Round 50

Round 50
Winner 🥇
Player:	Mithrandir
Dominion:	Khepri, God of having a bug for a face
Race:	Vampire
Second 🥈
Name:	Rio
Dominion:	Papa Troll
Race:	Troll
Third 🥉
Name:	Vran
Dominion:	Focke-Wulf Fw 190
Race:	Orc
General
Changes:	Round 50/Changes
Valhalla:	Link

Top 100 Results

Round 50 top 100

Round Win Story

This round story is comprised of real-time segments I wrote and posted in our realm discord and within the in-game journal function over the course of the round. Instances of past and present tense are the result of me not knowing if I was going to continue on in real-time or, assuming we won, wait until the end to rewrite the story more cohesively and fully told in a past tense like a real writer might do. But a real writer I am not. No edits (apart from those recommended to me at the time of my initial posting) will be made, so all the ugly, all the good, all the attempted humor remains. Enjoy.

Scratch here to give you all the jist/gist of how we either dominated or fell on our faces in round 50.

Pre-round: A couple rounds back Lud, Damdred, and I were talking about ideas for future rounds, and decided at a nebulous time that we should pack together. Equal parts charity from Lud and genuine curiosity by how the other half live, I'm sure. We came up with a few names of other people who might be fun to fill it out to a 5 with, and Mith (who I was already packing with in Round 48, and later got drafted by in Round 49) came up as a name, as well as Sugarjon. A couple others got mentioned, but I don't remember who all and I don't care because we didn't get them, so they suck anyway.

Well, I don't remember how it all happened, but Lud approached Dam (I think?) and decided to get the ball rolling on this pack during mid round 49, and around then it was known that Sugarjon would be a free agent since his brother Dave had callously decided to leave him behind and go on a vacation or something. Again, I don't remember exactly, and Dave wasn't in our realm, so it doesn't matter and he sucks anyway.

So that was the dream team: Lud, Damdred, Mithrandir, Sugarjon, and myself. We had loads of simming potential, strong oppers, fast attacking, slow attacking -- the whole package. All we needed were backup plans, in anticipation of the very real possibility of landing in the ghetto. So we started planning. Myself, Damdred, and Lud, are all insane people who make plans on top of plans on top of plans, so crafting multiple dynamic pack strategies to match the potential realm outcomes came fairly easy to us. By which of course I mean we each probably made or adjusted something like 30-40 sims each to cover all our bases.

We had settled on myself and Damdred playing ops, with Sugarjon playing fast, Lud and Mith on a slow attackers, but due to some activity issues that would occur a week or two into the round, Lud switched over to a shrine converter/early round opser, and due to not wanting Sugarjon to have to potentially go fast alone, I wound up falling into a fast role as well. So then it became myself and Sugarjon going fast, Lud opsverting, Mith playing slow, and Damdred being a full-round opser. Because of how epic of team players we all are (apart from Mith, of course, but we don't need to talk about him, he sucks anyway) it was determined that if SJ or myself started to run, Lud would make sure to either slow or stop his conversion to help keep up ops support, or if SJ and I died off, we would be able to deconvert and help out with ops for when he would need it. Again, plans and backup plans were all the rage in our pack.

Placement: Fully expecting to wind up in the OD version of Baltimore, we were pleasantly surprised to find ourselves accompanied by Zar and Allegorical! Awesome, I was expecting maybe 1 decent random, and instead we got two strong ones. Aside from those two, we had 1-2 players who hadn't yet shared their advisors, and several others who were total unknowns (but we don't need to talk about them, they all suck anyway). Well imagine the shock and surprise when one of those hidden gems turned out to be Jocke! Hi Jocke, I haven't played with you since my first full round, how have you been?? Anywho, that was 3 awesome randoms, and both Zar and Jocke being the legends they are decided to fall back into ops roles. Hellyeah, now we have 3.5 opsers, no problem with having me play fast at all now. And Allegorical wanted to play a quick converter Dwarf. Always a welcome addition to a realm, so that really filled us out and covered all our bases.

During all of this, two of our hyperactive noobs Khrawn and Tomkys were spending every waking minute trying to give my pack the world's largest migraine. As has been established many times in Dom chat, I am a deeply unhelpful person when it comes to new players, as I frankly find them beneath me both as a player and as a human being. The thought of actually trying to help someone sickens me, so that task fell to Lud and Jocke, who have the collective patience of at least 12 saints and probably a handful of monks, too. But seriously, the questions and desire to learn was nice to see, even if a majority of what they seemed to want to do in the game involved, to put it indelicately, Zoojing the fuck out. Tomkys, after being warned against playing spirit, elected to name his dominion "MerfolkLand" as a means to dissuade people from hitting him as a spirit. This was a conversation that actually happened.

Now is as good a time as any to talk about our realm theme. It's not something everyone takes seriously, but I like dressing up for Halloween, so I like being well dressed in OD as well. A good 90% of the theme discussion was just myself and Lud batting ideas back and forth, with the connective tissue being that Lud likes mythology and I like being an idiot. So we settled on the middle ground of Egyptian Gods, and what they're basically the gods of as if described by an idiot. Maybe not the funniest theme of all-time, but I liked it, Lud really liked it, and nobody else said much of anything about it that wasn't at least mildly supportive, so there you go. We put on our costumes and looked very dapper indeed.

So we were all set up, only about 15 minutes left in the pregame before protection ended and the entirety of the game would erupt into chaos and bloodshed. But wait, what's that smell? Something...manly. BOOM! Like the fucking Kool-Aid man, DantheMan's big ass flies through the wall "OH YEAHHHHH GIMME A LIZ SIM, SNAP INTO A SLIM-JIM!!" or whatever Kool-Aid men say when they want to give you the panic sweats. I was indisposed, Lud wasn't around, so it fell to Damdred to throw his wife and children to the side and barrel towards the nearest computer to get that man the craziest and most irresponsible lizard sim he possibly could with only about 5 minutes to spare. He got it in with about 45 seconds left on the clock, and we were all set. Somehow.

1- Ammat, Goddess of probably having gout, bigchris27, Dwarf 2- Isis, Goddess of Jigsaw Puzzles, Lud, Human 3- Horus, God of being too boujee for the bus, Damdred, Sylvan 4- Thoth, God of Thoughts and Prayers, Zar, Merfolk 5- Hathor, Goddess of hooking up at the club, Jocke, Dark Elf 6- Anubis, God of telling people to go to hell, Scratch, Firewalker 7- Ra, God of leaving it as cookie dough, Sugarjon, Lizardfolk 8- KoboldLand, Khrawn, Kobold 9- Robert Irwin 🩲🐍, DanTheMan, Lizardfolk 10- MerfolkLand, Tomkys, Spirit 11- Khepri, God of having a bug for a face, Mithrandir, Vampire

And lastly 3 people who never left protection, but we don't need to talk about them. They all suck anyway.

Lud asked for 3 different voice channels in the discord, so I made them all because he wanted to make sure all of our fast attackers had a special place to pair up with their designated opper. Since I was going with a slightly different build, I didn't need any help oop, but Sugarjon, Mith (while not fast, he still needed the help) and Dan were all going to require assistance. Well, two of those channels were left untouched, but that first one had like 5 people in it, so I bet they all had fun there. Our attackers all got hits off, nobody gave up a stupid oop hit, so the first wave was all good.

Wave two: Dan and Mith were going to wait until the end of the tick, I had already planned on hitting a cheap bot while I was still in range of such things, so the main concern at the top of the hour was finding Sugarjon his hit. He had about 7900 OP to work with, but turtling would be very nice, so the hunt was on. The dream team had spotted some potential AC drops, and settled on a spirit that had land coming in and still hadn't put their ares on. All that was needed was 7300 OP, easy money. Sugarjon got called away by his daughter right before the top of the tick, so the drop already wasn't looking the best, but within a minute or two he and Damdred hopped on voice chat, updated revelation and got him his hit.

2026-06-07 12:02:23 Sadly, the forces of Ra, God of leaving it as cookie dough (#6) were beaten back by redness or swelling between the anus & genitals (#8).

Well shit.

Apparently they had cast AC in the 6 second gap (probably lag) between Damdred's fresh rev and SJ's send. Nobody's fault there, apart from maybe SJ's daughter, who frankly should be ashamed of herself for causing her father so much distress this early in the round. Shame on you, young lady.

Meanwhile I had already made my follow up hit, Mith found a very safe bot himself, and Dan was expected to pop back online at any moment to swing his big OP at the tallest MFer he could find. Also, one of the chatty noobs bounced because he didn't have enough mana for his racial spirit spell and missed a barracks spy. So we had two bounces at +12, not the shiniest of starts, but I've seen worse.

Now it's Dan's turn! His OP was crazy high, but his DP was disgusting, so we needed to find him something that was big but also not entirely suicidal. Some scanning found us a 107% hit for him that would leave him with 8400 DP at home that tick, so that looked like the best possible option here. But Dan was still trying to be a greedy little potato, so kept looking for higher land targets. Then he sat and waited for the end of the tick. And sat. And sat. Why isn't he sending? What's going on?

