Round 28

Round 28
Winner 🥇
Player:	Bobbo
Dominion:	Calvin Candie (#5)
Race:	Halfling
Second 🥈
Name:	Toothy
Dominion:	Daisy Domergue (#5)
Race:	Sylvan
Third 🥉
Name:	Rush
Dominion:	Gogo Yubari (#5)
Race:	Icekin
General
Changes:	Round 28/Changes
Valhalla:	Link

Round 28 - Realm #5 Win Story

Hey folks, your friendly neighbourhood blopper Rush here.

What, you were expecting Bobbo to write his own roundwin story? You remember how that went last time, right? Besides, that guy has a lot of sleep to catch up on. I figured I’d give him a break.

So instead, realm #5, ultimate victors and champions, gods among men, present to you this collaborative approach to the roundwin. It is mostly written from my perspective, for whatever that’s worth to you (probably not much, but you really don’t have a choice here), but I’ve asked my realmies to jump in and add their perspectives at some of the more exciting moments in the round, so you shouldn’t miss out on the strategy side of things.

Speaking of strategy, fett has a diarised account of his round highlights here - definitely give this a read for your OD strategy fix.

Anyway, that’s enough preamble. Onto the story! And for those of you who don’t like a good yarn, there’s a TL;DR you can skip to at the end.

Week 1: Bad motherfuckers

I randomed.

I landed in realm #5 with Bobbo, Merf, InternetFett and Toothy in one pack, themed to Tarantino villains, and Joe, Poe, Moe and Toe in another pack - 'the eeny meenies', or as I like to call them, 'the blops hydra'.

Cool realm right off the bat. With bad motherfuckers and seasoned veterans like Merf, Fett and Toothy on-side, together with the blops hydra, we had a recipe for a very dangerous realm.

Thraynden was the other rando along with me, and we both joined the Tarantino theme. I was Gogo Yubari.

My plan was to explore as an Icekin and scale back the blops early to help focus on my growth for a change. I was getting fed up with the top attackers telescoping out of my range with 1:1 landgen and then sliding into the protective hugbox of the Elite Guard, while I bogged myself down with great ratios and no one deserving enough to use them on. So, really, my only goal was to stay relevant as a blops support role this round.

Fett whipped me up a sim that let me go schools early, after I'd fortified my defense a bit. Schools early are terrible now, by the way. "GPC did me dirty again!" I shouted into the Scottish night sky, just as another storm broke over my head and cut my power.

Towards the end of the first week, it became quickly apparent that this round was likely going to be dominated early by fast attacker superstar Bobbo (Calvin Candie). But in my view a round doesn't really begin until war and blops become active, so let's start there - where it gets interesting.

Week 2: Natural born killers

Props to Toothy for his realm name game this round, man's a legend. Sews his own pants, grows his own turnips, smelts his own saucepans, writes his own realm names. Does it all naked too. A man unparalleled; peerless.

Reserv-war Dogs (#5) has declared WAR on Icy Star (#7).

Three seconds after war was enabled we were straight on it. Primary target was Denzel Frothington (Nate) for snares / fireballs, and Harry Brewdini (mris) for fireballs. Snaring, we discovered the hard way this round, is completely unreliable, and can report 0 wiz strength when in fact the target still has enough strength to cast spells. Denzel was able to continue casting self spells even though we believed we had him snared down to 0, thanks to a quirk in the game's code with resilience, rounding a 0.9 DOWN to 0. Or something like that. Fett explained it to me but I was mostly thinking about Elden Ring at the time. I could be playing Elden Ring, I was thinking, and here I am trying to understand what batshit computer in this world thinks you round a 0.9 to a 0 instead of a 1.

Ultimately, though, when we realized we couldn't reliably snare Denzel, we focused on fireballs instead, and brought his mighty kobold peasantry to whimpering 8k by the end of the war. #7 were the early threats and we wanted to hobble them quickly. Little did we know just how much of a thorn in our sides they'd become in the mid to late round game.

And, in war, there are always casualties.

The Big Lebrewski (mdk) (#7) invaded fellow dominion the Bride (#5) and captured 59 land.

In other news:

A new Wonder of the World has been discovered, the Halls of Knowledge!

We decided this was definitely the Wonder for us. A lot of us were running schools, and some of the attackers, including Bobbo, who weren't, would still benefit a lot from this. He would be able to tech his way to Ares' Favour and Avatar of Ares for a 5% op bonus with it.

