Editing Round 49 Admiral General Aladeen

== PROLOGUE ==

Hi. Rush here. And it's time for another draft round roundfail!

I was drafted onto Team Cerby in the third round, my ego devastated that I wasn't a first round pick as per usual. But I think somewhere in the third round is a more sensible pick up position for someone with my skillset - which if I were to pitch myself, would be: (almost) never gets hit, good at setting nerds on fire, and you don't need to write your own roundwin story if you do actually win - because I've probably already done it. 

The downside, obviously, is when you lose - because I'm here to catalogue our failures all the same. 

I found out what team I was on during the podcast, and I was pretty happy with it. On Team Cerby (in selection order) we had: King Jota, DanTheMan, yours truly, Cronel, Asanka, Sharkey, Cosula, AresTitan, WolfOneX and TheLastVegan. 

Dan and Cerby would run FA builds, Dan going Liz and Cerby going Undead. King Jota went for his old faithful, Dark Elf, with Sharkey going Nomad. TheLastVegan wanted to fast attack as a Dwarf, and would not countenance any of the many offered opinions, mainly from experienced players Cerby and Jota, that this was not a smart move. So that was our attacker roster.

On the blops team, we had Cronel (Icekin), Cosula (Sylvan), AresTitan (Icekin), WolfOneX (Halfling), and I ran Sylvan. 

Finally, we had Asanka on an efficiency explorer build. I think Cerby had drafted him hoping he would be our de-facto 'ops guy', but he mostly did his own thing. I don't blame him, I hate being the ops guy. He was useful plenty when #9 tried to run, though, as we were able to keep occasionally updated ops on their liz. 

We were also joined by two randoms, 'Gilbert Bottom Feeder' and Rio. (Future Rush edit: Rio kept his advisors hidden all round, and we didn't know he was in-realm until after the round ended and the game reveals everyone's lifetime). Both resolutely refused to join discord, but were actually quite active and responsive in council. Gilbert was effectively a spare back-up blopper, though he remained relatively small all round.

Our theme was 'dictators'. Not the most inventive theme ever but certainly giffable. I went for a fictional dictator, Admiral General Aladeen (a Sacha Baron Cohen character). Cronel, despite his seething loathing for the big orange paedophile, went for Donald Trump. Sharkey, in a throwback to our round together all the way back in r32, where he behaved like a ruthless dictator all round, opted for Xi Jinping (https://wiki.opendominion.net/wiki/Babidi_R32). The only person from our draft pack who did not participate in the theme was Vegan, who named himself after an anime girl instead. When Jota (who went for Dr Bashar al-Assad) asked why not, he would only say that his anime girl was more of a dictator than Assad. I laughed at that at the time, thinking it was a good joke. It would later become apparent from a sudden wall of text from Vegan that this wasn't really intended as a joke, but actually an expression of sympathy towards what he believed was a misunderstood dictator. Alright, cool, let's not touch that one. 

I began to recall the horror I felt the round I was a draft captain, and were it not by the grace of an ignorant Mris, I would have been forced to draft Vegan onto my team as he was the last guy on the board - and I would be the captain left with taking whoever wasn't picked. I recalled the relief I felt when Mris drafted him instead. I recalled the slightly childish but quite real disappointment I felt when Vegan later accused fett of conspiring to end the round before that draft early, just as he was about to make a hit, to personally screw him over - because Vegan then left our little community, and that in turn meant Mris wouldn't have to suffer him on his team.

I wondered why Cerby would make such a selection. But I later found out Cerby had found himself in much the same position I had been - Vegan joined the draft super late and was just handed to us by fett, much like a villain might hand a cartoon bomb to a plucky hero, fuse already lit and burning away. Thanks fett. 

I expected Vegan to detonate at some point but besides that, I had high hopes for the rest of us. We were, as I said on the pod, a 'glass cannon' build - both strong and weak at the same time. FAs with a team of bloppers behind them can take advantage of opportunities that normally would not be available to them. But the flipside of that setup is that if the FAs trip over, the realm is essentially dead in the water. We had no slow attackers, no converters. We had Jota as a strong mid-speed backup but ideally he would rise under the cover of solid FAs. 

Cosula's sim was a mirror of mine, and I hoped this round I could divert him away from his usual behaviour of destroying his own economy our of sheer paranoia that he'd fail a blop or worse, that someone will succeed a blop on him. It was going to be a challenge, I realised, when two days into the round I caught him training wizards on top of dryads.

Well, I guess I'm getting ahead of myself. Let's get this show on the road.

== WEEK 1 - GLASS CANNON ==

We had a strong start, with everyone making great hits, and importantly Dan and Cerby were making great hits. 

Around day two, I caught a single op from #10. #10 didn't have any op threat to me, theft wasn't live and there's no reason to check a dominion like mine at this point in the round - unless, I reasoned, you were scoping them out for a potential war. It set my spidey senses tingling. 

We were in contention for running, and after my own checks, #10 seemed to have a bunch of bloppers on war% towers already (a wasteful but highly aggressive stance). I brought this to the attention of the realm and Cronel and Ares both reported that #10 had been all over their news. So I suggested Dan and Cerby get serious about blops defences and they diligently brought in the small number of wizard guilds and wizards needed for maximum protection. 

The main contenders at the earliest stage in the round were #3, who had a strong FA Liz / Lyc duo in The Joules of the Crown (Slater) and The Noble Gases (Jamo); #4, who had an annoyingly strong Kobold THREE BLIND MICE 🐭 RAN FROM THE KNIFE 🔪 ('Crazy guy' - perhaps a Crazy Elf rebrand) for a few days but who rapidly fell off; and #9, with a strong Liz / FW duo in Hussar (Weaser) and Berzerk (Bobbo). Berzerk seemed to fall off rapidly, while Hussar was to become an early nemesis for our realm. #11 also had a notable FA Liz in Fires Of S’mordor (Shining). 

For our part, the team was really good at sniffing out Ares drops, helping set up some opportune hits. Dan maintained a strong position in the first week. Cerby, who started off strong, started to fall slightly behind Dan, and the other leading FAs. King Jota, who was skiing around the Italian Alps, was able to keep on track; occasionally pausing at the top of a mountain, removing his royal mittens and making Ares drop hits. 

Realm #10 remained of interest since they were likely cycloning for the Wayfarer, which we were interested in sniping. However, the crafty bastards held back their firepower ahead of the ranks updating and misled my instincts for when to start angling for a snipe by about 12 hours, and took it 3h after the ranks updated.

''2026-03-25 21:16:15	The Wayfarer's Outpost has been destroyed and rebuilt by Minnie's Haberdashery (#10).''

It's not a novel tactic, it's just not easy to pull off without a lot of bloppers and some organisation. I should have expected it in a draft round where engagement and organisation is at an all time high. 

Disappointingly, realm #10 didn't war anyone at blops live. They had taken that highly aggressive stance but it turned out to be posturing, presumably to discourage early wars. These guys were playing the slow, defensive, efficient game it seemed. Yawn. What a waste of blops talent!

There weren't a lot of great options for Wonders this round. Imperial Armada (Boats cannot be sabotaged, -1% platinum tax from Royal Guard) is just a poor man's Underground Society (50% chance of causing hostile spy operations to fail), and Wizard Academy (-50% hostile spell damage) is just a jank version of the Ivory Tower (50% chance of causing hostile spells to fail). Ruby was an option if we were going to run, but not useful to half the realm. And nobody really wants the Hanging Gardens, so it would likely go to some lame-o realm that was terrified of war, taking a Wonder they figured nobody would come at them for. The Planar Gates, the shiny new draft round Wonder, was nowhere to be seen. 

As for our great plans to stomp the playerbase into the ground, day four was where the glass cannon started to crack. 

Dan had identified a DE in #2, Chuck Norris can divide by zero (jmerc) as a potential target, as he was relying on over 3k drafts for defence but had dropped Ares. That was a lot of stabbing, but we pulled it off.

''2026-03-26 00:59:42 Victorious on the battlefield, Pope Francis (#6) conquered 55 land from Chuck Norris can divide by zero (#2).''

But then Hussar in #9 came knocking.

''2026-03-26 02:23:10	Hussar (#9) invaded fellow dominion Pope Francis (DanTheMan) (#6) and captured 89 land.''

Our realm's intel had been that Hussar couldn't hit Dan, because if he did, the #3 Liz would hit Hussar.

