Round 41

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Round 41
Winner đŸ„‡
Player: playt0i
Dominion: Hawk Tua on Yami
Race: Halfling
Second đŸ„ˆ
Name: Faith
Dominion: No place like gnome
Race: Gnome
Third đŸ„‰
Name: Weaser
Dominion: The Real Elf Woods
Race: Wood Elf
General
Changes: Round 41/Changes
Valhalla: Link

Top 100 Results[edit]

Round 41 top 100

Round 41 - Realm #6 Win Story[edit]

I’m going to start off by dedicating this round to my first born, Jemma. If you somehow stumble upon this somewhere in the distant future, Daddy was indeed a nerd and loves you.

Prologue[edit]

This round was a bit of a mess. Full of hopes, secrets, 5:4s, cheating and miracles. Let’s go!

Chapter 1 - Formation[edit]

It has been a while since we went hard as a pack. It is almost time for our yearly run at it, but quite honestly, I was itching. I’m expecting my first child and knew that chances to go hard in the future would be far and few. On top of that, witnessing a fresh FA win made me tingle even more. The final nail was JC, out of all people, wanting to go ham. Our pack was - me, JC, Yami, InternetFett, and Cents. We weren’t sold on going fast yet because it remains to be seen on how our ops support would look like. Cents took a round off, and we’re happy to get his support back. As we spoke about what was strong, Yams wasn’t sold on the FA part of things. I do agree that a runaway strat isn’t as strong at the moment versus something slow and efficient, but I still felt that getting into a good position could make it possible. So I just wanted to say -> told ya so, Yams <3. Before knowing who we landed with yet:

  • I went over the usual races for going fast. I personally think Lyc is the fastest but has issues sustaining. Liz just feels a step behind now that their Lizardmen are so expensive. Kobo
 pairing? No thank you, I’m good. After taking a lap around the race pool here we are again, Halfer, my love. Halfling has been nerfed since I last used them with no more casualty reduction spell for all units. I wasn’t overly concerned with this and chose to view the nerf as having a little more land space in return. While I knew I wouldn’t be able to push as hard with Slingers, Staff Masters are still very good in the long haul. Despite Fetty telling me that Halfers suck, my comfort level with them ultimately decided for me.
   InternetFett—08/13/2024 12:52 PM
   isn't halfer kinda meh atm?
   playt0i—08/13/2024 12:53 PM
   Meh prob ya, but im comfortable with them
   InternetFett—08/13/2024 1:03 PM
   but i still like FW and liz over kobbo/halfer
  • JC went through his usual dance through the catalog a bit earlier than usual. It was a lot of <insert race> talk sandwiched with wanting to go back to Sylvan since he’s always deathly afraid of blops. This round, JC was feeling a bit spicy. He looked into Orc for a while because he truly didn’t think they were bad and wanted to make them work. He also looked at UD and felt they weren’t properly explored. Through a lot of back and forth simming, all numbers were surprisingly close and comparable. We honestly had no idea how good UD would be, especially past the first week. The heavy OP spec aspect fundamentally felt wonky. With that said, I would like to think I influenced JC’s final decision with me telling him to go UD because he could potentially be the first to win with this iteration, and fun fact: UD is his favorite race (in general).
  • Yams was decided pretty early on. Not that all nerfs make a race unplayable but we seem to have an affinity or maybe stubbornness to play a race with a recent nerf to prove that they’re still good. Human became Yams’ choice. He felt they were still plenty strong. He was not wrong.
  • Fetty was a bit more fluid. He had interest in Spirit before they were nuked. Fetty also thought about picking back up the FW he played a few rounds back. I don’t actually recall conversation about having 3 FAs being overly crowded, but surely that probably played a factor in Fetty going Nomad. There are other factors too that I won’t reveal in case he were to ever pick them back up.
  • Cents, the ultimate packy, is as simple and easy as can be. “Just give me a sim.” However, he’s always had this thing about going 900 schools. For some reason JC egged him on and he took it as a green light. He certainly tried
but fell short at 500 schools iirc.

Our Realm[edit]

Before placement we were going back and forth fantasizing about who we’d get, figuring that it’ll never actually come true. Who will it be?

   playt0i—08/12/2024 8:07 PM
   oooh ill take candarius again

That was the beginning of hitting the lottery. We land Candarius and Jez (2 pack). We landed together a few rounds back when we were slacking and had very fond memories of them. We were happy to get Larso, a selfless vet, back for his first round in a while. We also got Vovin. Quoting Fetty, “An A+ pull!” Lastly, and most surprisingly, we got Frisko. Frisko got me back into OD, and packed together during our DC win. So that was the cherry on top and it only felt right to give it another go. Our collective group were all willing to push towards the single goal of a realm win. As far as theme goes, Yams had nothing to do with it. In fact, we had to sort of force it upon him. Yams is simply too humble, but at the same time a great sport. Ultimately it was Candarius’ idea and the rest of us ran with it.

