Editing That teenage chick with the snarky cat

Hey there folks, Rush here with another roundfail. It was like the wacky races this round, with all sorts of mad hijinks. Cartoon villain Wurstmeyer and his cult of death lemmings was a particular highlight, but we also saw some great competitive play, some completely insane non-competitive play, and ultimately a win from a pack that was well overdue one. 

This round I packed with Rio, Zedijar, Unfather and AgFx; an unlikely assortment of characters, partly given Zedi's blood feud with both myself and Rio, stemming from ancient grudges (I blopped him and Rio hit him) - but it was a dynamic I thought would be pretty unique, especially given Rio, Zedi and Unfather all have packs they traditionally play with each round. 

We landed with a mix of people who joined discord and were active (King Jota), people who joined discord but were relatively quiet (Cosula, BlackyBlack), and people who think discord is the devil and none shall worship at its altar without sacrificing thy soul to the ninth circle of hell (Rubicon and the "@ss" pack). This led to us going old school and relying on council posts to coordinate the realm in war, stop them from blindly feeding threats (which didn't always work but happened a lot less as a result) and offer build advice to which they were surprisingly receptive. 

Our pack theme this round was "vague descriptions of witches" or something, so I was "That teenage chick with the snarky cat" (Sabrina the Teenage Witch). It was originally 'sarky' cat, until AgFx highlighted that it just looked like a typo to non-Brits. 

I went Icekin, a race I haven't played in forever, and finished on 7,083 acres. I finished 7th overall. 

WEEK 1 - DEJA VU

Stop me if you've heard this one:

By the end of day 7, the Fast Attacker (FA) threats were out of range of most blackoppers. For anyone paying attention to these roundfails, this is a fairly consistent window round after round: you have about 48 hours to nuke them into the dirt. That window is really tight. Bringing in towers and ratios while FAs bring in mods and op is the lethal tightrope all early blackoppers walk, and I'm not even sure it's worth the risk - but it also means that if you don't strike them early as a blopper, you might not get to strike at all. This round we had two FA Firewalker threats (and no FAs of our own), Salas of the Caribbean and Addendum A: Add an additional Adder, so punching one of them meant helping the other. And nobody wants to play kingmaker*.

(Note from future Rush: I wrote this in Week 1 before it became trendy to play kingmaker realms!)

Our pack concept this round was designed with the FA blops window problem in mind, and we had decided to do something a little different and try to run more efficiently in the early game to try and keep up with FAs at the midgame. Unfather had pitched this idea to me during the draft round, but I ended up not running with it after the dastardly Wurstmeyer vetoed him in my selection. This round, Rio had similar designs in mind, and I was keen to give the idea a solid shot, so we set about assembling our A-Team, drafting together our ragtag band of misfits that you usually wouldn't see come together outside of a draft round.

Unfather would play a superfast Goblin blopsplorer, I would play a decent-paced Icekin blopsplorer, Zedijar would play a fast attacking Firewalker and deconvert into blopsplorer (hoping to reap the prestige benefits later), AgFx would play a slower Nox blopsplorer and try as best he could to keep up, and Rio would play a Wood Elf late game nightmare. 

It was also our hope that other realms might hold the FA realms in check a little bit, but this round also saw a reduction in realm sizes coupled with unfortunate realm assignment for many of the regular blackoppers, who found themselves in ghettos or in numbers too small to make a difference. And despite the playerbase being gifted with Sly's wisdom that you only need two bloppers to "stop a runaway dead in their tracks", no one seemed keen to put his unorthadox teachings into practice. And so, there were no meaningful wars in the first week. 

This wasn't for a lack of trying on my part, mind you. I'm all for testing the limits. Pushing boundaries. Exposing charlatan mathmagicians and their lunatic fringe theories. After debating the effectiveness of two bloppers vs a fast attacker in the discord for what felt like hours, I suggested to my own realm that we war the top FA (Salas), because as luck would have it, we had two bloppers in range at the time. 

They threatened to have me removed as Monarch. And that was the end of that discussion.

2023-08-10 21:59:31	Addendum A: Add an additional Adder (#6) (Rury) invaded I am not a racist, I have nox friends (#12) (Damdred) and captured 69 land.

2023-08-12 11:59:37	Salas of the Caribbean (#13) (Chunk) invaded I am not a racist, I have nox friends (#12) and captured 74 land.

These two hits took Adder slightly out of my range where I would be able to jump in with a land bonus if needed to war them. But I didn't want to war Adder because he had no FHs. I've got a new policy of targeting players who specifically build FHs and wanted to hit Salas if we got the opportunity. Because fuck Forest Havens. 

