Editing Round 44 TraditionalStory

== Round 44 - Realm #4 Win Story, Traditional Version ==

=== Draft Round Team & Races ===
Wurst: Damdred and I thought we had good chances to win the FA setup if we get the right draftpicks. We also thought that **SNARE** is broken with a 5+ blop pack and that a draft round potentially secures us such a setup. Hence we picked a couple of strong FA (Dan (Lyc), Sizz (Liz), Me (Goblin)) and added 2 strong midspeed players (Sly (Spirit), Damdred (Orc)) that were supposed to use our runaway position to secure the endgame.
We topped that with the amazing explorer/bloppers (DaveTheGoliath, Psychosophy , Cosula, Extravadanza). We also picked KingTitus who wanted to attack I think. 
Then we had Dishess in our realm randomed. A buddy of Damdred who joined the blopsquad. 
Few words about my strat. 

The plan was to play a Wolfrider (WR) OOP attacker — using GN to offset WR’s high cost. I started with a high GN Lyc sim that Rio made a few rounds ago and tweaked it for my needs. But my tweaks left me with about 600 draftees at OOP that I didn’t actually need for DP.
That caught my attention.

Then I remembered what MDK told me last round: “The way to win with Goblins is Raiders.” To which I — always the reflective gentleman — replied: “Forget Goblins, they suck.”
The result after adding massive raiders at +0? An OOP attacker that gave up its 9-hour, but broke any DP sheet at +9. I’d hoped for a massive opener — and Chunk didn’t disappoint: a clean 125% hit gave me a solid land lead. I used the surplus in drafts to push 1:1 elite/raider mix and would pivot from it once I either run or need to push 5:4 for our mid speed races.

=== A Fast Start ===
During the Draft Podcast, we were told that our team looked scary on paper — but also like a prime candidate for drama and early abandonments. Naturally, we laughed it off. And then… came OOP.
Dan made his first hit and, just two hours later, dropped Midas. Alarm bells rang. We had Damdred call him up, and Dan told us — cheerfully, we might add — that he was out drinking with a buddy, had cast Midas, and trained rats.  Then he vanished again, apparently blackout drunk. 
After no training the whole evening and night as a small acres lyc attacker his round was sadly over. And since he nearly had no dp incoming and he needed every draftee for dp we figured he would be more likely to feed than to be of help. Oopsie. 

Sly: OOP for us went well, if a bit uneventful, until we realized Dan was inactive. I got my hit pretty early on, Damdred’s Orc got 3 hits, Wurst made a solid hit. The real fireworks came with our second hits, which set the tone really for the rest of the round. Wurst had the great idea to try to catch some larger doms with the 9-hour capability of Gobbo (with spec OP from OOP), and did just that to great effect. Sizz also made a nice first hit, and my Spirit managed a player hit for my second hit.

2025-04-06 09:59:52	Victorious on the battlefield, Winton, 1 year, violating 50m restraining order (#4) conquered 61 land from Daniel Michael DeVito Jr. (#3).

This hit ended up being really important IMO because 3 Dwarf (Chunk) looked very strong later in the round, and we ended up feeling the need to fireball him later.

2025-04-07 11:00:24	Bluey, indicted, pulled Val Kilmer's plug (#4) has been abandoned by its ruler.

The early hits were extremely important for our speed. We kept finding solid player hits for all 3 of our main fast attackers. Things were going well, until we encountered our first challenger: Wreckage (Bobbo), the Goblin in 6. Extra was a bit low on DP, but we managed to immediately retaliate with Sizz’s Lizardfolk. Damdred also managed to make a huge hit on one of our fast competitors, the halfling in realm 2.

2025-04-07 21:59:57	Wreckage (#6) invaded fellow dominion Unicorse, death row, vexatious litigation (#4) and captured 65 land.
2025-04-08 08:14:25	Victorious on the battlefield, Bingo, life without parole, decapitating Calypso (#4) conquered 66 land from Wreckage (#6).
2025-04-08 20:01:29	Victorious on the battlefield, Muffin, grand larceny, 20 years (#4) conquered 72 land from The greatest joy of magic lies in searching for it (#2).

