Rushpunzel

ROUNDFAIL 33

This round I packed with Eric, Rury, Vinn and MannoWrath. By fluke, we landed with Volvandese, effectively forcing Eric's gang back together despite all their efforts to split up. We also landed with some new players and some mostly-quiet pinoys. And MeeSAX again, who asked for a sim twice, got a sim, and then never said another word. Rio drafted him for the coming draft round. Good luck Rio!

I was Rushpunzel (who saw that coming?). I finished 14th on 6661 land. I was aiming for 6666 land but the round disable foiled me.

I chose the name Rushpunzel not because I'm some egomaniac - I'm actually extremely humble - but because initially theme plan was to combine your name with a fairy tale, but a few people didn't think they were "OD-famous" enough to pull off putting their own names into their doms, so we also ended up with a Rio, a Merf and a Fett - effectively granting us "is it them or...?" status for anyone guessing locs.

I'd decided to play Merfolk for a change, instead of a more blops focused race. The GPC later decided to buff them by halving the clumsy "explore penalty" racial trait, which was a welcome boost given I was playing them anyway.

As ever, for those who live life in the fast lane, there's a tl;dr at the end.

WEEK 1 - THE TEMPLE OF GOATSE

With yet another big nerf to blackops this round, most of the usual blopper crews were also feeling the same way - with "what's the point?" vibes prevalent - I expected something more akin to r31 where it'd be a while before we saw any wars. And if any did break out, it'd be for wonders among the lesser realms. For the first time ever, I did not gear myself up to be blackops ready the milisecond that they went active, favouring a bit of efficiency to try and stay in range of the top for longer.

Many fast attackers - perhaps spooked by the warfest of r32 - apparently took the opposite view about potential wars, and built the trivial meta ~30 FHs to make themselves fireball proof, as well as generate lumber, reduce spy disband damage, reduce wizard assasination damage, and enjoy one complimentary handjob a day from the GPC member of their choice. FHs just get wilder and wilder every round.

Mris/sands, not content with all these freebies, also nerfed fireball by 10%. I heard he also has plans in the works for a "spontaneous combustion" RNG mechanic for wizards casting fireball. Can't wait!

The first week was totally swamped with fast attackers, with lycs in #1, #4 and #6 (Rio, Ivetza and mdk respectively) being the strongest threats. I was also peripherally aware of the liz in #1 (bigchris), and a couple of gobbos people had earmarked for being big boys later in the round. Vinnderella (Vinn), our Firewalker, also held a threatening position for the first couple of weeks.

For the most part, the first week was a bit of a snooze fest, just making sure I had enough defence to cover The GOAT #4 (Ivetza) and his obsession with temples.

WEEK 2 - FED TO THE WOLVES

Up until the end of the first week I'd been running some spies and basically no wiz. So when Rury would ask me to plague an attacker, or cast Swarm on some low-food greedyguts, I would end up pointing out that he actually had more wiz than I did. To which Eric would reply: "what parallel universe did we land in where Rush can't blop?". I figured that this must what it feels like being typecast. Like that ginger kid from Harry Potter, I bet he's not getting any acting roles where he's not some goofy sidekick chanting spells and waggling his wand around. Likewise, I can never just peacefully explore; I must always be the thorn in some attacker's side. Thoroughly shamed, I queued up some wiz and finally allowed Eric to really own the title of being the realm's most useless at blackops.

Just before all the lycs moved out of range, I vexed them with hexes (okay, plagues and swarms) and stole anything that wasn't nailed down. I hardly ever had any ss for ops, much to the chagrin of my packmates, but I stayed the course. Because what parallel universe are we in where I'm an ops bitch instead of blackopping, right?

Towards the end of the second week, Vinn sent and got caught short. I felt bad for him; the guy had kept us all up to date with top op when we started falling out of range, which was greatly appreciated. He overlooked that he was hittable by Goatse, and that was the death of Vinn.

2023-02-04 23:11:49 The GOAT (#4) invaded Vinnderella (#2) and captured 139 land.

Which then led to the #6 lyc and #1 liz tucking in:

2023-02-05 04:19:48 Unknown (#6) invaded Vinnderella (#2) and captured 125 land.