''2026-03-26 04:56:33	The Joules of the Crown (#3) invaded Top Girl You All Known (Keanu) (#7) and captured 72 land.''

So, completely wrong in other words. Whoops. Dan had misread something on a calculator somewhere, and got his cheeks clapped as a result. 

This gave me big deja vu, because it's exactly what happened in my realm last round too. Well, at least in terms of our big FA being completely screwed by day 5 and team blops just standing around in front of a Lake Michigan sized pool of mana, asking themselves "where the fuck do we send this now then?"

Well the answer, at least in this case, was obvious. 

''2026-03-26 12:42:11	Certified Baddies (#6) has declared WAR on Well that mass-ive hit rings like the Vatican Bells! (#9).''

Hussar, for some reason, was really slow in getting into the guard, and so we already knew he was on a delay entering the elite guard. He also seemed really slow in entering the elite guard, not sure what the guy was doing. Not filling in applications in a timely manner, that's for sure! Like Ares drops though, not dotting your i's and crossing your t's does present occasions your enemies can take advantage of, and this was one of them. It put Hussar, who thanks to his hit on Dan was about to leave range of most of the bloppers in our realm (assuming he eventually managed to make it into the elite guard), squarely in our crosshairs for about 6 hours - and thereafter, only in range of Adam. Which meant team blops could set him off burning, and then Adam could manage the fireball maintenance. All right before his land came in. 

We also targeted their dwarf, Magyar Huszar (Zar). I'd noticed he was beginning his conversion on high acres and was playing very, very efficient (to the point where earlier in the round I'd been swarming him on 5k food while Gaia was on). So he ate a bunch of fireballs as well, and we set him burning too. 

Hussar got another hit off in the war, and shortly after the for-babies rejuvenation mechanic kicked in, making him immune to further blops. Boo! 

''2026-03-26 23:03:06	Hussar (#9) invaded Sing with me. There's H, He, Li, Be, C (MeeSAX) (#3) and captured 72 land.''

The plan had been for Dan, who had settled on the idea that his round was already over and he could relax, to suicide Hussar and kill his round off here. He'd released AMs and put them into spec op, and Hussar hadn't clocked it, which apparently gave Dan the edge he needed to hit him. I think this turned out to be another Dan miscalc, though, so we had to abanDan that plan.

But then we noticed our burning dwarf pal in #9 had his Ares due to run out in a tick, and he had such efficient mana reserves. So efficient in fact, that stealing some of them meant he couldn't cast it. If he even logged in in time to mitigate the drop. And so Dan instead got a massive hit.

''2026-03-27 04:00:09	Victorious on the battlefield, Pope Francis (#6) conquered 103 land from Magyar Huszar (#9).''

Dan's plans for rest and relaxation were out of the window. He was now back in the game, if a hit behind the other frontrunners. Blops team breathed a sigh of relief. King Jota went skiing. 

The rest of the war went smoothly, with #9 doing essentially nothing to us. As we approached war cancel, we started to consider what we could do to limit #3. Other realms were too afraid and cowardly to do anything, of course. But not the mighty Team Cerby!

Their Liz, The Joules of the Crown, was out of range of most of us except for Adam - but he could still annoy him plenty with fireballs that take forever to trigger burning.

The rest of us would focus on the very sinkable The Noble Gases, and also fireball him. Marie built Curie-ously on Becquerel's work (B) and The Weak Interaction (Jamo) were secondary targets. We advised all bloppers to stop hurting #9's dwarf (he was in ruins anyway), and to start recharging wiz strength and mana for war in 24h. 

== WEEK 2 - THE ACTUAL WORST ==

Cosula had listened, it seemed, to my slightly exasperated advice that he stop training wizards on top of his dryads, which have 0.18 wizards built into each unit (and are also not cheap). That lasted five days. Then he started telling us that he was losing sleep over the idea that someone might succeed an op against him, and that he would lie awake at night thinking about some other guy in the noob league that had disbanded some of his spies. The thoughts gnawed at him. His paranoia seemed like it might consume him. By the end of the first week, he was back to training wizards on top of his dryads again. Even worse, when I asked bloppers to check in with their wiz strength ahead of the war, he reported that he had none, since he'd blown his load on noob league targets a few hours ago - despite knowing we were going to war with #3 later. He had no wiz or spy strength and would have to sit on the sidelines when we declared.

When Cerby drafted Cosula, I figured he would be a useful blopper in the early game until he was consumed by this bizarre desire to be indestructible in a league that doesn't matter, before he fell out of range and his utility became more limited. But he wasn't even reliably useful as a blopper when he was in range. 

There is I think a hierarchy in OD, you can probably think of it as a bit of a social class system. The most respected player is Zooj, obviously. Then after Zooj, the most respected players are fast attackers - assuming they're any good at it. Then you've got mid and slow speed attackers. Then you've got opsers. Then you've got efficiency explorers. Then you've got bloppers. Then you've got converters. Nobody likes converters. And then in last place, you've got whatever TheLastVegan is.

So we can look at the OD class system like this: 

Zooj > FAs > SAs > Oppers > Explorers > Bloppers > Converters > TheLastVegan

But if you're a blopper who is not useful to your team, where do you fit into this class system? 
 
Zooj > FAs > SAs > Oppers > Explorers > Bloppers > Converters > TheLastVegan > Cosula

I'm putting him dead last for now. But there's still a whole round ahead of us, so there's room for improvement. We'll check in as the weeks go by this round to see if Cosula can improve his standing. Place your bets now, folks. Root for him, or write him off. We'll see what happens. 

Realm #3 was next on our target list. We knew it was risky but we were all safely defended, so as long as we didn't play like total morons the risk of feeding #3 was pretty minimal. I forgot to take notes on most of this war, but the main targets would have been Joules, Noble Gases and Marie. You know the drill. Fireballs, maybe some sinks if someone looked greedy. None of it was particularly interesting. What was more interesting was how completely we dropped the ball in this war.

If you were paying attention, you already know how it went down. It got memed hard in the discord, and deservedly so. We played like total morons and fed both Joules and Noble Gases two war hits, literally the worst possible outcome. And entirely avoidable - because just 12 hours before the hits, I had warned the realm in discord: 

'''Rush:''' Realm #3 just checked me for Ares, be on your guard folks. Amp it if you arent safe.

Cerby did not amp his Ares.

''2026-03-30 03:00:24     The Joules of the Crown (#3) invaded fellow dominion Vladimir Putin (#6) and captured 88 land.''

'''Cerby:''' My bad guys. Should have casted early.

Five hours after the ares drop on Cerby, Cosula also let his Ares drop. 

''2026-03-30 08:01:39    The Noble Gases (#3) invaded fellow dominion Kim Jong-Un (#6) and captured 78 land.''

'''Cosula:''' Fffffffff, Ares drop

I felt bad for the hit on Cerby, because I knew he'd feel like he'd let us down. He had let us down of course, the absolute lemon. But you know how it goes - we're all biologically wired to be a lot more forgiving towards people who own up to their mistakes and try to make amends. 

Cosula I didn't feel bad for - he gets hit every round, and doesn't do shit about it. And now he'd gone from mostly useless to a war liability. Basically the worst thing you can be as a blopper - you are more vulnerable than anyone to a war hit because a lot of your potential dp spend ends up allocated to spies and wizards that do fuck all when there's an army marching at you. So you've got to be vigilant - more vigilant than anyone else. Unfortunately a lot of bloppers tend to be more casual players, and as such are among the least likely players to be vigilant when it's most needed. What a terrible irony.

The real problem I had though, was that it wasn't possible move Cosula further down in the OD class system from his current position in last place. So instead I had to invent an entirely new class just so I could demote him further.

Zooj > FAs > SAs > Oppers > Explorers > Bloppers > Converters > TheLastVegan > TheLastVegan but he's rambling about Syria and expressing far-right pro-Russian views because Jota named himself after a Syrian dictator > Cosula

I know from extensive experience that if you are warring top op, these guys are always absolute sharks and they will eat you if you slip up. Every time. There are no free passes. But it doesn't seem to be obvious to people who aren't in a bunch of wars every single round. 

''2026-03-30 19:48:17	There were concepts of a plan (#6) has CANCELED war against Helium rises, Ares drops (#3).''

Embarrassing.

== WEEK 3 - LIZARD PEOPLE ==

I said on the podcast about three days before realm #2 took the Hanging Gardens, that the realm which takes the Hanging Gardens is essentially advertising that they are a big ol' bunch of wimps. It's the "we fear war, pls don't hurt us, we are harmless babies" Wonder that's safe to take because, in theory, nobody really wants it. 

