty here is that only about five doms had me in range. They did kill draftees at 80 or so per shot, but they soon ran out of SS, and they were in different realms, so it wasn't exactly a joint effort.

The play was simple but cute: train big garou before the land came in, take two land bonus rezones for swamps, and destroy the 30 WGs I had from the earlier war into temples for a decent defence-reduction bonus. Followed by mass spec OP to ensure the hit.

So I bountied up all ops, including rev. They got done and I used the bot to track. Then, after a quick discussion with mdk, it looked like I might breach my 5:4. I told him I had it handled, but maybe I didn't, so I did spec OP and rats. Then I rechecked the actual ops I'd requested earlier, either that tick or the tick before.

WOW, the guy had no Ares! So I spammed the channel: can someone look at this, am I seeing crazy stuff here? Then Sly gracefully slapped me down along the lines of "calc it yourself, big boy, you're trying to win."

So I requested another rev and prepared my hit. As the Liz hadn't sent yet I could full send, so I put my self spell on for extra converts, and after one more Ares, I full sent!

2026-08-23 19:08:33 Victorious on the battlefield, Britney Baby (#10) conquered 161 land from ⬇️ Is an absolute Wanker ! (#8).

What looked like an Ares-drop hit... well, it was an Ares-drop hit, but I did have him 9 hours later for sure. I promise.

=== The war debate (team) ===

Charles went back to the Wanker the next evening for 144 more. That same day brought the round's big strategy argument. Charles wanted to use our three demons to wipe out the competition realm by realm: "Winning isn't enough." mdk, Gabbe and jboy talked him down. War would upset the balance, where the second-tier doms were busy pinning each other, it risked the Fountain, and it would get Gabbe and Sizz fireballed out of training. Gabbe answered with a "let them eat cake" gif. Charles took it well, and mris added the caveat that we were trying to win the round, not collect style points.

=== Stagnation (Days 17–20, team) ===

mdk's plan for the next stretch ("Do we want to stagnate game") was to skip his daily bonus, keep the Lizard in 4 pinned in his range so he could never send, and make him burn his population on chams and DP while Charles ballooned toward 46k peasants and 500 DMs. mdk was openly willing to sacrifice his own dom to freeze the board. Björn in 2 abandoned on day 17.

It paid off on day 19. The Lizard was about to get hit all in and decided to try and send and not let mdk get land but mdk was faster hit him for 128 and Norm (#9) might have tried to hit him first because it was a short time in between the hits or he thought he was safe to hit, which left Norm open. Gabbe took 155 off Norm (scratch) Gabbe:"not bad for a dead dom" Norm abandoned the next day which was to bad be was actually strong there and could have offered some threat, the Lizard was finished, and mdk went back to farm the Wanker for 160.

=== Days 21–22: Bottom feeds #1 (back to Charles) ===

On day 21 mris made the call: "both of them are at 5:4. the time is now."

I was always very reluctant to bottom feed. However, I knew I had a decent average spy ratio of 0.4, which could help mitigate the risk. I simply ran out of targets, and the guys I was failing to target kept casting Ares or building a buffer defence against snares. Nothing much to say other than that I greedily took four. The first was a decent land grab, and that guy had kept swarming me forever, so I owed him one. The human was a semi-threat, so we thought it would be good to tap him.

2026-08-29 05:55:18 Victorious on the battlefield, Britney Baby (#10) conquered 145 land from ᛋᛚᛁᛁᛒᚾᛁᚱ aka Sleipnir (#2). 2026-08-29 17:36:58 Victorious on the battlefield, Britney Baby (#10) conquered 84 land from Registered to Round 51 ⬇️ (#8). 2026-08-30 05:26:47 Victorious on the battlefield, Britney Baby (#10) conquered 99 land from AAAA (#7). 2026-08-30 17:37:28 Victorious on the battlefield, Britney Baby (#10) conquered 92 land from Joe Riogan (#9).

(Team note: that last one was Disco's dom, the one Gabbe had hit 12 hours out at the very start of the round.) Charles then went back into guard for a week, around 650 DMs and 60k peasants: "Come back as a monster in a weeks time 😜".

=== Day 27: Vishakmar ===

Me and my main ops boy neruht had been working on this guy for about 10 days, if not longer. He's a 12-hour caster. We did have a chance to catch him once before, but I didn't pre-cast Ares, so I messed up my 5:4. Anyway, patience is key, and 12-hour casting is a dangerous game.

We voiced up for this hit as well.

2026-09-04 06:00:25 Victorious on the battlefield, Britney Baby (#10) conquered 247 land from Vishakmar (#4).

(Team note: "FUCKING MERKED." Vishakmar explored out of range that same hour and abandoned that evening.)