2026-06-07 13:00:06 Sadly, the forces of Robert Irwin 🩲🐍 (#6) were beaten back by Shrimpkin Park (#10).

Well shit.

Apparently his timer on the game was off, and instead of refreshing at any point, he let it sit on the page and then bounced. Or at least that's what I thought. As he clarified shortly afterwards, he has refreshed the invade page earlier that minute and had clicked to invade when there were approximately 8 seconds left before the end of the tick, so between the UI and possible Internet lag, 14 seconds were lost during processing. That made us think back on an hour earlier, when SJ and Dam were on call together and there was a 6+ second gap where information wasn't being processed properly that led to the failed AC drop. Something funky was going on here, so Dan turned in a report, as we also urged SJ to do the same. Worst case we're seen as bouncing crybabies, best case we get the land we should have gotten if the game hadn't decided they hated us.

Oh and I forgot to mention one of the other chatty noobs had bounced earlier on, too, so we were now looking at a realm with 4 bounces already in the first day. There have only been 5 bounces in the whole game so far. Very impressive start, I'd say, even considering 2 of those bounces were currently under investigation.

After that disastrous +12 hour, things went pretty quiet in the realm as everyone waited for their land to not come in and geared up for the next wave of "hits". Lud and I went a-huntin' and found a few possible hits for myself and SJ (Dan would have to wait an extra hour for reasons we don't need to get into again), and landed on a troll that was woefully under defended and about 87% my size. Hitting top of the tick would still leave me solidly defended, SJ would follow on him and be even more defended, but I got first dibs because so far I hadn't run into any bouncy roadblocks. We hopped on VC to make sure we got the hits in ASAP (SJ muted his mic so I couldn't hear him but he could hear me, which is the exact opposite of what most people would recommend), and of course it ended poorly.

2026-06-08 00:00:14 Victorious on the battlefield, Ra, God of leaving it as cookie dough (#6) conquered 38 land from Pietris (#5). 2026-06-08 00:00:11 Victorious on the battlefield, Anubis, God of telling people to go to hell (#6) conquered 41 land from Pietris (#5).

Wait, what? We...got land? I was confused by how the hits went through and immediately contacted Fett to rectify the situation.

Meanwhile, our chatty spirit noob was all geared up to hit someone when his troops came in, but spent too much of his mana and couldn't cast his spell. Again. But this time he didn't bounce! He just had to wait. See, we're learning things in here today. Granted, very slowly, but progress is still progress, even if it's sandwiched between complaints about how you can't ask the game for your mana back in the form of online receipts or some other nonsense. It sounded like cryptocurrency talk, and after a couple minutes of feeling my brain dying, I dipped out of that conversation to instead bask in my greatness for still being able to make hits.

Our little spirit noob sent on that same target as it didn't require the use of the spell, but in true spirit noob fashion got himself hit at the end of that same tick. But the next part of the story brings us back to Dan, who was once again sitting on a cannon and waiting to blast. Many ops were taken, many ops were failed, but the target that was settled on what just over a 100% hit, but would leave him with pretty questionable DP for the following ticks. He decided to wait until the end of the tick to send. Anyone want to take a guess what happened next here?

2026-06-08 01:59:36 Robert Irwin 🩲🐍 (#6) invaded Christina A-grill-era (#10) and captured 50 land.

Nice. Nothing else much happened after that before bed time rolled around, and we made it through the night all safe and sound.

Or so I thought.

No, wait, yeah, we were safe. Honestly with how things have been going, I just assumed we woke up to 2 or 3 red notifications and a flaming bag of poo on our front porch, but the night passed without incident.

Still on our same cycle, SJ and I both needed to find some hits but neither of us had the most impressive OP, so we would need some more of that Damdred hunting magic. So after a little prestidigitation, he conjured up a solid hit for Jon, but I was still in an uncertain spot. But wait! An ares drop! We hopped on voice chat, I loaded up my pathetic OP and waited for that southern drawl to tell me "go", hit send, but in my rush I forgot to tick the cancel under 75% box...eh, I'm sure it'll be fine.

2026-06-08 12:05:03 Lampard's Ghost Goal (#4) invaded Pietris (#5) and captured 32 land. 2026-06-08 12:05:03 Victorious on the battlefield, Anubis, God of telling people to go to hell (#6) conquered 35 land from Pietris (#5).

That's right, ladies and gentlemen. I was less than one second away from accidentally doing a bottom feed. Not to say it would have completely ended my round, but I was dangerously close to having a stupid bit of rushed play mess it all up. Time to get serious, man, what are you doing?

Meanwhile in spirit land, our noob got himself hit by the same guy who hit him last time, which we all felt was likely to keep happening until the end of time, because instead of wanting to train more defense, he complained that if he trained defense he wouldn't be able to train more offense. We're dealing with next level play here, I'm sure I'll be checking in again shortly. The other chatty noob (kobold) made a safe hit and was cruising along nicely. He seemed willing to learn, and was showing signs of that growth, so all good there.

Now seems as good a time as any to give a brief update on the status of our slower folk. I don't want them thinking I haven't been watching them during all of this.

Our explorers (Zar, Damdred, Jocke) were all cruising along nicely, grabbing bounties, keeping track of top op, and overall doing a lovely job at keeping the boat afloat for the rest of us. Damdred was slightly miserable because Sylvan is boring, Jocke was spending a lot of time on the bounty board and helping to prevent our spirit friend from licking too many doorknobs, and Zar was mostly pretty quiet. But they were all doing a good job, and hadn't given up any hits yet.

Allegorical's dwarf was coming along nicely, though his population wasn't exploding quite as we would have liked. An unfortunate casualty of the keep changes in recent rounds, quick converter strats have taken a considerable hit, but he was still looking good and ended day 2 right around 1150-1200 acres and somewhere around 10th largest.

Mithrandir's vampire (an adjustment from the one he ran in R48) was speeding along the early part well, his keep was looking very strong, and he was spending a big chunk of time sitting around pooling platinum and releasing draftees so he could do a mass training session to prepare for when he would start attacking again. So nothing going on there, but everything was going according to plan.

Lud's human was looking very strong. His population was growing beyond Allegorical's, he was barely behind him in land, and with 2/3 of his DP units being elites, his efficiency was already yielding some incredible results. Running shrines and grabbing ops, he was able to help find hits, track top op, and do all of that while gaining more and more benefits from it. Things were working very well here, and at least from my point of view he was looking like a definite top contender for the second half of the round if things kept moving forward at this rate. All that needed to happen was we had to keep our fast guys moving to try to set up some roadblocks to keep that progress unencumbered.

At the top of day 3, I knew I didn't have the OP required to do anything. Neither did SJ, but he had started training OP to line up with a slightly different hit cycle, so there was no real need to go scrounging too hard immediately. I was able to fully send my OP, but that didn't mean much. My offense was basically the adult man version of 3 kids in a trench coat, but Damdred and Lud both had hopes they'd be able to find me something. So the search was on.

Lud had his eye on a specific gnome as a potential AC drop target, but it would be the hour after my usual hit time. That means I'd have to wait, which was the least surprising thing in the world, on account of the 3-kids-in-a-trenchcoat I had to work with, so I was game. Didn't expect it to work out, frankly, but this time I'd at least make sure to tick that 75% cancel button, so at least there was progress in that way even if the hit didn't get to work out. Hopped into VC, got to hear Lud exclaim "fuck you, Timmy!" when his human competition got blasted, then waited for the top of the hour and the rev.

2026-06-09 01:00:08 Victorious on the battlefield, Anubis, God of telling people to go to hell (#6) conquered 44 land from Desert Sunset (#5).

Not the biggest hit of the cycle, but an entirely unexpected one, and one that was full of those shiny gnome mountains. I guess that means I get to be a mod whore now, too. Sadly, a few of the other competitive fast attackers made bigger hits at the same time, so I only lost ground there, but not nearly as much ground lost as would have been had I skipped the cycle entirely. Jon still had to wait a few more hours for his hit, but me and Dan were moving again, so it was a huge win.

After a couple hours, Jon was able to take a lovely hit on a Dark Elf whom had recently been lit up by a few others, so his delay was definitely worth it.

2026-06-09 04:59:48 Victorious on the battlefield, Ra, God of leaving it as cookie dough (#6) conquered 54 land from Avril Lamb-vigne (#10).

Nice.

The morning came, and a lot of big hits started to happen yet again. Largely at the expense of #5, which had a handful of terrible feeders. Looking at their realm town crier was so glowing red it was like Darth Maul having a lightsaber fight with himself. Well, presumably one of the kobolds in #5 got really fed up with all of this, and took it out on one of the lizards in #10.

2026-06-09 11:59:48 50 Reasons to Train Sui Op (#5) invaded Justin Timbersteak (#10) and captured 70 land.

This led to a bit of a feeding frenzy, though I had to wait for a couple others to eat first in order to save enough turtle not to also get myself blasted, but eventually was able to take the free acres instead of having to wait until this evening to find a hit. Luckily I had Damdred and Jocke around to help update some ops and tell me I was good to send.

2026-06-09 13:25:32 Victorious on the battlefield, Anubis, God of telling people to go to hell (#6) conquered 43 land from 50 Reasons to Train Sui Op (#5).

