Editing Round 41 The Conrad von H tzendorf of OD Strategery

Hi, this is Rush here. Zar was kind enough to let me hijack his entry in the top 100 so I could post this Roundfail. Turns out when you abandon, Emperor fett personally deletes your very existence from the history books in disgust - and rightly so! But it meant I had nowhere else to go. So thank you to Zar, last refuge of the fett-scorned and official sponsor of my last ever (gasp) Roundfail. 

'''FOREWORD'''

This foreword has been a bit of a bitch to write. Actually this whole Roundfail has been a bitch to write, what with all the drama, bullshit, lies, cheating and general cunty-ness on full display from our wonderful community this past round. I have pretty much washed my hands of OD at this point, but I had over 6,000 words of this Roundfail written before I quit - so I figured I might as well tidy it up a little and then hit publish. One last yarn.

Before I get into it though, I'm going to be somewhat self-indulgent and talk a little bit about the editing process first. It has some context for the tone of this Roundfail so it's worth covering.

When I write these stories I do tend to spend a fair bit of time on them, and a big part of that is the editing. I re-read what I've written and revise it repeatedly through the round and post-round. I probably revise the entire volume five or six times before you ever even see it on the wiki. I have one golden rule with these Roundfails: they are light entertainment. They are a bit of fun for people who are still capable of some oldschool reading in an age of short attention spans and tiktok videos. In this community, that's probably like five of you. Then there's a larger group that just Ctrl + F for their own name, and when they don't find it, they go back to watching youtube shorts of guys being accidentally hit in the balls by various projectiles. But no matter how you consume this content, it has always had those 'light entertainment' guard rails on. These Roundfails are supposed to be at least mildly interesting and funny, and not meant make people feel bad about themselves. That means no genuinely hostile or personal attacks on other players. When I do trip up and cross that line, it always gets caught in one of the edit sweeps before publication, and if something does sound genuinely hostile, I'll re-work it until it's at least funny instead of just mean-spirited. This is why we end up with memes about Mithrandir going to Disneyland instead of a toxic rant about selfish players not giving a shit about teamplay weeks before they ever got on a plane to the magic kingdom. It is an exercise in self-moderation and it '''always''' improves the overall quality and entertainment value of the Roundfail.

It has been very hard to follow that golden rule this round. Not least because so many people in this community clearly have absolutely no interest in moderating their own toxicity, or just don't have the social aptitude or self-awareness to realise when they're being cunts and reel themselves in. I'm not talking down from a pedestal here, I'm right up there on the list of repeat offenders in cheeky comments - but some players really go beyond the pale with genuine anger and are so relentless in their heedless cuntery that they have now effectively poisoned and polarised the community. 

So in the end, not wanting to further poison the well, I settled on somewhere between keeping it vague enough that any of you reading this who did contribute to this shitshow won't feel personally attacked, while still having a good rant at your expense. The best of both worlds. Unless your name is Mithrandir, in which case you still get a well-deserved roasting throughout this story - starting three paragraphs ago. 

I'm aware this is a quality control failure, but I've decided it's warranted in this case. 

Also, this is by no means a 'finished' story; I abandoned on like day 33(ish), but I'd been on autopilot for a week before that, so it ends quite abruptly. I only found out through the grapevine that playt0i won the round, but I was happy to hear that for two reasons: one, he's a cool dude, and two, he's one of those incredibly insular one-pack-for-life players, which likely excludes him from a lot of gossip. Speaking to him post-round, he had absolutely zero forewarning about all of the blops alliance rumours, and did not benefit from the perceived pre-round (un)intelligence that some other players tried to use to their advantage. So congratulations to playt0i and his pack / realm for the win. It was well deserved and fairly earned. 

Anyway, with all of the above in mind, you are now equipped with the drama warnings you need before deciding if you want to waste your time reading this Roundfail. Without further ado, let's spin this stupid yarn.

'''PRE-ROUND - SIX DEGREES OF KEVIN BACONDIR'''

Hi, Rush here with another Roundfail. And it's another draft round baby!

Oh, it wasn't a draft round, you say? Well, maybe not for you. But if you're a blackopper or spicy fast attacker, it most certainly was a draft round. If you weren't invited, that's a you thing. 

But in all seriousness, after soloing the previous round I was keen not to re-live that experience anytime soon, and we'd been trying to organise a pack but had somehow ended up with six players wanting in it, which obviously wasn't going to work. We were also all a bit frustrated with the lack of meaningful war in the previous round, which led to a realm running away essentially uncontested. These two problems had a solution, and so we set about having our own private draft. 

We approached a mix of mostly blackoppers and fast attackers, as well as a handful of players that had a mixed skillset, meaning any pack that was built could have some versatility depending on the preferences of its captain. Identikit hydras, but with enough genetic variation to be wildly different beasts in the field. 