=== Day 28: The freeze breaks ===

mdk had spent days as the plug, pinning the merfolk Da Hong Pao in 3 while the converts caught up. Early on day 28 he finally sent, 169 acres off Prawn Bernthal (#1, merfolk): "Community has been unleashed." mris landed his first convert hit that afternoon. In between, Charles spent three ticks locked over a same-name account a friend had registered. The RC cleared him and re-ran his ticks.

=== Day 30: The Gabbabomb ===

Gabbe just sat and trained 5:4 to hit someone. Then Koi Leonard (Weaser), the Icekin in 1, became top OP out of realm (240k, heading to 260k) and spec dropped Sizz. Sinking him wasn't realistic, Gabbe sent his leftover lizardmen into Koi for 231 acres. Gabbe: "Haha they were ready." mris: "gabbe has now killed 5 threats." Adam: "Fastest deconversion in history." The price was about a thousand acres: six doms from realms 1, 2 and 3 fed on Gabbe in the same tick. Charles: "I would literally walk my dominion off a cliff to follow general Gabbe."

=== Day 31: Bottom feeds #2 ===

With no other targets in sight we opted to BF again. This time I just picked the two biggest I could hit and went back into the guard. It took so long to build my acres after the first BF that I was keen to cap it at two hits.

2026-09-08 04:45:29 Victorious on the battlefield, Britney Baby (#10) conquered 200 land from Prawn Michaels (#1). 2026-09-08 16:51:53 Victorious on the battlefield, Britney Baby (#10) conquered 173 land from Tie guan yin (#3).

=== Day 35: The Downrightdave snare ===

So I found a snare opportunity hit. This merfolk hadn't been in range for long, and I tracked that he was letting Ares drop to 6/5/4, so I thought we had a good chance. After we math'd it, it all seemed very possible. The nice thing was that the merf wasn't in any guard, so we had 10 or 11 guys who could take part in the snaring. Also, thanks to the greedy explorer vibe we'd seen this round, his ratios were around 0.4 (about to get even worse!).

We swapped monarchs and voiced up. Around six of us were in voice, with another few in Discord and a couple around to sustain the snare. After a quick rev and war declaration we spammed snare. I got an instant server error but managed to get to 25 SS in about 3 seconds. The re-rev showed Ares 5, so it was successful! We maintained the snare with plenty of SS still available, soon to be needed.

It was an annoying time for me: 10pm, past my usual 9pm bedtime. My wife wondered why I was still awake. Little did she know it was for a big Ares-drop hit in Open Dominion!

So I got new ops just after 10pm, and where I should have had him by 4k or so, he was 5k over my OP! Shock! He'd released his full wizards.

Problem 1: his castle. He'd invested into castle and it was huge, so we started to lightning bolt it.

Problem 2: his spies. He still had some, and we obviously didn't want any chance of a bounce, so we assassinated a few. He released spies, we killed some more, and he released all his spies. He was now at a 0 ratio for spies and wizards, lol. We even had our FWer, with a terrible spy ratio, assassinate a thousand draftees on top. He went from around 10k total (after the multiple releases) to around 3k.

New ops showed we had him by 2k. Fair play and nice try. Thankfully our active realm saved the day!

2026-09-11 21:27:27 Victorious on the battlefield, Britney Baby (#10) conquered 257 land from Downrightdave Chappelle (#9).

=== Keeping the Fountain ===

mdk, Sizz and mris all landed 200+ hits the same evening. The war with 9 came with a cost, though. While we were at war, realm 9 cycloned our Fountain down to 35,044 of 250,000. On day 36 we finished it off and rebuilt it ourselves ("wonder at a mil now," per mdk), then canceled the war. We held the Fountain from day 10 to the end of the round.

== Grand Finale (The Endgame) ==

=== Day 37: Time for an all-in (Charles) ===

We noticed almost instantly that the merf in 3 had released all his wizards and spies to spec OP for a hit, and we identified our demons as the likely targets. But what mdk spotted first was that this might be the day the win could be sealed. The merf would enter my range and I could potentially all-in him. He had no ops on me at this time and would have none when he arrived home either, with no spies or wizards.

(Team note: mdk's call that afternoon was "Merfolk hitting our demon pretty much wins round for us.")

The funny thing is that when his specs dropped, our guys started assassinating the demon with the higher DP (by about 5k). It saved our demon from having to release around 5k spies and wizards anyway. So that demon made himself safe, but just before hour change more draftees were killed on the other one, and the hit happened.

2026-09-13 18:53:45 Da Hong Pao (#3) invaded fellow dominion Charli XCX (#10) and captured 376 land.

A loss for neruht, but a huge gain for our realm.

For this hit I took my daily bonus, rezoned to temple, and proceeded to drop spec and draft up to increase my 5:4. The hit was very easy. We calculated a full invest and release of mermen, but I killed a ton of draftees too, and so did a couple of others online at the time. I sent roughly 9k over, as there were no other attackers in my range. Revenge hit complete.

2026-09-14 06:26:17 Victorious on the battlefield, Britney Baby (#10) conquered 270 land from Da Hong Pao (#3).

