Editing Round 35

 

This round only had a weak runaway followed by a bazillion suicidal lizardfolk trying to pull him back. This led to mid-race overtaking early on and made round 35 the "round of the woodelfs", with several of them dominating the round after week 2 as well as a strong spirit who only got knocked down at the end... My icekin used his underdog position, flanked by a very strong welf, nomad and the “runaway”, to rise to the top.

** Unconventional Converter on high DM/Schools with mainly LBM. I told him endless times how this aint gonna work… well…. It worked…. quite well….sorry Faith :D

** Totally took me by surprise. Great played nomad. In another round dynamic he could've won with that strat. 

===Gameplan===

===Early Game===

This round had many fast attackers competing. We had Dan - Mris Sucks who found nice hits early game and got in a little lead.

We had a terrible hit cycle for Swamp - Gordon Gekko - Liz  who had to repeatedly wake up middle of the night to see his scouted target got hit the hour before and had to settle for smaller targets because our american ops team was deeply asleep as well. This led to him slowly falling behind and then a bounce seemed to seal his fate.. but he kept going and become a relevant fast attacker in the early midgame again and converted then to a blop support and helped us till the end.

===Early game competition=== 

* #1 (us) Dan - lycanthrope with swamp as liz support. 

* #2 Soup - strong fw with lyc support (damdred)

* #4 InternetFett -  lizardfolk, combined with a blop pack and a bunch of strong midraces. Especially Mithrandir - Jabba - Woodelf who was one of the three races to compete for the win. 

* #9 Downrightdave and Sly - double lizardfolk

We had a big hit setup but in line to classic Dan fashion blops came his way. 

Because he had to sit a few days #9 managed to get 5 guys in his range. A spy drop later they warred us, snaring Dan. 

One of their lizards suicided Dan all in who went for the retal. 

===Midgame=== 

Realm #4 on the other hand were proud owners of the Spire of Illusion. With all those strong mid game races it was a pain in the ass to keep ops up to date on them. 

We went for a snare hit on their icekin and fballed Rurys spirit - not a simmer because he looked terrible strong. Two birds with one stone. 

Obviously that was a mistake. Dan was still on the top attacker spot with a decent land lead but his fire was slowly dying. Dan kept on hitting for a bit and nearly got a final HUGE hit on the biggest explorer but a last second sinking campaign by #4 denied him this last glory as well. 

We told Dan early to pump mods and buy Faith, Warpig and me time. 

===The 'other' midgame=== 

Meanwhile #6 spirit - Rury and #4 woodelf - Mithrandir became real powerhouses. 

-#6 Rury did run a very well working masonry spirit. He had a strong woodelf attacker (Poige) and a strong UD (Erix) as backup. 

- #4 had the strongest welf attacker (Mithrandir) flanked by Shaidars gnome and Sharkeys nox. 

Meanwhile I had a decent econ (but nowhere near Mithrandir). 

The round seemed over when Mithrandir made a well timed rezone hit on Volv.

Then Mithrandir starved. Two hours. On -4000 food. 

===Climbing up===

On top we had Dan pumping troops and #4 and #6 were scared that they would get hit by him and the other realm could feed of Dan. 

So I made a couple of unsafe bot hits hoping that #4 and #6 would lock each other up…

… and there I was back in the game. 

At the same time Faith started his humongous 500 dm and 500 school rezone with a 15k lbm release conversion project… we feared that #4 would be 3-4 hits ahead by the time he finished converting but their stalemate allowed him to convert and make his first hit just a bit smaller than them. 

===The Lategame===

-#1 My Icekin did catch up well and I had a great economy running. Meanwhile Faith got his Welf online (behind #4 and #6 but faith was playing the long game). Also Warpigs nomad - Kahlon became quite strong now too. 

-#4 welf - Mithrandir - Jabba was the biggest welf with potential top op most of the mid/lategame. 