We also had #4 in our sights as the next war target.

One thing I learned early this round is that I'm in an all-murcan realm, and would tend to do a lot of their wargaming around 2am my time, and their war-declaring around 5am my time, so every three days or so I'd be waking up to absolute chaos in the discord with pings, blops and attacks flying all over the place. It also meant that by the time I got my blopping on, the fucker I was targeting already had EM on. I ate a lot of my own fireballs this round. It was bad for ranks chasing, and I had to settle for sloppy seconds from the blops hydra. But blops are my bread and butter, so I set fires where they were needed, electrified some castles, sank some boats, whatever the flavor of the hour was. My ratios were not spectacular, but at this stage in the game they're still leagues better than the targets at the top, almost without exception.

2022-03-06 03:00:05 "DEATH PROOF" (#5) has declared WAR on Michael scott to rule them all (#4).

2022-03-06 18:05:39 The Halls of Knowledge has been destroyed and rebuilt by "DEATH PROOF" (#5).

2022-03-09 00:14:11 The Halls of Knowledge has been destroyed and rebuilt by More RP for us (#4).

2022-03-10 16:18:10 The Halls of Knowledge has been destroyed and rebuilt by "DEATH PROOF" (#5).

2022-03-10 16:19:25 "DEATH PROOF" (#5) has CANCELED war against Less RP for us (#4).

The TC gives a good summary of the exchange here. Our priority target for blops was Well, well, well how the turntables (Almezo), an early fast-attacker threat. We blopped them, they attacked our Wonder. They of course took their merry time with it to give us the smallest window possible of taking it back once we had the ability to cancel, but our blops hydra did the maths on cyclones and with Merf dropping guard to make a couple of hits, we knew we could take it back with plenty of time, mana, and op to spare. It was a breeze.

That’s a cyclone pun, by the way.

Week 3 - Kill Bilbo

Week 3 opened with a bang. Bobbo asked me to do a clear sight sweep of everyone in his range (all eight of them). I noticed that the big explorer Squee (Craghack) had 0 food, and a revelation revealed that some anonymous hero had also swarmed the poor bastard. With Fools Gold on and a stockpile of plat, it indicated that he was probably going to sleep through the next 2-3 hours, while losing units every tick to starvation. Combined with draftee assassinations from me and Poe, it brought him low enough for Bobbo to hit him. So he did.

Victorious on the battlefield, Calvin Candie (#5) conquered 188 land from Squee (#1).

Then, Iron Man (Ivetza) came along.

Iron Man (#3) invaded fellow dominion Calvin Candie (#5) and captured 249 land.

Bobbo had hit this guy a few times already, and we were all well aware of his suicidal op. He had the potential to break me for a while, but I was pretty sure he had a bullet with either Bobbo or Fett's name on it, so I wasn't particularly worried. However I had no idea Iron Man was a daily bonus away from hopping into Bobbo's range. Apparently Merf had warned Bobbo of precisely this fact a mere six hours prior. Whoops.

A few days later we were back at war, this time with #9, aka the Ukrainian pack. I pointed out the bad optics about warring a realm literally called "Slava Ukraini!" but was overruled by Vladimir Fett, who seized control of the Monarchy from Toothy and insisted that they weren't a real realm anyway, and would in fact welcome us to their lands once we'd declared our special military operation upon them.

The war was sparked by Pirate Bae (Pasi), the icekin, when Fett spotted that he'd started his convert by mass-training wizards. As soon as he did that, we had a rapidly closing window to fuck him up. We fireballed him down from 40k peasants to a dribbling 16k and sabotaged the goblin, Workers of Ukraine unite! (Shaidar) to within a few boats of being sank, in the hope that he might panic send on a bot and Bobbo could hit him, but he stayed cool. Unlike his icekin friend! Hohoho!

Meanwhile, Iron Man was ALREADY back in range and apparently reloading his suicidal OP spud gun.

At this point in the game, Merf seemed to think I was on course for a 6k finish, but I remained skeptical, since I'd never even broken 5k before. I was in the top ten players for land size though! Who saw that coming? No one! Not even Oment*. Merf said it was because I was in the presence of greatness. He clearly hasn't heard of Rushism, but I forgive him for his heresy.