It's good to keep moving, but I knew deep down I would need to start pushing my own mods to keep up with these other goofballs who were already 10%+ on GNs and GTs. So I took the mountains I got from the night before, built myself about 50 GNs, and would spend the rest of the day trying to get my DP at a reasonable enough level to find another hit in the evening if possible, though likely it would have to happen in the morning instead.

Sugarjon was waiting for his troops to get back, but was falling a bit behind. Dan was already well out of the race and seemed to be on his way out the door, but our converters and slow guys were still looking strong, so as long as I was able to help slow down some of the other FA here over the next couple weeks, things would work out for us in the end.

Meanwhile in the valley of the noob, our chatty kobold noob went and bounced for the second time, lifting our bounce total up to 5 within the first 3 days. Remember when I said he was showing a little bit of promise? Well it turns out I'm both an asshole *and* a liar. I was hoping we'd be able to get down to a 1:1 day:bounce ratio for the realm by the end of the first week, but that seemed an unrealistic dream at this point.

Things were going along in a fairly routine way leading into the start of day 4, I was getting set up to be top OP in the morning, SJ was getting his economy moving and starting to look more alive again, Dan was doing Dan things, and our noobs were attempting to put the safety scissors and pool floaties to the test, but were officially out of range to cause any more harm to themselves or others.

But there was a storm a-brewin'. The suicidal kobold in #5 wasn't quite done yet, and was looking for a little dessert after his last meal.

2026-06-09 23:37:01 50 Reasons to Train Sui Op (#5) invaded Cake (#10) and captured 84 land.

That's 2-for-2 on blasting the big lizards in #10, and they were even hit in the correct order -- steak first, then cake. It was perfect, both comedically and for what I was hoping to see happen. It was also a very exciting way to end the 3rd day, but with blops opening up in just an hour, hopefully nothing awful would come of that for us.

At night, we started to concoct a plan to hit Cake in #10. With a few assassinations, we would have him, but it was at a weird and super early time, so it would take a little luck to get enough people online to be there to stab. Luckily we had enough people around and got it done, albeit earlier in the hour than was most ideal. The only real concern was the Kobold in #9, but the estimated OP he would have to send to get me was going to leave them very susceptible, so we went ahead with it anyway.

2026-06-10 08:50:56 Victorious on the battlefield, Anubis, God of telling people to go to hell (#6) conquered 77 land from Cake (#10).

Cool, now I just needed to survive the next 9 minutes and everything should be fine. Probably should have sent later, but if it takes a sui to hit me, I feel pretty good.

2026-06-10 08:58:43 Young Forrest (#9) invaded fellow dominion Anubis, God of telling people to go to hell (#6) and captured 73 land.

Apparently some wires got crossed, because that was not a sui at all. Great, I just gave 150 acres away, and that probably wouldn't have happened at all if I had sent just the next tick. Definitely frustrating, but these things happen. Operating on very little sleep and just generally feeling a bit grumpy, I was still not totally checked out, and saw this hit against me as not such a horrible thing, considering now I would be much less likely a war target. If we don't get warred, that's better for Lud, Mith, and Allegorical, and I'm playing for the slow guys anyway, so it wasn't such a horrible thing to have happen in the grand scheme of things.

During the following hours, there were plans emerging for a follow up hit, but I wasn't going to focus too much on that. The main thing that happened of note during this time was Mith finally got a hit on the board!

2026-06-10 12:48:54 Victorious on the battlefield, Khepri, God of having a bug for a face (#6) conquered 30 land from We liggen onder je nest!! (#0).

From this hit, he got 399 kindred converts, which was definitely a step in the right direction, and it was great seeing him finally start moving again after that first day. With any luck, he'd be able to keep growing safely, but more to follow on that later.

Allegorical's population had finally started to boom, Lud was still chugging along nicely, and Mith was moving. If I hadn't gotten hit, this would've been a great day overall, but it still wasn't a bad one. But by the time my troops got back and SJ's numbers were blowing up as well (he and I were fairly equivalent in numbers at this point), we were on the lookout for a couple more hits. Ask and you shall receive.

2026-06-10 20:57:18 Victorious on the battlefield, Anubis, God of telling people to go to hell (#6) conquered 55 land from Christina A-grill-era (#10).

2026-06-10 21:10:11 Victorious on the battlefield, Ra, God of leaving it as cookie dough (#6) conquered 55 land from Hep (#1).

And we were off again! Maybe not the top threats in the game, but still moving forward, with the hopes of being able to block some people as we needed to in the future. We were both marked as safe from the big scary guys, though there was always the looming threat of some goofballs doing some suis, but at a certain point you can't play scared and just need to move forward. We were both a hit or so behind, but undeterred.

Due to the rising cost of living, Lud's exploration had to slow down to keep himself safe, but Jon and I were gearing up to hit again soon. Due to us being less modded than some of the other competition, and having a solid number of DMs, bouncing back was definitely more on the table than for a few others.

Meanwhile, #9 declared on #11 to sink their FW who didn't keep up docks very much, sadly, so at least temporarily there were less people holding them back. Which of course was a bad thing for us, due to the fact neither of us had enough OP to really limit them. But there was mostly a lot of sitting to come up. A whole lot of it, but luckily something popped up for SJ, who was able to grab a nice hit that would put him ahead of me.

2026-06-11 21:38:21 Victorious on the battlefield, Ra, God of leaving it as cookie dough (#6) conquered 51 land from Burgie (#10).

Oh, and I forgot to mention Mith made his second hit, so he was fully on the map now. The nerfs to keep had definitely left an impact on this strat as he had run it two rounds prior, but he was still moving, and the converts already were pretty incredible.

2026-06-11 17:59:15 Victorious on the battlefield, Khepri, God of having a bug for a face (#6) conquered 35 land from We liggen onder je nest!! (#0).

I guess it's time I check back in with what's going on in the valley of the noob. I don't remember if I mentioned the kobold getting himself hit already, but that happened, and now the spirit was making dumb sends that would put him right in range of all the people we didn't want him to enter into the range of. As could be expected, to be perfectly honest, because this is a person who is either incapable of reading or of understanding what was being written. But never fear, this surely won't be the last we're hearing from them.

Pretty late at night, we were bouncing around looking at any potential hits for me, and found that with some stabbing I would be able to catch a vampire from #7. Only like a 76% hit, but at this point I just needed to grow and it didn't really matter how. So we got some people together, did a little pokey pokey, and got it taken care of.

2026-06-12 04:14:37 Victorious on the battlefield, Anubis, God of telling people to go to hell (#6) conquered 53 land from 😇 Bring me to life....... 🚑 (#7).

Most of the other fasts wound up hitting in the following hours, but the halfling in #9 held a bit longer, until this nonsense happened.

2026-06-12 10:09:30 Forest Gump (#9) invaded 50 First Rounds of OD (#5) and captured 116 land.

An ares drop on one of the top explorers in the game (who was already woefully under defended), and it pretty much looked like we were going to see a halfling runner from this point. He would have enough OP to follow up on this guy again in 12 hours, and there's really not much anyone can do to stop it. To make it even more sad, one of the (fairly dead at this point) FA from #10 took a swing and a miss, bouncing on the guy in spite of his ares still being down. But wait...that might actually be a good thing for me. There were a couple small windows where I'd be able to take a shot at this explorer, I'd just need a little bit of help again doing the pokey pokey. So it became forge-pumpin' time for the next 6 hours.

2026-06-12 15:23:18 The Rise 📈 and Fall 📉 of the Ramen 🍜 Empire (#11) invaded 50 First Rounds of OD (#5) and captured 111 land.

Or maybe earlier than 6 hours. With the casualties here, and that player deciding it was a genius move to train a ton of spec DP instead to make a hit against him even easier, I was able to turn right back around and give him a little love-tap myself, in hopes that SJ might be able to also follow in a few ticks. Anything to keep that stupid halfling from getting another gigantic free hit.

2026-06-12 16:26:58 Victorious on the battlefield, Anubis, God of telling people to go to hell (#6) conquered 99 land from 50 First Rounds of OD (#5).

Rock on. Right around this time, Mith was looking to make another hit, as all of the relevant FA were moving up from this giant free land explosion and his new safe range would be increasing exponentially. So the crew found him a cheap spirit bot, and he got his next hit in.

2026-06-12 16:58:42 Victorious on the battlefield, Khepri, God of having a bug for a face (#6) conquered 36 land from One Sweet Whirled (#0).

All-in-all, I'd say this was a pretty good day for us so far. Even our spirit, who essentially lucked out due to the fact Mr. Firewalker decided he didn't need to cast ares or have defense at all, was able to make it home safely. Of course he decided he needed to immediately follow that up with another hit, which was unsurprising, as chewing on drywall and hitting on low DP were the two things he was most happy doing, and we'd grown to expect nothing but the finest gaming skills from him up to this point, so this turn of events was pretty much par for the course.

The time finally came for SJ to follow on the big firewalker explorer, who was no longer so big, but was a very welcome hit. He was able to make it the tick before the halfling in #9 got his troops back, so that would take at least a little bit of land away from him if/when he would double on the firewalker, so that was a win.

