Editing Round 31

{{Round_finish
 | round = 31
 | round_id = 45

 | winner_player = [[User:nate|nate]]
 | winner_dominion = Daily Dose of Vitamin D (#11)
 | winner_race = Lizardfolk

 | second_player = [[User:King Jota|King Jota]]
 | second_dominion =  Wife vs OD round 31 (#11)
 | second_race = Goblin

 | third_player = [[User:Rush|Rush]]
 | third_dominion = Suffer like G did? (#11)
 | third_race = Nox
}}
== Top 100 Results ==

[[Round 31 Top 100 Finishers|Round 31 top 100]]

== Round 31 - Realm #11 Win Story ==

Hey folks, your friendly neighbourhood blopper Rush here.

What, you were expecting nate 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.

Ok ok, only true [[Round_28|OD wiki historians]] are going to get this reference. 

But just like last time, if you're the kind of person that gets bored reading MANY WORDS, there’s a TL;DR you can skip to at the end.

=== ROUND 31 ===

You know, the most recent rounds have all had some weird quirk that has felt designed to mess with my specific playstyle. The last time nate won, it was having to explore in the EG; a truly awful experience as a blackops explorer. Last round it was blackops being completely useless; a truly awful experience as a blackops explorer. This round, it was universal peace for 22 days straight; a truly awful exp- well, you get the idea. 

This round I packed with nate, mris, mdk and AlexJones. I was "Suffer like G did?" It was my first time playing Nox in a full round, but their potential to be blackop powerhouses had become irresistible. 

I finished third overall, with 6983 acres - just shy of 7k, due to 'offensive actions' (such as peaceful exploration) being disabled a few ticks earlier than I had bargained for - marking my second finish in the top three. It was just as surprising to me the second time as it was the first. My strategy for growth is niche and relies on a lot of luck with realm composition, and is contingent on helping to enable a runaway at significant cost to my efficiency. But when it works, it works well, and those inefficiencies soon pale in the face of being able to grow with ~100k less dp than everyone else.

The initial plan was for nate, mris and Alex to play fast, with mdk set up to convert after about two weeks. 

Nate said: ''“We thought lyc would be fastest. Kobbo we knew had the potential to go beast mode in the right circumstances - if we had top op and no other competition. I didn’t think liz were ever played properly and wanted to show their potential. Ultimately, our fast strategies were built around the idea that we could have 5 weeks free time if we failed - which everybody kinda liked the idea of.”''

I would support with ops and blackops, and we hoped to pull in 2-3 other players to blackop from the pool of players we landed with.

As nate put it: ''“We reckoned blackops were going to be overpowered and we expected them to be used to great effect early, so we wanted our realmies to jump on that support bandwagon with us. We knew we needed at least two fairly strong ops / blops roles.”''

It didn't pan out as planned. We landed with precisely one player that was kinda open to the idea of blackopping - Chateauneuf du Pape (margoose). Insert :grimacing: emoji here.

Margoose was packed with King Jota (Wife vs OD), Freeze (It's not a game, it's life!), Unfather (Bain Marie), and Dayvinho - best known as "the guy who got hit about 14 times oop when the bots were broken". Dayvinho never joined the discord, perhaps out of shame… or perhaps because he gave zero fucks. We will never know. 

In short, these guys were all very keen on attacking and had no interest in blackopping. A disappointing start, I thought, but that would all change later. 

For Rushism corrupts all, given time…

-

I usually like to start writing my round stories around the same time that we have our first war - since that's when things usually start getting interesting - but at the time of starting this log, it's DAY SEVENTEEN and still not a peep from the playerbase. If I were in any other realm, I’d have been absolutely chomping at the bit for war. Like, people would be muting me on discord just to shut me up. It is out-fucking-rageous that no one declared. I was also getting discord pings and DMs from people who didn’t realise I was in realm 11 mocking me for not having the balls to war realm 11!

At this stage, Daily Dose of Vitamin D (nate) has shaken off the competition and is now the only fast attacker standing. 

