Red haired one with the flute in Buffy

My usual pack were splitting up for the round just for a little break as well as other summer commitments.

Erix had reached out to me, practically begging me to join him and his ragtag crew of miscreants who were in dire need of leadership. I told him I'd need to wait to see the round schedule as I'd be away for two weeks so may miss an important chunk of the round. Erix later came back to me a few days later in virtual tears saying that they had filled their pack so would have to play another round entirely rudderless.

I'd entirely forgotten about him by that point and had already started putting together an alternate pack. I was still nervous about missing some of the round, so fast or even medium attacking wouldn't work. I decided instead that a band of bloppers who could balance out the top to keep things interesting for everyone could be best. The first person I spoke to was Rush who as it turned out had planned on something similar in the past and was on board.

We then discussed other names - wanting either seasoned explorers or versatile players who could adapt to blopping. We spoke to a few people but it meant wrenching them away from their already agreed/established packs which we did feel bad about - but it gave us both Unfather and Zedijar - two people who not only knew what they were doing but were both Euro so would be good for timezones. As a 5th, we reached out to someone we knew would be up for some blopping: AgFx.

Although initially planning to explore, we decided it would be good if I attacked to at least have some hope of a win rather than just being spoilers of other people. The round start time ended up being very inconvenient for me with no chance of an OOP. I would have liked to have gone Sylvan, but it was out of the question. I ended up going WE mainly because BB had a sim and log from the previous round, which I was able to do a few hours before OOP. I was away for another 8 days and only managed a few logins per day but managed to squeeze in a few hits in those days before flying home, having to just trust I had enough DP each send rather than being able to check fully as my vacation was in a different timezone than the team.

While the main battle of fast attackers (#6 vs #13) was raging, I was focused on efficient. Despite an imperfect start, I managed to start hitting frequently enough to be only slightly behind BB'd pace of the previous round. Early on, I was ahead of most other efficient threats. Only the #12 spirit (Swamp Fox) and the #2 group of converters looked to be competition. #2 kept on getting attention from other realms but #12 were looking solid, so we made our first blop war target the spirit. His blop defenses were extremely weak so we wrecked him good. I even gained a huge amount of spy mastery from him. We even kept him snared for a while forcing him to go overboard on DP which I'm sure stifled his plans.

I continued to keep hitting, as the top fast attackers were replaced by medium and quick converters. The notable ones were the #12 pair of merf (Wurst) and gob (Crazy Elf) vs #8 gob (Gothia). Gothia was slightly ahead after managing a pair of hits. He looked to be the main contender so we were lining up to war him but #12 were not far behind and then both Wurst and CE made hits making them the more dangerous. Just as the 48 hour war cooldown finished we went back after them. It turned out to be round-defining as that pair started to push some crazy numbers and likely would have won the round if we weren't holding them back.

Things started to settle a little and some order was establishing. The top attackers were still #12 (Wurst and CE), #8 (Gothia) and now #6 Merf (Erix). I was starting to climb up and was probably around 5th in terms of OP. I'd passed the efficient converters in land so things were looking good.

Then something weird happened. #10 warred us out of nowhere and just one of their guys started LBing me intensely. They seemed to be targeting Unfather more but his ratios were decent so we just carried on. Gothia had managed to get a hit on CE with war-LBing CE (huge mistake on CE's part as he was vulnerable even before the LBs the ticks before) so we finally warred Gothia just as his land arrived in order to FB him amd limit him. He had wiz on the way but not in time, however it did mean it was a flash attack and we wouldn't sustain heavy damage on him for long. Annoyingly at the same time, #3 decided to come after me as well and 6 of them had blops capability so FB'd me hard (I had about 45% reduced damage but still got hurt badly). I wouldn't have minded if they had a contender but their only hope was a converted human who was miles behind. They'd been going after lots of people so at least it wasn't pure douchebaggery, but it disrupted the balance a fair amount, as another contender (#11 sylvan - JC) started growing at exactly the same time.

JC had been a few hits behind me which as a sylvan vs WE isn't a good place to be. Then he managed to string 3 hits in a row on diminishing (and pretty poor) OP - the last one being a war hit on #2 gnome which is crazy - how do you give up a war hit to someone with no flex and has sent twice already without much incoming? Nevertheless, combined with my 48 hours of getting FB'd, he jumped me in the pecking order. I'd gone from lead contender who just had to avoid shit (like #3) to now needing a situation to rebalance things out.