2026-06-12 21:45:03 Victorious on the battlefield, Ra, God of leaving it as cookie dough (#6) conquered 93 land from 50 First Rounds of OD (#5).

The halfling was being at least slightly limited by a kobold in #5, so things were starting to improve in ways from how bleak they had appeared at the start of the day. Overall, day 6 was a pretty good day for us.

The weekend was a bit of a blur, and not because nothing happened during it, it was just a busy time for me, so the details are definitely a bit foggy even as I'm typing this immediately after the events all took place, so be patient with me here. The halfling was gearing up for another big hit following his previous even-bigger one, and my numbers just weren't where they needed to be to do the same. So it wasn't looking good. Luckily he sent fairly early in the hour, which gave us more time to find me something.

2026-06-13 18:30:57 Forest Gump (#9) invaded The Three Burger 🍔 Problem (#11) and captured 88 land.

It wasn't going to be easy to find a hit that would keep up with that one, and I needed the other FW in #11 to send before me, too, in order to feel safe. But the stars aligned, yet again, as I was gifted with two more events. First was this:

2026-06-13 18:40:06 Justin Timbersteak (#10) invaded Wolf Rider? I Just Met Her (#0) and captured 56 land.

And then this:

2026-06-13 18:51:48 The Rise 📈 and Fall 📉 of the Ramen 🍜 Empire (#11) invaded Fiat G.55 Centauro Ex Tenebris (#1) and captured 64 land.

And what do you know, my full send was enough to cover Justin Timbersteak by almost exactly 100 OP, as long as he didn't do any funny business, it should be okay...

2026-06-13 18:59:50 Victorious on the battlefield, Anubis, God of telling people to go to hell (#6) conquered 84 land from Justin Timbersteak (#10).

Whew, okay, he didn't pull any funny business. That was a real nail-biter, and not losing ground on the halfer was perfect, so this really couldn't have been a luckier break.

The spirit noob started hitting a wonder (not sure which, I don't believe he ever said), but at least now he was doing something that could be considered vaguely useful, and wasn't getting hit for it, so this was all a massive improvement. But then his kobold friend decided to take over duties and essentially sui'd a vampire in #5, which wound up feeding the kobold in #9 and a converting goblin in #1. So they were officially a double act, playing some bizarre tag team version of the game that was still way above my pay grade to fully comprehend.

Oh, and they made sure to blame SJ for not properly telling them what was safe DP in spite of him regularly posting top OP charts and there being ops that were less than 2 hours old on the exact guys who hit him. This was truly an incredible strategic moment, one we'll all refer back to in the coming years when attempt to highlight the greatest of all moves in OD history.

But all is well, because Mith got his fifth hit since he started moving again, and was starting to look pretty good.

2026-06-14 15:31:39 Victorious on the battlefield, Khepri, God of having a bug for a face (#6) conquered 44 land from Unyielding Umber Blaze (#0).

The next course of action, knowing full well that the halfling would take his incoming land and turn them into 9,000,000 mods, was to do the same thing right back at him in hopes of either slowing him down or keeping up with him if he moves. So as predicted, he made about 85 GNs, and I did the same basic thing right back, along with training about 700 spec OP units for good measure. We were now getting pretty close to the same numbers, only I have more peasants and still much less mods. If it's a stall he wants, it will only benefit me, as I had about 120 DMs at the time and was only trying to slow people down to help my slow people anyway. So we sat around for a while pointing our guns at each other.

So we sat. Not much else was going on around this time other than our spirit noob and a couple others tossing hits and cyclones at a wonder. And then, out of fuckin' nowhere:

2026-06-14 23:11:07 The Planar Gates has been destroyed and rebuilt by Amun-Ra, God of being all high and mighty (#6).

Looks like someone's gonna get a free 1k OP. And that someone is named "whoever wars us and takes this fucker", cuz I don't think I'll have a chance to use it much while we've got it, but we have at least 24 hours, and this little boost may well be enough to stall that halfling even more. This was a huge win for the noobs, and even if it's short-lived, just might give us the ammunition we need to keep this standoff in our favor.

So we just kept on training. In the meantime, we got our 50th and 51st late sign ups, but this time I think they might stick around, because they joined the discord and everything. One of these late signups was Gothia, who was pretty much just checking in on the game, but seemed willing to help out with raids and the like. Either way, it was cool to see him again.

Allegorical, who had been patiently waiting for the pieces on the board to move so that he could actually start attacking after his conversion, made the calculated risk of sending on his first hit, after seeing higher land targets sending on less DP while also in range of the halfling, something we all signed off on as an idea. It was reaching a point where sitting was not going to be helping us for much longer, but we were happy to see him finally on the board.

2026-06-15 14:59:52 Victorious on the battlefield, Ammat, Goddess of probably having gout (#6) conquered 56 land from Leauge of 20 000 planets (#0).

So the top OP stall continued until we all collectively got tired of it and knew we needed the game to commence, so the hunt was on to find a new target. Damdred was on the case, which means one was found pretty quickly. A gnome AC drop that would have me fully safe from the halfling and would net me about 75 more mountains. Yes, the halfling would be able to send, but I wasn't really holding him anyway, and at least this way we were the ones controlling the pace. Just needed him to not hit much bigger, and everything would be cool. Hopped onto VC with SJ, who refreshed the rev page for me while Dam spammed the spell at the top of the tick, and got it done.

2026-06-15 20:00:10 Victorious on the battlefield, Anubis, God of telling people to go to hell (#6) conquered 76 land from Droll Troll (#2).

Since this obviously took place at the top of the tick, it gave the halfling a lot of time to find his own, which he did later that hour. But that would free up SJ to hit that same target but for even more land, so everything worked out and we let the game start moving again.

2026-06-15 21:57:31 Victorious on the battlefield, Ra, God of leaving it as cookie dough (#6) conquered 94 land from May cause nausea and/or blindness (#8).

Since SJ hit the following tick, we had to keep a close eye on the halfling and what he was doing. Knowing that it wouldn't take much more than an OP spec dump and some bad luck to catch SJ with his pants down, we stabbed some of the halfling's draftees and had SJ release a small number of wizards to retrain as his own DP just to be careful. Letting the halfling hit back-to-back was not an option, and I would need him not to hit again for at least one hour after his troops got back in to fully see my OP come in. But he wound up being safe and the halfling wasn't able to make another hit immediately, so everything worked out.

Mithrandir, who had been regularly making hits at this point, started to get moving even more rapidly, as he saw this new window as a time to potentially hit twice, so he made the moves he needed to get that going, using myself and every other top OP as a shield against goofballs hoping to graduate from bot hits to player hits.

2026-06-16 00:58:54 Victorious on the battlefield, Khepri, God of having a bug for a face (#6) conquered 51 land from We liggen onder je nest!! (#0).

And then again 12 hours later...

2026-06-16 12:39:03 Victorious on the battlefield, Khepri, God of having a bug for a face (#6) conquered 52 land from Thor God of Thunder (#0).

In total, he converted somewhere around 2200 kindred from these hits, which is insane to think about, and with all the scary goblins coming up around this time, it was important for him to get these hits in before they were able to push for their next wave of 9hr hits. In total, this was a very beneficial day for us, the stall worked out well, and with the new land/GNs I had coming in, I would be able to (at least temporarily) take over as the top OP in the game. Let's fucking go.

So with the stall behind us, we decided to turn around and send again, which basically meant looking through realm 5 to see who in there was low in my range. Found a hit, made it at the end of the hour, and forced the halfer and FW both to follow. Luckily they did early enough for SJ to send the same tick as them both, so everything was all good.

2026-06-17 01:59:30 Victorious on the battlefield, Anubis, God of telling people to go to hell (#6) conquered 82 land from 50 Reasons to Train Sui Op (#5).

2026-06-17 02:59:51 Victorious on the battlefield, Ra, God of leaving it as cookie dough (#6) conquered 78 land from Fifty Shaves of Gnomes (#5).

Went to bed, set to train a billion salamanders, and then woke up to this:

2026-06-17 04:21:32 You want a praline? (#9) has declared WAR on Amun-Ra, God of being all high and mighty (#6).

Looks like someone's a little intimidated by our impressive-ass realm. So I took some FBs, they stabbed some of my wizards, the usual. Nothing much could really be done to my boats, but I was hoping they'd be distracted by them just to keep them away from pulling any crap on our slower guys. Instead of doing any spec dumps I let my draftees pool up to distract and scare them into wanting to assassinate me. Anything to kept the target on me instead of Lud, Mith, or Allegorical.

Meanwhile, we noticed their dwarf had basically no boats, so the plan was in to wait until he got home from his attack to sink him. Our noob pair decided they needed to be extra helpful, as the spirit (completely ignoring everything SJ had just laid out about waiting for his troops to come back in to sabotage) blew all of his SS on sabotaging the 14 boats the dwarf still had at home, because reading is very difficult, especially when it's reading through the foggy, snot and saliva-covered window they had just spent the last week-and-a-half endlessly licking and heavily breathing onto. The kobold at this time had basically nothing to help us with, as he wisely chose to ignore everything we all said about how dead he was as an attacker after having taken 3 hits and bounced twice in a single week, and was pouring everything he had into training more OP. He was destined to feed, and would probably be giving up war hits to #9, because why not?