We had thought that other realms, notably 4, 6 and 8 were going to turn their attention to the next biggest threat in our realm, The boot (mdk), and all the intel ops we took suggested that they were bringing in the spywiz... and it just never happened.

Of course, I was war-ready from the nanosecond blops went active, but our original realm composition was almost entirely attackers. But as their rounds went off the rails, they deconverted and took up the wayward path of the blopper. One by one our attackers fell and stepped back into the shadows, only to emerge as legends reborn, bristling with knives and juggling fireballs. A veritable circus of madlads.  

So around the time other realms were beginning their spywiz arms race, Blacklight Shine (mris), Hey pisan, pass the gabagool (AlexJones) were doing the same. Throw margoose and myself into the mix and we actually had some blackops potential. Later on, Unfather (a sylvan) would join in, and despite his protests at the start of the round that he would "never push the explore button", he ended up enjoying the carnage. 

I think realms with their own converters were put off warring us, concluding that the exchange would be equally or perhaps more damaging for them than it would for us. I suspect if one realm had taken the initiative we would have ended up with multiple wars declared on us all at once, similar to the 3v1 we ended up with the last round Bobbo won (r28), but it seemed that nobody wanted to be the first to stick their head above the parapet. And those that usually would be the first to meet danger head on - your Merfs, your Saccoras and your Cronels - had landed in sleepy realms, or were being smothered by peace-loving hippies.

=== WEEKS 1 AND 2 - PEACE AND LOVE ===

So, I don't have much in the way of notes for this chunk of the round. The main threats were City Wok #4 (Rury) and Bronze Fury #6 (Gothia), and they gave nate a pretty prolonged race before he managed to conclusively run away. They deconverted; we thought they'd blop us, but they didn't. 

I had been solo cycloning the Golden Throne for about a day, but we decided to switch to the Ruby Monolith and coordinate taking it down after the Throne went to realm #9. We took it apparently without contest from full hp to 0, with cyclones and some coordinated attacks from mris. It's one of those Wonders where, as an explorer, it only really has value to you if it's going to help the attackers in your realm get on top, but would be hot garbage if that wasn't the case. But it looked like we were moving into position to maintain the lead, so I was happy enough with it.

=== WEEK 3 - COLD WAR ===

Top op outside of our realm was gobbo Star wars kid #10 (SlyD), who hit Freeze after he sent out underdefended: 

''star wars kid (#10) invaded fellow dominion It's not a game, It's Life! (#11) and captured 108 land.''

Freeze, who had thought he was safe, was not a happy chappy! Later it transpired that his packmate, Unfather (who had sent out earlier and was vulnerable to a hit) had advised that he'd be fine - and ended up getting home safely after attackers started feasting on freeze instead of him. Talk about throwing a lamb to the wolves! The chaos gods approved. It was the first clear sign that Unfather would be an asset to the dark side. 

Meanwhile, we were looking for a realm to war, since it was starting to look like none were ever coming our way. Two Spirits, There was a ghost! This is ECTOPLASM! #4 (Erix) and The Grey Ghost #6 (bigchris), were potential late-round threats, with Ectoplasm in the better position. We started preparing for war. And then star wars kid did something that forced #10 into a gear shift, and significantly altered our trajectory as well. 

He bounced. Twice in a row. 

''2022-09-30 00:09:12	star wars kid (#10) invaded Conehead (#2) but failed to conquer any land.''

''2022-09-30 09:04:20	star wars kid (#10) invaded Hopes die last (#11) but failed to conquer any land.''

He had been exerting an oppressive level of control over some of the attackers in our realm (besides nate who had pretty much already walked off into the sunset), making them actually strategise their hits, but the bounces really put a full stop on his influence. #10 seemed to recognise this pretty much immediately, and a second cold war spywiz arms race began, as their realm started bringing in a ton of blackops units. It was pretty clear they had a hydra from the telltale purple suicide league emblems next to several of their names, and they also easily outnumbered us in terms of blackoppers. 

Although the shift in approach we detected was almost instant, war was still days away.