(*Fun fact: Oment pinpoints my exact location every round with disturbing accuracy. But this round, he mistakenly identified me as one of the blops hydra heads, so for now we can rule out the widespread conspiracy theory that he’s a psychic alien from the future.)

(…Unless that’s what he wants us to think?)

After the initial wave of fireballs on the icer, and literally just as we were discussing a snare to bring down his blizzard before he re-cast it early, he abandoned.

The Pirate Bae (#9) has been abandoned by its ruler.

It came as a shock, since we hadn't really even gotten started with the blops. We talked about it in our discord and it seemed likely there was some other factor behind it. The usual anti-blops campaigners tried to hold this up as proof that blops drive players away from the game, but fortunately Pasi was available to ask directly if he abandoned because of blops. And he said:

"No."

Somewhere in England, a befro'd gentlemen quietly loaded up a spreadsheet and deducted 50 Riopoints from Pasi for not toeing the line.

With the icer out of the game, we spotted the next biggest icer - Frosty the Hitman (Faith) in #6 - initiating his convert, but we were locked into our war with #9 and couldn't respond. That punk got lucky.

Week 4 - Say war again, I dare you

So, Merf released an episode of the RiolTalk podcast, where he made some characterically bold and provocative statements. Something something something, #5 is guaranteed to win. Blah blah blah, pocket player. Yadda yadda yadda, yamaguccis.

It will have come as no surprise to anyone who heard that podcast that we ended up in a three-way war shortly after its release.

We initiated by declaring war with #15 to disrupt the gnome, Beta (jboy) with lightning bolts and sabotage. The bolts did a nice amount of damage, but we didn't think we were going to be able to sink him, especially after he brought in some docks. Even with the collective might of our blops hydra unleashing hell, plus my substantial blops capability, and Toothy's, and most of the Tarantino pack, it's really difficult to sink a target if they have taken even the lightest of precautions.

Realm #7 decided they were going to try and take us down a few pegs and declared war on us, and immediately set fire to the main head (or at least, the most talkative head) of our blops hydra, Joe (Peabrain), who was in the middle of converting. They absolutely hammered him. #6 then dog-piled on us by declaring war shortly after. Joe took the overwhelming brunt of it, but Merf and Fett also caught some heat.

Peabrain said: “Aw MAN! This killed my VIBE, dude. I was doing my thing, you know, like I always do, and like, these other guys were like, man, Peabrain, dude, you can’t be doing your thing, you know? It was harsh. Totally unreasonable. So I tried to, like, get into a better place - a better head space, you know? And just like, vibe my way through it. But man. It was gnarly. Like, for real. My peas were on fire. It was biblical. Like, when Moses was setting fire to those bushes, you know? And he had that conversation with God? And God was like, Moses - and I’m Moses in this scenario - so really, God was like, “Peabrain. God here. Peabrain, carve this onto a stone tablet: “Thou shalt not allow others to kill thine vibe.” And I’d be like, “yo God do you not just like, have a pen and paper? Gotta be askin’ me to CARVE shit onto rocks? For real bro?” But long story short, I whiteknuckled it. I parted the dead sea of converting and it was WILD, man. These guys are ANIMALS. I loved it.”

We thank you for your insight Peabrain.

By now, most of us were teched up to the eyeballs thanks to the Halls, and I certainly felt it was nearing the end of its useful life to me, so #15 taking pot shots at it was beneath my concern.

Realm #7's role in the war ended quite badly for them, and the wider community, with an unwise hit on our realmie:

Green Mountain Boys (#7) invaded fellow dominion Eeny, Meeny, Miney, Moe (#5) and captured 213 land.

Which then directly led to Green Mountain Boys (Sarmis) entering the top dog's range and getting torn a new one:

Victorious on the battlefield, Calvin Candie (#5) conquered 229 land from Green Mountain Boys (#7).

Realm #7 weren't able to take the Wonder down before the war ended, but they helped line it up for #6 ninja it in the space of a few minutes:

The Halls of Knowledge has been destroyed by Ezekiel 25:17 (#6)!

The wars weakened Joe, but ultimately strengthened Bobbo, so it was a mixed bag in the end. I don’t think Joe enjoyed it very much, but he took it in his stride. And hey, I’d say it’s a pretty sweet accolade to be a new player and have what felt like half the game take you on because you’re such a potential threat. That’s just how OD players show their love and admiration.