Wurst: Contenders for our FA were: #2 Halfer (Disco), #6 Goblin (Bobbo), #9 Lyc and Liz ( SugarJon and HighLow) as well as our main contender #12 Halfling and Lizard (Erix and P@cz). We stayed in the lead with Damdred even taking out #2 Halfer with his Orc. Sizz Liz kept along and smacked #6 Goblin. Sly’s Spirit was getting in position to take over under my cover but had to push quite an inefficient build to do so.  

=== The First Challenger ===
Sly: As always, my advice is to look big, as big as possible when playing FA. Even though we were barely out of the gate, we were making big moves and our amazing ops team helped us track everything. Wurst got a massive hit on the lead 9 Gobbo, Twix (Soup), who had yet to convert—and who was far from finished having a say in the round. I also then delayed a hit on an explorer in 9 Frosty Franco (who had huge drafts stacked) so that Wurst could follow, giving him back to back large hits.

2025-04-10 15:59:37	Victorious on the battlefield, Winton, 1 year, violating 50m restraining order (#4) conquered 112 land from Al-twixander The Great (#9).
2025-04-11 02:59:39	Victorious on the battlefield, Snickers, 6 months, Overdue DVD Rentals (#4) conquered 97 land from Frosty Franco (#9).
2025-04-11 03:00:15	Victorious on the battlefield, Winton, 1 year, violating 50m restraining order (#4) conquered 74 land from Frosty Franco (#9).	

Wurst: After those takedowns, Damdred’s Orc fell a bit behind. The Revenge hit from Wreckage on Damdred sealed his fate sadly. 

2025-04-13 06:34:34	Wreckage (#6) invaded fellow dominion Muffin, grand larceny, 20 years (#4) and captured 69 land.

Sly: We were confused by this as Wreckage had pushed huge OP and had much better hits available for more land, but in a classic MERF-realm fashion, desire for revenge outweighed pure improvement/winning chances. Team mcgeeal became an enemy, and we would later exact payment. Our goal was to finish winning the fast race as soon as possible. Main threats a week in appeared to be 12 Halfer Ulysses (Erix), 9 Lyc (Sugarjon), and Wreckage still training high OP. There were a lot of second tier guys too hanging around still.

=== The Thorn in my Side ===
Sly: Wust continued to make very solid hits in his bid to run. Sizz and I managed to keep up militarily, but Wurst’s land lead would prove decisive. I dropped huge temples to catch 6 Merfolk, Deep Six (InternetFett) as well, who I thought looked very good and would be annoying later in the round if not dealt with.

2025-04-13 18:59:49	Victorious on the battlefield, Winton, 1 year, violating 50m restraining order (#4) conquered 94 land from 🧟HIGANSTOLDAWIN HIGANTE GI TULI ANG DWENDE🧟 (#10).
2025-04-16 04:45:52	Victorious on the battlefield, Winton, 1 year, violating 50m restraining order (#4) conquered 92 land from Aaron Hernandez (#5).
2025-04-16 18:14:17	Victorious on the battlefield, Winton, 1 year, violating 50m restraining order (#4) conquered 95 land from The greatest joy of magic lies in searching for it (#2).
2025-04-18 18:59:58	Victorious on the battlefield, Snickers, 6 months, Overdue DVD Rentals (#4) conquered 112 land from Deep Six (#6).

Wurst: Two weeks in, I had a pretty massive lead — but hadn’t fully pulled the trigger yet. 12 Halfer was still a constant thorn in our side, and 6 Gobbo kept overtraining OP after every hit. I dropped some specs to hit Zar’s Human in #8 — the hit landed clean. Then I realized: if we can snare him, I can go back-to-back. So we pulled the team together and, for the first time this round, coordinated a snare to set up the double tap.
On the first send, I was technically hittable by a suicide from Erix. But we figured it was worth the gamble — Sly and Sizzler would bite chunks out of him in return, and maybe even me. Plus, our broader plan was to get Sly into the lead, so the risk felt justified. Erix didn’t bite. Yet…

2025-04-21 07:59:54	Victorious on the battlefield, Winton, 1 year, violating 50m restraining order (#4) conquered 146 land from I wish we came up with a better theme (#8).
2025-04-22 01:51:53	̶T̶h̶e̶ ̶F̶a̶i̶r̶y̶ ̶G̶a̶r̶d̶e̶n̶ Unicorse #1 (#4) has declared WAR on I wish you didn't (#8).
2025-04-22 04:15:12	Victorious on the battlefield, Winton, 1 year, violating 50m restraining order (#4) conquered 126 land from I wish we came up with a better theme (#8).	