The people we approached were all informed that there would be no collusion; this wasn't an alliance, or a non-aggression pact, or an effort to work together towards a common goal (besides trying to have our respective realms win, of course - like every other realm out there). Once the round began we all knew we would all be enemies. One of the people we invited as a potential fast attacker was Mithrandir. We thought he could be a great wildcard player, though it later became clear that he was already committed to Erix's pack. But instead of declining our invitation and explaining he was busy or already committed to a pack (which is what every other player we approached who couldn't make it did), he expressed interest and fished for more information. As I look back at our discord conversation, I realise now he never actually declined to join - his line was always essentially "I'm interested and will probably join, just give me more time", stringing us along until we found out he was just leaking a warped version of what we had told him.

Mith repackaged the expressly conveyed "no collusion" rule in his invite as a "blackops coalition" and told his then-realm that this blackops coalition was forming for the next round. I don't know who all initially heard this 'Mithiniformation', but I do know that virtually half the playerbase knew about it by the first week of the round and that this was the catalyst for the meltdown we'd all see on day 4 after blackops went live, when BigBell brought the rumours into the main discord. This untrue rumour of a blackops alliance (which would have been a very obvious breach of the rules) had gestated inside Mithrandir's realm about three weeks before the round started, going unreported despite the rumours reaching multiple packs. And because it was never reported to fett or the rules committee until after day 4, it meant a sizeable subset of the OD community was now operating under the Mithguided belief that there was a blackops alliance this round - and presumably altering their playstyle to anticipate it, whether in foreplanning pre-round or by strategic changes after learning about it. 

Whether by active backdoor gossip or passive exposure, it's quite easy to encounter info you shouldn't have in OD. You can learn things you shouldn't just by existing in a realm discord where someone else shares it. Using BigBell as an example here is illustrative of how rife it is, as he's someone with no previous round connection to Mith in-realm, and he discovered information (albeit bullshit) shared by people in that realm. I suspect if we played Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon in OD it wouldn't take anywhere that number of connections to trace it all back to Mith, but there's at least two degrees of separation in this one given that BigBell's realm this round shares no common realmie with Mith's realm last round or BigBell's realm this round.

There is a lot of info-sharing that goes on in this game, often between players that have strong pack connections but occasionally decide to ride with another group. They have close friendships and talk in their own channels, and usually it's not considered actively harmful because the bulk of the info they trade is locations. If you're a top player in a realm with someone outside of their normal pack, there is a non-zero probability your location will leak - and not always just to the rest of that person's pack, but to their entire realm. And once it's in the realm's collective information, it gets shared even wider. In case you ever wondered but couldn't figure it out, this is why most people know where most of the big names are by the end of the round. The community likes to gossip. 

Normally this info-sharing doesn't apply to hard strategic information; these people are typically only sharing locs and not ops. They may get some psychological insight benefit from it, and usually that's about it. There are also people who do share ops or try to push strategic moves onto other realms, but they are an extreme minority of elite players - such as Wurstmeyer, who was kicked off the GPC this round after being investigated by the rules committee. But it is highly unusual to see anyone share strategic information ahead of or during a round that they should not have access to, and even rarer to see a complete lie proliferate throughout the community uncontested, especially where it concerns the characters of players we all know and have played with before.

So it was with some considerable dismay that I realised either Mithrandir or his cohort, or both, were spreading this rumour about a blackops alliance. Multiple realms caught wind of it through a series of Chinese whispers. This is strategic information sharing, even though it was bollocks - and that is expressly against the rules, and not in the "oh what's the harm tee hee" kind of way that loc-sharing is treated despite also being expressly against the rules. The players responsible for this info sharing took NO HEAT for actually breaking the rules - and instead directed real anger at innocent, rules-abiding blackoppers. 

Hypocrisy at its finest.

It seemed to me at the time that it was an obviously silly conspiracy theory - 15 players with no history of cheating, deciding collectively to all cheat together and throw away their reputations, was just so ridiculous that I was legitimately (and in hindsight, foolishly) confident nobody would believe it. Of course we'd always been wary the pack draft could leak before I could announce it on the Rush Hour podcast, it was just disappointing to see how it had been presented to other players behind closed doors. So when I heard about what Mithrandir had done I just messaged him directly and asked him to knock it off, and hoped that would be the end of it. How naive I was. In retrospect of course I should have known that once that gossip train had left the station there'd be no stopping it.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. While the Fake News Express was hurtling towards Drama Station, we were still in the process of drafting.