Not personally too irritated by being blopped here (I'd been expecting it for a while), the mood in the room was still pretty annoyed by just how stupid the behavior of the noobs was at this point, as we all lamented being saddled with a pair who refused to pay attention, actually listen to the paragraphs of advice they had asked for, engage in the actual strategy of the game, etc. Sure, it wasn't as bad of a draw as #5 got, but as far as we could tell, #9 (who were our main competitors at this point) weren't stuck with anyone nearly as worthless and debilitating as this, so it became an obvious disadvantage for us at this point.

By this point Dan was no longer around (not fully abandoned, but hadn't logged in for over 2 days), Gothia hadn't logged in since he initially signed up, a newer player who joined the discord and signed up late hadn't figured his way out of protection yet, and the 2 noobs were proving to remain as useful as could be expected, so we were fully down to 8 players in spite of having 13 people in the realm. Even attempts to sink the dwarf in #9 proved useless, as nobody noticed the harbor investments he had beforehand, so all-in-all this was not a very good day for the realm.

This persisted for a bit, Mith got another hit in, and I spent my burning just trying to keep OP as high as possible to threaten and limit the halfling. By this time, a goblin in #1 was starting to get really strong, so the time for early converters and mid speed guys was rapidly approaching, and I knew my time on top was quickly coming to an end. Thank goodness. I was getting tired, needed to be able to relax for a bit. I feel like I'd done my job of slowing a potential runner in the halfling, and never really intended on trying to win myself. Two weeks into the round, and it wasn't looking like we would be seeing a fast attacker blasting too far ahead, which is what we needed for our slow guys. But we still needed them to grow, so something would have to give. Once I was trained to close to 100k OP, it was time to push DP and stop just trying to suppress. Let's let the game breathe.

Realm 9 were doing everything they could to slow me, from assassinating draftees, keeping me fireballed as much as they could, to sabotaging boats (even though that wasn't really much of a possibility due to how many docks I had). After I was done being fireballed, they turned their sights onto SJ, which was pretty ideal, considering how much we wanted them to leave our slow guys alone. In spite of this war being very bad for me, I think we managed to make the most of it, and had slowed the halfling down enough that even with as much support as he had, a runaway was fairly unlikely.

More hits were made, the FW in #11 was getting stronger, I was falling behind, the halfling was still in a solid position, but the pace had slowed so much that a fast attacker win was all but guaranteed not to happen, so I was able to chill for a bit, build some DMs, and either prepare for a deconversion or just plug along for a bit and hope for some really good luck. SJ was keeping up and finding some hits, though he had reached the point where he was hitting bots now, so we both knew our respective times in the sun were drawing to a close. 2 weeks in, we had a solid performance, time for us to hang up our hats and start to pay our people back for the support they gave us at the start.

Allegorical, Mith, and Lud were all looking very strong at this point, Mith had been hitting regularly and was ahead of where he was at on his previous vampire attempt from R48, Lud was about on schedule with his conversion, sitting on solid pop, and great efficiency, and Allegorical can managed to make some solid hits to keep himself strong in the field of mid speed races. Though me and SJ weren't able to take over the game, we managed to help our slow guys to not fall too far behind, so it's hard not to see what we did as a success. The only hope now was that neither the FW or the halfling would manage to get too many lucky hits in sequence and keep the race competitive until Mith was able to really take over.

Realm 9 would wind up declaring on #11 to slow their FW down, completely ignoring the huge pain in the butt that would be the goblin(s) in #1, which felt like an oversight, but they seemed to be having fun trying to force their guys into the best position possible, so more power to them. Without much as far as slow threats go, they were pretty limited in what they could try to do, so this aggressive playstyle made as much sense as anything for them. So as the FW started to get fireballed down, I began pushing for more OP and pop, hoping to take advantage of their mutually weakened situations. Maybe they'd forget about me and I could slip back in to the race again. SJ was thinking the same thing.

The war between #11 and #9 proved to be another one where no real damage was dealt to #9, with the FW getting fireballed down quite a bit, and the halfling was able to get another free hit from Timmy. So while I was busy at a family gathering, my whole realm went wild finding hits for me. They found me a hit, and I sent without even double checking numbers.

2026-06-21 19:13:33 Victorious on the battlefield, Anubis, God of telling people to go to hell (#6) conquered 96 land from The pen is blue , the goddamn pen is BLUE!!! (#7).

Around this same time, Mith was getting very strong, his vamp converting close to 2k kindred every hit, and was almost at the point where he would be able to hit around top OP. As long as I kept pushing to try to keep some pressure on the halfling, our realm would keep being in a strong spot moving forward. Still no runner after 15 days, Lud was getting very close to his first hit, and Allegorical was still looking very solid. As long as we could hold on just a little bit longer...

Lud was starting to find himself in a precarious position. Set right between a pair of competing fast attackers in #9 and #11 that seemed to be trying to burn each other out with OP, and poor Lud was trying to finish his conversion. So as his hit window got pushed back further and further, a certain doom had started to set in. At this same time, Mith was still chugging along nicely, and Allegorical was watching his pop explode, so we still had some very strong people in the race at this point, even with Lud being stalled out. But that wouldn't be the case for long, for Lud was about to finally make his move.

2026-06-23 06:59:56 Victorious on the battlefield, Isis, Goddess of Jigsaw Puzzles (#6) conquered 85 land from Top of the Rankings (#0).

He wasn't able to pull off a 9hr, but still got his first hit in, which we were pleased to see didn't get pushed back any further. I made another hit just barely within my 75% in hopes that the FW and halfling would hold each other for another day or so and I could try to catch up, but due to a silly AC drop from one of the goobers in #10, it was to no avail and I fell even further behind. I'm done, ladies and gentlemen!

2026-06-23 16:34:12 Victorious on the battlefield, Anubis, God of telling people to go to hell (#6) conquered 101 land from Albatros F-3 (#1).

2026-06-23 19:04:41 Forest Gump (#9) invaded Justin Timbersteak (#10) and captured 125 land.

2026-06-23 19:01:18 The Rise 📈 and Fall 📉 of the Ramen 🍜 Empire (#11) invaded Justin Timbersteak (#10) and captured 138 land.

It would have been nice to have a hit of the day at least once, but playing flashy wasn't the strategy from the start, and I succeeded in trying to at least help slow down a potential runner, so I can't complain about my performance overall. It was the most successful FA round I've had so far (arguably my first real attempt in over a year) and it felt good knowing I was at least decent enough at it to compete at the top for a while. I know it sounds like a eulogy, but that's how it feels at this point. High stakes, high drama! But just because I'm out of the race doesn't mean my realm is out of the race!

Due to these hits from FW and the halfling being early tick AC drops, this freed up the rest of the game to go absolutely wild and start sending like mad. Allegorical got a hit in, as well as Mith, which ultimately made this a great day for us, in spite of it being a small Greek (or I guess Egyptian?) tragedy for myself and SJ, who had both pretty well fallen off a cliff at this point. But enough about me! (Spoiler alert: I will continue to talk mostly about myself)

2026-06-23 19:48:58 Victorious on the battlefield, Ammat, Goddess of probably having gout (#6) conquered 100 land from Reechani (#0).

2026-06-23 19:34:00 Victorious on the battlefield, Khepri, God of having a bug for a face (#6) conquered 90 land from Boatload of Problems (#0).

It occurs to me I haven't checked in on our noobs since we lost our wonder and they stopped being able to be hit by the top attackers and bounce like a dozen times. So let's see what they're up to, shall we?

It was raid time, and our two noobs were doing everything they could to make those rewards their bitch. 5 combined attacks on the raid between the pair, no hits taken between either of them for about a week, and barely any asinine questions about why we don't all have 20% temples...what the fuck? I almost hate it when they're being useful, it gives me that much less to laugh about. So now I'm pretty much dead as an attacker and my comedic punching bags aren't being total dead fish, so this whole round was essentially ruined for me at this point. So with nothing left to enjoy on a day-to-day basis, I decided to hit the abandon button. But then I remembered that I had no idea where that button even was, so I stuck around instead.

Within about 2 minutes of me finishing writing about how our noobs weren't fucking up as much now and lamenting their actions as not being comedic enough, twas as though the heavens parted, and God himself spake unto thee "have this nugget and be merry". Thank you for the nugget, I will cherish it. Our deconverted spirit had spent I don't even know how long saving up platinum so he could use his martyrdom perk to mass train a metric fuckton of spies and wizards, and wound up with 2.5 million platinum sitting there and nowhere near enough draftees to train them all. Meanwhile, the kobold noob went and sent with way too little DP and was almost surely going to get himself eaten.

Remember, this was within 20 minutes of what I had previously written! When you need a good laugh, just wander down into the valley of the noob, for there are many a gift to receive. 1867 spies, 2550 assassins, and 3199 archmages, all in the same tick. I don't know what happens next here, but I'm sure it will be stupid. So we'll definitely be checking in on them again. Bless their hearts.