That situation came very quickly. CE started pushing pure sui OP and Wurst had been pushing heavy spec OP for a while. I noticed that Wurst's all in DP wouldn't last long without Ares especially as #12 and #8 had lingering war. The war OP bonus was slowly ticking down and Gothia had enough to hit him right before it expired, so I awaited fireworks, then nothing happened. Apparently Gothia was just busy that tick and missed the window.

I went to bed but woked up an hour or two later and saw fireworks anyway. It looked as though Erix had spotted the same thing as me and had been able to hit Wurst all in. He wouldn't have been entirely safe from a retal (CE could hit any attacker at this point) but was worth the risk. Gothia had been training huge amounts of DP and was nearly safe but again was worth the risk. JC on the other hand made a huge mistake. He was top contender at this point so needed to cover his ass. But instead he saw something shiny and tripled Wurst despite not being safe vs either CE (who with 9 hour could get home same hour) or Wurst who may as well hit something. I was just short of hitting JC so here was my chance as he was definitely gonna get hit which would open him up to me being able to double. Then CE hit Gothia instead? This was not the "game theory" move to make. Oh well, I thought. Maybe they wanted hits on both Gothia and JC so Wurst will hit him instead. So I waited... and Wurst never sent. I concuded that maybe Wurst wanted to hit me as revenge for the wars so I had to sit and wait.

Wurst ended up starving overnight so wven if he wanted to, he couldn't retal JC so my chance to get back onto an even keel was gone for now.

Annoyingly, this set of hits led to a sui fest from loads of other people. I was smaller than the other main attackers so in normal times without suis, I could have made a normal hit and capitalised while they all built but these multiple unsafe sends meant that Gothia and JC ended up being able to make 2 additional hits each, while I just made 2 myself. Even more annoying was that as I was setting up for a 100% hit, CE and Swamp Fox suicided my target meaning I hit for 120 fewer acres than I could have gotten. It put me way back with JC clearly in front. #12 were now dead dead.

As a sylvan, we couldn't really touch JC on wiz ops and he had both decent docks and the Underground Society so spy ops were severely neutered too, meaning our blop squad couldn't help out other than ops.

From this point, JC pretty much had it in the bag. He didn't even need any help. Just not screw up in a way to leave himself open to let me/Gothia hit him. The main thing he had to look out for was #13 undead who had been slowly catching up and putting together some reasonable 5:4. His main issue (but also opportunity) was that he was carrying 800+ barren.

Then JC screwed up! He made a hit and left himself open to the undead. JC had about 340k DP which against the undead's temples brought it down to 320k or so. The undead could hit that and leave 285k or so himself, so well within 5:4. I stocked for rezone and could put together about 335k so could double. I think Gothia could then triple. There were about 5 people who could hit the undead, but 2 of them would hit JC instead if possible. Perfect situation for undead as he makes a huge hit, clears out all his barren, takes down the top dom, and ends up on pretty much the same landsize while being able to send out safely on his return. But the undead doesn't send on him and BFs instead?

Every winner needs a good amount of luck but at this point, JC has been pissing into the wind and somehow his teflon t-shirt and facemask has kept him ammonia-free.

From this point, JC was pretty much gone. I managed to make a hit while still in his range, but needed to rezone smithies to stay safe. Gothia also made a hit which was surprising but initially good news, until it turned out he somehow miscalced JC's OP so JC got yet another free hit.

There was no chance from that point. I tried a few more plat stacks to try to create other opportunities, but a few other people left themselves wide open to JC so no good chance came.

JC played the end round well leveraging his pop to go huge specs but at that point, he could really do whatever and still win.

Eventually a lot of us efficient attackers lind up waiting to make big final hits. In the last couple days that #3 human who was way behind (Ed) finally made an appearance and even jumped up into JC's range. I had been looking for a big hit to leapfrog back over him (I would need a top 5 finish to improve my Rio rating) but attacking was disabled early so I finished 11th.

Overall, it was a good round. The pack and realm (I forgot to mention some of the realmies - Jota as a sylvan was always closeby but didn't get the insane luck JC had). We made all the right war calls and our pack didn't make many mistakes - none of us bounced or got hit. We just had some bad luck with round dynamics and #3 sort of trying to do what we did but making a hash of it.