For blackoppers and versatile players, we pulled in all the big names and a few moonlighters. We had Cronel, AgFx, Grapes of Math, ForPony, Damdred, Swamp Fox, jmerc, former roundwinner mcgeeal, volv, Loki, Zar and myself. We also had to consider which fast attackers might be game for such a volatile arrangement. They had to be adaptable and comfortable with a lot of chaos, so it was a very short shortlist of about five names: Downrightdave and Sugarjon were obvious choices, with Dave being part of the original 'hydra' and Sugarjon eager to see what all that fuss was about. Damdred had floated Soup as being interested, and we also checked in with Rio and Mithrandir to see if they'd be interested. Rio couldn't make it, having other commitments, and Mithrandir as we already know expressed disingenuous interest in joining.

While we waited days for Mith to give us a concrete response that would never arrive, Soup confirmed his interest. Fortunately Soup was the real deal, so we snapped him up. We had our three team captains.

The rest of the process went about how you might imagine if you've ever been part of the official draft rounds. I landed on Team Soup, alongside Zar, Volv and Loki. Dave picked up mcgeeal, Swamp Fox, Grapes and jmerc, while Sugarjon leaned fully into the hydra spirit and selected Cronel, ForPony, AgFx and Damdred. Sugarjon had built the most authentic hydra of yore, and would be reliant on the algorithm lottery in landing with other decent attackers to make the most of it, while Dave and Soup's teams had a bit more flexibility and wouldn't be so reliant on realm composition. 

'''WEEK 1 - THE MITHINFORMATION TRAINWRECK'''

At realm assignment, we had an interesting mix: Ivetza and Rompar had two-packed, and we also landed with some decent random active bloppers, namely Hexum (Beautiful Disaster) and Bazzaroony, whose names I both recognised as being nuisance competitors in previous rounds for blops ranks. Well, at least this round they'd be a thorn in my enemies' sides instead of mine! Ivetza was potentially a blessing and a curse. A blessing for his capability as a fast attacker, and a curse because it's Ivetza. If his round went off the rails there was a high chance he would too. But Rompar made up for it with his banter in discord. We also landed with a relatively new and active player, shanulf, who was cool and keen to learn the game.

I was The Betty Boop of Massive Bloops, and I decided to go Undead after hearing Cronel talk them up the previous round. Big thanks as always to Lud for the excellent sim, it performed exactly as he predicted it would and came out really strong on high land at oop, though it was a bit spooky relying on so many draftees for squishy dp for the first 12 hours, even knowing they couldn't be assassinated. As Lud foretold, I had a lot more ops in my news than I was accustomed to without actually getting hit. 

I didn't take much notice of the first three days of the round as usual; we all know the real round starts after the excel simulator disengages on day 4, when blops go live and attackers collectively wet themselves at the thought of being lightly pelted by soggy noodleballs. 

We mostly seemed like we were in a good position. Soup and Ivetza were in the mix of competitive FAs, and while our realm had taken some hits, it was mostly our inactives that fed. Bazzaroony also had a string of bad luck where he got munched a few times and almost abandoned, but some words of encouragement from Ivetza gave him the motivation to play on. Of our pack, Loki had been the most indecisive about what he wanted to play, stuck between the idea of wanting to try out something unusual and off-the-wall while also not wanting to be a burden to the pack in case it failed. He'd oscillate between those two positions like a coked-up human pendulum until he eventually came down on playing a converting Dark Elf, following a suggestion from Volv who'd seen Sarmis play it quite impressively. I had personally hoped Loki would be blops support so a converter - and following what was presumably an incredibly hard-to-follow act in Sarmis' shadow at that, which Sarmis himself also failed to pull off - was not the best news, but at least he was a DE converter, which solved the issue of him getting roasted if we went to war. And he said he'd still support with blops as a "combat blopper", a concept I'd never heard of before. I didn't really see it happening but it's the thought that counts, right? At oop Loki struggled to keep pace with the dp requirements and got hit, which immediately hurt his chances of a decent convert. 

''2024-08-20 02:59:13	Hawk Tuah (Bobbo) (#12) invaded fellow dominion The Kurt Cobain of Sui Trains (#4) and captured 56 land.''

The best laid plans and all that.

Meanwhile Volv had created a monsterblop build and came out of protection on something ridiculous like 17% towers. He was like AgFx on steroids. Zar was always pretty useful for blops generally, but I knew from playing with him previously that ops is where he shines. I'd suggested to soup after he drafted me that we snap him up before someone else did, as when he's on the ball with ops he just makes everyone else's lives so much easier. 

I followed my usual path of coming oop quite light on spywiz, and on around 10% towers early so I had a sufficient mana pool to launch one full volley of fireballs if it was needed. We took a pragmatic approach: we'd see what the landscape looked like, with an opportunistic view to war, but not a cavalier one. In fact I had expected us to be the least war-mongery of the three hydras and the last to war, but that didn't exactly play out as planned and we ended up being the first realm to break the seal on declaring war. The decision essentially became a foregone conclusion when soup sent out on a hit without updating one of his closest competitors in #8, the lycanthrope I'm not gay but ops are ops (Disco).