Rio had a different view and wanted to hit Adder, since he was a hit ahead and had upcoming support from their converted Dwarf, iii) Preheat oven at 30000K to summon Quetzalcoatl (Oment).

In the end, we did neither of those things, because the motorheads in Realm #2 got in the way.

WEEK 2 - THE FIVE POINT PLAN

The Legend of Zooj continued on this round and everyone without exception was happy to see him return; making hits, taking hits, blackopping, giffing and generally being an all-around cool guy. Unfortunately his arch-nemesis, the snivelling Semo had gone into hiding, so the playerbase wasn't able to pick sides this round. Not that any self-respecting player would pick Team Semo... or would they?

Somehow, King Jota was completely ignorant to the legend of Zooj and, ''even after I explained it all to him'', still wanted to hit Zooj. He made the uncomfortable demand of our realm that that we go get Zooj's ops, and Unfather readily collected them. But alas, Zooj had too much defence for the mighty King Jota! In fact he and Rio were both forced to settle for hits elsewhere.

2023-08-13 21:47:23	a hero is born (#5) (King Jota) invaded Blighted Mountain (#2) and captured 50 land.

2023-08-18 09:02:09	Red haired one with the flute in Buffy (#5) (Rio) invaded Blighted Mountain (#2) and captured 56 land.

Turned out Blighted Mountain was Semo. King Jota and Rio would never admit it, but they were clearly on Team Zooj all along.

In addition to blackops being dead in the water in the early game, the RNG gods also blessed this round with two anti-blops Wonders - the Ivory Tower and the Underground Society. And the realm with Adder (who was top op), #6, took the Ivory Tower, while Cronel's realm, #1, took the Underground Society - presumably for safe-keeping. It would later fall into the hands of #11 who would ultimately win the round, though, so it is questionable whether Cronel can be trusted to look after these things in future. 

Over in #5, we had a plan. 

What we wanted to do was take down the Great Market, then war #6 while most of us were just under Adder's range, then send the Ivory Tower back to #0 (with the Market simultaneously ensuring we didn't get stuck with the IT and acting as a Wonder #6 probably wouldnt want), then fireball his support, then congratulate ourselves on a job well done. It was a five point plan. You can't go wrong with five point plans. 

Unfortunately, realm #2 sniped the Great Market just as we were close to taking it, ruining our five point plan, and then sat on it like a bunch of plums instead of using it in the 4D super-high-level cerebral chess game the way we had planned for it. They actually just used it to boost their economies. What a bunch of short-sighted losers, right? 

''Italic text''2023-08-14 20:10:00	The Great Market has been destroyed and rebuilt by Muscle Beach (#2).''

Realm #2 was at war with Realm #10, so we decided to wait and see if they would try and take the Great Market, and if they didn't, we'd war #2 and take it off them. We agreed to decide the following day. It wasn't quite a five point plan, but sometimes you have to make do. 

While I was asleep, the fiends in #10 immediately cancelled their war with #2 and then declared on #1.

''2023-08-14 23:11:58	What can we say? We're Warheads (#10) has CANCELED war against Muscle Beach (#2).''

''2023-08-14 23:12:31	What can we say? We're Warheads (#10) has declared WAR on Barbieland (#1).''

And while I was still asleep, Realm #3 declared on Realm #2! Rio wasn't pleased. He was fuRious that I'd chosen to sleep, and said in his usual pack, whenever there's a round on Oment hooks his eyelids up to a car battery and a motion sensor so whenever they start to droop from fatigue, he gets an electric shock. He doesn't miss a thing that way. I said that doesn't sound healthy, but Rio just scoffed and said "that's why you don't have what it takes to almost win three rounds in a row". If that's what it takes, I don't want to almost win anything. I got electrocuted in Portugal once when I tried to turn off a bathroom light in the hotel I was staying in. Not only did it hurt like a motherfucker, but it meant I had to spend two weeks pissing in the dark.

''2023-08-15 09:59:50	̿' ̿'\̵͇̿̿\з=(◕_◕)=ε/̵͇̿̿/'̿'̿ ̿ (#3) has declared WAR on Muscle Beach (#2).''

This war scuppered our plans again, because we assumed they were after the Wonder. So we instead warred Realm 9 and took the Wayfarer's Outpost.

''2023-08-15 18:59:42	Eye of newt and milk of Erix (#5) has declared WAR on Damn the broccoli! Damn you! And damn the Wright Brothers! (#9).''

It was a nice, neat, stress-free Wonder takedown for a change, with attackers doing most of the damage and even one of our anti-discord dudes joining in on the action. 