Wurst: Once I moved out of Erix’s range, he set his sights on our top contender: Sly’s Spirit. From the sidelines, I had to watch as Sly got dragged deeper and deeper into the DP spiral. With his inefficient build, he didn’t have the staying power to outlast Erix in a slow game. So, Sly made the call: switched back to OP, took a suicide hit from Erix, and hit him right back.

Unfortunately, that wasn’t the end of it. Erix barely stayed within 75%, and his Lizard was quietly massing solid OP too. The pressure kept mounting, slowing Sly down further. Eventually, he had to throw in the towel and deconvert — joining our growing Blop squad for the late game.

Sly: Erix played it really well, despite his goal being obvious to us in slowing Wurst and/or myself down specifically. There were times when he dropped specs and I thought he was surely hitting me, but he didn’t. The difficulty for me in this phase of the round was that personally I wanted to just keep hitting and not defend him, forcing him to trade ASAP, thereby removing him as a threat which would enable either Wurst or I to run earlier. But before Wurst was out of his range, the issue would be that we’d find him a hit, but him going OOR of the halfer would mean it would free Erix up to hit me without Wurst being able to benefit. So we had this back and forth where I’d make a call saying I wasn’t going to defend him, then Wurst finding a hit prompting me to push huge spec DP asap to defend him so that Wurst could hit.

Ultimately it all worked out, though I think I probably mishandled this situation—but give credit to Erix where it’s due. Erix ended up suiciding me after I was already dead (they wanted to be sure, fair enough I guess), but in so doing he ended up feeding both of the very nice looking dwarves… Oh, realm 6 also tried to snare me but I was online and barely got the AC cast off.

2025-04-23 04:59:28	Ulysses STACKED Grant (#12) invaded fellow dominion Snickers, 6 months, Overdue DVD Rentals (#4) and captured 194 land.
2025-04-23 05:11:46	Victorious on the battlefield, Snickers, 6 months, Overdue DVD Rentals (#4) conquered 138 land from Ulysses STACKED Grant (#12).

=== Running Away ===
Wurst: #6 had warred us earlier in the round, targeting our Lyc Explorer (Psychosophy) and Sly — probably thinking back then they had better odds against them than against a spec-heavy Goblin like me. But now? It was payback time.

McGeal, their Lyc Explorer, was greedily expanding without proper spy coverage. So we did what we do best — the classic sequence: Hit someone, push OP, snare, go again. With that, and the hit on #12’s Merfolk earlier, I now had a massive land lead and could build up a ton of DM. At this point, new contenders started popping up. #9 Goblin Al-Twix (Soup), a converting Goblin, was able to force me into some DP. But he lacked the numbers to grow into my range. We actually considered his OP overtraining a hidden blessing — it made efficient races in other realms hesitate to send under him. So thanks for that, Soup.

2025-04-27 14:51:10	I'm thinking about it... (#4) has declared WAR on And now you know (#6).
2025-04-27 19:12:50	Victorious on the battlefield, Winton, 1 year, violating 50m restraining order (#4) conquered 261 land from Keel-Haul (#6).

Then came #3 Dwarf — suddenly a real threat with solid 5:4 and a growing mod push. We saw he was gearing up for a fast acre grab, so we decided to hit him preemptively. Some good old-fashioned fireball spam later, and he never really recovered. Another one off the board.

2025-04-29 19:58:15	Unicorse and his humble servants (#4) has declared WAR on We’re too old for this shit! (#3).