''2024-08-20 17:59:42	Victorious on the battlefield, The Ricky Bobby of Going Fast (#4) conquered 47 land from step through the fog and creep through the smog (Beta52) (#11).''

With mounting horror soup realised the lyc could break him, which would spell disaster for our entire realm, as we had pinned our best hopes of doing well on our twin FAs. And now it looked like one of the two was about to get demolished.

We only really had one recourse: sink his ass. We took a look at his docks situation and as soon as we realised he was sinkable, our mistake became Disco's misfortune. 

''2024-08-20 18:35:26	The Roger the Dodger of Sticky Situations (#4) has declared WAR on (ODA) (#8).''

I think Disco may have actually had decent spies for a fast attacker; I remember failing a bunch of ops on the guy. Or maybe I was just unlucky. But we still took him down to 77 boats from approx 150 and suddenly he couldn't full send anymore, and had to sit on his hands until he fixed his docks problem and his boats regenerated. We also set him on fire, because why not? 

Once he had the boats to send, he got some due gratification with a war hit on our realmie 34 hours later.

''2024-08-22 04:47:16	I'm not gay but ops are ops (#8) invaded fellow dominion The mr bean of comical relief (Bazzaroony) (#4) and captured 53 land.'' 

It wasn't ideal but we had averted disaster for soup, and with our realm composition it all hinged on him and Ivetza keeping the pace. Our realm was still in the race.

Meanwhile, the other hydras had found themselves in a war for one reason or another. Dave's realm had been savaged by Wurstmeyer and co in realm #12:

''2024-08-19 14:55:16	Hawk Tuah (Bobbo) (#12) invaded Tipyourcanoe and Sink Them Too (DownrightDave) (#5) and captured 55 land.''

''2024-08-19 16:59:56	Zip Splat (DanTheMan) (#12) invaded Tipyourcanoe and Sink Them Too (#5) and captured 49 land.''

So it was with little surprise that a war their way came: 

''2024-08-20 18:43:00	Creating a game in which no dominion needs to go to bed hungry! (#5) has declared WAR on snap, crackle and pop (#12).''

At blops live, #12 were among the first to start spluttering that the war was unfair and that bloppers can't be trusted to make sensible decisions. But revenge is best served hot and fiery in OD. There are genuinely players in this game that seem to be operating under the misapprehension that hits, particularly multiple hits, aren't MASSIVE acts of aggression and don't deserve to be punished later. It makes no sense to me but it really does appear to some players as though nothing should ever upset the sanctity of the careful balance at the top - even including some well-earned revenge. Realm #5's war with #12 was effectively us all witnessing an egotist realm being slapped out of its reverie by the cold hand of reality. A lesson in diplomacy perhaps.

Cronel's realm took the bold decision to war #6, and the even bolder decision to start fireballing their two fully protected top attackers. This was the second round in a row Cronel's realm had warred and bombed fully protected targets (having not spotted the Wizard Academy protecting a realm last round) and then been flabberghasted at being ineffective. Of all of the realms, realm #6 had more protection than anyone else; #11's fireballs would have been shrugged off. I thought #6 was actually a viable candidate for war, and is a realm I would also have considered at some point early on were it not for soup's shenanigans, but only in the sense that you'd have to kneecap their late-round threat players instead and avoid feeding their top guys. And even then it would have been incredibly high risk / low reward with how dysfunctional mutual war is now. The halfling, Hawk Tua on Yami (playt0i), and the undead, Someone suicide Yami! 🎯🔫 (Jcinnz), were both virtually immune from wiz blackops, and their races highly resilient against spy blops. And they could mutual if declared upon, granting an obscene op bonus that still feels incredibly strong given that the concern of pile-ons from other realms no longer applies now that wiz damage is capped and time-limited. Mutual used to be risky business back when a blops pile-on from other realms was a potential threat, but nowadays with rejuvenation it's just risk free and purely beneficial for the top realm to mutual if they are defended. They all do it without a second thought now. No strategic thinking required, just go mutual - it's free real estate. 

''2024-08-20 19:56:49	Flame on! (#11) has declared WAR on Generic realm name (#6).''

''2024-08-20 20:54:16	Generic realm name (#6) has declared WAR on Flame on! (#11).	''

That 10% op bonus would have been absolutely crushing and #11 didn't manage to keep up, and ended up feeding the top ops instead of hobbling them.

''2024-08-21 02:59:45	Victorious on the battlefield, Someone suicide Yami! 🎯🔫 (Jcinnz) (#6) conquered 48 land from step through the fog and creep through the smog (Beta52) (#11).''