''2023-08-17 17:59:58	The Wayfarer's Outpost has been destroyed and rebuilt by Eye of newt and milk of Erix (#5).''

Shortly afterwards, Realm #3 cancelled their war with #2 without even making a scratch on the Great Market. You might be thinking "what the fuck?" here, and if you are, congratulations, that's the correct reaction. 

''2023-08-17 18:32:09	̿' ̿'\̵͇̿̿\з=(◕_◕)=ε/̵͇̿̿/'̿'̿ ̿ (#3) has CANCELED war against Muscle Beach (#2).''

Realm #3 then declared on #6, the top dogs, and went after the Ivory Tower instead.

''2023-08-17 18:33:56	̿' ̿'\̵͇̿̿\з=(◕_◕)=ε/̵͇̿̿/'̿'̿ ̿ (#3) has declared WAR on #12 Turn the milk into cheese (#6).''

Once again #3 stymied our plans. With them at war with #6 and working on taking down the Ivory Tower, we no longer had a need to do it. Which was a shame because I'd just moved into Adder's range, ready to rain down the fireballs after the Ivory Tower fell. But at this point in the round, both Adder and Salas had been killing each other softly, with each holding the other back from running away, meaning that our priorities were starting to shift away from the soon to be former top ops. For once the fast attackers were doing an adequate job of keeping each other in check, and we had no need to insert ourselves into the equation.

Our sights were instead focused more towards the up-and-coming tiers of efficient players. Rio identified the spirit, Gotta Grab Her By The Acres! in #12 (SwampFox), as a potential late-game threat, and King Jota agreed, so #12 became our war target instead. 

He had no Forest Havens. We had bloppers well in range. It was my lucky day. 

WEEK 3 - DOWNING SPIRITS

Despite the lack of Forest Havens we decided not to fireball him. Instead, we decided his castle could use some redecorating so we lit him up with lightning bolts instead, doing nearly 3mil damage. When we warred, he was already out having hit a bot just before the war, and his Ares was low so we snared him as well. I heard some grumbling later that it was lame to snare someone so another realm could hit him, but although we knew that was a possibility (and still didn't care), the main reasons we snared him were because A) it was easy and B) it kept his self spells off, particularly Energy Mirror. I dont want to be lightning bolting my own castle, thank you very much.

Still, not being able to cast Ares probably made him quite nervous since he was on questionable dp without it, but - and this has happened every single time I've snared someone without anyone in our realm lined up to make a hit - nobody noticed that he was snared for about 12 hours. Other realms just don't pay that much attention to external wars 99% of the time. They look to see initial damage sometimes, to see who is blackopping who and with what, but that's usually about it.

SwampFox brought in spies to counter our permasnare and we eventually had to call it off, and the first spell he cast was Ares. We stopped the assault and recharged our batteries, waited until the next day, and fireballed the their big merf, Do You Even Sim, Bro? (Wurstmeyer), before cancelling the war.

As wars go, it went pretty well - they didn't attack our wonder and we knocked the wind out of their spirit's sails. 

AgFx, a secret Team Semo agent, had meanwhile had decided to cast a whole ton of duration spells on Zooj, who also had Energy Mirror up. Zooj lived up to his legendary status with a 100% reflect rate, and AgFx found himself quaked, flooded, plagued and swarmed for his efforts. 

AgFx, who had spent half the round dropping Ares on not-quite-enough-dp, now had all negative spells on him and still hadn't cast any self spells. Zedijar, who was slowly getting more and more irate at this consistently cavalier attitude to danger, asked AgFx for about the 15th time to at least cast Ares before his blood pressure spiked. 

The goblin in #8 then caught our attention when he pulled a 9-hour on two attacks, which was going to put him on big land and position him as one of the big contenders.

''2023-08-23 01:48:36	Skyraider of Kher (5/5) (#8) (Gothia) invaded Peaceful Druidic Society (#0) and captured 102 land.''

''2023-08-23 10:00:21	Skyraider of Kher (5/5) (#8) invaded Mojo Dojo Casa House (#1) (Saccora) and captured 97 land.''

We started gearing up to declare war before his second wave of land came in, which would mean we could still utilise AgFx for the initial volley of fireballs - any later and he'd be out of range. But then the merfolk we'd been toasting at the end of our war with #12 put himself back at the top of our target list:

''2023-08-23 17:59:27	Do You Even Sim, Bro? (#12) invaded Lord Ians Mighty Muscles (#0) and captured 113 land.''