Week 5 - Does he look like a bitch?

We noticed far too late that Green Mountain Boys' OP had spiked up around 53k in under 24 hours, and by the time we'd clocked it he had about 7,500 suicide squads in the queue at around 6 hours, so we weren't able to react much. Sarmis said later on that he’d timed the drop so we were all asleep, but I was definitely awake when he did this, being in a completely different timezone from the MST snoozers. Unfortunately my attention (and spy strength) was consumed by assassinations on David Hasselfroth (AlexJones), trying to limit his op potential. Wrong guy, turned out. Should have been assassing Green Mountain.

The op spike put Green Mountain in the position to hit THREE of us quite comfortably - Fett was clearly the best target for him in terms of land gain and taking down an attacker threat, but I was also next in the firing line if Fett did anything outlandish (like a mass release) to prevent it. Toothy was also a potential target, but he had less appealing land types than me (no one wants your crappy forests Toothy!) No matter what we did, one of us was locked into getting railed by this inevitable freight train. Gnomes are crazy.

Fett said: “The day was never going to end well. Green Mountain dropped 7500 suicide squads and could bonus into my range. Hasselfroth was following suit and even though I was training rats throughout the night, I would not be able to stop them from hitting me. I could release but Rush would get hit instead, and I wouldn’t have any OP. I’m not sure there was anything we could do here. Both of their OPs went up ~45-50k in just 24 hours - insanity.”

So we grit our teeth and waited.

Green Mountain Boys (#7) invaded fellow dominion Marsellus Wallace (#5) and captured 425 land.

It was an absolutely massive hit. But when the dust settled, and we took stock of the situation, we realised it wasn't going to be all bad for us. Green Mountain was about to repeat history. With a big hit on our realm, he once again pranced merrily into Bobbo's range, only to be ripped to shreds moments later.

Victorious on the battlefield, Calvin Candie (#5) conquered 293 land from Green Mountain Boys (#7).

Shockedpikachu.jpg

It was fun ride (just kidding I hated it), but probably wasn't the outcome #7 had in mind. As for our realm, two things were laid bare by these events: 1) we'd gotten complacent after five weeks at the top; we should have seen those chess pieces moving earlier. And 2) it's nice to be able to get by on much lower DP under the overwatch of big attackers, but it does put you on thin ice when someone does make their move. I trained more DP after that.

Until this point Toothy and I had been neck and neck on acres for a while, and I'd been in the top 5 for land size for a few weeks, but he'd mathed his econ better, plus he had what I'd describe as 'a more cavalier approach to risk', and it meant he was able to push past me and take the fifth place spot. My only hope for a top five finish now relied on catching up with Baby Squid (Oment) in #11, and while I'd closed the gap a lot in the last few weeks, there was only a week and a half left to go.

Turns out, that’s a long time in OD.

Week 6 - The Hateful #7

While we'd been at war with #13 trying to knock the gnome Gimme Shelter (Robert) off kilter a bit, it's probably worth mentioning that Merf had wanted to war #7, but was overruled by the majority - who decided it was more motivated by grudge than strategy. But it turned out that would have been the much smarter play.

Better late than never right? We ended the war with #13 and immediately set upon #7.

It was total chaos. I swear this round has just become one big game of whack a gnome. Here are the highlights:

Revenge is never a straight line. It’s a forest. (#5) has declared WAR on Smokey never forgets (#7).

O-Ren Ishii (#5) has attacked the Wizard Academy (#5)!

The Wizard Academy has been destroyed and rebuilt by Revenge is never a straight line. It’s a forest. (#5).

This very swift wonder takedown opened #7 up for blops, and rendered us largely immune to them, at least on the magic side of things. For my part, I was mostly assassinating draftees on David Hasselfroth again to limit his OP spike potential. Didn't want any more crazy gnome suicide squad armies popping up overnight. He was also losing food from training so much OP in a short period, so I also made sure he was permaswarmed and toasted with fireballs. I had been running 10-11% towers for the almost the entire round since we were almost always at war, but I was having to let that wind down in order to start bringing in Guard Towers, so by now I was running on about 7%, but with some decent imps and a few techs (Menace, Wizard Nexus, Mana Pools) to help prop up my wiz strength and mana production. I wasn't exactly swimming in mana, but I was still able to sting #7 enough to hurt.