''2024-08-21 20:57:29	Victorious on the battlefield, Someone suicide Yami! 🎯🔫 (#6) conquered 62 land from The Mailman (alison) (#11).''

Realm #11 noped out of that war as soon as they could.

''2024-08-22 19:39:18	Flame on! (#11) has CANCELED war against Generic realm name (#6).''

''2024-08-22 20:01:17	Generic realm name (#6) has CANCELED war against Flame on! (#11).''

It was #11's first mistake of the round, but it wouldn't be their last, because their next move would be to mess with the best: realm #4. 

My realm. 

Meanwhile, realm #1, supposedly a pinoy realm that had been constructed by fett (at their request) to help prevent info-sharing in ironically what has turned out to be the most prolific example of info-sharing we've ever seen in a round from a chunk of the playerbase, declared war on #13:

''2024-08-21 00:47:51	We Got A PhD In Break Dancing (#1) has declared WAR on "We come from the land of ice cream & dough" Bread Zeppelin (#13).''

Nobody knows why. I'm not even sure they could tell you why.

But this marked the fourth war shortly after blops went live. 

At the time, to the subset of the info-sharing community that was hopped up on Mithrandir's falsehoods and absolutely fizzing about it, all of these wars looked like a coordinated effort. The Mithinformation started leaking like a burst dam. The blops coalition rumour finally got formally reported - by a realm that wasn't Mith's. And in another realm that wasn't Mith's, or the origin of the report, BigBell had "various concerned citizens" approach him with this Mithinformation. Who knew BigBell was the OD police? He was the first person to bring those rumours into the discourse in the game's main discord. What followed was a series of serious accusations of cheating - though to give BigBell some due credit, he did caveat them with "**if** you've done this, then this is what I think". But just putting the Mithinformation out there was enough to set imaginations alight and turn the discord into a swamp of toxicity. And to BigBell's discredit, he would then repeatedly water down what started off as "if you have a blackops alliance then you are the worst of people" to, after three or four watered-down revisions to his accusation were countered by truthful denials on my part, what ultimately became "if you have a discord the rest of us aren't in, you are still the worst of people". And at that point I had to disengage; it seemed to me he'd become too entrenched in his position to be reasonable, and had to come away with his pound of flesh to justify his anger. We did of course operate a private discord to organise the draft. After the draft was conducted it was shut down so nobody could communicate. But you try explaining that one to the guy in the middle of a conspiracy theory meltdown. No thanks.

The discord did its thing. We talked it out, hundreds of messages were exchanged, and then fett ruled in and said a private draft wasn't against any rules, which everyone involved already knew but it was nice to have it officially stated. The worst I heard was that it was a "moral grey area", which I don't agree with, but even if it were true, hey, we're blackoppers. The moral grey area is where we live.

Once everything settled down, inevitably some dozy git would meander in having read none of the exchange, and offer their uninformed two cents on the original Mithinformation, then saunter off and the whole thing would explode again for another several hours. Rinse and repeat until everyone hates each other. 

I'm not one to hold grudges usually, but the community has a lot to answer for on this one. Despite initially sharing information and rule-breaking, none of the heat came down on Mithrandir, and instead was laser focused on an entirely innocent side draft a small number of players were having. I am still annoyed about it weeks later as I revise this section of my notes. I don't think Mithrandir ever intended or could have foreseen that this shitstorm would happen, and I think control of the rumour would have immediately left his hands as soon as he told his realm, but in my opinion he is still fully responsible for everything that followed - and hasn't once apologised, which indicates to me he doesn't even think he's done anything wrong.

But Mith's stupid behaviour aside, my real gripe is the hypocrisy of the community targeting a draft that wasn't against the rules while sweeping the absolutely rife info-sharing that goes on under the carpet - because so many people are at it and many of the accusors will have been complicit in it. 

Cuntmongering of the highest order. 

Pinoys, as one example, get a pretty bad rap for having their own sub-community that shares information freely between its members, but if they were sharing that information with their friends regardless of nationality, do you know what we'd call them? It wouldn't be cheaters. We'd call them your average elite pack.

So that was week one. The community had collectively shit itself, and a bunch of people including myself left the main discord in disgust. Even Pillar of the Community AgFx was pissed off, which was the first huge alarm bell to a lot of people that things had taken a serious turn. 

We were off to a great start. 