Our realm discord agreed that #12 looked like a strong realm and was the bigger threat, so we altered our plans to go after them. As luck would have it, AgFx would be 1 acre in range a few ticks later, so that's when we planned to have some smoked haddock.

As soon as the 48h cooldown with #12 was over, we warred them again and started fireballing the Merfolk.

Not long after that, Wurst was in my DMs accusing me of playing kingmaker, since we'd gone after him instead of the goblin in #8, who we had been considering. Wurst had evidently assessed our realm to be of no consequence - but we were playing for the win. We had a Rio and we had a King Jota, which is like having two Aces up your sleeve. 

Wurst accuses me of blackopping him pretty much every time he gets railroaded by blops so this wasn't out of the ordinary. But the last two rounds he's accused me, it has had nothing to do with me. On this occasion however, he was right. Not about the kingmaker part, but that I was blackopping him. It would in fact be Wurst that would go on to play kingmaker a few weeks later, suiciding and gifting his acres to whoever's majesty he favoured, then instigating a mass abandon of realm #12 like some cult leader convincing everyone to drink his hypocrisy-flavoured Kool Aid. 

Unfortunately for us, although we had three in range, we did fairly trivial damage to him - Wurst's RNG mojo wasn't quite at Zooj levels but it was close enough that he was DMing me smug gifs of all his reflections. Unfather and Zedijar seemed to eat most of their own fireballs. Only my fireballs flew true, with around four reflected the whole war. That's because I'm a better blopper, you see. A cut above. Eventually you just evolve beyond the RNG.

We cancelled the war at the 48h mark to assess our options. Zedijar, who had huge ratios but not enough towers to make use of them, was annoyed that his economy was starting to lag, and wanted some time to focus on efficiency. It seemed he had not quite grasped the essence of blopping: only once you are standing in the ruins of your own economy can you truly ascend to blops master status. To blop effectively, one must flirt with self-destruction!

We didn't give poor Zed any time to recover; in a little over a day we were at war with #2 instead.

Realm #10 was already at war with them but we weren't sure who their target was - couldn't see any damage to the most obvious threat, the goblin Rangoon Red 1967 Shelby Cobra, but then he moved from RG to EG and all but one player in #10 was then out of range, and the only player still in range, Fun Dip (Guydoonster), looked at that stage to be an efficiency lycan explorer and was probably not particularly useful for blops, let alone doing them solo. #2 had also been in a bunch of wars already by this point, and somehow none of the warring realms had noticed that they had a pretty sweet economic Wonder - The Great Market - and it had been left untouched through every war. We hoped on this occasion #10 might actually take it off them. 

Our target, however, was absolutely the goblin in #2, Rangoon Red 1967 Shelby Cobra (CragHack). 

''2023-08-27 11:55:32	Tongue of rat and goblin poo, we've got some magic just for you! (#5) has declared WAR on Muscle Beach (#2).''

We had figured he would be in the process of or would have joined EG by the time we warred, but we had three blackoppers in range anyway: Unfather, Zed, and me. Zed didn't have enough mana from his comparatively low towers to full volley, so AgFx (who was out of range) had to scout some mana targets for him before we warred. We also checked to see if he had any FHs the day before, and he had none, but when we checked him again the next day he had the cowardly and predictable meta 3%, which made fireballs pointless as it took us down to effectively just #TwoBloppers in range. So we warred them and electrocuted his ass instead. 

Meanwhile, King Jota was plotting and scheming to hit LarsILLvania, but was a mere 45 op short.

"Surely we can kill 40 odd draftees!" Unfather cried. 

Zedijar, with an SPA of 0.8, gave it a valiant try: "Five tries and 170 spies dead."

170 spies dead! It seemed Lars had built his entire dominion out of spies.

"Lars is a tough nut to crack," King Jota mused, stroking his goatee and pouring himself another brandy. "We'll need to send in the big guns."

"Yes," Zedijar agreed. "We need... @AgFx."

But AgFx is a man aloof from pings. You can try it, but chances are he's busy playing bass, or on a wine-tasting tour in the Swiss Alps, or programming some crazy OD tool, or playing an old school board game, or - and I blame myself for adding this further obstacle to reaching him - absorbed in Baldur's Gate 3, which he picked up after I recommended it on the Rush Hour podcast. 

And alas, AgFx could not be reached on this occasion. It turned out he was too busy attempting to build the world's largest gundam model out of toothpicks at the local community centre to raise money for disadvantaged children. Or something like that, I forget exactly what he said he was doing. 

Tossing what was left of his brandy into the fireplace, King Jota said: "Blast it all! If you want something done, do it yourself."