=== WEEK 4 - HOT WAR ===

You know, it's actually pretty rude how #10 went about it. There I was, ready for war at any moment, for three long-ass weeks - and nobody does a damn thing until I'm smack dab in the middle of a guest appearance on the most niche podcast on the internet. 

Realm #10's opening gambit was to snare The boot, our human converter, who Merf had just given a 95% chance shot at winning the round if he was left to his own devices. Once EM dropped, the fireballs started, and mdk was transformed from potential roundwinner into a toasted marshmallow. He had protected himself with a 0.5 wpa, 1% FHs and investment into Spires, but 10 had so many blackoppers that it just didn't matter. 

We waited for #10's hydra and their other blackoppers to blow their loads before we responded with a mutual war dec, and focused on frying / sinking star wars kid, which would keep him irrelevant despite the mutual war op bonus, while our next best chance for victory, Wife vs OD (King Jota) got a hit in - taking him out of range of a lot of the blackops #10 could dish out.

Realm #10 for their part, focused almost entirely on destroying mdk, which while not a great time for mdk, at least gave us hope that there was still a path out of the worst of the danger. 

We attempted a volley of fireballs on Chocolate Rain #10 (faith), but he had protected himself with what seemed to be a 1.0 wpa ratio, 1% FHs and about 12% Spires, which reduced his fireball casualties so much that we just gave up. 

Instead, we turned our attention to potentially snaring their icekin, Brent Rambo #10 (Neophyte) to strip off his blizzard. We calced his spa at around 1.0, so pumped enormous spies overnight to take our blackoppers' spa up to around 2.0, which we thought would ensure we could snare him. He responded by pulling in another 1k spies, but by our calculations at that moment in time, it probably wouldn't matter much. This was likely wrong in retrospect, but we wouldn't discover how broken at both ends snare was until later. 

Around the same time, #6 declared war and dogpiled on, directing a lot of blackops at mdk even though he considered himself a dead stick by this point. #6 mostly ignored Jota, which was our biggest concern, and #10 still hadn't realised it was time to switch targets yet either. Importantly, the hydra had demonstrated to us just how broken snare was by snaring mdk for 36 hours straight - a gift of knowledge that we'd use to our full advantage later.

As we were preparing to snare Brent Rambo, a much easier target presented itself.

''2022-10-03 16:59:53	Victorious on the battlefield, Wife vs OD round 31 (#11) conquered 149 land from RESPECT MY AUTHORITAH!!! (#4) (MacTheMeek).''

A little bit too late, the blackoppers in #10 finally came for Jota:

''King Jota said:''

''2022-10-03 19:12:24     0 boats have sunk mysteriously while docked.''

If Jota had been sunk, it would have been a big L for our realm, but he got his hit in, taking him out of range of most of the suicide leaguers. And he would bring in the docks to close off that potential avenue for the remaining few blackoppers still in range to limit him.

Realm #10 had achieved their goal however, and mdk was out of contention for the win. Even worse, mdk made an impulsive hit that left him wide open to a mutual war bonus hit from Choco.

''2022-10-04 16:12:00	Chocolate Rain (#10) invaded fellow dominion The boot (#11) and captured 251 land.''

Which was then followed up by:

''2022-10-04 16:24:22	You're just way too big (#8) invaded fellow dominion The boot (#11) and captured 179 land.''

As far as wars go, it doesn't get much worse than that. mdk got rinsed. 

Meanwhile, we knew we didn't have the sheer number of blackoppers on our side needed to make even a small dent in faith's armour. FHs, of course, remain grotesquely overpowered; the GPC have known this for four rounds now (and faith has now even chimed in to agree), so it's curious that they still haven't acted to balance them by at least taking the lumber production bonus off. When Guilds took on the blackops bonus from FHs, they were quick to completely strip off the mana production. Weird how blops so readily get insane nerfs but any broken attacker shit is conveniently ignored eh? I joke of course: it happens every round so it's not in the least bit unusual!

