Editing Round 38 All this from a slice of gabagool

'''Mini Roundfail'''

Hi, Rush here.

I took this round off, so I don't have any notes, but that doesn't mean I don't have a few highlights from this round. So a Mini Roundfail it is. I was "All this from a slice of gabagool?", the Nox blopsplorer in #7. I didn't actually know my finish position until I went to write this, and was surprised to learn I'd finished in the top 30 (29th), after spending most of the round in the high 40s. 

I decided to play Nox, not because I particularly wanted to, but because it's the only race I had a sim for now that the GPC have taken to intentionally breaking everyone's old sims (and have intimated they'll do it again for next round). So good old Nox it was!

My plan was to take the round off and just coast as a casual solo blopper. I'd turned off my advisors, wasn't gonna join discord, then realm assignment happened and I got seeded into the hydra's realm. And those guys are fun, so I ended up joining the discord anyway. 

Early on we warred #11 to blast their socks off but, fireball just doesn't have that oomph that it used to - and they mutualed us, which was absolutely gruelling with the 10% op bonus and wrecked all of our economies far more than our fireballs did theirs. So that was the first and last time we brought our wet noodles to any real fights.

Dave did his fast attacker thing in the early game and did a pretty good job of acting as an early check on #11 all by himself for the few days he was relevant. Such is the gamble with fast attacking, however, and he eventually became food for #11 instead. He deconverted, and spent the rest of his round bashing his head against the brick wall that is the Shadow League. From FA to SL, dave might be the most masochistic player in the game.

This round, the powers that be had taken the unprecedented move of transferring some guy out of realm #11 and into the graveyard where all the bots live, such was their ire against whoever the hell that guy was for not responding to their messages. So I figured, heck, if they can banish someone to the graveyard for that, I can definitely get dave banished for feeding top op. I reported him and made the transfer request, but was duly ignored by the Rules Committee who were instead more concerned about rigging the game in their favour and punishing #11 for zooj existing. It was exasperating, not just because these committee decisions are just so inconsistent, but mainly it would have been funny to see dave as king of the bots for a round. Boo to the RC!

We had a bunch of wars but we were useless at all of them, partly because of the nerfed blops, but partly because we couldn't fully control how the new blops system worked unless every single person in the realm was singing from the same hymn sheet. If it wasn't one of the quieter guys in our realm silently triggering burning on a second-wave target we had planned to hit later - thus rendering him completely immune from all wiz blops from rejuvenation just as we looked for a second target - then it was Grapes "testing his damage" with a single fireball knowing full well it could trigger burning and risking it anyway. Then not telling us. But he hadn't counted on revelation spells snitching on him! Round-the-clock fireball maintenance is just too much of a pain in the arse to coordinate anyway, so most of the time I don't think anyone bothered, which also contributed to the flop of every blop war. Can new fireball be as strong as or stronger than old fireball? If you look at Wurst's maths, it says yes. Will we ever actually see it in practice? I don't know. This round we had the lowest number of fireball kills we've seen for a long time - about a quarter of the previous round for the master of fire. It's starting to feel all a bit New Coke to me. Great new taste, but no one's buying it. 

For my part, I barely cast any noodleballs except against the #11 in the first war. Instead I prioritised my old favourite, insect swarm, and kept the title for that all round. I also channelled Saccora and spun a few other plates on titles this round, picking up plague master and food thief. The diversity helped me pick up the blops rank in the Rush Ranking end round. (I'm probably not allowed to announce that yet. Don't tell AgFx.) That's gotta be the best rank now that fireball isn't, right?

We trolled #1 for a bit after #9 tapped out of the eternal game of wonder tennis they'd been playing for the Gnomish Mining Machine, by warring them and knocking it back to the graveyard. A little overdue payback for all their Town Crier spam over the round! #9 then seemed to take umbrage with us warring their abused spouse and warred us to aid #1 in destroying our Altar of Heroes, in a clear case of collusion that the RC naturally took no action on. Boo to the RC!

In the best and easily most hilarious suicide of the round, Volv smashed the Gnomish Mining Machine out of #0 into his realm, ensuring that #10 were the ultimate victors of the wonder war, depriving both #1 and #9 of the glory that should have really gone to one of them. At this point I was worried we could have been accused of troll collusion, but the RC took no action. Yay to the RC? Honestly, I think they'd all gone to disneyland after the zooj ruling. 

Grapes, Jon, Dave and Matty - who had fallen flat on his face on day two as a DE attacker, and somehow found himself in the Shadow League wondering how his life had come to this - were all focused on messing with ForPony! in SL, trying to ensure he didn't get various titles, particularly mastery titles. Jon managed to lose his gem thief title to Saccora in #11, even though Saccora was so large that he only had two people he could steal from for the entire round. Jon didn't seem to appreciate the gravity of this embarrassment when I pointed it out to him so now I have to mention it here again to underscore it. 

We had an in-realm goal of taking as many titles from #11 as possible this round, and I think we took five in total. AgFx was the biggest loser out of this targeted campaign, as we took swarm, plague and bounty hunter off the poor guy. Bounty hunter was the biggest time sink, since it meant me posting god knows how many ops for dave to fulfil, in order to go from being something like 1000 ops behind, to finishing about ~400 ahead of the nearest competitor by the end of the round (who was no longer AgFx by this point, but Manno). His cheaper ops in the SL were basically a cheat code to success for this category, as he could spam twice as many ops as anyone else thanks to the discount. It was still probably the most tedious and grindy thing I've ever done in OD though (and I don't even get anything for it!), I'm probably never going to post another bounty again. 

Vovin had a great round as an explorer DE, and proved that the race seems to have recovered a bit since the last time I played them (all the way back in r26); perhaps not to the point where they're blopper-viable, at least to my performance expectation, but certainly they can perform well as a super efficient explorer now. 

Cosula spent the first 35 days of the round converting as a Wood Elf, only to make two bot hits and attack the Gnomish Mining Machine. As far as most converts go, I'd say this was an above average performance.

New player Noren had a really strong start playing Dwarf explorer, but he lost a lot of steam mid-round and ultimately ate a few hits that took the wind out of his sails, and then towards the end I think he had some irl stuff to deal with that took his attention away from the game. But he picked up a lot quickly, I've got high hopes for him next round. He's in dave's draft team so it's up to Other Rush to look after him now. 

Peabrain, our nomad attacker, abandoned at some point (again). No one's really sure when exactly it happened as it took us all a while to notice.

Congratulations to mcgeeal on his win, despite being handicapped by landing in #11 with Merf and co. Truly a victory for the ages! Of course, I taught that guy everything he knows, you know. 

Most people have had their eyes and ears on the upcoming draft for a few weeks now, which has overshadowed this round with the hype around it. I was drafted into Dan's team and I'll be honest, if you'd have asked me to choose one captain that definitely wouldn't draft me, all of my money would have been on Dan. So that was a bit of a surprise, but I'll save the details for a proper Roundfail story next round.

Most importantly, Helldivers 2 came out so we've all been playing that. In fact I'm off to deliver some liberty to the galaxy right now. See you next round for a possibly actually narrated Roundfail story? If there's any interest in that let me know, maybe it's a better medium than walls of text in 2024. Although there will still be the text version, it's literally gonna just be me reading the text version aloud.

Okay bye.