I was asleep when most of the carnage happened.

Fett said: “Shit got crazy. A bunch of smaller guys started sending and Hasselfroth hit Thunder Gun, but left himself open to my suicide. We calced a bunch of different ways and decided that I should do it to soften him up for Bobbo. Green Mountain would hit me, but Joe could potentially r/r on him and soften him up too. So we both went for it.

“Joe ended up getting hit out of nowhere by #1 WE even though I was much larger. I got hit four times in total. Both gnomes ended up in range with #1 WE and #2 WE (with a land bonus) coming later. #7 declared mutual war on us, but it was too late to make a difference. Bobbo hit Green Mountain pretty safely and would be home before mutual became active.”

Victorious on the battlefield, Marsellus Wallace (#5) conquered 331 land from David Hasselfroth (#7).

Green Mountain Boys (#7) invaded fellow dominion Marsellus Wallace (#5) and captured 454 land.

Smokey never forgets (#7) has declared WAR on Revenge is never a straight line. It’s a forest. (#5).

Victorious on the battlefield, Eeny, Meeny, Miney, Joe (#5) conquered 367 land from Green Mountain Boys (#7).

History is written by the victors. (#1) invaded fellow dominion Eeny, Meeny, Miney, Joe (#5) and captured 300 land.

KGBLT (#2) invaded fellow dominion Marsellus Wallace (#5) and captured 387 land.

Gimme Shelter (#13) invaded fellow dominion Marsellus Wallace (#5) and captured 353 land.

Frosty the Hitman (#6) invaded fellow dominion Marsellus Wallace (#5) and captured 284 land.

Victorious on the battlefield, Calvin Candie (#5) conquered 333 land from Green Mountain Boys (#7).

Revenge is never a straight line. It’s a forest. (#5) has CANCELED war against Smokey never forgets (#7).

In other news, I overtook Baby Squid and crested 6,000 acres after the dust settled. Before this round I’d never even broken 5k before.

Could I catch the Firewalker though?

Week 7 - Vainglorious Basterds

With the last week of the round underway, Bobbo's position was incredibly strong, and it felt certain that he was going to win the round. Merf's 100% guarantee from the podcast three weeks ago that our realm would win the round had proved prophetic. The community on discord had a few arguments about who was responsible for Bobbo's looming victory, with #7 taking a lot of flak from players who accused them of basically handing him the win. Regardless of what you think, #7 gave us several scary moments this round, and there were points where it could have gone either way. There were misplays - on both sides. Perhaps our biggest misplay was ignoring Merf's vendetta to set fire to #7 much earlier! That ultimately led to the massive hit chain in week 6.

My late game goal was just to overtake the Firewalker Shinzou wo Sasageyo (Slater) in #3 and try to secure third place when the round ended. As it happened, this proved to be a lot easier than I expected. My economy was just in much better shape and I was teched up to the eyeballs thanks to the Halls of Knowledge.

By the time the round ended, I was sitting on over 7k acres and in third place. Better than any finish I've ever had by an enormous margin. There were a lot of factors that tied this round together, not just in terms of my own personal performance but #5 as a whole. I think our main advantages were:

- Strong early dominance by Bobbo and Fett

- Great strategy from Merf

- Active supporting blops hydra Poe, Toe, Moe and Thraynden

- Massive threat from converter Joe that worried the playerbase enough to spark a three-way war

- Toothy the Adventurous. Nuff said.

- Picking up the Halls of Knowledge early, and;

- I’m sure I added something to the mix too. Call it charisma. Guile. Pep. I galvanised this team.

I finished in third place on 7,650 acres, behind Toothy on 7,795 and Bobbo on an astounding 9,017 acres. Realm #5 takes up the entire winners’ podium, taking gold, silver and bronze. Go team!

So congrats to Bobbo for another roundwin! Congrats to Toothy for second place! And thanks to everyone in #5 who made this such a fun and spectacular round <3 It was a genuine blast playing with everyone this round. I know I wouldn’t have finished anywhere near this size without having such a great realm.

Of course, it wouldn’t be a complete roundwin story if we didn’t hear from the actual roundwinner, Bobbo, so we asked him for his input as well.

Bobbo said: “I am Bobbo and I approve this message.”

Thanks for reading!

TL;DR

The round in a nutshell: https://imgur.com/a/6KbciC0

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