'''WEEK 2 - THE IVETZA PROBLEM'''

Ivetza had surprised me; not only did he help talk Bazzaroony down from the ledge after he got hit multiple times, but he was also taking time out to coach new player shanulf, who had been efficient-exploring but wanted to try and convert. I was starting to warm up to the guy after his weird winking homophobic tantrum in the previous round. But we eventually encountered a problem, and it was pretty early on. Soup had thought he and Ivetza were in a symbiotic fast attacker bromance relationship, one protecting the other, the two of them rising as one to take on the world together. It's the ideal situation for fast attacking in OD and they were working in synchronicity. Ivetza apparently did not see it this way however, because it seems when Ivetza spies an opportunity, he does not consider the ramifications for others, he only sees the opportunity as it pertains to Ivetza. This is ultimately what led to us falling off as a threat to #6's rapidly developing stranglehold on the round.  

''2024-08-26 21:13:52	Zip Splat (DanTheMan) (#12) invaded Someone suicide Yami! 🎯🔫 (Jcinnz) (#6) and captured 128 land.''

''2024-08-26 21:16:02	Obesity Boys (BigBell) (#13) invaded Zip Splat (#12) and captured 104 land.''

''2024-08-26 21:16:05	Vǎrkolak - 0/0, completely harmless (SlyPimp) (#9) invaded Zip Splat (#12) and captured 102 land.''

''2024-08-26 21:16:33	I'm not gay but ops are ops (Disco) (#8) invaded Zip Splat (#12) and captured 87 land.''

Zip Splat's suicide on Someone suicide Yami had sparked off the usual chain of vultures feeding, and soup was preparing to be the fourth in the chain. He'd taken the ops, he was discussing it in discord, it was a safe hit for him, and the land would help him stay in the race and keep the pressure on #6.

Ivetza had other plans. He logged in, saw the suicide, didn't bother to check top op (which he wasn't safe against), didn't consult anyone and immediately full sent at Zip Splat, essentially suiciding on a suicide. 

''2024-08-26 21:25:27	Victorious on the battlefield, The Topper Harley of Gummy bears boxing (Ivetza) (#4) conquered 77 land from Zip Splat (#12).''

Ivetza had stolen soup's safe hit, knocked the target out of soup's range, and then because he wasn't safe, directly fed the realm that #12's suicide was intended to hurt, ruining the suicide and soup's chances to keep the pressure on #6. He had double-fucked our realm and undone any benefit from Zip Splat's suicide.

''2024-08-27 03:22:41	Hawk Tua on Yami (playt0i) (#6) invaded fellow dominion The Topper Harley of Gummy bears boxing (#4) and captured 112 land.''

Some of the realm accused him of stealing targets, and Ivetza's response was "I log in, I see a suicide, I send". Soup was considering abandoning at this point, to which Ivetza simply said "if you want to abandon go ahead, I will follow". 

That abandon didn't happen, and soup limped on for a bit before later deconverting. Ivetza would also follow with a deconvert shortly afterwards.

Towards of the tail end of the first week, Sugarjon's realm of wonder-sniping wee bastards had sniped the Wonder we'd been diligently cycloning. Cronel would later claim personal responsibility for the snipe.

''2024-08-23 22:10:14	The Halls of Knowledge has been destroyed and rebuilt by Warpool (#11).''

This then led to the first war between blopper realms and was the first obvious signal that there was no love lost between the draft hydras. But if that wasn't evidence enough, #11 made it mutual. "I think that was a mistake," said soup, and then made the hit of the day with the full mutual war bonus active. 

''2024-08-25 23:18:49	The Ricky Bobby of Going Fast (#4) invaded fellow dominion Hydra Bob (ForPony!) (#11) and captured 121 land.''

Realm #11 dragged out the war for a while, but after eventually calculating that they wouldn't be able to take the Wonder back from us in the 3-hour window they'd allowed themselves by mutualing when they did, and suffering under the intense pressure of soup's boosted op, they threw in the towel. They got a decent borrow of our Wonder, but it had now been returned to its rightful owners.

''2024-08-28 19:58:02	War Were Declared on #4 (#11) has CANCELED war against The Stephen Fry of Low QI (#4).''

I'm just going to pause the flow for a bit to let you appreciate our realm name. Witty, insulting, on-theme AND it rhymes? It's gold.

And we're appreciating.

And appreciating some more.

Okay, let's continue.

We didn't have our Wonder for long before the other blops hydra in realm #5 made the decision to come after us for it.

''2024-08-29 08:59:53	Lack of war is weakness entering one’s body (#5) has declared WAR on The Marv Murchins of Stealing Realmies' Targets (#4).''

This annoyed us, because we had been gearing up to war #6 and attempt to kneecap their late-game threats. 

As part of their war they fireballed soup, who was at the time the only one still left pressuring #6, which led to further hysteria about bloppers from the community. They didn't hammer soup particularly hard though, so I'm not sure if it was a rogue blopper or if they changed their approach after taking some backlash. Either way, soup never had burning or rejuvenation trigger in the war.