  • Hawk Tua On Yami - playt0i
  • Reflections Within Yami - Vovin
  • Where in the World is Yami - Candarius
  • Someone suicide Yami!đŸŽŻđŸ”« - Jcinnz
  • wooimbouttamakeanameformyselfhere - Frisko (theme breaker)
  • Moons Over My Yami - InternetFett
  • Yam E. Coyote - Yami
  • Don’t put all your Yami in one basket đŸ„šđŸ§ș - Cents321
  • The Statue of Yamirty - Larso

Chapter 2 - War and Things[edit]

The hour is here and we’re off to the races. Things mostly went as planned until they didn’t. Late Day 1 I finally learned what the UD spell actually did and I hate it as I write this. Vǎrkolak - 0/0, completely harmless (#9) played by Sly (first round back in a while), had a 750a UD that delayed his first attack between the hours of 12-24. I think he could have hit just about anybody at that point and I lean towards saying that he definitely broke the standard DP chart on the particular hour he sent. Luckily, JC tends to have pee pee measurement contests with other doms playing the same race as him, and he spotted Sly. JC had a bit more dp, so he wasn’t as worried, but I had to scale back my hit and train a bit slower to keep drafts for dp. I wish I could say this was it for dealing with UDs but it became an annoying situation on repeat every 48 hours with the op spike.

I’m not a fan of the spell because it really interrupts planning. 6 hours is hard to train or send around. You train to defend against an UD’s non-spell OP and as soon as you’re defended they suddenly have more trickling in. Plus during the spell, which I saw plenty of, Sly and JC would simply add MORE spec op on top of the spell. The power spike was so disruptive and the cooldown felt like the spell was always right around the corner.

JC and I bobbed and weaved around danger for a bit while Yams and Fetty were doing their slower things. Cand got smacked what felt like a bajillion times, but it refocused him! Jez is completing IRL duties but still very alert. Lars is growing alongside us with his dorf. Vov seems to be getting into the swing of things as I secretly spy and remind him to turn on Ares/Midas for the first few days lol. Cents/Frisko living the Ops life. So what’s next? War. That is always the answer and fear as we approach the start of day 4. JC and I planned during CTP how many WGs and Wizards/AMs we were willing to invest for some protection (almost 300k plat worth
 pain). We saw last round’s winner bring in WGs/Wiz/AMs and they were untouched for the round from what I recall. So it only made sense to do so? Or so you’d think because I saw absolutely 0 protection from any of the other Fast Attacking realms. I can understand taking the chance and cutting corners if they’re closer to the 2nd or 3rd OP tier, but JC and I decided to take no chances. Though I wondered if maybe we were missing something and were just dumb for wasting so many resources. The war bell rings
1 war, 2 wars
and none on us. I’m told that realm 4 was initially going to war us, but needed an emergency u-turn to sink the Lyc in #8 (played by Disco) to prevent him from hitting 4’s FA. The hour ends and we’re thinking our protection was enough to deter any wars, but we spoke too soon

2024-08-20 19:56:49 Flame on! (#11) has declared WAR on Generic realm name (#6).

JC got blopped first, probably because of some public talk by a certain person about how strong UDs were looking. I’m not sure whether to thank this guy or not as realm 11 saved me for last. Back to the war, out of the Fast Attacking realms, we were the only ones to mutually declare back and JC landed TWO war hits on realm 11. During the war, 11 did successfully snare JC for a bit and fireball us down to whatever vulnerable peasants existed. Being that I was second, I feel I lucked out and had rejuvenation on my side for a while after the end of war.

Secret Draft Packs[edit]

I’ll say this first, the dommunity complains a lot. Someone is affected by something: complains. Someone is wanting others to do the dirty deeds for them: complains. Someone who has absolutely nothing to do with anything from a mile away: complains. Most of our playerbase are reasonable and okay but man did we have a lot of excessive crying this round. Stop expecting others to play for you. If you want something done, do it yourself or shut up. News soon hit DomChat that a selective number of players had decided to run a private draft to make three five-packs. To my understanding, their goal was to place themselves in a situation where they can freely use blops as a mechanism to help their fast attacker(s) out in hopes of a round win. There were accusations that they all knew and agreed to blop at the sound of the bell. In a fair sense, people argued that had they known of such a thing, they would have played war time differently. I would like to believe that the secret pack’s intentions were pure and that they in fact did not coordinate with each other after the draft had taken place. In the end, basically every FA realm was warred if I recall correctly. While I don’t think what they did was breaking the rules, it did feel wrong when I initially learned of it.