And so King Jota stole 1,000 lumber off some sleeping wood elf and invested it into forges. "That's 10 more op," he said, dusting off his hands. Then he pulled out a huge stack of plat and threw it straight into the forge, literally burning money to boost his offence. "And 20k plat puts me 2 points above his dp."

''2023-08-27 19:34:11	Victorious on the battlefield, a hero is born (#5) conquered 92 land from LarsILLvania (#10).''

And with that, King Jota lit his pipe, reclined in his chair, and said: "That's why they call me the King."

He wasn't actually the King, of course - I was. But sometimes you've got to just let people have their moment. 

The next day was also to be a bad one for Zedijar, who woke up to find that Wurst was coming for his booty, having dropped a load of specs and mods right after Zed had calced him - and had him by about 4k. Zed was worried he wouldn't have the time necessary to release spywiz to try and force a bounce if Wurst came after him. 

Zedijar: "Ugh, I feel bad knowing I'm gonna feed them."

Rush: "Well on the bright side - unlike me - you don't have to live with the absolute certainty that you'll be receiving a smug gif from Wurst in your DMs in a few hours. Really, when you think about it, I'm the victim here."

Wurst and Zed played a bit of cat and mouse, with Wurst taking ops, Zed investing and spywiz releasing, Wust checking him again, etc. But the process did at least set Wurst on to considering other targets, and he found one with better landtypes so hit them instead. 

King Jota was also having a stressful time. A large number of his troops had starved because he hadn't been feeding them. I pointed out that it was fairly easy to avoid, as all he needed to do was trade for some food. He told me to stop being a smart arse.

To cap off a relatively bad day, Cosula disgraced himself: 2023-08-28 19:05:22	Victorious on the battlefield, The other lesbian from Buffy (#5) conquered 81 land from Zooj (#1).

Our realm really needed to get it together. 

Not long into our war with #2, Realm #3 declared war on Realm #12:

''2023-08-29 08:14:24	Fine then if no one else will (#3) has declared WAR on Bro, you killed my Spirit (#12).''

Had they just woken up mid-round and missed the fact we'd been at war with them twice?

Towards the end of the week, Rio made a risky hit and sent out without enough dp in range of the #6 merfolk, 11) Put the Cat in a Super Snazzy Suit (Erix), banking on the him being unsafe to send vs the #12 merfolk (and having undesirable land types). 

''2023-08-29 17:59:31	Victorious on the battlefield, Red haired one with the flute in Buffy (#5) conquered 97 land from I Love My Angel (#0).''

The gamble paid off; Erix didn't lift a finger. Both Rio and King Jota seemed to be in a good position for the late game. Jota even had the title for most prestigious dominion. The question was, could our elite blops squad slow down their threats enough to help them?

WEEK 4 - EVERYONE HATES #5

From my perspective, it seemed Rio was in a good spot, with King Jota trailing just slightly, though he was still the most prestigious dominion. Unfortunately King Jota was more interested in the new ODA round that had started than he was in OD, which divided his attention. 

Cosula too, it seemed, though he was also at Moomin Land a bunch instead of casting Ares and training DP. I think at signups there should be a checkbox for players that says "are you going to a theme park this round?" and if they check "yes", you put them all in the same realm with Mithrandir. 

''2023-08-31 14:48:09	Razzmatazz 1969 Chevy Impala SS (#2) (MacTheMeek) invaded The other lesbian from Buffy (#5) and captured 121 land.''
	
''2023-08-31 07:32:56	Ultramarine Blue Spartan Assault Tank (#2) (Shaidar) invaded The other lesbian from Buffy (#5) and captured 142 land.''

From our perspective the war went fine and we damaged the goblin's improvements. From #2's perspective the war probably felt like it went great with all those Moomin-sponsored acres gained. 

At this point, Rio took the mic and gave our realm a state of the nation address. 

"Gentlemen, and bloppers," he said. "Let's look at the realms worthy of note - and only the realms of note."

(And yes, that means if your realm is absent from this list you should feel slighted.)

"Realm #1. It has zooj.

"Realm #2. A good human and goblin, but their wood elf and two gnomes are behind me in stats, and that gap should extend. A 50% chance to win according to Merf.

"Realm #3. A bunch of blackoppers.

"Realm #5. All stars. I like my position right now, but I don't love it. King Jota might be of some help if he keeps up. 

"Realm #6. Some people in the mix but a long shot for them. Their nomad or dwarf could have a shot, if the merf in #12 doesn't get lucky any time soon.