With faith invulnerable, that just meant we needed another target. Fortunately #6 had also declared on us, and The Grey Ghost #6 (bigchris) was one of our hit list targets anyway, and he'd just saved us the hassle of coming for him. We left him with 6k peasants. Next, we decided to kill the main spirit threat, Ectoplasm. But first, we had to take a brief detour to offer up another sacrifice to our benevolent god, nate. We warred #4, snared their lyc, and shortly afterwards...

''Victorious on the battlefield, Daily Dose of Vitamin D (#11) conquered 232 land from Where Can I Order some City Wok? (#4) (Rury).''

Then came the main course. There was a ghost! This is ECTOPLASM! #4 (Erix) was huge and growing problem, and if the hydra hadn't underscored how busted snare was, we might not have even tried to pull this off. We had to orchestrate a situation where Jota could eat him. We rev'd Erix and saw that the wee rascal had freshly cast Amplify Magic on his Ares, so had around 17 hours left on it, and 8 hours on Energy Mirror. 

Didn't matter. Snare busted. We got to work.

It took round the clock shifts, coordinated by timezone, with Eurobloppers saving ss while Muricabloppers took on the nightshift, for Euros to take over in the morning. We had no ss to spare for errors, so we had a discord channel (#snare-erix!) dedicated to keeping track of his wiz strength. We didn't have the same numbers on blops as #10 when they hit mdk, and some of our dudes were just out of range. We had to snare just enough to get him near zero and then stop, so as not to waste any ops. But once we had the routine down, it was clear that we could keep this up forever. Most of us had ridiculous spy ratios for prepping to snare Brent Rambo in the previous war. Erix didn't try to compete with spies, and instead of training dp he started pumping suicidal spec op, which massively prolonged the inevitable hit, because Jota then had to train to defend it.

Eight hours in, his Energy Mirror dropped, and we launched the fireballs. The assault took him down to about 7k pez. Then every single tick thereafter he'd be snared close to zero and lovingly fireballed.

A full 34 hours of this hyper-organised and brutal blackopping later, Erix is still extremely powerful, but we were now at the point where we knew Jota could safely defend his suicide. 

''2022-10-06 20:56:27	Victorious on the battlefield, Wife vs OD round 31 (#11) conquered 233 land from There was a ghost! This is ECTOPLASM! (#4).''

If the marathon proved anything, it's that snare is OP as fuck, spirit is OP as fuck, Erix is OP as fuck, and our realm's coordination is OP as fuck.

Erix tagged back by suiciding Alex: 

''2022-10-06 22:56:01	There was a ghost! This is ECTOPLASM! (#4) invaded fellow dominion Hey pisan, pass the gabagool (#11) and captured 229 land.''

This seemed to initiate the beginning of an epic death spiral that Erix would lock himself and You're just way too big (#8) (Wurst) into, after Wurst took a cheeky pot-shot at him. 

''2022-10-07 05:59:31	We were on a BREAK!! (#8) invaded There was a ghost! This is ECTOPLASM! (#4) and captured 203 land.''

''2022-10-07 05:58:27	You're just way too big (#8) invaded There was a ghost! This is ECTOPLASM! (#4) and captured 223 land.''

Jota also got a sneaky hit in during the melee: 

''2022-10-07 06:14:09	Victorious on the battlefield, Wife vs OD round 31 (#11) conquered 164 land from You're just way too big (#8).''

And then Ectoplasm had a few more gentleman callers in the night: 

''2022-10-07 06:24:43	🔨Toolshed🔧 (#5) (playt0i) invaded There was a ghost! This is ECTOPLASM! (#4) and captured 160 land.''

''2022-10-07 06:20:46	star wars kid (#10) invaded There was a ghost! This is ECTOPLASM! (#4) and captured 184 land.''

''2022-10-07 06:41:23	Johnny The Police Officer (#1) (jboy) invaded There was a ghost! This is ECTOPLASM! (#4) and captured 151 land.''

And finally, of course, Ectoplasm hit You're just way too big:

''2022-10-07 11:25:01	There was a ghost! This is ECTOPLASM! (#4) invaded You're just way too big (#8) and captured 190 land.''