Well I'm back to check in on them already, as I woke up to see our spirit noob (who had neglected DP for days to save up to train ratios) had gotten himself doubled by the orcs in #1. These noobs, you say their names a few times and they'll pop in to do some dumb shit, like a boneheaded Beetlejuice. On the up side, the 180-190 acres they lost will only make their ratios stronger, so in the end they got what they really wanted anyway. Have fun spiraling the noob toilet, mister spirit, try not to touch too many poops on the way down.

With the FW and halfling staring deeply into each other's eyes with a sense of longing, the field was set for Mith to make his move to slip past the fast guys and really get rolling. With the incredible amount of converts he was getting from every previous hit, his all-out DP was still good to cover top op, so he pushed OP as hard as he could and got himself another hit.

2026-06-25 19:10:38 Victorious on the battlefield, Khepri, God of having a bug for a face (#6) conquered 93 land from I Call Everything (#0).

This was the time to move, and that prompted the brain trust to really start pushing forth ideas. Rezoning incoming acres to GN for a swift turnaround was settled upon as a very tantalizing proposal, which satisfied Mith's need for speed, Dam's love of weirdness, and Lud's appetite for modding. So the plan was set, just needed to wait for it to be executed. Lud, meanwhile, was trying to set the table for a double, and potentially even a triple, but the FW and halfer needed to start moving soon or he would be fully stuck.

The weekend was pretty long and busy for me, so keeping up with the details of the round was definitely not something I was capable of doing, but I'll try to sum up a few things that happened over those few days, and hopefully I don't repeat much.

-The valley of the noob gave up multiple hits between the two of them. Eventually kobold released their spec OP.

-Pretty much every one of our big hitters made some hits, and we had pretty solid growth.

-Mith was fully becoming one of the biggest and scariest in the game, so we had to refocus our efforts into backing him up.

-SJ and I made our final BFs to start the deconversion process and get ratios to start to work as oppers.

Don't like the lack of details? Too bad! This is my story, go write your own. Never should've clicked on anything I wrote if you wanted something that was informative, smart, or good.

The FW was clearly pulling away from the halfling by this point, and had firmly established himself as the only real FA left in the game (halfling was just too far behind at this point to feel scary), but this was not a dominant runner situation, so there was plenty of room for Mith/Lud/Allegorical to slip through. Eventually the FW would hit again, which opened up the entire game to doing some wacky shit. The vampire in #8, who Mith had been quietly competing with all round, wound up making a very poorly thought-out hit that resulted in him getting blasted by the FW on return, which gave Mith extra opportunity to move again a couple times. Meanwhile Lud had positioned himself to do another 9hr, so even though the top FA was gaining big acres, our own guys were moving as well, which only improved our positioning overall.

Mith: 2026-06-29 06:47:03 Victorious on the battlefield, Khepri, God of having a bug for a face (#6) conquered 143 land from Jenny Curran (#9).

2026-06-30 06:09:34 Victorious on the battlefield, Khepri, God of having a bug for a face (#6) conquered 133 land from Fifty Shaves of Gnomes (#5).

Lud:

2026-06-29 14:55:26 Victorious on the battlefield, Isis, Goddess of Jigsaw Puzzles (#6) conquered 112 land from Under My Spell (#0).

2026-06-29 23:26:44 Victorious on the battlefield, Isis, Goddess of Jigsaw Puzzles (#6) conquered 112 land from Zaire Kicking the Ball's away (#4).

Allegorical:

2026-06-29 23:52:15 Victorious on the battlefield, Ammat, Goddess of probably having gout (#6) conquered 114 land from Chicken Rice Without Bone (#0).

Both hits Mith made were on mountain races, so GNs were flying in, and with the converts he had accumulated, all he really needed was some OP, so the bloodreavers came funneling in. Lud was in a spot where he just needed to balance knights with cavs, and had accepted that his 9hring days may be over, at least for now. And Allegorical was just trying to get by and maintain solid pop, so he was just trying to keep relevant numbers that could give him a safe bot hit whenever possible. Things were moving along nicely.

SJ and I, our attacking days long behind us, had pumped up ratios to be opper support, but with 3 people aside from us doing regular ops, there wasn't a whole ton of desperate need for either of us for this, so I decided to mostly stack mana in the event of war. If someone decided to mess with us, I wanted at least one of us to be able to send a few middle fingers back. Otherwise, we were all just sitting around waiting for units to come in to make another wave of hits.

Noob alert! Our kobold noob, who deconverted by releasing his spec OP into draftees and then doing nothing else, gave up an AC drop hit and quickly corrected that flub by not training DP and giving up two non-AC drop hits shortly afterwards, which he seemed to see as a step in the right direction. I think that alone gives you some idea what it is we had to work with here. He had now given up 8 hits, bounced twice, and even caused a bounce himself (which was purely accidental, of course). But he was now small enough that any damage you might cause the rest of the realm would be relatively minimal, in spite of being responsible for majority of the red in our TC.

Zar, who had mainly been covering random ops and plaguing some of the top threats in the game, was off having fun with his ever-present side quest of trying to bait bounces, which was pretty stressful for a lot of us, as in a lot of ways it did seem like he was going bungee jumping without the cord, but he's a bit of an elasticity expert, so I'm sure this is just paranoia on our part. That being said, a majority of hits the FW had been getting seemed to be from AC drops, so justifiable paranoia nonetheless.

There came another slight stall, as the FW, halfling, and one of the goblins were all spending their time continuing to stare into each other's souls, but luckily Mith had them beat with DP by a significant margin, and the dream team were able to identify an ares drop for him to take advantage of.

2026-07-02 20:00:27 Victorious on the battlefield, Khepri, God of having a bug for a face (#6) conquered 165 land from Kurald Galain (#9).

It was a lovely hit, but would only be super valuable if the FW couldn't also grow....which he didn't! So things were going well. The following morning, one of the kobolds in #9 sent on some sketchy DP, so Jocke, SJ, and I spent 30-40 minutes going over all the numbers and attempting to wake Mith up to make a super safe hit. But he needed to wake up! C'mon man, this is OD, the only one who's allowed to sleep in here is me! Well he did wake up, but was too groggy to confidently send until the next tick, so it was fine, as long as he kept moving.

2026-07-03 11:11:53 Victorious on the battlefield, Khepri, God of having a bug for a face (#6) conquered 162 land from Bubba (#9).

If he got to move forward with this hit ahead of the FW again, it would be smooth sailing. Let's see how this develops...

After the hit on bubba, things were continuing to look pretty decent. There were some hits by bigger people, some of the threats kept moving, but so were we, so unless something horrible happened, from our viewpoint we were in the driver seat. The firewalker was still the biggest attacker, but Mith's vamp who is getting really scary at this point, was definitely nipping at his heels. Bizarrely, almost no blops were being sent this way for the first three weeks of the round, so people were definitely underestimating just how scary he might get.

Some more time passed and hits were made, I really need to take better notes because it's hard to remember exactly what all transpired at this point, but Lud and Allegorical both made their hits (which I do recall being somewhat risky) and #6 continued on with our subtle domination.

2026-07-03 16:59:52 Victorious on the battlefield, Isis, Goddess of Jigsaw Puzzles (#6) conquered 163 land from Tero (#1).

2026-07-05 02:59:01 Victorious on the battlefield, Ammat, Goddess of probably having gout (#6) conquered 169 land from Increased risk of developing Blood(Reaver) Clots (#8).

The next step would be getting Mith his next hit. There weren't a ton of options, and everyone in range was well-defended, so it would have to be an ares drop. And off like a flash, Damdred sped around looking at every single op on every single person, identifying a merfolk in #8 that we had been eyeing for some time now and used as a sort of back-up plan for a few hits now. It wouldn't be so easy as a simple AC drop though, we needed to stab some draftees as well. So we all popped on, let Lud do some math, stabbed a ton of draftees, refreshed revs about a dozen times, and let the vampire loose.

2026-07-05 14:14:40 Victorious on the battlefield, Khepri, God of having a bug for a face (#6) conquered 194 land from Ive (#8).

Mith made the hit, immediately saying he failed in the discord channel, because he's spent too much time with Damdred at this point, and we kept on moving. There were a couple ticks a ways out that could be problematic, so he trained spec DP, and everything went just fine. Very nice.

Not much else happened for another day or so after this hit, until the FW got himself another ares drop in the middle of the night.

2026-07-06 04:00:27 The Rise 📈 and Fall 📉 of the Ramen 🍜 Empire (#11) invaded Shrimpkin Park (#10) and captured 221 land.

Oh, no.

No, wait.

Apparently the FW didn't do his math quite right, because he left himself susceptible to our boy. This is gonna be good.

2026-07-06 04:34:53 Victorious on the battlefield, Khepri, God of having a bug for a face (#6) conquered 320 land from The Rise 📈 and Fall 📉 of the Ramen 🍜 Empire (#11).

