R39Volv

Captain's Analysis: Volv

Team Volv

• Round 1: Chunk
  I'm kind of an old-school DC dinosaur who plays by intuition and doesn't really sim or use excel. I wanted a co-captain who could be a genuine strategic co-leader and cover the areas where I am weak. Chunk is a spreadsheet wiz who can make strong sims, has created useful math tools for the game, and brings a much newer perspective. My hope was that the realm as a whole would benefit from the blend of our styles and strengths.
• Round 2: Bobbo
  My co-captain and I agreed we wanted to build a balanced realm with a couple fast attacker threats early, slow attackers to push late, and a collection of explorers for support. Good fast attackers come at a premium, so I planned to use my round 2 pick on the strongest fast attacker still available. I was expecting to pick Ivetza or Allegorical because I honestly never thought Bobbo would fall to me, so when he did it didn't take long for me to decide. He's a top tier fast attacker from a veteran pack, and he's in a close enough timezone to Chunk and I for coordination to be easy.
• Round 3: Esthera
  While I think its important to have a horse in the race early, it's undeniable that slow strats are in a strong place right now. After securing Bobbo, Chunk had expressed flexibility with what he would play, so I had two alternate gamplans depending on who went, with Allegorical and Esthera as my top options for one and the other. Once Allegorical went, my plan became that I wanted to get a player with large finishes who preferred slower styles, ideally someone I hadn't played with before but who had played in big packs. Esthera was my top choice for that role, so I was happy to draft him.
• Round 4: jboy
  At this point I intended to take ops support, hoping to secure my regular packmate Mannowrath, who I thought would work well with Chunk as an Excel guy and with me as an ops team. Jboy, like Bobbo before him, I didn't really expect to fall to me. When Manno went, jboy was left looking like my best option, and I felt he could make a strong slow attacking duo with Esthera, as both had expressed an interest in primarily slow attacker/converter styles in the sign-ups.
• Round 5: DavetheGoliath
  At this point I desperately needed to start drafting some support for all these attackers, and a bunch of captains apparently felt the same way, as I had a list of 6 potential support opsplorer players, and 5 were drafted before my turn. Dave was the one who made it through, so I took him. He's a friend and packmate of Chunk's, who spoke quite highly of his teamwork, so I was glad to add him to the roster.
• Round 6: Sloxxor
  There's no guarantee people's plans as will line up with your hopes as a captain, so in case Dave didn't want to explore and get ops, I wanted to draft some more potential support for my attackers. Sloxxor generally explores to a solid size, and his time zone was the same as or similar to Esthera, so I drafted him hoping he'll be interested in offering some ops support.
• Round 7: MeeSAX
  This pick was essentially the same in reasoning as my previous pick. I wanted to get a crew of explorers to hopefully offer a network of ops support for my core of attackers. MeeSAX has explored to 5k+ as a Sylvan the past couple rounds and is near jboy, which was difficult to find timezone-wise in this draft pool.
• Round 8: alison
  At this point, many of us were going on fairly little information to decide between most players. Alison was in my current realm, so I knew them to be active in Discord and better than they looked on paper in our master draft spreadsheet. Has the potential to be a major value pick.
• Round 9: zooj
  This one surprised me. As it fell, I had the final pick of the draft, so I got whoever nobody else took. So many captains talked about picking zooj so many times that I was shocked he was the last one standing. Haven't played with him before but I'm told he's very active, so I'm interested to see how it plays out.