Thus began the greatest exchange of grudge hits OD has ever seen. But that's not my story to tell. 

Star wars kid's hit took him back into range of nate, who all-inned him: 

''2022-10-07 18:06:52	Victorious on the battlefield, Daily Dose of Vitamin D (#11) conquered 202 land from star wars kid (#10).''

Overall, it was a good trade for our realm, although Alex definitely got a raw deal out of it.

Just as we were winding down the blackops and starting to catch up on info ops, freeze got hit by a dominion that wasn't even on our radar, while he was out on a bottomfeed and thought he was safe: 

''2022-10-07 18:36:09	I Shot an Arrow Into the Air (#3) (Sarmis) invaded fellow dominion It's not a game, It's Life! (#11) and captured 138 land.''

Sarmis would later do what he does best and abandon. 

The hit on freeze, alongside being busy IRL unfortunately led to him leaving the discord to concentrate on “real things”, like work. One of the drawbacks of constant war with a lean blackops crew, dedicating all spywiz str to dealing damage, is that it really puts the blinders for tracking emerging threats. Fortunately freeze was still around to help with spy blops when needed, we just had to communicate with him via his agent, Unfather. All calls were now being screened. 

It was time to move on. We cancelled the war and started recharging to swing round and hit #5, whose gnome and human were looking quite dangerous.

=== WEEK 5 - GOING DOWN TO SOUTH PARK ===

From one South Park themed realm to the next... I do like the show, I promise.

''2022-10-07 21:00:43	Dogs of the AMS (#11) has CANCELED war against South Park (#4).''

Realm #10 went after realm 9, a pretty docile realm besides a couple of strong attackers, which had taken the Golden Throne early. They were easy meat and offered up a decent Wonder on a silver platter to our competitors. 

''2022-10-07 22:58:20	All your base are belong to us (#10) has declared WAR on ⭐Hollywood Stars ⭐ (#9).''

We stuck with our plan and warred #5:

''2022-10-08 12:30:22	Can't hide forever. (#11) has declared WAR on Cock Magic (#5).''

We immediately set Human Kite #5 (Yami) on fire, and then started sinking him. From the ops we took during the 24h or so that we had him on full blast, he was undefended and didn't really do anything in response apart from keeping EM up, and behaved as if he wasn't being blackopped at all. Later he'd argue for increasing the baked-in RNG fail rate on blackops from 5% up to 30%. 

We decided to keep Kite sunk, and turn up the heat on the Doctor Timothy (Templeman).

At the end of it we took down the Horn - earlier than planned, because once again some random realmie (who wasn't in our discord and had not shared advisors) went rogue and knocked it down before we could cancel war. He even responded in the council thread, right under a post that explained in plain English why taking it early was not a desirable situation, to say "got it, it only had 40k left"! 

In the draft round the exact same thing happened - with Yami's realm no less - and we kept that wonder for less than an hour. Fortunately this time Yami & co didn't smash it down in record time, presumably because it meant they'd have to leave the guard and would get eaten by nate. 

With the war over, we took a day or two to recharge and catch up on ops, and then decided to settle an old score.

''2022-10-12 19:42:40	Disaster Girl has entered the chat (#11) has declared WAR on All your base are belong to us (#10).''

At this point nate and Jota were in a pretty secure position. Nate had much higher dp and could defend any suicides, whereas Jota was running much lighter dp and would struggle to hit and avoid a suicide - but didn't seem concerned about that potential issue, presumably because  nate was in such a strong position that anyone thinking about making that tactical move would be on very unsteady ground. Jota decided to continue playing efficient rather than pump out the shamans.  

We targeted Chocolate Rain with fireballs and sinks. We knew he was still a difficult target - he was very well protected with 12% spires, 2% FHs, a 0.5 wiz ratio (guesstimated using out of game tools) all reducing damage, and our opening volley at full blast took him from 53k pez to 38k pez. If he'd had EM on it probably wouldn't have been worth it. Given the level of damage reduction though, we were probably wrong about his ratio, again highlighting the need for an info op that displays spywiz. It was likely he'd kept it at or close to 1.0. With hindsight we may have taken a different decision here. Of course, as the war progressed and he put up EM and resil reduced the damage even more. It was going to be an absolute grind, but we decided to knuckle down this time and see how much damage we could actually do. 