So when #2 made that announcement by taking the Gardens, naturally we had to war them. Take that, harmless babies!

''2026-04-01 20:00:05	Special military operation (#6) has declared WAR on Chuck Norris doesn't wonder, he is a wonder (#2).''

Poor notes on this one, but I believe the main targets in this realm were Chuck Norris isn’t dead he’s AFK and still winning (Ivetza), Chuck Norris Dwarves All Other Men (downrightdave) and Time waits for no man, except Chuck Norris (Chunk).

We didn't really war them to spank their bottoms over their wimpy Wonder selection of course, Jota had decided for Jota-reasons that they needed to be nuked so they didn't interfere with his rising ambitions of winning the round.

I had wanted to damage their Wonder without knocking it down - the challenge was to leave it on 1hp. Cerby was well up for the challenge, and started Wonder-bashing. But then realm #2 lit up Sharkey and set him burning (he had no defences), and Jota got cold feet about the war and instantly cancelled it before we could pull off a legendary dunk leaving realm #2 with a 1hp Wonder. 

Sharkey was issued a command to bring in wizard guilds and defences. Sharkey wanted several days to do this and asked we hold off on the next war. His request was denied by King King Jota (not a typo), however, for he had set his sights on realm #11 - home of Fires Of S’mordor (Shining), the current leading second tier op threat. But he wasn't the target, Jota basically considered him a failing power at this specific point in the round I think. Instead we were directed at the Merfolk, Mithravioli (Erix), the Dwarf, Chicken à la Witch King (Mithrandir), and a converting Wood Elf, Minas Tirith-misu (MannoWrath).

We set all three off burning in the first wave. It strained us to maximum to pull that off, but between us we had the firepower, aided by the two non-discord players who were definitely doing some shenanigans. We kept them up to date with who we were nuking and they got in on the action. We also tried to sink the Dwarf, but he legged it out of the gate pretty quickly and made a bot hit before he could be effectively sunk. 

Around this time, I noticed that Cronel - who for once wasn't asleep, but was instead AWOL due to being at a Kpop concert - had blindly explored into range of Joules by 11 acres.

But it wasn't the end of the world: we were nearing the day change. As long as Cronel didn't take his land bonus at the day change, and Joules took his before the day change, it would all work out fine. I pinged Cronel and gave him the news. 

Joules took his land bonus. The day changed.

Cronel then also took his land bonus. 

Well shit. He was still going to be 11 acres in range. 

I was in the middle of writing Cronel's eulogy when Ares Titan chimed in to say he had also blindly explored into Joules' range. 

Well shit. Now it would be a case of who had the most land. They were both Icekin, so had the same land types, meaning whichever was biggest was probably gonna get chomped. 

I asked the question.

'''Rush:''' How many acres will you be in range by? Cronel is gonna be 11 acres in range.

'''Ares Titan:''' I have 83 acres coming. 

I blinked. 

'''Rush:''' Jesus.

One small mistake for Cronel, one giant mistake for Ares Titan. 

Hey, did anyone watch the Artemis II launch? I didn't. I would have if something exploded, but otherwise, we've seen it all before. They were doing that shit back when tv was still in black and white. Going to the moon is so retro. I get it, though - I also own a lava lamp. But it's pretty cool we're sending people to go and have a look at the moon after 50 years of not bothering I guess. Someone has to go check it's still there. Some conspiracy theorists think we've never been to the moon, of course. All staged in a tv studio, that's what they say. There's actually a big crossover between that group and the people who think the Earth is flat too. I used to think these conspiracy theorists were all nutcases, and then I learned that the world is in fact controlled by a ring of rich, elite paedophiles, and so nowadays I have a lot more time for conspiracy theories. 

There's one conspiracy theory that says Avril Lavigne committed suicide in 2003 and was replaced by some body double, a chick called Melissa. And then Melissa started putting coded messages in the next album she released, Under My Skin. And then in 2025, Melissa was replaced by Grapes of Math at an Avril Lavigne concert, and its just been Grapes in a wig ever since. That one's a bit wild, sure, I'll give you that. But I do genuinely wonder sometimes if Mark Zuckerberg is actually a lizard person. He does look like what a lizard person would look like if they wore a human skin suit I think. 

And speaking of lizard people. It was shortly after the first wave of our war with #3, when we had switched to maintenance mode on the burning merf, woodie and dwarf, when the three little Zucks imploded - saving both Cronel and Ares from their doom. 

It does seem to have been partly motivated by revenge - since it all started when Hussar hit Joules' realmie. 

''2026-04-03 08:59:44	Marie built Curie-ously on Becquerel's work (#3) invaded I will eat you so much (#0) and captured 71 land.''

''2026-04-03 09:59:57	Hussar (#9) invaded Marie built Curie-ously on Becquerel's work (#3) and captured 97 land.''

''2026-04-03 10:56:06	The Joules of the Crown (#3) invaded Top Persistent Browser Based Game of 2000 (squanchy) (#7) and captured 106 land.''

''2026-04-04 19:59:54	Hussar (#9) invaded Top Birthday Candle Extinguisher (Internetfett) (#7) and captured 108 land.''

''2026-04-04 20:56:06	The Joules of the Crown (#3) invaded Hussar (#9) and captured 169 land.''

''2026-04-04 21:26:41	Fires Of S’mordor (#11) invaded The Joules of the Crown (#3) and captured 175 land.''

I think it was around here that Jota started to get excited. This sort of destruction and chaos at the top is exactly the kind of environment his previous round-winning playstyle thrived under, and he believed both he and Sharkey were in strong positions, with Jota the stronger of the two having played faster, while also dodging #2's fireballs. 

Jota immediately demanded all bloppers start fireballing the #11 liz before his land came in - but of course, we couldn't, because we'd already stretched ourselves to maximum fireballing their merf, woodie and dwarf. Nobody had anything left in the tank and we had all been expecting only maintenance duty until their wittle baby rejuv mechanic kicked in. I pointed out that we had only two options here: stick to the original plan and hurt three players - or abandon the maintenance fireballs, significantly undermining the damage, and start saving to bomb the liz instead.

Jota picked the second option.

Meanwhile, as the chaos at the top was blazing on, we had some chaos at the bottom too. TheLastVegan was now relentlessly feeding whenever he hit.

''2026-04-04 14:59:05	Victorious on the battlefield, Madoka☆Magica (#6) conquered 68 land from GoDSeXor LeMah KaHai (#0).''

''2026-04-04 16:38:13	You shall not Pasta (Zooj) (#11) invaded fellow dominion Madoka☆Magica (#6) and captured 66 land.''

''2026-04-04 17:39:43	MARY HAD A LITTLE LAMB🐑CHK CHK BAM🔫NO MORE LAMB☠️ (Sizzler) (#4) invaded fellow dominion Madoka☆Magica (#6) and captured 67 land.''

''2026-04-04 19:59:10	LITTLE RED RIDING HOOD🧺LIKES FURRY🐺WEIRD STORY🤢 (Wurstmeyer) (#4) invaded fellow dominion Madoka☆Magica (#6) and captured 59 land.''

Sharkey tried to help him by offering a lot of good advice over several paragraphs, but the response back (verbatim) he got was:

'''TheLastVegan:''' me strong dorf

Good chat guys.

In the early round, you'll recall that Jota and Cerby had both tried to dissuade TheLastVegan from his "dwarf fast attacker" plans. Let's have a little flashback to that conversation. Imagine all this in a sepia tone, grainy film.

'''Cerby:''' Dwarf? Have you FA before?

'''TheLastVegan:''' Twice. I'll only spec ops for the first 2 hits and then spam clerics.

'''King Jota:''' Yeah that wont work with dwarf sorry

'''Cerby:''' Dwarf is not typically a FA race, more mid-speed. If you want to FA I’d suggest a different race, if you want to go dwarf I’d suggest mid speed.

'''TheLastVegan:''' Prestige doesn't take land

'''King Jota:''' The way dwarf got hit with both a price increase on Clerics and more expensive spec op there is really no reason why you would attempt running a dwarf utilizing exactly those units for dp and op. Dwarf works out well coming oop with miners for dp and warriors for op, or perhaps even better doing a quick convert and attacking a few days after oop.

'''TheLastVegan:''' Warriors take too many casualties

'''King Jota:''' I suppose you've played dwarf a lot before?