We waited a few days before making it mutual, ensuring we took what was rightfully ours back from the scamps in #5.

''2024-08-31 02:59:12	The Walter White of Educating Noobs with Smite (#4) has declared WAR on We’re sorry, that doms lack of defense was clearly our fault (#5).''

We scouted a potential war hit for soup in #5, but he was unfortunately not safe against #6 to make the hit. And ultimately #5 decided they didn't want to be caught in a Wonder war.

''2024-08-31 08:00:06	Lack of war is weakness entering one’s body (#5) has CANCELED war against The Marv Murchins of Stealing Realmies' Targets (#4).''

Realm #5 would then later complain they had been gearing up to go after #6, when they in turn were warred by #3.

''2024-09-01 17:15:05	The roof is on fire 🔥 (#3) has declared WAR on Revenge is best served with war (#5).''

Quite annoying when cheeky blops realms disrupt your plans for blopping the big baddies, innit #5? 

'''WEEK 3 - DUMPSTER FIRE'''

For two weeks the OD discord had been a toxic swamp of aggro and snide remarks about blackoppers. It happens every round but it was now in overdrive after Mith's rumour mill shenanigans; I wasn't in the discord anymore but I was still getting updates that the usual suspects just couldn't leave it alone. I think for the nature of a game like OD it is expected that it attracts more of the neurodiverse than you'd see in other online communities, but this had gone beyond the weaponised autism you see pitted against blackops each round.

I had expected it might actually die down after I left the discord, since I'm usually a major antagonist, defending the importance and utility of blackops, and therefore the guy also partly responsible for helping perpetuate the conversation. But instead of leaving a void where players could freely shit on bloppers with no pushback, other bloppers by this point felt so aggrieved at all of the outlandish and absurd criticism that they were clapping back. 

The blops playstyle is in never-ending flux thanks to this never-ending blops screeching. People blopping don't know up from down half the time, and it is exhausting listening to this asinine nonsense about a playstyle its most ardent critics don't play and wouldn't even touch with a barge pole when most of us here are pushing or in their 40s, and just trying to have a good time playing a game with our friends. And we can't be having that now can we?

I'll interrupt my own rant with a small but necessary concession here. The majority of players pushing these lines aren't toxic players generally, they just wade into the middle of a heated discussion, drop a big turd into the mix, offer no solutions, and go back to doing whatever they were doing. It's what they've always done round after round and its been fine, so I can see why doing this probably felt like nothing out of the ordinary. Unfortunately by this stage, a near-unanimity of the blops players were sick of it and were pushing back against these constant and casual waves of abuse. And they were met with mostly mixed reactions of surprise and irritation. Grapes of Math, one of the friendliest guys in the community, became Grapes of Wrath and unleashed the fury on some poor saps in the discord that were still whinging about bloppers. Swamp Fox, always the smart one, made the wise decision and just straight up noped out of the discord and even out of the notion of playing OD full stop. Pillar of the Community and the Man with the Voice, AgFx, who has probably done more for this community than anyone outside of fett and the GPC, snapped and abandoned, quitting the game. Damdred left, dave left, plenty others like jmerc muted the place and the list just goes on. In droves, bloppers were sick of the community's toxic behaviour. It was an exodus. 

So much for those halcyon days where we thought we were different and more mature than all those other gamer communities eh? 

For my part, I was totally fine not playing the role of the argumentative blopper in the discord. Leaving had evoked the same sort of feeling I have when I'm lying in bed and I can hear it's pouring down with rain outside, but I'm all warm and cosy. I knew there was storm raging on outside, but it was now someone else's problem. 

Of course, there were immediate downsides. No AgFx meant no Rush Hour podcasts for the 60-70 people that listen in every other week, and Riol Talk would probably have to find another editor if AgFx and Merf were both out of the picture. Fett worked out we could still pull in the blops ranks data since AgFx's work was all open source, but without the silly end of round awards show we do to go alongside it, it had lost a lot of the shine for me. And why would you want to contribute to a community that just throws abuse at you anyway? 

I'm coming to the end of this rant shortly, I promise. Let me end with this:

Blops screechers - those of you who cannot help youselves - you need to recognise that blackops have a valuable role to play in this game, and that blackoppers by and large do play that role in good faith, working together as a team, co-operating with their realm to the benefit of the realm. The sneering attitude towards these collective players is repugnant and completely lacking in self-awareness. What bloppers do is functionally no different to what attackers do: we disadvantage other players to advantage our team. Attackers do it by taking their land, bloppers do it by burning their peasants or sinking their ships, or debuffing them in other ways. Attackers in particular need to drop this superficial 'aggrieved victim' mentality when they get blackopped: you are the enemy and you are not innocent or harmless. I know it's a different story when it comes to the balance at the top, because this is a top-down game and those actions can affect everyone, but for the overwhelming majority of players, you are in the trenches of a war game. Stop crying about it, it's just weird. 