Yup, it's good. Very very good. This was by far the biggest hit of the round at this point and may be the winning hit, and with Mith making it home safe, there wasn't much that could be done to slow or stop him. He joined the guard, and while he was busy building his hundreds of new acres, we caught that the FW had went and given himself the Scion hero, so he no longer had the ability to pressure, and was (at least for now) the only attacker who would be in his range. So if we could get Mith another big hit before someone else was able to hit into his range and limit his 5:4, it would be GG. He began pushing temples, GT, and the plan was in motion to train as many dire bats as he possibly could to secure himself the game-winning hit and final nail in the coffin for his competition.

So the plan was made, Mith would push heavy temples and dump a ton of dire bats to align with the building, and he would be able to make another hit fairly quickly. Screw efficiency, we were looking at all mods all day, and just wanted to put a little more distance between himself and the next tier of attackers. He needed to grow fast, push 5:4, and see if we couldn't get this vamp to fly.

With close to 7% temples and 3k bats incoming, he would be able to hit like a hammer, but we needed to be careful about who would be the target, since pretty much everyone had ratios and wasn't too keen on the idea of feeding a runner. Sadly, people saw this eventuality and started to train in preparation of this, so his options were relatively limited. But that doesn't mean he didn't have options. Settled on the demon in #7, who seemed to always have Surreal Perception on, got his ops, he released a ton of spies and wizards to try to force a bounce, but he didn't anticipate our secret weapon: we have fucking Lud. Math math math, okay, you can send this much, cast AC, take your land bonus right after so some goofy butt dwarf can't get any ideas, whammo.

2026-07-07 15:25:49 Victorious on the battlefield, Khepri, God of having a bug for a face (#6) conquered 228 land from What's the Story, Wishbone? (#7).

You are now entering the age of the vampire.

Sadly, things got a little more bleh here. Lud, who had started to feel the sadness of his human not coming together as we had planned, felt the pressure to try to get moving to put himself in a position to pressure up-and-comers to support Mith. Found a hit, knew it was slightly risky, sent.

2026-07-08 00:59:51 Victorious on the battlefield, Isis, Goddess of Jigsaw Puzzles (#6) conquered 145 land from Cake (#10).

Not a bad hit, but it turns out we all missed how many gems someone had, and never refreshed a Vision to reveal the second +2.5% OP tech on the King of Rock 'n Roll.

2026-07-08 05:58:37 Elvis Presley (#9) invaded fellow dominion Isis, Goddess of Jigsaw Puzzles (#6) and captured 236 land.

Definitely a setback, but not a killer. Still, very disappointed in myself that I was too short on wizard strength to fully sweep his threats before the send. But it's fine, somebody else turned out to not be too big a fan of early rock 'n roll music.

2026-07-08 09:59:27 Bitten by Luis Suárez 🇺🇾 (#4) invaded Elvis Presley (#9) and captured 237 land.

This was swiftly followed by another unexpected event.

2026-07-08 11:03:11 Stupid is as stupid does (#9) has declared WAR on Switzerland 4 - Colombia 3 PENALTIES (#4).

Which ignited a whole semi-sarcastic debate in the main OD server about how #9 were helping us with this war somehow. As if hitting one of our big guys was doing us a favor, and that warring the guy who hit their guy wasn't just an obvious act of revenge and was actually a big conspiracy to guarantee a win for our vampire. But that's all irrelevant, what really mattered now was making sure Mith was able to pump the OP required to smack that guy in #4 back down out of range and bring in some tasty mountains before someone else grew into range and he wouldn't be able to 5:4 to his fullest potential.

Damdred suggested we just snare the dude before his land got in, which sounded crazy at first. But was it crazy? No, it wasn't. So we sat, waiting for his land to be closer to coming in, semi-regularly checking clear sights to make sure he hasn't spent any mana without potentially tipping him off to us watching his AC, and chose to move forward with the snare at an awkward time that people might not expect, in case he was preparing for a snare.

2026-07-08 17:15:15 Zlatan, Zlatan of Zlatan (#6) has declared WAR on Switzerland 4 - Colombia 3 PENALTIES (#4).

We got him down to 0%, and had Jocke on upkeep duty for the first 2 ticks, with the rest of us chipping in after to keep him down. Now, we wait, and check some land spies on other people who might try to do some funny business to pop into his range and hit him while he was out. Nope. Nobody? Alright, cool. Let's get this over with.

2026-07-08 21:19:42 Victorious on the battlefield, Khepri, God of having a bug for a face (#6) conquered 234 land from Bitten by Luis Suárez 🇺🇾 (#4).

You are now entering the age of the vam- no wait I already said that. Ahem..

You are *still* entering the age of the vampire.

Nailed it. And Lud got to have his hit against him result in something positive for the realm! So this was a very good day.

The next day involved a lot of people hitting and getting hit by each other, but mostly in other realms. The human in #4 did a 9hr double hit on the kobold in #10, then the troll in #2 hit the human in #4, then the merfolk hit the troll in #2, all the while we were plotting the next big move for Mith. We had eyes on a few of the big guys, but the goblin explorer in #4, in spite of having to defend Mith's war bonus 5:4, was still way out of reach. Then Damdred, who had apparently forgotten to take his medication for the day, threw out a silly suggestion: why don't we try to snare him? The dwarf snare went off without a hitch, but the chances of us pulling off another snare in the same war only 24 hours later was very low, because who does that? That wasn't going to happen and we'd need to look elsewhere, obviously.

So we prepared for another snare in #4, and waited until their big explorer had 4 ticks left on ares before we united to once again do our dirty deed. But we didn't have the strength we once did, our powers sapped by a needy vampire! We didn't even get him down to 0 in the first barrage, which did not bode well for us maintaining a snare for the next 4-5 hours. It was at this point that Zar threw out a silly suggestion: why not ask "the noobs"? Because apparently we live in some fantasy world where when you have a problem you can just throw a noob at it. I don't think so.

So we threw the noobs at the problem, and got him down to 0 and they were able to hold him down at 0 for the next tick and a half. The rest of us kept them down, as 5 ticks worth was determined to be enough. This wasn't easy, we were pretty much all totally spent on SS, but we were fueled by our ruthlessness and determination, so we found the spy strength we needed. Well done for the help, Khrawn and Tomkys. That's right, for now you're not "the kobold noob" and "the spirit noob". So don't fuck it up.

All that was left to do was sit around and figure out what gifs to post in domchat. This was supposed to be my job, presumably because I'm the funniest person in the world, but I was too busy typing this up to put my efforts into something like that. This is more important, the people need to know how awesome we are!

Before the epic conclusion of the 2nd snare (which has not happened yet at the time of me typing this, so suspenseful!) I want to take a moment to talk about the second raid of the round. Not a whole lot, just a few words. First off, it was tough to get it accomplished, but we did it. Valiant efforts from everyone involved, and that also includes *checks notes* Tomkys and Khrawn. Yeah, I'm still allowed to call them that for now. This also includes Gothia, who was barely over 1k land and had only popped online a handful of times to check in on anyone and tell everyone how great of a job they were doing, cuz he's a sweetheart. But I really want to talk about Dan, because in spite of barely logging in and essentially being an abandon, this crazy MFer 5:4'd a damn raid. That's serial killer behavior. But somehow, and probably because he was so disgustingly small, he got away with it without being hit. A perfect encapsulation of our realm/round up to this point: insanity + teamwork = success. (Edit: Dan did get hit, as SJ pointed out to me, he was just so small I didn't notice his land total had gone down)

So it was the tick of the attack, we collectively lobbed about 5 million investments worth of lightning bolts at the target, and Mith was locked and loaded. But Lud needed to have his fun, so we all sat around for 5-10 minutes while he did his crackhead math to make sure that, yes indeed, Mith was about to get big as fuck.

2026-07-09 21:23:11 Victorious on the battlefield, Khepri, God of having a bug for a face (#6) conquered 312 land from Maradona Hand of God (#4).

Lud's math was correct.

Less than 24 hours after this last hit that put Mith over 7k land, there were many debates on what he should do with his land. Lud was all about continuing to push mods, I was a homeboy, and Damdred was somewhere in between the two, far too distracted by his rapidly escalating case of snare madness. Everywhere he looked, all he could see were snares, driven mad by this newfound power. But ultimately he just needed to sit, build, and out train the explorers before he could hit.

So Mith went to bed, cast fools gold, set all of his automations to building like 9 homes, and then slept in and had half a million platinum stolen from him as soon as FG elapsed. We pinged him about 50 times and eventually he would wake up, but only after he lost 3 hours worth of production to the same people he was trying to outtrain. Not ideal, but not a round-ender. He'd just need to be a little less careless with automations and things would move forward just fine. But we still have about 12 days left and while he's easily the frontrunner, these kind of mistakes could cost us the round! Oh my, the tension!

Well there was a lot of sitting around to be done at this point, with every explorer mass training DP and everyone out of range doing their best to keep it that way, so as Mith's population started to dwindle and every other attacker was getting closer and closer, Damdred finally threw out the idea of just going for a BF. At almost 2k land bigger than the next tier of attackers, it would take an incredible jump for anyone to catch up to him, and with only a small number of attackers that he wouldn't be able to all-in if they did make it into range, no one was going to grow into range. Mith fully had hit his no-flex 5:4, so there wasn't much else to do at this point. So a BF it would have to be. Hardly the fireworks we wanted to see, but to try to secure a win, it's what must be done.

