Round 38 Eris

Another roundfail, who would have guessed? Certainly me!

I went solo this round and landed with Nate's pack (Mris, Mdk, AlexJones, King Jota), two brothers (King Drillo, Teppa), as well as King Titus, JDH, and Ayo/BigTyrone as fellow randomers. None of the kings actually took monarchy, what a surprise!

I picked merfolk so I can be less worried about blops (sinking immunity at the very least), and Nate helped improved my sim. The realm looked quite active so it was a good sign, but it wasn't long before my motivation took a shot in early days. I kinda struggled finding targets for my first few hits, as there were surprisingly less underdefended doms than before. I did found a cheap player hit as my 2nd after hitting a bot for my first.

2024-01-15 01:35:30 Victorious on the battlefield, Eris (#13) conquered 31 land from LL Bee J (#10).

So things weren't great, but also not particularly bad, and then, on my third hit, this shit happened:

2024-01-15 13:10:59 Sadly, the forces of Eris (#13) were beaten back by Miss Fit (#2).

It was a stupid mistake on my part. I had the guy's land spy the tick before, so I didn't bother to update it on the tick I hit. The sylvan rezoned his land, and I bounced by tiny margin. Some other guy also bounced on him before I did, presumably for the same reason. That didn't make me feel any better, though. In fact, I was so ticked I ended up forgetting to recast Midas for like 3 ticks. Talk about double down!

It's only early days, of course, and I had plenty of time to bounce back, but I was in whatever mood for some time, until Mris and co. started pointing out that my dom looked good. Along the way we took down Halls of Knowledge, which helped me getting the Ares techs, until realm 6 decided to take it from us.

2024-01-22 13:59:54 Turtle Power (#6) has declared WAR on ...To rock (a rhyme), that's right (on time)... (#13).

Surprisingly, they didn't really blop any of us and just focused on the wonder. It must be because Wurst's proposed fireball change was so amazing (as he declared himself) it turned people off from using it.

We retook the wonder, but 6 was persistent and declared again. As most of us were almost finished with teching, we decided to let them have it. I did manage to get a war hit out of it.

2024-01-26 17:24:28 Victorious on the battlefield, Eris (#13) conquered 78 land from Rocksteady (#6).

Our explorers then began to cyclone School of War, however...

2024-01-30 01:10:03 The School of War has been destroyed and rebuilt by (not the actual realm name because apparently it didn't stick like war declaration) (#4).

Looking at realm 4, they had a lot of land dependent races. Wood Elf, Nox, Gnome, etc. They didn't need SoW, so why did they get it?! It turned out, one of their randoms threw a single cyclone and got it, much to his joy (while his realmies weren't thrilled). Talk about being unlucky...

Moving on, nothing particularly interesting happened as realm 11 had three potential runners at this stage, making the round relatively dull. That was until their FW (Fett) pulled a back to back bounce when attempting to ares drop someone.

2024-02-01 21:00:14 Paulie 'Walnuts' Pliosaurus (#11) invaded A Dwarf dominion. (#12) but failed to conquer any land. 2024-01-31 18:00:06 Paulie 'Walnuts' Pliosaurus (#11) invaded Daily Dose of Vitamin Nate (#12) but failed to conquer any land.

I continued to hit bots for the most part, but did manage to land a big it on zooj.

2024-02-01 02:00:55 Victorious on the battlefield, Eris (#13) conquered 123 land from Attack of the Killer tomatoes (#8).

Due to my bounce earlier, I didn't bother joining guards and then it slipped my mind to do so after we concluded our wonder business. After I hit a bot, Mdk pointed out that there's a good chance 11 halfling, Elvisaurus (Bobbo) will bottomfeed me as he just did a war bf earlier. I spent half the day being antsy because I had no way to magically cover like 10k op, but somehow I made it back safely. Meanwhile, Bobbo bf'd a bot a couple of hours later.

Things got a little spicy later on when 10 dwarf, DMXXX (Volv) suicided 11 gnome, Velocisapper (Harm). I had the op to hit volv, but my dp was sketchy. Mdk told me to hit anyways and bank on the 3 and 8 dwarfs (Something something glory hole / cerbrus87 and Johnny Bravo / Gothia, respectively) to keep 11 kobold, Weekend at Bernie'Saurus-Rex (MERF) from hitting me. And so I did.

2024-02-06 16:35:44 Victorious on the battlefield, Eris (#13) conquered 162 land from DMXXX (#10).

Unexpectedly, Gothia also hit Volv, and then 11 warred realm 3 to sink cerb. Once again I found myself in a nervy situation. I later learned that realm 11 didn't manage to sink enough boats, otherwise it'd have been my ass. Whew!

The round began to look somewhat promising to me, and then, a few hits later...

2024-02-14 16:59:11 You make my heart saur! ❤️ (#11) has declared WAR on It's Tricky... Tr-tr-tr-tricky (Tricky) Trrrrrrrrrrricky (#13).

I was dead.

No, I didn't get hit. But I also couldn't send due to risk of being whacked by a war hit. We decided to hit 11's wonder, the Wayfarer's Outpost after some time and while they eventually cancelled, my dom was beyond salvageable. It was somewhat funny and annoying at the same time how quickly my round went kaput.

At this point, I just wanted to get a bigger finish than my previous merfolk (5375a) so I began bottomfeeding. Just after I did that, however, Gothia suicided 11 icekin, I'm the Zby, gotta love me (Lud). Gothia got hit many times, but unfortunately Nate bounced on him as he didn't update the ops. This, however, allowed me to hit Gothia when my troops returned, just barely.

2024-02-18 01:21:18 Eris (#13) invaded Johnny Bravo (#8) and captured 157 land.

That didn't help me to bounce back, though. I remained dead, and for my last two hits, I bf'd SAM...

2024-02-23 19:20:26 Eris (#13) invaded Goliath (#8) and captured 116 land.

...and Volv when he suicided on a wonder.

2024-02-26 21:15:56 Eris (#13) invaded DMXXX (#10) and captured 94 land.

In an attempt to win the round, we warred realm 6 and they mutualled us, which pretty much locked me home for the rest of the round. We tried to sink their Wood Elf, Splinter (Faith), but wasn't able to do so, and so 11 goblin, Spinelessaurus (mcgeeal) secured a rare explorer win, as well as an even rarer win as a non packed player. Meanwhile I failed my objective, finishing at only 5225 acres because of collusion!

That's all for now. I thank my realmies for their advices and ops helps, and thank you for reading, as always. See you in another roundfail story, unless I miraculously won a round. Yeah, as if.