'''TheLastVegan:''' I won't get hit

I told him I was screenshotting that line for later, but I could never really be bothered to rub his face in his own hubris when the invasions started coming his way thick and fast. There is no helping some people.

And that brings our interlude here to a close. I now return you to the chaos at the top:

''2026-04-05 07:44:04	Hussar (#9) invaded The Joules of the Crown (#3) and captured 143 land.''

''2026-04-05 08:56:07	The Joules of the Crown (#3) invaded Fires Of S’mordor (#11) and captured 132 land.''

''2026-04-05 19:28:04	Hussar (#9) invaded The Joules of the Crown (#3) and captured 153 land.''

''2026-04-05 20:14:58	The Joules of the Crown (#3) invaded Crazy for Kathy My Angel (#0) and captured 67 land.''

I think it was around here that Jota started to get annoyed. Joules had definitely screwed up somewhere, and was out of the game and reduced to hitting bots. I asked Jota how he'd fallen apart so quickly.

King Jota said: "The exchange started like this: 

"Hussar made a send. It was a calculated risk. He knew Joules could hit him, but a retal was guaranteed. Joules could have hit a safer target, but that would also have been a bit risky, as Joules would also be open for a hit from Hussar when he returned.

"Anyway, Joules chose to directly hit Hussar. Only left like 104k or something. 

"He failed to identify liz 11, so he started falling apart here. Took a big 175a hit from r11 that he surely did not plan for. Then came the expected retal from Hussar.

"When Joules' units returned he decided to retal the liz 11. Only this was his last big mistake as he left himself open to Hussar a second time. This time without any chance to retal."

For our part we started nuking the #11 liz, making sure he was burning before his land came in. Their merf, woodie and dwarf were left to recover and likely only suffered a few ticks of slightly limited income. They had received a stay of execution from King King Jota. Hopefully they wouldn't be a problem for us later. 

Well, I don't know about you, but I feel like it's a good time to check in with Cosula and see if he's managed to improve his class standing a bit since last week. Let's see, shall we?

Cosula had mostly been an asset during the war with realm #2: not feeding, bombing the right targets and sewing chaos where it was needed. He seemed to always arrive at a war dec low on both spy and wiz str though, due to the distraction of his noob league between wars, which was incredibly annoying. He was still training wizards, but at a much lower rate than I honestly figured he would after he fed a war hit to #9, expecting him to come off the rails completely. Against #3, he was able to bomb all the initial targets, and was only out of range when the liz became the nuke priority. Which while not ideal since we struggled to set the liz burning on our reserves, did mean he was able to do some maintenance on the second priority target, the #2 merf. It was a middle-of-the-road performance but still a significant improvement from the previous war.

Zooj > FAs > SAs > Oppers > Bloppers > Explorers > Converters > Cosula > TheLastVegan > TheLastVegan but he's vibe-simming a fast attacker dwarf with unwarranted and unshakeable confidence

Cosula had jumped two entire class ranks in a single war. The only way was up! Could he prove more useful than a converter though? Usually I'd say "psh obviously, that's easy mode!" but if I've learned anything this round, it's that Cosula is all about subverting expectations. All he had to do was not revert to his usual ways in the next war and he'd be golden. 

You can probably tell I'm foreshadowing, right?

You didn't bet too much on him turning it all around, did you? 

''2026-04-07 10:57:15	Our wars are the best wars, everyone says so (#6) has declared WAR on Like a forest it's easy to lose your way, to get lost, to forget (#10).''

I didn't want to war #10. I wanted to war #7, and burn them all to spite their Wonder selection (the Wizard Academy). It would be completely ineffective against a realm like ours, and a nice flex too. Plus there were a couple of strong players in the realm that could do with having some wet noodles tossed in their faces for a few hours. But King King Jota was the one calling all the shots now that Cerby had retired and deconverted, and so we found ourselves at war with #10. The main targets were Revenge is a dish best served cold (Jboy) and They call it a Royale with cheese (Merf), so we did our thing, burning both and fbing them for the first wave. The second wave was a bit more of a challenge, because Jota wanted us to burn their DE, These are the Basterds, ever heard of us? (Tidnab)

Could we do it? Yeah. Would it be easy? No. Would it cost me personally a fuckton of dryad losses? Yup. But when you're a blopper, you suck it up and do it anyway. 

Ideally in this scenario, you'd have non-wizard race bloppers target someone like this so they didn't have to take dp casualties, because when a wizard race fails a blop, it's brutal - losing a bunch of dp and wizards in one fell swoop. It hurts, a lot. Unfortunately our non-wiz bloppers didn't have the ratios to take on the DE, and it was only myself and Cosula that really qualified - and we were both Sylvan. I was a bit concerned about having to rely on Cosula for anything at this point, but I reasoned, well, if he's going to be useful for anything, it's fireballing a high ratio target with all the extra wizards he stubbornly trained. I was going to have to promote him above Converters if he pulled his weight here. 

Our realm also wanted to test run snare. It had been strongly nerfed in advance of the draft round and it was already a tough op to pull off. God forbid a blopper team be able to blop any of these sweaty attacker teams, right? I said if we were testing snare on anyone, the DE was our best option: if we lowered his wiz str first, it should (in theory) increase our success rate against him with the fireballs. Your success rate is in part tied to your wizard strength, so I was making the assumption that your defence rate would have the same effect. I could be wrong, but it seems logical. 

We set a time to snare the guy and we should have had six bloppers available, but Cronel fell asleep the hour before we snared so we were down a blopper. Since we didn't care too much about preventing him casting spells, we just went ahead anyway. We snared him down successfully and then launched our fireball volley. My first fireball was successful, and then I ate six fails in a row and lost over 100 dryads. I sighed. I had run the numbers beforehand, and on my ratios I should be seeing a 66% success rate (and that's before wiz str was taken into account), so six straight fails right off the bat was just gross. Cosula, who maddeningly wasn't anywhere near full wiz str again, only had a few fails - his expected success rate was around 73%. I grit my teeth and sent the rest of my fireball volley, and mercifully most were successful. Between us we'd probably hit him with 15 fireballs - half a volley from me due to shitty RNG, and half a volley from Cosula because he started off without a bunch of wiz str and failed a few. Cerby, now a deconverted blopper, had a similar ratio to the DE and had five successes and no fails (55% success ratio expected). He set the DE burning. 

The mission was a success despite me getting fucked by RNG. Now we just had to worry about maintenance, which is where it mostly fell apart.

We were unable to keep snare going for more than a few ticks despite having a whole team of bloppers and non-blopper contributors, as well as the two discord mutes we drafted in. That's 10 potential people snaring a target. Part of it was full coordination was proving difficult to achieve, and a big chunk of it was the nerf to snare. 

The biggest flop here though was when it came to maintenance fireballs on the DE. I was tapped, and so was Cosula, but Cronel was asleep and would remain so for another six hours. The next day, when I went to fireball the DE again, I full volleyed him and he still wasn't at base peasants. I asked Cosula if he'd been fireballing the DE, and he confirmed that he hadn't been (!!!). He had instead decided to fireball the undead, I like the way you die, boy (neruht), an explorer who wasn't a target or a threat to anyone, because he'd taken fright at the two or three fails he'd had the previous day against the DE. So the DE had basically fully recovered overnight and after full blasting him, wasn't at base peasants.

Cosula then announced that he was done prioritising the realm's war objectives and was instead going to focus on some random halfling in realm #7, who was close to competing with him for some titles in the noob league.

Fortunately Cronel was around to pick up the slack here and took the DE back to base.

Probably time to check in with how Cosula's doing in the whole OD class system I think. 

Zooj > FAs > SAs > Oppers > Explorers > Bloppers > Converters > TheLastVegan > TheLastVegan but he's drunk and belligerent and insists on telling you in detail about his favourite my little pony character > Cosula 

This noob league obsession had, in my opinion, driven him crazy. I wanted to grab him by the shoulders and shake him, screaming NOBODY CARES ABOUT THAT LEAGUE, NONE OF IT MATTERS, DON'T DO IT COSULA, THERE'S NO COMING BACK FROM THIS, IT'S A TRAP THEY BUILT TO MAKE A SUCKER OUT OF YOU but I knew it wouldn't make a difference. That cynical system was designed to capture bloppers, so they didn't bother attackers in other realms - and in the process, it renders them mostly useless to their own realm. While most bloppers were aware of this fact and could choose to abstain from the league, Cosula seemed caught in it like a bug in a spider's web. And he might be the biggest bug in that web, but he's still a bug in a web. 