2023-02-05 04:52:50 Thou shall not murder draftees (#1) invaded Vinnderella (#2) and captured 124 land.

We also saw our first wars break out and, as predicted, they were for a Wonder, and between realms that were not currently impactful to the round dynamic. #5 and #7 warred #8 on the same tick, gunning for the Ancient Library. It went to #8, because chain hitting a wonder with attackers is a lot faster than sending 40,000 cyclones one at a time. #5 never had a chance - but when I checked the rankings, the air ranks showed that they didn't actually try to take it quickly either, and #7 was too coordinated with their final hits to make it really feasible.

I made another guest appearance on the podcast as the blackops weather correspondent, and we talked a lot about the three lycs. Much of the early conversation ended up getting cut out in the edit; Rio had expressed concerns that we were straying into the territory of influencing the game by discussing the options open to the playerbase for taking on these threats. In particular we'd focused conversation on #1, who had just taken the Armada and were beginning to show that they had the edge.

I'd wanted to highlight in the podcast that the main counterargument I hear to "blops are the counter to fast attackers" is along the lines of "other fast attackers are the counter to fast attackers". I said that the three lycs were not countering each other here; rather they were co-existing in perfect harmony in some Hands Across America style collusion! That got cut too for some reason, which I was sad about because I thought the mental image was funny.

Cutting floor woes aside, we were now in a situation where the lycs were now beyond the reach of the blackoppers that could do any meaningful damage, and the supposed balance to that problem (other attackers) was not manifesting. I could guess why: one of the top lycs, or their realm, could go after one of the others and war them, and try to deal as much damage as possible. But that would ultimately just weaken both realms involved and leave the third threat with an advantage. All three realms also looked, at a glance, to be pretty underwhelming on blops firepower, so I'm not even sure any of them could have gone after any of the others and done anything meaningful even if they had the will to do so. But then, how do fast attackers keep other fast attackers in check, exactly? Does it only work if there are two fast attackers in competing realms, instead of three? Does it work if there are four? They could conceivably keep their competition at home but, as Rio pointed out on the podcast (and I can't remember if it was cut or broadcast), as lycs training spec op, it's going to start to hurt them pretty fast as well. What exactly is the check and balance here?

WEEK 8 - EPILOGUE

You've seen Pulp Fiction, right? Story told out of order and all that. I would love to say that I'm doing that here, that this roundfail is Tarantino-inspired and has some fantastic scenes coming up, but it doesn't. Well, not unless you relish the thought of Eric having a mental breakdown. Unfortunately, the truth is, there are three factors that cut this story short, with the third one being the main reason and also being all Eric's fault. Reasons one and two are the round was boring and I was busy. I didn't have any notes past week two and Eric scuppered my plans of looking things up half-assedly later. So I credit to Eric the Pulp Fiction nature of this roundfail story.

WEEK 5 - WHY DID GUS KILL VICTOR?

So I started watching Breaking Bad. Never watched it originally for whatever reason, and decided to finally see what all the fuss was about. I'm on season 4 now, and I don't really get why Gus killed Victor. Like, I get he was angry, because Walt and Jesse had just killed his up-and-coming replacement meth cook, Gale, but Victor was on Gus' side, man. And he was just trying to help by copying the cook process. It made no sense to me that Gus would kill him for that. If anyone has any theories, I would love to hear them.

WEEK 7 - IS IT OVER YET?

Yes. Yes it is. What happened in the final week? Well a bunch of stuff. But you can read all about it in [roundwin story]. The only element of the final week I think he misinterpreted was Rury's reasoning for not sending at Azog #5 (faith). As I recall, he was absolutely hammered, up a ski slope, and was up for delivering some OD demolition, but was ultimately talked out of it by his more sensible, sober packmates, who calculated that it would end up being too beneficial for the others that would then hit him. Then Rury passed out.

Congratulations to Rio and all of realm #1. For what appeared to be a bit of a cakewalk to victory from the outside, everyone who has seen a win from their realm knows how much time, dedication and teamwork FA wins require. Even the ones that are cakewalks. And the round before was always going to be a hard act to follow. Seeing Poige's realm limp on to an insane victory after being battered, bruised and abused for 40+ days and nights, enduring war, after war, after war, after war, I did suggest we just call it a day on OD there and then and declare them the ultimate victors for all time. Can we ever really top that round?