"Realm #8. Goblin playing well, probably the best of the top 4 ops right now, but isolated and can be chased down.

"Realm #9. Gob explorer.

"Realm #10. Lyc explorer.

"Realm #11. Four decent-looking doms but none in the top op mix yet. 

"Realm #12. The Merfolk is trying to bully but getting push-back, the goblin is overdoing op and now needs to backfill dp, and the spirit has been stalled a bunch. It remains to be seen if he can grow back up again."

These occasional bits of analysis as well as Rio taking the time to explain his thought processes on some of the moves he was making helped everyone in the realm understand our position better - we were still on long shot odds to win, but it wasn't out of the question either. It's also quite surprising to see just how many moving pieces these top attackers like Rio can track, and how often he's able to accurately predict the next moves of his opponents. I've played with a lot of realms at this point, and with a lot of packs, and there's honestly nobody I've played with that has this level of strategic nous combined with the patience and openness to explain it to others. 

So, the jist of it was that Realm #12 was about to become our war target for a third time... when they did something spectacular and handed #8 a huge advantage instead. 

''2023-09-01 19:59:33	Converters should stay in the kitchen (#12) (Crazy Elf) invaded Play with my big Ken (#1) (Bespoked) and captured 141 land.''

Every ops-taking eye in the game just about bulged out of their heads when this happened. Realm #12 had missed something critical in their ops on #8 - a vision. Skyraider had the final op tech, Avatar of Ares, and #12 hadn't updated it, so it wasn't showing up on their calcs. He could hit Converters. 

But there was still a glimmer of hope for #12... because Skyraider also didn't have the mana to cast both his racial and Ares in time for him to make the hit. And so #12 set off on a mad scramble trying to steal as much mana from him as they could, while Skyraider also had to find a mana target somewhere to claw together enough mana for both spells. In the end, Skyraider prevailed and cast his spells.

''2023-09-01 21:09:54	Skyraider of Kher (5/5) (#8) invaded Converters should stay in the kitchen. (#12) and captured 224 land.''

This changed our war trajectory from declaring on the #12 merfolk to targeting Skyraider instead. 

Little did we know, we were about to be completely rail-roaded in a three-way war. There were two major blackops realms this round - #3 and #10 - and they were very different kettles of fish in how they behaved in war. 

''2023-09-01 23:32:47	We goin' to the Candy Shop (#10) has declared WAR on Wool of bat and zest of Zooj (#5).''

Realm #10 seemed like it had a potential explorer roundwinner with their lycan, Fun Dip (Guydoonster), and so when they warred us, we figured it was to hurt the threats to his win in our realm, and to take our wonder, which would greatly benefit their lyc with the explore cost reduction and platinum bonus.

They did neither of these things, though from their perspective I think they thought they were targeting their lyc explorer's most direct threat. When war broke out it was Unfather, our big goblin explorer, that ate the majority of their blackops, rather than Rio, our up-and-coming Wood Elf. But Unfather had great ratios and weathered the blops with a skip in his step and a song in his heart. What song, I hear you ask? I'm Walking on Sunshine by Katrina and the Waves. "It's my favourite song of all time," Unfather explained.

Zedijar and a few of the anti-discord explorers in our realm also caught some heat. I received all of three blops, which all failed, despite having lower ratios than Zedi and Unfather - and #10 gave up on me and moved on. 

We had been planning to war #8 and roast Skyraider of Kher, when #10 blindsided us with what felt like another fairly frivolous war. But because they weren't targeting Rio, we also felt like we could confidently ignore them and continue ahead with our plans anyway. 

''2023-09-02 08:57:58	From spark to pyre, gobbo's gonads are afire! (#5) has declared WAR on Old Firefly (#8).''

The goblin had anticipated war was coming after his hit on Converters, and had put a bunch of spywiz in his training queue to up his ratios and mitigate the impending blackops. We toasted his nuts before his ratios could come in, and did as much damage as we could in the window that we had.

We then got warred by a second blops realm, this time #3, who decided to dogpile on in a very ungentlemanly fashion. 

''2023-09-03 13:55:05	We don't even know at this point (#3) has declared WAR on From spark to pyre, gobbo's gonads are afire! (#5).''

And unfortunately for us - or specficially Rio - they seemed to have a better sense of who to target. He had even more than the meta-prescribed 3% FHs however, at around 4.5%, so he didn't even notice he was being fireballed. 

Realms #3 and #10 were both so pumped with spywiz ratios and sheer numbers of bloppers that our realm, comparatively light with just four blackoppers, really couldn't do anything except weather the storm until they eventually fucked off and bothered another realm. 