Even worse, Jota logged in and without consulting anyone, cancelled the war. Making it his second early war cancel. 

I guess he was fully embracing the dictator cosplay. He had been complaining that they'd blopped him, but when I checked out his dominion he wasn't burning, had no debuff spells, and had plenty boats - enough to send an army more than 30% larger than what he had. His docks didn't cover a full send though, and whatever #10 had done had clearly shaken his confidence. You know things are getting bad when you find yourself missing Rio. You don't get that kind of pansy behaviour on his watch!

(Future Rush edit: Little bastard was in our realm the whole time, but I didn't know it when I wrote that line.)

''2026-04-09 12:01:14	We've ended another war, we've brought more peace than anyone (#6) has CANCELED war against "You know, fightin' in a basement offers a lot of difficulties." (#10).''

Welp. Good job I had the incredible foresight to change the realm name in advance. 

The DE still had 6-7 hours of burning left, so that was potential damage just left on the table after sacrificing a bunch of time and resources to maximise damage against a target that Jota PUSHED US TO BURN.

I am theatrically throwing my hands up in exasperation at this point in the round, dear reader. This realmmmmmmmm.

I pinged Jota on discord and called him a pansy. That'll learn him. 

That sneaky DE got a "war hit" after we cancelled the war too, on one of our no discord players.

''2026-04-09 19:58:06	These are the Basterds, ever heard of us? (#10) invaded The Shire. (#6) and captured 99 land.''

== WEEK 4 - LICENSE TO SNARE ==

As a gang of devoted peacebringers, we had now brought more peace to OD than any other realm, ending wars all over the place. And what did we get for our troubles? Just a bunch of griping from the peanut gallery who said none of the wars made any sense, and that we were only helping our enemies. Mostly it came from jboy, who we had just warred - go figure. But this is something you hear every round if you are a blop heavy realm. I have over the rounds worked out what they really mean when they say this: it translates to "the actions you are taking are not directly benefitting me, and are hindering our ability to win the round". Or if you want to look at it another way, "wah".

I don't care about that. I just want my realm to win the round.

Jota, our main strategist now that Cerby had taken a back seat, is a pretty savvy player overall. He has a great understanding of the landscape at the top and knows what needs to happen to open the windows of opportunity on the path to his victory. Do I think he is some master strategist prodigy? No. He is quite prone to reactionary target-jumping whenever someone makes a strong move that potentially puts that player ahead of where he is projecting he will be in the near future, which means his focus hops around a lot. It's the reason we burned the DE in #10, and the reason we stopped burning the DE in #10 early, and the reason we would suddenly end up suddenly shifting targets in the middle of other wars instead of maximising the damage against our original targets. The blop cannon is a slow and lethargic machine, not an agile thing; it takes a long time to reload, and you can't demolish targets quickly, or switch targets mid-fire. And damage is so limited that you can't really change targets on the fly without wasting a lot of resources. Despite that, Jota knew his stuff better than any of the rest of us, and the realm trusted his tactical decisions. He was mostly guiding us in the right direction. 

We also heard the argument, "if you burn everyone, it's the same as burning nobody" as a response to a very civilised (lol) discord discussion about why blops feel weak. This one misses the point completely. Our realm isn't on fire. Everyone else's is. We should be the beneficiaries. In theory, anyway. We were certainly not immune from our own fuckups, which cost us a lot this round. 

But we had some effective killshots in our previous wars, the dwarf in #9 being the most notable one - who was blopped and invaded. Poor Zar. But wars also subject you to a lot of risk - feeding war hits, and helping the realm you wanted to hurt instead. We did plenty of that too. 

It's a big problem with blops teams: they are casual players mostly, and you can make every effort in the world to say things like "cast AC early" and they still will casual themselves into an entirely avoidable AC drop hit and ruin the best laid plans of the realm. But the self-owns of bloppers are a comedic part of the rich tapestry of the game. 

As a blops team generally, it's not the most tight-knit operation I've been part of. Cosula showed up to every war on 50% spywiz strength and Cronel was always asleep at literally every war declaration no matter what time of the day it was - though at least he always brought the firepower when he was conscious. In wars, as a realm, we had started getting sloppy, and #10 was probably where it felt - at least to me - the most evident.

''2026-04-09 19:42:05	#4 spent $8 million plat making mice transgender. This is real (#6) has declared WAR on Once upto a Draft (#4).''

But I'm not going to cover that war because it was pretty uneventful. You already know what happened. Cosula had no spywiz str because the halfer in #7 was haunting his dreams. Cronel was asleep. And meanwhile Asanka probably nearly fed #9 because he does that at least twice a week, just to keep everyone on edge. 

Fortunately, Jota was there in a pinch to fill in some of the blanks when I asked if he had any comment:

'''King Jota:''' We had a war with #4?

Well. I told you it was uneventful.

'''King Jota:''' Oh wait, now I remember. That one can be summarised by "Veni, Vidi, Vici". 

For those of you who are unfamiliar with Latin phrases, that means "Eat rocks, nerds!". It seems even the ancient Romans had little patience for nerds.

'''King Jota:''' Our intent in the war with #4 was going after their efficient trolls, who were heavily teched, had a good amount of diamond mines and efficient builds. Long term threats. At this stage we'd seen several second tier doms like the merfs in #7 and #11, some strong dwarves, etc. that were all more or less on a par with each other - and could potentially be useful to eventually push some op on the liz. No clear targets had pulled ahead, so aiming for some slower doms made sense.

So there you have it. Now. We were back at war with #10. 

''2026-04-12 20:42:41	Did we do this already? I forget (#6) has declared WAR on "You wanna hold my hand?" (#10).''

Blops team would set one target on fire, then run out of peasants to burn, then move onto the next one, and the next, and the next, with reckless disregard for the maintenance side of fireballs - figuring that blops team was so big, someone else would take care of it. But that wasn't happening. We had spread ourselves too thin, weren't disciplined about plague, and so whenever someone went to fireball one of the many targets on the list in #10, they had tons of peasants regenerated. The priority target was Revenge is a dish best served cold (Jboy), so he was mostly kept crispy at least.

A new rule was implemented: no more than two targets at a time per wave in war.

After the war was over, realm #9's Hussy came after poor Revenge, declaring war for a 79% snare hit. 

Realm #9 were praised by the peanut gallery for this action, and we were blamed for enabling it. Though in our estimation at the time, it really didn't matter too much what Hussy did at this stage. He was playing for time to give the other up-and-comers a shot at victory.

Speaking of. Jota was getting progressively more fixated with #9's human, Persian War Elephant (nurtho), after he made several quick and strong hits - which made him the new and sudden priority concern to be addressed. Realm #9 was at war with #10, though, and we had assessed way back in the beginning of the round that this was a blops capable realm. We had to hope they'd deal with the elephant in the room, because there's no point in multiple realms going to war with one singular threat these days. 

I said this much in the discord, and Jota accused me of letting the peanut gallery in discord get under my skin, turning me off the war path. The suggestion was outrageous. 

Cerby had done some intel gathering, and had assessed that at this point in the round, realms #2, #5, #9 and #11 all had multiple potential war targets with several doms in each looking solid, and a strong sylvan in #8. I didn't want to get drawn into a never-ending game of whack-a-mole, especially now at the point in the round where the effectiveness of wizard blops falls a cliff. Instead I suggested the best option was that we beef up our spies and try to find Jota a snare hit to get his edge back, because he was starting to fall behind and was struggling to find a target, which was in turn limiting his ambition of getting into #9's range to start pressuring them with his op. 

We recharged our batteries and found one good option, but he wasn't a viable snare target due to a 0.8 ratio, so we needed him to Ares drop - but he cast early instead. Jota went to bed. 

Sharkey was similarly struggling, with three other doms in his range that could easily hit him if he sent. He and Jota workshopped up some viable scenario to get him up to 20% GTs quickly and try to pull off a 9hr to keep him in the game. 

Our next war caused a bit of controversy.

''2026-04-17 21:13:41	Sneaky Dictators (#6) has declared WAR on Destination Unknown (#8).''