This round, the only realm to war #1 was ours, after I agitated for it (not that it met any resistance, my pack this round was pretty cool with war). I'm not going to pretend that we weren't already too late to hurt the lyc, but we only had myself and Kale in coordinated blackop roles, so our options were non-existant until the lyc fell out of range - and then we did what we could to hurt them. We set fire to their spirit (BigBell) and took their wonder (twice) in two back-to-back wars. We hurt them where we could.

WEEK 4 - ERIC UNRAVELLED

It was Eric's attempted hit on the spirit in #1 (BigBell) that was the beginning of the end for him. It was during our war with #1, and Eric felt like he could get a cheeky war hit in, but despite it being 2am for BigBell, he had set an alarm and apparently did a by-the-book last-minute release and bounced Eric.

2023-02-17 02:59:47 GoldErix and the Three Bears (#2) invaded Thou Shalt Not Share Info Ops (#1) but failed to conquer any land.

Eric went through multiple stages of shock, disbelief, grief and self-loathing. He had oversent to account for a release but it hadn't been enough. The pain of the bounce would haunt him for days. He legitimately lost sleep that same night because the horror kept replaying in his head. He became a shell of his former self. I offered moral support by posting gifs of men sobbing in the shower.

On his next send the following day, Eric hit The Smurfs #3 (Chunk) and overlooked that it would give Witch King #5 (Wurst) the opportunity to invade him. And for Chunk to get his revenge.

2023-02-18 17:18:55 GoldErix and the Three Bears (#2) invaded The Smurfs (#3) and captured 241 land.

2023-02-18 18:59:14 Witch King (#5) invaded GoldErix and the Three Bears (#2) and captured 217 land.

2023-02-19 01:05:15 The Smurfs (#3) invaded GoldErix and the Three Bears (#2) and captured 221 land.

For Eric, the round was over, but his humiliation was not. He would finish the round exploring while in the Elite Guard.

Oh, and before I forget since Eric deleted our only discord channel, he also said that freeze was his favourite person in the whole world and should be president.

WEEK 6 - THE GYPSY CURSE

I finally got my car back after its repairs, in case you were wondering. Lets be real, you wanted closure on this story more than you wanted to read my take on the round. So here it is! I got smashed into in December last year (detailed in last round's roundfail story), and it has taken THREE MONTHS to get what was purely cosmetic damage repaired. During the repair, the garage LOST MY CAR. Legitimately spent a few days telling me "we dont have your car, are you sure you dropped it off with us?" until it mysteriously re-appeared on their system the third day I called about it. Then there was a week's delay because they misplaced a window they'd taken out. Then when I went to pick it up, I couldn't get into the car because the door key had died. Then I couldn't start the car because my door key was also my ignition key. Then when I got the car started after demanding they replace the battery, I couldn't move it out of their car park because some idiot had parked a burnt-out camper van in front of me and gone to lunch. Then when he finally did move it, I discovered my car's power steering was dead. It didnt go in with any of these issues, but it meant waiting another two weeks for them to fix it.

These fuckin' gypsies and their curses man.

WEEK 3 - THE LONELY LYCAN'S LAMENT

Three lycanthropes, best friends to the end,

Shared every meal, and each other they'd tend.

They'd groom their fur and sing by the fire,

Their bond so strong, it could never expire.

But one fateful night, one wolf lost his cool,

He threw a tantrum and broke every rule.

The others were shocked, they couldn't believe,

Their friend had turned, it was hard to conceive.

The second wolf vanished in a puff of smoke,

Leaving the third feeling lost and broke.

He missed his friends and their loving embrace,

Their bond was gone, leaving an empty space.

With no one to share his meals or his life,

The third wolf became morbidly obese with strife.

He ate and ate, trying to fill the void,

But nothing could replace what he had enjoyed.

The third wolf's meals, once shared with friends,

Are now a solo affair that never ends.

He eats alone, the roundwinner of late,

And wonders if loneliness is now his only mate.

TL;DR

This round in a nutshell: https://imgur.com/a/BumajPA