And that brings me back to what I said about these realms' blops styles. If our realm was a scalpel with blackops, #3 was a butcher's knife, and #10 was a chocolate teapot that didn't even take our Wonder. 

Infamy farming anyone was also a pain in the arse due to all the spywiz pumping going on. These psycho blops realms had genuinely insane ratios. There was one point after we'd cancelled on #8 where I found myself having to farm a lizardfolk in #10 with spy ops because *he had the least spies in my range* and thinking, this is a low point. 

WEEK 5 - A ZOOJ BY ANY OTHER NAME

So we all know what happened with #12 and Wurst's Kool Aid, but the fallout from it meant that it fed a bunch of acres to specific players, and Wurst's suicide in particular was surprising in that it seemed to ignore the rising sylvan threat and instead focus on hurting (3) Boil Gma's Werther's Originals during Matlock (MattyVanHalen), who had committed the crime of simply existing in a realm where someone else had apparently annoyed him. Or maybe it's less surprising when you consider Wurst's history of grudges. For us, it meant that the sylvan got a bizarre free pass on the suicide, and Rio would then struggle to catch him. It also fed Gothia, who Wurst had said on the Riol Talk podcast that if anyone deserved to win, it was him - but he ultimately ended up abandoning too. I guess those Wurst acres were still soaked in Kool Aid.

While all this was unfolding, I was sat in the waiting room at a doctor's surgery watching a man have a fight with a vending machine. 

This is a greatly relevant diversion, trust me. It's like parable for realm #12 or something. Also I just have to tell this story.

So this guy had tried to buy a bag of crisps, right, and it had gotten stuck, so in order to try and dislodge it he'd also bought the bag of crisps behind it, and that had gotten stuck too. But rather than cut his losses there, this madlad decides to buy a THIRD BAG OF CRISPS - and this is where it gets interesting, because that fucker just joins the conga line of stuck bags. The guy has spent like four quid and he's got nothing, he's still going hungry. 

He tries shaking the machine but it's a heavy bastard and it doesn't budge an inch. So he knows at this point he's got to start thinking outside of the box, and there are two rows of snacks above the crisps he's been trying to buy. Directly above the crisps are some packs of cookies, and above those are some more crisps. 

I can tell what he's thinking before he even does it. You can see him considering his options, like he's doing some visual calculus with this vending machine. He's going to try and use one of the snacks above the traffic jam as a weight to dislodge them. 

He goes for the top row with the crisps, I guess he figured the height and velocity from the crisps were his best bet over the density of the pack of cookies. Not the option I'd have gone for but I'm not gonna back-seat vend here. 

He pays his money, the coils in the machine rotate, the bag of crisps drops... and just lands squarely on top of the other three and doesn't dislodge shit. It just sits there, mocking him. 

The dude. Is. Livid. He takes out his phone, he's either recording or yelling at someone. After a minute of this he decides to go for the cookies instead. 

He pays his money, the coils in the machine rotate again, the cookies drop... and bounce clean off the four wedged bags of crisps without dislodging shit. He gets the cookies, they land in the collection tray; but those crisps are still in there, four bags just taunting him. It's a cost of living crisis and this man has spent a small fortune on vending machine crisps that he can't reach. 

He doesn't give up either. He keeps buying crisps, they keep falling on top of the pile and mostly bouncing off. He's getting snacks, but it's not the snacks he wants. It's not the snacks he paid for dammit. It's not the snacks he deserves. He is going full suicide with his wallet. 

But he does have a victory, of sorts, in the end.

The trick was to buy a fourth bag on the original row of crisps. There weren't any actual crisps left there but it moved the coils forward and put enough pressure on the trapped bags that it knocked all of them down except the first one, which was trapped by a cog at the end of the coils in the machine.

So this dude who probably only wanted one bag of crisps has to do a walk of shame back to wherever it is he works with like ten bags of crisps and a pack of cookies that totally weren't worth the cost or the effort.

And that, folks, is a lesson in cutting your losses. Quit while you're behind. Something realm #12 took to heart, albeit not before they were led astray by their emotions and had to do their own walk of shame on the Riol Talk podcast. 

You see, sometimes you've just got to let those hard-to-reach chips go. For the sake of your dignity if nothing else. 