=== Twin Goblins, and Realm 12 ===
Wurst: #9 Goblin Al-Twix brought in backup: his smaller Goblin buddy Ho-Chi (Tidnab) was edging into my range. Looked like they were setting up a classic pincer. I kept an eye on him and noticed he didn’t cast AC. So i pumped op and the tick before he was hittable, I dumped gem, ore, and lumber into my forge and pushed OP. Broke him AC off — by just 0.1% OP. Later, Tidnab told me they knew I was coming the next tick and planned to bounce me. Well... you’ve got to wake up earlier to catch an old fox.

2025-05-02 01:28:22	Victorious on the battlefield, Winton, 1 year, violating 50m restraining order (#4) conquered 253 land from Dwight D. EisenPOWER (#12).
2025-05-02 18:01:44	Victorious on the battlefield, Winton, 1 year, violating 50m restraining order (#4) conquered 199 land from Ho Chi Minh Mochi (#9).

Elated by that slick hit, we made a blunder: We declared war on #12 at literally the worst possible moment. Their Nomad and Human looked like the most threatening endgame contenders — but they hadn’t made a hit in ages therefore sitting on low peasants, diminishing our fireball damage. Also Sizzler just deconverted hours ago, leaving no op threat versus them.

They reacted immediately. They mutualed. Jboy, the Nomad, dropped mass GN + Temples and started ramping OP. Our big explorers managed to stay safe by anticipating the spike, but Sizz was toast. Knowing he’d feed at least once, he slammed the Abandon button — and we tried to delay the incoming hit with a snare.

Didn’t work. Jboy slapped him for an 85% mutual war hit and had the OP to 9h him again. Absolutely brutal. Big misplay on our part. But just when things looked bleak — #8 Dwarf (Harm) came out of nowhere and whacked Jboy with a clean 100% hit. Left himself open for a retal, but it gave us an opening. Jboy was still our biggest threat. We had to stop the 9h.

Enter: the Blop Pack. We tried something nuts — snaring him for nine freaking hours. It came down to the wire several times, but someone always logged in with just enough spy power to keep the snare alive. What looked like a disaster... turned into a pretty sweet turnaround.

2025-05-02 19:58:53	Unicorse and his loyal subjects (#4) has declared WAR on ABS-olutely I do (#12).
2025-05-02 20:59:13	We'll get you, and your little dogs too! (#12) has declared WAR on Unicorse and his loyal subjects (#4).	
2025-05-03 20:59:03	James 6. PACK (#12) invaded fellow dominion Bingo, life without parole, decapitating Calypso (#4) and captured 226 land.
2025-05-03 21:44:24	I wish I had a rabbit in a hat with a bat (#8) invaded James 6. PACK (#12) and captured 245 land.
2025-05-05 05:07:58	The Ancient Library has been destroyed and rebuilt by Realm (#4).
2025-05-05 06:00:27	Bingo, life without parole, decapitating Calypso (#4) has been abandoned by its ruler.

=== Final Phase: Snares Galore, and Realm 7 ===
Sly: We felt comfortable (maybe except for Wurst) going into the final phase of the round. Yes, 7 looked very strong, but I felt they were simply too far behind at this point to pose a serious danger without EXCESSIVE feeding, which seemed nearly impossible since everyone had been forced to defend Wurst’s OP already. We started a gameplan of making a snare hit on a realm, then having Wurst leave the guard for a war BF into the same realm afterwards, then rejoining guard. It worked well.

2025-05-05 21:30:26	Can't skip leg day when you have no legs!!! <3 Unicorse (#4) has declared WAR on Don't even think about it (#5).
2025-05-06 04:59:08	Victorious on the battlefield, Winton, 1 year, violating 50m restraining order (#4) conquered 273 land from Timothy Tebowington (#5).
2025-05-07 04:59:10	Victorious on the battlefield, Winton, 1 year, violating 50m restraining order (#4) conquered 213 land from Tony Dickerson (#5).

We went back to realm 6’s well yet again, and this hit required a ton of effort and coordination on our part to make happen as the margins were extremely tight.