At least docks are still fairly straight forward. Sink a bunch of boats and he can't send. So we did that too.

After a while, the original hydra (Peabrain's pack combo of strong attacker + 4 blops support) were starting to show up in my news. These guys build mega ratios and just go hog wild. I was getting fireballed, but I was also getting flooded, swarmed on 100k+ food, then plagued (bruh), and I was convinced that if there was a spell that threw a kitchen sink at you they’d have cast that as well. I think this is what it must feel like to be targeted by rank chasers instead of people trying to maximise damage on you. Nobody quaked me, even though I had diamond mines. I did at least finally get to see how Miasma works for the first time since it was added to the game, and confirmed it as a spell I will never cast. 3 ticks of spire investment completely undid the damage of that spell permanently. 

<small>''2022-10-13 13:35:13	 Spies from star wars kid (#10) were discovered attempting to sabotage our towers! We executed 40 spies.''
''2022-10-13 13:35:12	 Our wizards have sensed their power diminish. You lost 1 percent wizard strength, and 1 spy mastery.''
''2022-10-13 13:35:09	 Our wizards have sensed their power diminish. You lost 1 percent wizard strength, and 1 spy mastery.''
''2022-10-13 13:35:08	 Spies from star wars kid (#10) were discovered attempting to sabotage our towers! We executed 41 spies.''
''2022-10-13 13:35:07	 Spies from star wars kid (#10) were discovered attempting to sabotage our towers! We executed 41 spies.''
''2022-10-13 13:35:05	 Spies from star wars kid (#10) were discovered attempting to sabotage our towers! We executed 42 spies.''
''2022-10-13 13:35:04	 Our wizards have sensed their power diminish. You lost 1 percent wizard strength, and 1 spy mastery.''
''2022-10-13 13:35:03	 Spies from star wars kid (#10) were discovered attempting to sabotage our towers! We executed 43 spies.''
''2022-10-13 13:35:01	 Spies from star wars kid (#10) were discovered attempting to sabotage our towers! We executed 43 spies.''
''2022-10-13 13:34:59	 Our wizards have sensed their power diminish. You lost 1 percent wizard strength, and 1 spy mastery.''
''2022-10-13 13:34:58	 Spies from star wars kid (#10) were discovered attempting to sabotage our towers! We executed 44 spies.''
''2022-10-13 13:34:57	 Our wizards have sensed their power diminish. You lost 1 percent wizard strength, and 1 spy mastery.''
''2022-10-13 13:34:55	 Spies from star wars kid (#10) were discovered attempting to sabotage our towers! We executed 45 spies.''
''2022-10-13 13:34:54	 Our wizards have sensed their power diminish. You lost 1 percent wizard strength, and 1 spy mastery.''
''2022-10-13 13:34:49	 Our wizards have sensed their power diminish. You lost 1 percent wizard strength, and 1 spy mastery.''</small>

Star wars kid decided to try his hands at blackops, and exchanged ~320 dead spies for 1 tick of snare damage. The annoying thing is, he did actually delay me casting Midas for 1 tick by 0.06% wiz str. What an asshole.

I took some ops and saw he had another 2.5k spies and 1k wiz incoming in just 6 ticks. It looked like #10's response strategy here was going to be to try and disable me from blackopping. With 48 hours left in the war, nate and jota out of range, I was apparently now the primary target in a blackops war. It was a strange feeling. 

When the war concluded, we hadn't really achieved anything major, though our damage to faith was at least consistent. We stubbornly fireballed him for almost three days straight as opposed to just giving up. I don't know how much it slowed him down; maybe half a day if I'm being optimistic. No scores were settled in this war. It felt very much like stalemate.