The sylvan in realm #8, The Vegan Cannibal (Oment), had risen to the top of Jota's list of threats to his ambitions of world domination. Initially the conversation just revolved around whether or not it was worth fireballing him, given his natural defences. Most bloppers consider it very much not worth their time to limit a well-protected target with wizard blops, and the later on in the round, the worse it gets. But I had since adopted a different philosophy after playing with Rio in our 'Fire the Laser' round, and that was: fuck 'em. If they're a threat and you can limit them even a little bit, you do it anyway, as long as you don't end up feeding them. The sylvan's natural wizard defences made him a challenging target for most of our blops crew except myself as a fellow sylvan; and I had done the unthinkable and trained additional wiz on top of my dryads to boost my ratio a little further against him. My losses on fails would be absolutely brutal and I wanted to minimise them as much as possible (future Rush edit: this did not help). Cosula, also a sylvan but on much, much higher ratios, was of course totally useless because he was out of range. At this point, now that we were committing to war, we also started to consider snare as an option. We didn't have the op in our realm to hit the sylvan, but the sylvan couldn't defend Hussy without Ares, so we could strip it off him and feed him to the failing power in realm #9. Jota needed to keep things moving at the top for him to benefit and stay ahead of the slow attackers, and we could kneecap his direct competition this way too. 

Snare isn't easy at the best of times - a lesson #9 would learn repeatedly and to their great shame this round - but the GPC had also pre-emptively substantially nerfed it this round to the point where even as a full-on blops realm it was difficult to pull off. Not so much in terms of the number of bodies we had available to click buttons, but more in terms of it's difficult to get just a bunch players around at the same time with full spy strength and high enough ratios to pull it off, and making those clicks worth less meant even more organisation was needed. It was a fucking pain in the ass. But we did it, because we're pro. We snared the sylvan, who had immediately logged in but wasn't fast enough to recast (like I said, we're pro), so he went straight to his next best option: crying to the Rules Committee. "It was the fastest report we've ever seen filed," said RC member Yami in an exclusive tell-all interview*. "I think the player in question must be some sort of speed typist champion because within seconds, I knew I had to act to save the round."

(*All quotes fabricated for entertainment purposes.)

The rules committee briefly locked the Sylvan, making his dominion impervious to all blops, while they chatted about how best to screw over some honest bloppers just trying to get a win for their realm. In rulings like these, the Rules Committee (RC) often takes into account the intent behind the action, and applies various degrees of leniency to players - or at least they do when it's an attacker suiciding. When they're bloppers, however, it's a different story.

"This happened to me in the past, actually," Yami explained. "Got snared by a realm that couldn't hit me, been raging about it ever since - still get PTSD flashbacks in the shower sometimes. I'm in there trying to sing along to Disney's "Let It Go" and all I can think about is those sleazy bloppers causing problems in my otherwise perfect 47-day simulation - so this was my chance to really stick it to them and right a historical wrong."*

(*The bit about Yami singing Let It Go in the shower is true, and the bit about having his own personal baggage about this specific operation is something he admitted.)

"Also," Yami continued, totally unprompted. "I know this exact scenario has played out a bunch of times before and we've never done anything about it, not even an acres refund lol, but that's because when it happened those times, it was Wurst doing it so that was why it was fine."

Sharkey, also on the RC, knew we weren't doing it just to troll as he could see the realm discussion around it, so he explained the intentions behind the snare to the rest of the RC, who elected to ignore that the action benefited our realm, and made a ruling instead based on imagined future scenarios where this same action could happen but with impure intentions. They intervened and amped Ares for the Sylvan - and later, after we complained, gave us back our lost spies and spy strength. 

Oment posted his own thoughts on the snare, which you can read [[Round 49 The Vegan Cannibal|here]]. Not that I imagine it'll change whatever your opinion is much, since both accounts - his and mine - agree on the intent: we tried to feed him to Hussar. Where opinions start to diverge is in the nuance - whether you think it's fair game to hurt your future competition by feeding them to a dying fast attacker. I think it is. All's fair in love and war. Fuck this gentleman's agreement bullshit.

The RC's decision placed our realm on a very different path. Instead of Hussy hitting the Sylvan (which we weren't even sure he would, as their ops support had generally seemed quite lacking all round, given the number of times Asanka had sat with his Ares off for hours and hours giving us all panic attacks!), Hussy would instead hit us. Twice. It seems they were paying attention after all. 

The first hit was on Cronel, who said he had assumed Hussy would hit the Sylvan, and had explored into range. He did hit the explore button after the RC had already intervened, though, so this just puzzled me. He later clarified that he had also gotten high. 

I don't get high, or at least I haven't done for a long time, so I don't know if getting high gives you a craving to explore acres and forget that it'll get you hit. Last time I got properly high was about 20 years ago, and I spent that time lying in bed while a giant 2D Eric Cartman hovered over me, threatening to crush me if I closed my eyes. I would not have been clicking explore back then, that's for sure. 

''2026-04-18 23:59:12	Hussar (#9) invaded Donald J. Trump (Cronel) (#6) and captured 170 land.''

Next up to drop the ball was King Jota himself.

''2026-04-19 11:13:12	Hussar (#9) invaded Dr. Bashar al-Assad (King Jota) (#6) and captured 181 land.''

Jota said he'd woken up in the middle of the night to make the hit, his wife had started yelling at him about playing games under the covers again, and he'd hurriedly made the hit without checking he was out of range. 

Both of these hits into our realm were reported to the RC by other realms as deliberate feeding / collusion. Honestly, I felt like reporting them both myself. 

"Yeah you guys got reported a ton there," Yami said. "But at this point we already knew #6 are a bunch of idiots so we just figured it was probably down to your extremely low IQs and not something you could have helped, so we let it slide. Besides, as long as the Sylvan in #8 is good, we're good. Remember, I saved the round.*"

Jota bounced back quickly though, spotting that the dead lizard in #11 had dropped Ares.

''2026-04-19 17:01:00	Dr. Bashar al-Assad (#6) invaded Fires Of S’mordor (#11) and captured 185 land.''

Unfortunately the Sylvan in #8 also benefited, again acting with such speed that I started to suspect his forehead was surgically attached to his phone.

''2026-04-19 17:01:45	The Vegan Cannibal (#8) invaded Fires Of S’mordor (#11) and captured 175 land.''

This Sylvan was starting to feel like Lud's Sylvan from our Fire the Laser round, where every action we took only benefited him. And thanks to the RC, even actions we took to hurt him only benefited him. What a wonderful situation. 

The usual seething-behind-the-scenes sneering about bloppers bubbled over into the discord, mainly from Buckshot and his carer, Scratch, but after the last Bloppergate nobody could really be arsed engaging with them seriously.

Alright, end of the week. You know what that means. Let's check in with Cosula and see how he's getting on...

''2026-04-19 12:16:34	Not in the right headspace (Scuzy) (#5) invaded fellow dominion Kim Jong-Un (Cosula) (#6) and captured 130 land.''

Oh dear. Another Ares drop hit on OD's most hardcore blopper. You'd think he'd be a bit more attentive to the spells he's casting, no?

Cosula was now mostly useless in every war, being so small that he couldn't hit our priority war targets. He'd stumble into a war declaration, excitedly announce that he had 60% wizard strength (that's actually a lot more than usual) and ask who his targets were, only to find himself out of range of all of them, and left to fireball some harmless explorer or go back to squabbling with the noob league halfer in #7. I almost felt bad for him, and then I remembered that punching himself in the face all round was his preferred playstyle.

Zooj > FAs > SAs > Oppers > Explorers > Bloppers > Converters > TheLastVegan > Cosula > TheLastVegan but he's sending blind on Elf Woods now and bouncing like a champ 

Cosula has been elevated on position despite this though, because his stories about the halfer were at least entertaining to read. He was slowly being driven to madness and ever-higher ratios. So, now he's in a vegan sandwich in the OD class system. He's worse than the high concept of Vegan ("I won't get hit"), but better than Vegan in reality ("I will get hit lots").

== WEEK 5 - HUNGRY FOR WAR ==

We found ourselves back at war with #2. Honestly, I'd forgotten we'd been at war with these guys in the first place but Jota was like, "we need to do more war". And so more war we did.

This was the realm that we'd tried to leave their Hanging Gardens wonder on 1hp, so we had another shot at that at least. Then Sharkey sent out unsafe.

''2026-04-22 19:53:44	Victorious on the battlefield, Xi Jinping (Sharkey) (#6) conquered 122 land from Walk with Me please (#0).''

''2026-04-22 20:12:45	Chuck Norris doesn't need ops (Faith) (#2) invaded fellow dominion Xi Jinping (#6) and captured 197 land.''

Another war, another war hit we fed to the realm we were trying to hurt. This realmmmmmm.