Sharkeys nox fell behind a bit due to their war with #6. Shaidars gnome went crazy on gn during the second phase of the midgame. Sacrificing his chance in the late game but posing a constant suicide threat. 

-#6 spirit - Rury - Obviously you're not a simmer was lucky to get fed insanely easy hits on a nomad (who just kept 9hing on same dp) shortly after he decided to make a spec push.. flex and immortal troops on high masonry looked nasty and he was always just one hit away from running. 

They had the rezone from Poiges welf and a big UD as support.

During the last war with #4 (when they initially sunk Dan) they succeeded in snaring Sloxxor and gave Mithrandir a fat hit. 

The last 2 hits I was open to Shaidars suicide and I knew he couldn't let me go or I'd be unstoppable.

But we had Faith as a backup so he got fed a nice 100% war hit. 

Initially we hoped that Warpigs nomad could make a third war hit in a row on Shaidar but his mods dropped to heavy on all that incoming land so we decided to play it safe. 

Sadly Rury's spirit could join the party.

After the dust settled Shaidar would never really recover to threat 5:4, I got a net plus on land and Faith got fed heavily. 

===The turning point===

I was not ready for this hit and lacked dp vs #6 welf… so I waited.

Then something none of us expected happened.

Boom. Erix UD suicided Mithrandir. 

And Faith got another feed.

===Who likes some tuna=== 

Faith started covering me against potential spirit suicides / welf rezones and I started pumping crazy op with my gn and cheap ice elementals. 

The easiest hit was an exploring dwarf in #2 (Unfather) and I dropped some specs to aim him. We failed some ops on him before and we figured out he knows were coming for him since he had surveillance on. 

SwampFox and I talked the hour before the hit about how much he could increase his walls and draftees. We discussed him releasing wiz/spies and it was end of tick so I told swamp to scare him by assassinating draftees.

BOOM 70k networth drop immediately after the last castle. 

    2023-07-13 16:59:56 Victorious on the battlefield, Icekin (#1) conquered 317 land from I like the tuna here. (#2)

Now I was top land and had a good lead on #6 and #4. 

    2023-07-13 22:30:46 Obviously you’re not a simmer (#6) invaded Analsauraus Wrecks (#3) and captured 129 land

With the release from Rury I got many people sending me congratulations… especially from realm #4. But that was all a scheme to make us careless! Those mischievous hobos!

Meanwhile the merfolk in his realm, Emperor Palpagin - Craghack, went full exploration on 120k+ peasants creeping up on my landsize. Ohoh.

Thankfully Faith AGAIN covered me by pushing druids himself and now everyone had to defend 700k op. Insane.

I was outside and came home less than 5min before hour change.. realized I have to hit this tick because Mithrandir dropped 1500 druids..checked the math, got fresh cs/rev on the inactive sylvan saw his drafts go down. Thought me team went for assassination, oversend a bit and hit. BAM. 

Then Faith asked me where the sylvan spent his plat on and we realized he was active and his plat went into huge.spies/wiz (hence his draftee drop) but he didn't think it was necessary to cast ares. I could have easily bounced there under the time pressure..

Then we realized our cs on Mithrandir was 2h older than the rax so I was potentially hittable by Mithrandir after a tiny raze from Shaidar… 

But I could've probably invested in walls and I had 11k wizards waiting to be released so I think I might've been fine.

So the last 2 days I was terrible scared of a snare (which I barely covered) but apparently Mithrandir didn't want no war because he was scared of being sunk.

This limited his op and forced him to a bfeed. Meanwhile Faith could hit big for a more than deserved 3rd spot. 

To my whole pack and realm. This was a team effort and I'm very proud of my realm. We got obstacles thrown in our way the whole round and yet we always found the way around it. We've mostly been the underdogs in this round and yet we pushed and pushed and finally came out ahead.

Thanks Dan for paving the way for Faith and me and struggling through this exhausting early/midgame. Our comeback was only possible by your presence sitting above #4 and #6. Thank you!