=== WEEKS 6 AND 7 - FLAMBÉD RATBURGERS AND FLATTENED EARTHS ===

The last two weeks were just pure blackops fun. We targeted realms to enable hits for our attackers, finish off the competition and set nate or jota up for the win. 

Realm #9 was first, and the top explorer RATS (Ivetza) had a 600 acre lead on me, but he was about to get absolutely railroaded. It was going to be tight, but we thought we could slow his economy enough to the point where we could feed him to nate. He had prioritised efficiency so he had garbage ratios, no defense buildings, nothing really. Just a lot of land and a lot of rats.

Sometimes when you completely ruin a defenseless target, as we were about to with RATS, you do feel guilty about it. I still feel bad about starving Craghack so Bobbo could hit him a few rounds ago. But fortunately the target this time was Ivetza, who responded with some generally incoherent insults on the messageboard ("Cmon is that all, you homosexuals porn doll's..... 100 000 rats to rule you all .!."), and that really made killing him off quite satisfying. His economy was a smoking ruin, his growth was halted for three days, and with the op bonus he was forced into non-stop dp training while nate trained op. He managed to keep his ass just ahead of nate's snapping jaws, which annoyed nate, but all the while I was hammering the explore button and rocketing up in land. By the end of the war, we hadn't hit him, but I'd closed in on his lead from 600 acres to just 30, and my economy was (even pre-fireballs) in a much, much stronger position than his. So despite having a ton of extra dp after we cancelled and lost the war op bonus - which meant he was able to pure explore - within 24 hours he was no longer top explorer. 

The m'lady adventurer hat was mine at last.

While all this was going on, we all got to enjoy another great podcast moment when Merf announced he’d made a hit and was safely coming into Jota’s range, saying he “knew the numbers”. Nate laughed and wished him good luck. He knew that Jota knew the numbers too. 

''2022-10-16 04:14:50	Wife vs OD round 31 (#11) invaded The After Hours (#3) (Merf) and captured 224 land.''

With RATS scurrying off to safety but now irrelevant, Nate and Jota made hits on Johnny The Master Baiter (#1) instead (OMGnoob).

''2022-10-16 10:00:32	Victorious on the battlefield, Daily Dose of Vitamin D (#11) conquered 244 land from Johnny The Master Baiter (#1).''

''2022-10-18 10:06:16	Victorious on the battlefield, Wife vs OD round 31 (#11) conquered 239 land from Johnny The Master Baiter (#1).''

If Ivetza's war was a example of bitterness and poor sportsmanship, our next war targeting new player Flat Earth (Mithrandir) in #7, was the polar opposite - met with good humour and banter. His build was impressive and the speed he was growing was alarming; I never really bought the argument that exploring could be so overpowered compared to attacking with landgen, but this guy made a real case for it this round. He'd eaten a few hits and it had barely even stalled him. 

We gave him seven seconds to get ready.

''2022-10-19 13:00:03	https://youtu.be/-bL9BWEtLpM?t=55 (#11) has CANCELED war against ⭐Hollywood Stars ⭐ (#9).''

''2022-10-19 13:00:10	Snacking at the #7/ (#11) has declared WAR on Getting OPS on #11 24/ (#7).''

I'd been coordinating most of the blackops all round and this one was the closest I came to fucking up. We barely had enough people available for the snare, and if he recast Ares we didn't have the collective snare damage to keep him down. It was right down to the wire. Alex had said he'd be able to contribute - but he was driving, so he had to pull over somewhere to join in. Everyone had a half-hour warning. We all went... but at the end of it, he still wasn't at zero. Nobody had heard from Alex. I should have checked with him before going. It was a painfully long 20 minutes until we had confirmation that Flat Earth definitely was snared - and hadn't recast. The hit was on.

''2022-10-19 18:17:27	Victorious on the battlefield, Daily Dose of Vitamin D (#11) conquered 269 land from Flat Earth (#7).''