Sharkey also didn't have enough mana to cast Surreal Perception, which for Sharkey somehow made him more paranoid than if he could see who else was taking his ops. 

'''Sharkey:''' Oh god not enough mana for SP

'''Sharkey:''' Indescribable anxiety rn

'''Sharkey:''' Tempted to steal some mana

'''Sharkey:''' Who's there? I can't see bc I'm blind!

Three minutes later, he stole some mana and cast SurreaL Perception and was finally able to relax, safe in the knowledge that half the game was indeed taking his ops.

But the war hit on Sharkey did flip the switch from "we're burning our competition" to "okay get trolled bitches".

So we knocked down their lame-o food production Wonder. Then swarmed everyone. Then stole the nomad's food. 

Meanwhile, realm #9 was back at war with realm #3 again, trying to snare their dwarf - Marie built Curie-ously on Becquerel's work (B). Again. 

I reported #9 just in case the RC hadn't checked that they had a valid snare permit before the war. But the RC didn't have to intervene this time, because the snare failed. Again.

Yes, this was actually #9's second snare fail on the exact same guy. A for effort, Z for execution. I remember commenting when Weaser was discussing the team he'd built on the podcast that it looked like he had mostly forgotten to bring in ops and support players; to which he responded with crickets. I assume it was an intentional choice, those players are often undervalued. It was a decision that had come home to roost for #9. We knew their ops were weak before the two failed snares, however, since Asanka would constantly sit in range of Hussy with his Ares off, for HOURS, fully hittable, and they just never spotted it. In fact, Asanka's main role in our realm all round seemed to be to try and stress everyone out, and he was really good at it. Fortunately for us, #9 just didn't have their eyes open all round. I am shocked Asanka got away with it as often as he did. And it's honestly not that unusual from what I've seen from most efficiency explorers. It's why most rounds there's a runaway, you have people just constantly amazed at the relentless feeding that goes on. You only didn't see it this round because #9 apparently wasn't really looking for it.

Quick Cosula check-in before we end the week.

Zooj > FAs > SAs > Oppers > Explorers > Bloppers > Converters > TheLastVegan > Cosula > TheLastVegan but he's sending blind on Elf Woods now and bouncing like a champ

And yes, TheLastVegan really did bounce on Elf Woods.

''2026-04-23 07:49:30	Sadly, the forces of Madoka☆Magica (#6) were beaten back by Elf Woods (#8).''

So, no change for Cosula here because he still wasn't really doing anything useful. 

== WEEK 5 - GRUDGE MISSILE ==

''2026-04-25	I think I know more about the environment than most people (#6) has declared WAR on Cant outsmart science..or luck. But what a wonder-ful discovery! (#9).''

We were back at war with our pals in #9, so friendly with them we were, so collisional, that we couldn't resist delivering some freshly moistened noodles for them to enjoy. 

What did we do in this war? Couldn't tell you. Probably it was all Jota still desperately trying to squash down their Persian Elephant human.

This was a rare dogpile war, since #3 were already at war with #9, and who Grapes of Math had accidentally mutualed by fat-fingering something on the Government page. You've heard of the Mithtake; ladies and gentleman, I present you the Grapes of Mathtake. It was pretty bad for #9, since it cancelled their human's rejuvenation, which had only just kicked in. We took a look at what #3 was doing and didn't really see any evidence of much blopping, it did just seem they were taking their Wonder back. So on we piled, and set everyone burning again. According to Grapes, his apologies in-realm were met with an awkward, poignant silence. 

They destroyed our Wonder - the first time we'd lost it since taking it all round, despite being at constant war - and we took it back four hours later. And that was war with #9.

Not too long after, Jota assessed that Hussy was being limited by external factors, I think he said some merfolk somewhere was probably limiting him, so he decided to take the risk that Hussy wouldn't hit him even though the war bonus was still active, and sent out. 

''2026-04-27 10:04:05	Victorious on the battlefield, Dr. Bashar al-Assad (#6) conquered 173 land from Top toppings that top "Topper" Harley (Sloxxor) (#7).''

And realm #10, who hadn't done anything all round despite being in a strong position for a lot of it, finally decided to actually do something. And that something was to railroad and finally kill off Jota for our wars on them earlier in the round. 

''2026-04-27 17:09:42	This some serious gourmet shit! (TheThing) (#10) invaded fellow dominion Dr. Bashar al-Assad (#6) and captured 282 land.''

There was some crowing from the peanut gallery, some great memes, and everyone we'd managed to upset this round fell over themselves to stick it to us. Which at this point was almost every realm.

It was very short-lived though. Everyone was suddenly a lot quieter when their valiant hero exploded and fed half the game.

''2026-04-27 21:59:41	Chuck Norris Dwarves All Other Men (#2) invaded This some serious gourmet shit! (#10) and captured 219 land.''

Whoops.

''2026-04-27 22:23:41	Chuck Norris doesn't need ops (#2) invaded This some serious gourmet shit! (#10) and captured 199 land.''

''2026-04-27 22:24:43	Time waits for no man, except Chuck Norris (#2) invaded This some serious gourmet shit! (#10) and captured 171 land.''

Stop, stop he's dead!

''2026-04-27 22:48:41	Top 2AM Toaster (Rury) (#7) invaded This some serious gourmet shit! (#10) and captured 162 land.''

The hit from Toaster really seemed to rustle some jimmies in #10, who then set up a raze.

''2026-04-28 13:57:04	Top 2AM Toaster (#7) fended off an attack from This some serious gourmet shit! (#10).''

''2026-04-28 13:57:34	Water can flow... or it can crash (Esthera) (#10) invaded Top 2AM Toaster (#7) and captured 277 land.''

You don't see razes very often these days. 

Of course, #10's original assassin from #2 was the main beneficiary.

''2026-04-28 14:02:22	Chuck Norris Dwarves All Other Men (#2) invaded This some serious gourmet shit! (#10) and captured 187 land.''

''2026-04-28 14:03:39	Chuck Norris doesn't need ops (#2) invaded This some serious gourmet shit! (#10) and captured 171 land.''

Surely at this point #10 is just cooperating with #2? Someone get Chunk's read on that. Oh wait, never mind, he's in realm #2.

We didn't have anything better to do now, and it's not like #10 could do anything worse to us, so we pushed the big red war button.

''2026-04-28 14:32:46	I like to push buttons, big red ones (#6) has declared WAR on Each and every man under my command owes me 100 Nazi scalps (#10).''

There was no point taking revenge on the suicide, so we targeted their Merfolk instead, and set him burning before his land came in. 

Here's a fun or depressing little side-story for you, and your outlook will vary depending on your opinions on blops. When we warred #10 to target their Merfolk, he had about 31k peasants and 107 million in castle improvements. He had zero wizard guilds - but about a 0.4 wizard ratio and a ~6% reduction in spell damage from spires investments. Under the full onslaught of our mighty blops team, we were able to take him down to base peasants of just 27k, and take his improvements down to just 105mil before our wizards collectively refused to cast any more spells because there was "nothing left" to burn or destroy. I'm starting to think these wizards are fucking blind.

Whatever your outlook on blops, I'm sure everyone can agree on this: that is pathetic. 

Wars last for two days, and the damage is all dealt in the first five minutes - and the rest of that time is keeping them to this puny cap that trivialises it anyway. And then they get supercharged recovery and total immunity for ages. And a lingering tail op bonus that extends long after the war is over.

It's an absolute joke and I think I'm finally ready to throw in the towel on this playstyle. Look out for me next round, I'll be the guy sending on Elf Woods and bouncing.

But before that, another quick Cosula check-in. 

Cosula had turned up to the war with #10 with almost full spywiz power (80%+). I was almost impressed - until I realised it was because he'd driven everyone else out of the noob league, including the halfer that had plagued his every waking thought for so long. He was alone in the league, with no one left to blop, so he had more in reserve than usual. But he still couldn't target the Merfolk (not that it really mattered since just so much as glancing at the guy was enough to bring him to the bloppable limits), but was very happy to be blopping their harmless demon explorer (Check Out The Big Brain On Brad (Norfolk) instead, since he was yielding like 1600 peasants a go compared to the 300 or so on the Merfolk. 