2025-05-11 00:41:08	GI Joes are for kids. OD is a game for cartoon dogs. (#4) has declared WAR on Cobra Rising (#6).
2025-05-11 00:50:38	Victorious on the battlefield, Winton, 1 year, violating 50m restraining order (#4) conquered 316 land from Keel-Haul (#6).
2025-05-12 00:37:46	Victorious on the battlefield, Winton, 1 year, violating 50m restraining order (#4) conquered 231 land from Skidmark (#6).

Sly: We warred realm 7 for the first time as they were the clear late-round threat, doing damage anywhere and everywhere we could with the army of explorers at our disposal. They had a bunch of possible threats: a strong Orc (kongb), Icekin (Lud), up-and-coming WE (Faith), and a Nomad (mdk) who I was concerned would BF into Wurst’s range and then pump GN/temps to limit him while the Orc/Icer hit under us. I thought it was curious at the time that they decided to use the Orc to push 5:4 OP, which effectively meant he would never send again unless he left a ton of OP home. The Icekin basically did the opposite, training enough DP to at times defend Wurst fully and kept hitting with the OP he had. At the time I was more afraid of the opposite, but Lud explained:

:''“We considered but it was an issue of dp and time -- if I pushed 5:4 I was pretty trivially hittable because IE turtle sucks. And same with orc dp sucking. Orc couldn't get safe himself, and if he pushed for hits he would either be hittable, but more likely we thought wurst would just 9h hit me in reply. And even in extended trades we thought any land lead would be insurmountable given the # hits required to match his land lead as it was around day 40. So even though orc was much stronger, he and the nomad were the only ones that could safely push op while in range.”''

Fair enough, and perhaps the right conclusion in hindsight considering I didn’t think Wurst’s land lead was surmountable either way. We calculated that Wurst only needed one more BF to be clear of their future 8k finisher Gobbo explorer Dark Mines (Gorgh).

2025-05-13 15:35:26	GI Joes are for kids. OD is a game for cartoon dogs. (#4) has declared WAR on There can be no peace (#7).
2025-05-17 02:58:34	Victorious on the battlefield, Winton, 1 year, violating 50m restraining order (#4) conquered 230 land from Barack SWOLEbama (#12).

And that was it! Wurst was the inevitable winner.

=== Wurst’s Acknowledgements ===
Damdred – You really put together one hell of a team and led with unwavering dedication. You stayed a true captain till the end—always motivating, fully engaged, and spreading that energy to every one of us. Thank you for an incredibly fun round.
Dan – As someone in our realm said: “Easiest round win ever for you” 😅. Just kidding. We liked having you around as our mascot, and I’d still always pack with you. :*
Sly – What a joy it was to pack with you. Great understanding of the game, great tactical awareness. And when I hit a low point, you were the one who pulled me out of the mud.
Sizzler – My OG. I was so happy when I saw your registration and couldn’t believe my luck when Damdred drafted you. It’s always great playing with you. Your ability to read the board and to always remain calm helped me a lot.
DaveTheGoliath – Someone I hadn’t played with before, and I totally fell in love with your style. Proactive, engaged, smart and a joy to talk to. Youre everything one could wish fron a packmate!
Psychosophy – Thank you! I think in a way, you’re the one who sacrificed the most for this win. #6 disbanded 500 spies—you retrained 1,000. You could’ve pushed your exploring advantage, but instead, you decided to go heavy on ops eating tons of blops during our wars. Once again, it was a great pleasure to play with you. Your zealotism against McGeal after their first war on us was a constant source of joy.
Cosula – Feels like you’re a packmate now, with how often we land together! You also went beyond your limits and played a tremendous round. Always there when it mattered—and always ready to throw some fireballs!
Extravadanza – Oh boy. I often forgot you’re a new player because you showed such a great understanding of the game and insane activity. And your meme game even won you Meme of the Round. I hope we play again in the future—it was a pleasure.
Dishness – Also a new player who immediately understood how the game works. You became a full-fledged member of the blop division in no time and needed little to no guidance.
This win was 100% a team win. The amount of activity, engagement, and support everyone in this group brought was something I’ve never experienced before. One person missing and we wouldnt have done it. A big heartfelt thank you to all of you.