For their part, #7 were doing a fair bit of damage to me with blackops. Once again I was the top guy in their range so once again became the de facto blops magnet. And for the first time in my OD career I applied to the Royal Guard to escape the range of a much smaller player on insane ratios in the suicide league - Praedinia (AgFx).

The next war target was decided when this appeared in the crier:

''2022-10-20 20:38:26	Ron Jeremy 🍆 (#9) invaded star wars kid (#10) and captured 210 land.''

RATS was pleased as punch to welcome us back, as you can imagine. We had no real reason to target him specifically this time; the war was just to give Jota the op bonus to hit Ron Jeremy (DanTheMan). But we fireballed him anyway because fuck him. Meanwhile their blackoppers occupied themselves with lightning bolting me, apparently unconcerned that they were '''increasing''' my dp thanks to the free castle improvements reshuffle that spell now grants (who comes up with this stuff?). 

''2022-10-21 08:07:01	Victorious on the battlefield, Wife vs OD round 31 (#11) conquered 292 land from Ron Jeremy 🍆 (#9).''

The dying days of the round were a mix of nate and Jota making hits and really either one of them could have won it. 

''2022-10-22 21:07:52	Victorious on the battlefield, Daily Dose of Vitamin D (#11) conquered 278 land from Will the Real Martian Please Stand Up? (#3).''

Ron Jeremy gave us all deja vu when he flew into Jota’s range and immediately got batted out again. 

''2022-10-23 19:59:40	Ron Jeremy 🍆 (#9) invaded Eater of Days (#5) and captured 269 land.''

''2022-10-24 07:16:18	Victorious on the battlefield, Wife vs OD round 31 (#11) conquered 298 land from Ron Jeremy 🍆 (#9).''

But for the final hit, the guys assassinated a bunch of Toothy’s draftees and I woke up to:

''2022-10-26 01:58:30	Victorious on the battlefield, Daily Dose of Vitamin D (#11) conquered 311 land from And When the Sky Was Opened (#3).''

Toothy had gifted nate the win.

=== EPILOGUE ===

All things considered, I had a great round. I did not expect to finish third; faith absolutely would have leapfrogged me if attacking had been disabled a few hours later than it was. He would have gained 1200 acres in just 18 hours, which is pretty obscene. But that was the last-minute gamble he took to try and hookshot himself onto the podium just as the curtain fell, and it didn't pay off. I also got screwed out of a 7k finish by gambling with the end round timer, but I'll quite happily take third place as a consolation prize!

Of course, the only thing that really mattered was unlocking that fetching hat as a messageboard icon for most acres explored. 

Nate took first place. Jota second. I was third. The winners' podium was all realm #11, baby! 

As a realm we all worked together as one team to get hits for nate and Jota. Both were great dudes and I'd have been happy with either taking the top spot end round. There had been plans for Jota to bottomfeed and for he and nate to secure dual first place, but I think Jota ran out of time.

Thanks to everyone in the pack who made this round fun:

I’ve played with nate and mris once before (randoming), and my recollection of that experience is mostly about spreadsheets and an ocean of data. This round was no different. I'd ask "what's top op?" and instead of being told a number, mris would say: "I'll calc you a sheet". Fucker made me learn how to read his spreadsheets.

Playing with nate is a bit like having some lofty god in the clouds above who occasionally descends from the heavens and demands a sacrifice in exchange for his blessings of prosperity. 

mdk may be the self-confessed most paranoid player in OD, but since he seems to get blackopped to death every round, it is probably justified. Really great player, super active and helpful, always gave me superb advice on the few occasions where I wasn't sure what the best move was. 

I think Alex mostly coasted this round after he converted to blackops, so we didn't see too much from him in the discord, but he always made time for coordinated blackopping.

And finally, thanks to King Jota's pack of ragtag attackers that I take full credit for corrupting and turning over to a life of sin (sorry not sorry) - all fantastic, active and a lot of fun to play with. I'd be stoked to land with any of you guys again. 

Thanks for reading, blop you next round <3

=== TL;DR ===

What happens when you train attackers to be bloppers?

The round in a nutshell: https://imgur.com/a/QGQpni6

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