Cosula was going to finish as the top rankwhore. He had all the ranks. He was light years ahead on everything we track, and it was almost entirely farmed from completely irrelevant targets. This is why we had to start crushing down low land players in the Rush Ranks. If the game had some similar way to assess who was hurting the right targets (and I have no idea how to implement that), you might see better blops targeting from Cosula. But the way it is now, he demonstrably cannot alter his behaviour. He's too fixated on the ranks and not the real goal. I've played with every blopper in the game (I think), and none of them operate to the detriment of the realm's goals like Cosula does. To each their own, he can play however he wants - but that doesn't mean he's free of my devastating criticism for it! 

Speaking of. 

Zooj > FAs > SAs > Oppers > Explorers > Bloppers > Converters > TheLastVegan > Cosula > TheLastVegan but he's reached the limit of discord servers he can be in after joining too many Roblox servers and had to cut one, and if he has to choose between the realm discord and Roblox, he's choosing Roblox, and now he's gone

Actually, that caveated version of Vegan is far more preferable to the idealised Vegan. Let me fix that.  

Zooj > FAs > SAs > Oppers > Explorers > Bloppers > Converters > TheLastVegan but he's reached the limit of discord servers he can be in after joining too many Roblox servers and had to cut one, and if he has to choose between the realm discord and Roblox, he's choosing Roblox, and now he's gone > Cosula > TheLastVegan

== WEEK 6 - DICTATORS NEVER WIN ==

We let the war with #10 run on for the full duration, so their merfolk got gently noodled twice. Did it make any difference? No. But it felt like we were getting some sort of revenge, and psychologically, that was worth something. 

''2026-05-03 02:00:26	I like to push buttons, big red ones (#6) has CANCELED war against Each and every man under my command owes me 100 Nazi scalps (#10).''

''2026-05-03 12:08:00	Victorious on the battlefield, Dr. Bashar al-Assad (#6) conquered 206 land from Minas Tirith-misu (#11).''

Remember my stupid plucky optimism when I said "it's not like #10 could do anything worse to us" in the previous week?

''2026-05-03 23:47:46	Water can flow... or it can crash (#10) invaded fellow dominion Dr. Bashar al-Assad (#6) and captured 289 land.''

This realmmmmmmmmmm!

'''Cerby:''' Fucking realm #10.

Cerby said it for everyone. Realm #10 was never really in a particularly strong position, and our blops had, at least in their apparent assessment, guaranteed they never would be - so they had shifted their round goal to the mutually assured destruction of our realms instead. I loved it.

Jota made no comment. I like to think he went to his happy place, back in the Italian alps, back to simpler times, when he was skiing down slopes without a care in the world - and far, far away from realm #10, where they could never hurt him again.

In the last weeks there was a lot of talk about an explorer win. Top 2AM Toaster in #7 tried to secure it for Top Hat Model at Target Corp (mcgeeal) by suiciding the top explorer, Chu Ko Nu (Extravadadza) for a spectacular 604 land hit - but Chu Ko Nu still finished the round 28 acres ahead and the top explorer for the round. Unfortunately for Extravadadza, Chuck Norris doesn't need ops (Faith) would ultimately win the round despite tripping over at the finish line: 

''2026-05-06 01:12:14	The Forest Keshiks of Mongolia (#9) fended off an attack from Chuck Norris doesn't need ops (#2).''

Word on the street was the troll in #4, LITTLE RED RIDING HOOD🧺LIKES FURRY🐺WEIRD STORY🤢 (Wurstmeyer) could have played Kingmaker by setting up a raze hit with his other troll pal MARY HAD A LITTLE LAMB🐑CHK CHK BAM🔫NO MORE LAMB☠️ (Sizzler), but chose not to do anything, and so by their inaction Faith secured his victory.

Realm #4's Mary would instead end the round by suiciding Asanka, who was the third-largest explorer. 

''2026-05-07 04:27:24	MARY HAD A LITTLE LAMB🐑CHK CHK BAM🔫NO MORE LAMB☠️ (#4) invaded fellow dominion General Idi Amin Dada (#6) and captured 551 land.''

''2026-05-07 04:30:35	Persian War Elephant (#9) invaded MARY HAD A LITTLE LAMB🐑CHK CHK BAM🔫NO MORE LAMB☠️ (#4) and captured 346 land.''

''2026-05-07 04:30:54	Water can flow... or it can crash (#10) invaded MARY HAD A LITTLE LAMB🐑CHK CHK BAM🔫NO MORE LAMB☠️ (#4) and captured 239 land.''

''2026-05-07 05:24:27	Chuck Norris isn’t dead he’s AFK and still winning (#2) invaded LITTLE RED RIDING HOOD🧺LIKES FURRY🐺WEIRD STORY🤢 (#4) and captured 286 land.''

''2026-05-07 05:26:40	Victorious on the battlefield, Dr. Bashar al-Assad (#6) conquered 261 land from LITTLE RED RIDING HOOD🧺LIKES FURRY🐺WEIRD STORY🤢 (#4).''

I think #4 was probably just excited to get in on some of #10's revenge action, though suiciding a sleepy explorer at the end of the round to finish on a net loss is certainly a choice. Realm #10's revenge actions certainly felt a lot more seismic to the realm.

We finished the round on a war with our old chum Hussy and his pals in #9. Just farming fireball kills to try and get five of us over 200k peasant kills this round, which I'm happy to report we succeeded at. According to Volv, keeper of the fireball ranks, that's a new record. 

Our realm had a collective total of 1,414,874 peasant kills this round. That's the same population as Maine in the US. Get fucked, Maine!

And of course, #10 couldn't let the grudge go and suicided Jota again on the last day. 

''2026-05-07 05:27:13	Revenge is a dish best served cold (#10) invaded fellow dominion Dr. Bashar al-Assad (#6) and captured 352 land.''

''2026-05-07 05:38:10	Top 2AM Toaster (#7) invaded Revenge is a dish best served cold (#10) and captured 260 land.''

''2026-05-07 05:58:51	Top Game Collector in Texas (#7) invaded Revenge is a dish best served cold (#10) and captured 259 land.''

Credit to the cosplay, he really went all in on revenge.

'''King Jota:''' So sour realm #10. I am happy we fucked them up well. 

Alright, we're finally at the end of this round - which means one final Cosula check in. I'm going to be kind to him, not because he deserves it, but because I can't in good conscience leave the guy as the filling in a TheLastVegan sandwich.

Zooj > FAs > SAs > Oppers > Explorers > Bloppers > Converters > TheLastVegan > TheLastVegan but he's showing up in your dreams now, quietly whispering in your ear the thing that terrifies you the most in the whole world: "I've already signed up to the next draft round Rush, and fett says I'm on your team again" and his breath is hot and wet on your ear and you want to pull away or cry or scream but you can't because you're paralysed and he keeps saying it over and over again

And so, ladies and gentlemen, I present you the third worst class in the game: the Cosula class.

Did it occur to me while creating this class tier list that drawing first blood with what essentially our community's version of Rambo might be a bad idea? Yes it did. So I'll be in hiding once this roundfail goes live. Pray for me.

== EPILOGUE ==

There's may be a lot of snark in this roundfail, but I had a blast this round. The whole realm was fantastic fun to play with, very active, great banter and worked well together. Team Cerby drafted a risky team and I commend him for it: there are lots of draft captains that would never dare - myself included. I would absolutely not be building a glass cannon blops team if I was a team captain! I've played this exact scenario many times and while it's a lot of fun, it is so hard to win with in the current blops climate in OD. Your glass cannon is fragile, and you also piss some of the more sensitive players off in the process - who then spend all round  campaigning in the discord that you're terrible because - oh no - you affected them (lookin' at you Jboy), which can be a total drag. We also had the added hurdle of the random intervention by the RC mid-round to contend with, which hurt us a lot. 

We also got to see who was the best combat blopper, after discovering Rio had been hiding in our midst all round - meaning we can directly compare his fireball damage with Jota's, as both were running Dark Elf builds. And turns out, it's Jota! Despite Rio being the first to flight test the playstyle, Jota had beaten him at his own craft, killing 69% more peasants with fireballs. Nice.

Cronel says we had the most wars ever - declaring 13 and having 1 declared on us - but that's harder to verify (or at least, I'm far too lazy to go back and check). I know back when infamy farming was a thing, one round we spent virtually every day at war. But 14 wars is a lot, for sure. 

I didn't chase any ranks this round, it was all for the war effort, and so ended up with none. That's dedication to the cause baby. I finished 26th on 6,166 land. Out of our entire draft pack, I was one of only two players that didn't eat a hit this round. The other was Adam, our MVP in the early wars and new to OD. One to watch for future rounds I reckon. 

Alright, see ya.