We all have at our disposal relatively cheap and accessible blops protection, it is so much easier to weather blops than it has ever been, and yet the blops screeching just keeps getting more and more shrill with every round. It is totally paradoxical. The more these players get what they want, the more dissatisfied they seem to be. Or perhaps they're just more encouraged, now they can see what works to achieve their goals? It's a genuine question because their behaviour makes no sense to me. 

My unsolicited advice to the GPC, and the solution to this confected illusion of a problem is this: stop listening to these degenerates. They are never going to stop pushing for blackops to be obsoleted in the game and they will never be satisfied until they can play in their excel simulator for 47 straight days. We don't have to be in constant panic about blackops every single round. We only need to tone down the reactivity to these public freakouts by the same people every round. 

Anyway. That felt cathartic. 

So where are we? We're almost at the end of this Roundfail because, after all the above was said and done, I realised I didn't really feel like playing OD anymore, so I kinda stopped paying attention. At this point in the story it's the end of Week 3, we've had a few wars for the Halls of Knowledge and managed to hold onto it, and our realm's FAs were dead. Soup had deconverted with the new scion hero and had moved over to the dark side. Ivetza had followed but, not realising there was a new scion hero, had deconverted without using it. Whoops. Our realm's focus shifted from looking after their interests to trying to give new player and converter Shanulf a decent shot at having a good time, as well as Loki who had finished his convert as well. Converters, ever the bane of a blopper's existence, don't always get this level of care and consideration from a meanie blopper like me. I've said before it's a bit like being handed someone else's baby and being forced to look after it, but this round I found a better analogy: converters are more like pears.

I'll let Eddie Izzard explain - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-PGPMGUGNsQ

Ripe for half an hour, most converters. But shanulf had been forgiving of the realm's warmongering in the early game and had eaten his fair share of blops already, and was still having a good time, so we were all happy to rally behind him and give as much support as we could. He was after all now our lead attacker. 

'''WEEK 4 - OUT OF STEAM'''

Shanulf was stuck for a while under Choo Choo 🚂 (#12)'s op, and we were considering options for war.

...aaand this is as far as I got with the Roundfail. I had some other random notes, but nothing really worth extrapolating further on. Well, except for this:

''2024-09-11 00:46:17	Hawk Tua on Yami (#6) invaded A$$, Grass or Plat - No one explores for free (Mithrandir) (#8) and captured 173 land.''

Mith not only fucked the community but also massively fed the runaway this round. Slow clap for Mith everybody. 

'''EPILOGUE'''

Usually most rounds that suck have a bittersweet quality to them, and despite all of the noise surrounding this one, this round was no different. I still managed to have a good time within the bubble of our realm until the real fatigue with the trajectory of the game and the community set in. 

There has always been two main ways to enjoy OpenDominion, at least in my view: there's the game itself, obviously, and there's the social side of it - the community of your realm, and also the wider community, which has something like four podcasts (and probably has two new ones by the time you finished reading this sentence), people who contribute Roundfail stories, and groups that play other games together. From a blackopper playstyle perspective, the game has been in a pretty terrible state for about five rounds now, and I've heard through the grapevine that there are yet further plans to remove blops rankings and cap spywiz ratios, and it just continues to get worse every round. Blackops are like a scab and players can't stop picking at it. All of the blackoppers I know are social players, they can (and have) put up with a lot of these unpleasant changes because ultimately it's still fun to play games with friends. Some still even hold that view in spite of this round. But for me, when the community turns out to be a toxic wasteland, there's no incentive to play the game, and there's no reason to stick around. That's where I'm at.

Maybe I'll check back in 5-10 rounds and see if the community managed to find a sensible solution to blops. I have little confidence that it's capable of doing so, and even less so now that I'm not around to explain why all of vinn's wild-eyed gameplay-feedback suggestions are bad.

To my pack and my realmies, I'm sorry I didn't manage to play the full round, but you guys all know the reasons. My first ever abandon, and it does feel like letting the team down. I did think about messaging Wurst and asking him where to find the abandon button for the memes, but I found it easily enough after all. It's on the Government page, for anyone wondering. 

To my blops bros forever in the trenches, in particular Damdred, Swamp Fox, Cronel, AgFX and Saccora, I'll miss playing with you guys. 

And finally, last and most definitely least, I'll end on this note:

Mithrandir sucks.

'''TL;DR'''

This round in a nutshell - https://imgur.com/a/m9Uj9jR

'''RUSH'S ROUNDFAIL REPOSITORY'''

You can read the full back-catalogue of my Roundfail series here: https://roundfail.blogspot.com/