(Team note: mdk, several drinks deep: "I might be drunk and stupid but I am a fucking oracle.")

=== "The only way to lose" ===

After that the round went to stall. Nobody wanted to send first, and mris stood down to act as a feeder and suicide insurance for Charles. Charles wanted to bottom-feed twice more to widen the gap. mdk put a stop to it: "The only way to lose is us attacking… Charles does not bottom feed now… Literally only way to lose this."

=== Day 41: Another BF, this time a war BF (Charles) ===

Realm 4 declared on us, seemingly to sink our FW so they could free up their attackers. We think! Of course we responded with a mutual!

However, only their DE sent, and he was already safe to do so? Anyway, we calced that I could leave guard and make a safe war hit. We first aimed for one of their merfs, but I would have had to send some WW, so we decided against it and grabbed the UD instead.

There was a potential chance of three razes from different realms, and then an Icer with a mutual-war suicide on me, so we sank him too.

2026-09-17 19:59:38 Victorious on the battlefield, Britney Baby (#10) conquered 272 land from Secret channel club member (#4).

(Team note: mdk had been sunk, fireballed and plagued, and bottom-fed AAAA for 219 to escape before the mutual. Gabbe the next morning: "8300 wins rounds." Charles: "I think I'm done hitting for you round." Both wars were canceled on day 42.)

=== Victory lap (Days 43–47) ===

One dom with real OP was still near Charles: Koi Leonard (Weaser), the Icekin in 1. On the evening of day 42 Koi sent twice, taking 204 from Siren's Open Mic Night and 229 from "wants to attack you!" in 8, which left him light at home. Overnight we set up the same all-in play that had worked on the merfolk. Charles would all-in Koi at hour change, before his conquered land and a mountain rezone could lift his DP. Adam, hytt and neruht were staged to stab draftees, and mdk was on standby with a raze. Sly ran Koi's DP under the rezone assumptions while Gabbe ran the bot calcs. Charles released spies and wizards to be sure he had enough scavs incoming to break. At hour change on day 43 he took 315 acres. Adam: "Holy Shit!" neruht: "didnt even need the raze 😎" Gabbe explained why: "the guy did not have enough plat to even rezone." A few hours later mdk said it outright: "win is honestly secured."

That afternoon jboy did his end-of-round suicide duty. He chose the DE in 4 (Apologize) over the Icer and took 380, then got fed back three times: 212 to Show me your cat, 222 to Scratch's cat isn't real and 144 to Apologize. His verdict: "Nice, they denied #1 from hitting me xD". That evening mdk took 282 off Show me your cat, the gob in 4: "Should Secure 1/2 atleast".

From there it was about not losing. On day 44 Charles itched to drop out of guard for more land, and the realm shut it down. jboy: "If u wanna lose, go 😆". Gabbe: "You are not safe." hytt, who had been ready to war for the realm all round, was pointed at a personal-best finish instead. Gabbe: "Let's get you a record finish. Thank you for always being ready to war for the realm 🙏"

The last real jolt came on day 45. mris's Ares dropped, and Koi sent the moment it did, taking 253 acres. We scrambled to get mris back online before a double-tap, but almost nobody could reach his DP, and it stayed a single hit. After that, Gabbe's instruction was the whole plan: "only build spec dp now." On day 46 the rest of the server fed each other.

We went out with a bang. On the final evening we declared on realm 4 one last time. We waited for wizard strength to reach 100%, then sank their Icekin's to limit any last second 5:4 chaos. neruht: "burned 16k of his pes lol". hytt: "He is down to 8862 boats".

Offense disabled early, at 03:47 server time on the last day. neruht: "wow early disable". M4nus: "Winning realm!" slz: "Really well played round guys. Amazing teamwork. Best realm I've been in." jboy: "Finally in a runaway realm (First time) haha"

Charles finished at 9,070 acres, about 1,400 clear of the next dominion, with mdk on 7,515 in third.

== Curtain Call (Afterword) ==

A note from Charles below.

I’d like to thank my pack, and my realm.

Firstly to Gabbe for letting me in. Considering I joined to be the Opsplorer as they didn’t have room for another attacker in the pack! Then the rest of the pack, mris, mdk, jboy.

Almost every move, every decision, and all long term planning came from serious debate. Not just with the pack with our realm vets too, Sly in particular.

The rest of the realm, starting with our 3 demons (Adam, neruht, hytt), plus Sly, Sizz, m4, and slz all playing such a pivotal role.

Particular thanks to mdk for being my full round running mate. To sit and stall while I BF and grew takes a real top man. Hope one day I can return the favour.

To my ares drop voice pal neruht, wouldn’t have made half my mid round hits without your activity and teamwork.

And once again to Gabbe for his guidance, sacrifice and patience. <3

OpenDominion - User contributions [en]

Round 51 Win Story