2026-07-13 15:57:33 Victorious on the battlefield, Khepri, God of having a bug for a face (#6) conquered 253 land from Lady Char Ga (#10).

And you know what? 500 land isn't bad for a BF. In fact, it was so not bad that why not go for another one?

2026-07-14 03:44:22 Victorious on the battlefield, Khepri, God of having a bug for a face (#6) conquered 190 land from Battle of Nuremburg: 20th Anniversary Edition (#4).

This one put him at right around 8200, with the next largest person in the game about 2k land behind. So you know what? Maybe just one more.

2026-07-14 15:55:26 Victorious on the battlefield, Khepri, God of having a bug for a face (#6) conquered 191 land from Lady Char Ga (#10).

With daily bonuses, this would put him around 8700 by the end of the round, and he could officially sit, train, build, and pretty much do whatever he wanted from this point on. Hardly the sparkly finale we were hoping for, but growing over 1200 land in 2 days by any methods is pretty great, so who cares about flashiness? Let's just get this thing over with and put an end to the mithtery of whether or not this guy can ever win a round, or if he'd mith his shot again with a bunch of silly mithstakes. Let's turn this mith into a legend.

From the point of that last update to this one, very little of note happened. The troll in #2 and orc in #1 were slowly climbing towards Mith, getting to the point where their numbers were very close to rivaling him, but without nearly as much land. So he spent most of his post-bottom feeding time training and building temples up to a full 20%. It was long and slow, but ultimately necessary. Luckily the troll and orc weren't too keen on growing for a bit, as the troll rightfully seemed afraid of sending while in range of Mith and getting blasted back down, and the orc outright refused to come into range whatsoever. So we sat, and everyone sat.

Then came day 45, which is where things started to get way too messy to get into all the details in any kind of concise way. But I'll do my best. The troll in #2 made a hit that registered on the GTC as being the top of the hour, but actually happened the previous tick and the GTC apparently rounded that number to the following tick. This attack happened at 5AM EST, which just so happens to be when I woke up for work, which resulted in me and Lud, who both were awake and out of range of the Troll, panic-pinging anyone and everyone who could possibly help get ops on the troll to see what was going on. Lud realized the target of the troll's hit was a firewalker, so we got a barracks spy and found that the hit did indeed happen the previous hour and Mith wouldn't be able to 5:4 him down out of range. Which would have been a bigger disappointment if Mith were awake, which he wasn't.

Later that tick (which, again, was technically the tick after the troll sent) the orc in #1 sent on a very big hit with very sketchy DP, but with him being out of range, we still couldn't do much about it. But the land would put him in range of Mith, but there was still about 15 minutes left in the tick for Mith to get online and make the hit on the troll (or anyone, really), but again, he would not wake up.

Another hour went by, then another, then another... eventually, 4 hours after the troll sent, Mith sauntered into the room with his sleepytime Scrooge outfit, asking what all the fuss was about. I was foaming at the mouth because every player in the game apart from him had managed to make a hit while he slumbered like some kind of mystical fairytale princess under a witch's curse, but we were all awake now and the time for planning would have to begin. So we scanned everyone, let Lud do a ton of math, and started to concoct a plan...

By "we" I of course meant me and Lud, who were at a point of desperately trying to make something happen in our favor after the nonsense of that morning (I forgot to mention Damdred had been neglecting DP for idk how long and went and got himself hit 4 times in a row), where he was going through the list of attackers who would be open to being hit by the troll, until we came to a merfolk in #4 that would be a very safe hit for the troll, and would only allow him to gain a total of almost 1000 land on Mith if he caught him. That was no good, but that same merfolk was in Mith's 60% range and wasn't in the Elite Guard, so...why not us hit him first? It would give Mith another 400+ land, and put up another roadblock for the troll, so it felt like a slam dunk.

Mith needed a little convincing, as he still hasn't removed his sleeping cap and needed a bit of nudging. So I threw Lud at him and after 10 minutes of doing math at him, the conclusion had been made that hitting this merfolk was indeed the smart move. So that's what happened, as it was safe from a troll 5:4 and would just make it a little harder for the troll to catch up in time.

2026-07-21 15:55:12 Victorious on the battlefield, Khepri, God of having a bug for a face (#6) conquered 201 land from Heart break 💔 that David Beckham heel flick (#4).

This sadly opened the troll up to being able to send on the orc in #1, but that wouldn't be the first fireworks show. Oh no, there were plenty more to come. And a lot of our plans involved lighting those fireworks. While I wasn't personally too concerned with the troll taking over and winning, there's always the possibility of some dumb shit taking place that could let him slink his way through, so why not just close the door on him altogether? So things started to move into place that would allow Mith to keep growing while also keeping the troll busy. Sadly this would involve the troll getting busy with Mith, who was hoping to end the round without getting hit for once in his life. Sorry buddy.

With the troll out on his hit on the orc, Mith would be able to tap the troll, which would then allow the troll to semi-sui on Mith, which would allow Mith to hit him back (and even the orc, assuming he'd want some revenge). It was all very messy, but Lud enjoys his crackhead math, so we wound him up and set him loose on a calculator so he could spin numbers into gold, which all proved to be wildly accurate. If you don't have one, you should try to get yourself a Lud, they come in handy in situations like this.

I feel like a lot of this stuff is pretty self-evident, but I'll post the GTC notifications all in a bunch, because it's pretty wild. The point being, much to my chagrin, this was all mapped out in advance, so technically went as was planned. I just didn't like the idea of giving up one of the biggest hits of all-time here.

2026-07-22 05:33:28 Victorious on the battlefield, Khepri, God of having a bug for a face (#6) conquered 363 land from Papa Troll (#2).

2026-07-22 08:59:56 Papa Troll (#2) invaded fellow dominion Khepri, God of having a bug for a face (#6) and captured 611 land.

2026-07-22 09:39:39 Focke-Wulf Fw 190 (#1) invaded Papa Troll (#2) and captured 484 land.

2026-07-22 17:22:25 Victorious on the battlefield, Khepri, God of having a bug for a face (#6) conquered 349 land from Papa Troll (#2).

2026-07-22 20:22:05 Papa Troll (#2) invaded Focke-Wulf Fw 190 (#1) and captured 372 land.

Fuckin' messy. But it put Mith in the lead by about 1300 land and with very little time left for the troll to do anything else. There weren't enough possible hits in the game for him to make up that extra ground, so all we needed to do was sit. Lud and Mith tossed around the idea of following up on another hit against the troll, which I advised against. The potential risk of accidentally bouncing, along with other people in #2 razing Mith down and giving up a hit to the troll right before actions were disabled was very slim, but just wanting to go for a 10K finish wasn't a good enough reason to go through with it in my mind. I pleaded my case, went to bed, and ultimately they also agreed the risk was there, and it wouldn't be worth it.

In spite of all the action that took place in the last moments of the round before growth stopped, there's really nothing much else for me to say here. While the final day wasn't a sparkly finish, the results speak for themselves. Mithrandir, the curse lifted, would finally win a round, finishing at 9977 land as one of the largest winners in OD history. I got my first pack win (not counting sprints, sorry High), Damdred got his first non-draft pack win, Sugarjon got his first pack win, and Lud got to add yet another success to his resume. Not only was this a successful round, but on a personal level this was the best collaboration I have ever experienced in the game, everyone bringing their own flavor to the game, and that includes the realmies outside of the pack as well.

The pack:

Damdred, the architect of the madness. His ideas were often the ones that were pursued and led to this victory.

Lud, whose coordination and maniacal number crunching saw those crazy ideas through.

Sugarjon, omnipresent and the first to jump in to help at literally every opportunity, consistent top op updates throughout.

Mithrandir, the hammer. Took advice and considered every decision throughout, doing everything he could to secure his first win.

And myself, Scratch, the storyteller, the comic relief, and frequently asleep backup helper. Easily the least important part of the pack.

The realm:

Zar: huge explorer, opper, AC-drop-baiter, by the last week was one of the only people large enough to give us updates near the top, always around to help out.

Jocke: Also always around to help, great support, he along with Zar carried the outside-realm top OP tracking for that last week or so.

Allegorical: the scary sui threat dwarf. Sadly he didn't really get to do the sui he wanted, but the threat was there and he was always ready to follow through with it.

Gothia: the absentee raid helper. He didn't have to do anything, but he did and helped push us over the edge.

DantheMan: the Kool-Aid Man, he stuck around to help with raids even though he died off very quickly, which was huge.

Khrawn: the kobold noob, eager to learn, less eager to take good advice. Still, it's good to have active new players, hoping to see rapid improvement in the future.

Tomkys: the spirit noob, same as the last, but trained crazy ratios which allowed him to help out more, which is always greatly appreciated.

Earthboundcharlie: appeared in discord very very late in the round as a returning old player. Didn't have time to get too involved, but wanted to at least mention him here.

I want to say it again, but thank you to everyone in the group for what they did to help. It was ridiculous how effective and helpful everyone in here was in securing Mith's win. I don't know how to finish this whole thing, so...bye.

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