WEEKS 6 & 7 - ENDGAME

Two Girls, One Kupp (#11) (Jcinnz), one of the stronger doms in realm #11 we'd had an eye on had been making leaps and bounds of progress and was now in the dominant position. For a while it had looked like the explorer Peter Griffin (#9) (Mithrandir) was going to steal the show, but Kupp kept a steady pace, took some good risks (or made some mistakes that he didn't pay for, depending on who you ask) and found himself in the dominant position towards the end of the round. It became problematic for Unfather and myself, as we both had to dump massive amounts of spec dp to stay ahead of Kupp's similarly massive spec op dumps - there were several occasions where I defended him by just a few thousand points, and at least one squeaky bum moment where it was as low as about 200dp. And Unfather had his own similar moments of panic caused by these spec dumps and was caught short a few times, and had to scramble to get just enough dp to defend Kupp.

We had no real recourse against him - he was strongly defended against any blackops we could throw his way with natural wizard defences and having snapped up the Underground Society from under Cronel's nose in #1. It had also become fairly clear to us that short of some miracle happening, Kupp had the round in the bag, so we relaxed into a "can't do shit" mode and took our eye off the Declare War button for the rest of the round. 

Eventually Kupp moved out of our range and, while I knew Unfather would soon move into his range, it left a gap of about a day or so where we had no ops on Kupp and I had to make a decision to either continue to defend imagined op spikes or risk focusing a bit more on growth in order to secure a 7k finish. I chose the latter. 

Unfather accidentally sleep-explored back into Kupp's range before he'd planned to, but hours of dread soon turned to delight when he entered Kupp's range and realised he just barely defended him. I knew could explore just below his range and hit 7k, but I didn't defend him, so I knew I also de facto became his top bottomfeeding target by being the largest dominion out of range, if he chose to play scummy. He could hit me at any time he wanted so I decided to just continue going for the 7k and pray someone else presented a better option. Unfortunately, I retained the "best bottomfeed" title until the end of the round.

But Jcinnz he did something unusual for top attackers when they are untouchable: he didn't bottomfeed. He could have hit me and knocked me under 7k and there wasn't anything I could do about it, he just chose not to. 

I'm not complaining. Bottomfeeding is generally a pretty shitty thing to do, and it's rare to see that sort of restraint. Even if it wasn't my ass on the menu I'd have to say fair play to the guy. 

CONCLUSION

In the end, we didn't win, but we finished as the largest pack with Unfather and myself in the top 10 (and Rio in the top 10 until the final day, finishing 11th, having been denied a final hit by an early invasion disable), we didn't take any hits, and we affected the dynamics of the game to our favour and as we intended pretty well through the round. So it's not a total roundfail this time, even if it's not a roundwin. What do you call that? A roundsortofbutnotwin? 

I'll have to work on something more catchy.

Congratulations to Jcinnz and realm #11 for their win. I think this marks the first "Yami pack" win in OD history, putting an end to all those Leo DiCaprio never-won-an-oscar style references. Although I guess Leo did eventually win one, so perhaps it applies even more so now!

TL;DR

This round in a nutshell - [https://imgur.com/a/uLzLv5O How to raise Zedijar's blood pressure]

AND SOME MUSHY THANKS

On a more serious note - rare for these roundsortofbutnotwins, I know - I just want to thank my pack this round: Rio, Zed, Unfather, AgFx; and some of the people in the wider community too - particularly Grapes, Merf and Oceanu. I went through some horrible shit this round and it was hell, but you guys helped me a lot, even if you didn't realise it. OD became a bit of a safe haven for me while I went through that hell. It has reinforced what I already knew about our community: it's fantastic and full of very cool people.

At the start of the round I was already in the thick of it (astute roundfail fans will have spotted this health saga actually started in the last roundfail), and just before the round started I was absolutely convinced I wasn't going to live long enough to see the end of the round. I thought I had some rapid degenerative neurological disease, but it turned out to be a severe form of long covid (despite having pretty mild symptoms from the virus in May) - but I didn't know that at the time. It has been without a shadow of a doubt the darkest few months of my life. 

Anyway, I told my pack I was pretty ill and that it might be best if they found someone else, because I couldn't guarantee any consistency, but they said they'd rather have me on board, because fuck it, it's a game and let's just have fun. I thought that was pretty cool. Particularly for this bunch of tryhards!

If anyone does want to read that whole story I posted it to one of the long covid communities on reddit. I won't leave the link here as I don't think it's appropriate for some lighthearted roundfail puff piece, but I do also have this newfound compulsion to try and spread awareness of what long covid can do to you, so others don't have to suffer the confusion and actual terror I went through - shoot me a DM if you want the link. 

I'm a lot better now, by the way. I'm not fully recovered, but well enough that I've returned to work this week after two months on medical leave. 

All of which means there are probably many more roundfails to come. Catch you in the next one - or as Rio would say: toodle pip!