Chapter 3 - Scorned Doms[edit]

I had made my feelings clear to JC that if we hit a big-ish attacker with aspirations of winning, we’d have to tread carefully with the decision as it almost always leads to them becoming a 5:4 threat for the rest of their days. JC wanted to hit attackers to soften up threats, and of course that totally makes sense. The irony is that I didn’t listen to my own advice as the hit was simply way too tempting:

2024-08-22 04:51:04 Victorious on the battlefield, Hawk Tua on Yami (#6) conquered 73 land from Hawk Tuah (#12).

I hit my doppelganger Hawk Tuah (#12) (Bobbo <3). The double irony is that Bobbo didn’t go full 5:4 himself, he actually deconverted shortly after. The 5:4 threat came from his realmie and perennial round abandoner and good for a first week 5:4 threat, dan. To be fair, he finished the round.

For 4 whole days, we sat and grew when we could while defending a nasty 5:4. We had so much DP
like so much. At this point, I was slightly ahead of JC, and we decided that we can’t both play in fear. Being that he was smaller, we simply decided that he’d send and if the sui were to happen, it’ll just push me further ahead. Sadly, the sui did happen. We were prepared. It didn’t happen the first hour, but the following. I had to run out for a haircut and told everyone that if it happens, ping me and tell me exactly how much I’d need to send. JC pings me frantically as I’m walking to my car. I’m expecting to see numbers but don’t. I do the calcs myself. I press send
 and we failed our plan by about 30 seconds. The timing felt awful. We had no one to blame but ourselves and my barber for taking a few minutes too long. However, as sometimes happens with a sui, not all is lost. We expected 4 FW (Soup) to be the main beneficiary of 12s sui but he didn’t get a chance. Instead 4’s Liz (Ivetza) stole the hit. I didn’t even think to check ops since the Liz hit a sui and that usually means good DP but luckily JC had some due diligence and made us realize that I was able to tag the Liz. Big consolation prize. 12’s dead FA is now gone so it was 4 FWs turn. At this point JC was a bit skeptical about whether 4 was truly training to 5:4/limiting us because he thought they were still playing for rankings. JC, bless your heart. Fast forward 8 days, all the other FAs are freely sending with complete disregard of the 5:4 threat. Feels really bad. We decided we’d go the same route of not letting the 5:4 threat run our round. Once again we sent JC into the wilds and dared realm 4 to feed me. Well, they did, but we had no idea it would be a double hit on JC! We were only expecting the one. JC, we’ll forever remember your sacrifices. Okay, home free right? Not quite. No one noticed until it actually happened. Realm 12 had an UD that converted. We figured he wouldn’t be a threat to win with the lead we had but now we were back to that spell being a pain. He pushed massive spec OP to limit my own 5:4. I was close to breaking him on a few occasions but my wife went into labor around this time and we were never able to pull a hit together. Not much here other than defending and eventually pulling a bottomfeed to keep him in range by 1 acre that led him to deconverting.

Chapter 4 - Toxicity and Complaints[edit]

My favorite part of this game is none other than the human factor, otherwise we’d be playing a spreadsheet sim for 7 weeks. It is impossible to completely expect a “guaranteed” action from anyone because of it. That in itself will always cause a level of excitement and a degree of the unknown. While I understand that we’re moving towards a lot of quality of life changes in the game, it makes me a little sad that we won’t have the pureness that is brought by players. However, this was one of the least fun rounds as a community I have ever been a part of. The toxicity that plagued our main server for weeks with people seemingly at each other’s necks the whole time forced me to mute DomChat just to get away from it for a while. There were a lot of complaints this round with the actions of certain realms. I understand some of the arguments from both sides. I hate to normalize the categorization of bloppers because I truly think we’re all just dominion players as opposed to something so specific. But for lack of a better term, there were a group of unhappy campers taking up issues with realms that were warring and blopping. On a regular day, I tend to lean towards the non-blopping crowd because I personally like to be strategic with wars. While I understand the messages from both sides, the delivery was fucking terrible. Other than for the purpose of reaming one another, a solution was nowhere in sight. I have never liked the attitude some people have of telling others how to play the game. No one plays for you. Everyone’s allegiance is to themselves and their own realm. People may make decisions that others deem incorrect, and I may even agree, but I would never go as far as demeaning others for how they play. We can stand and die by our message, but delivery matters. It has been far too long that the lack of moderation of DomChat existed. I’m glad this has awakened what is needed. Keep the jokes, the memes, gifs, healthy banter, but keep the toxicity out.

The final big outburst of the round occurred when realms 8 and 12 were warred, presumably instead of us.

2024-09-05 00:53:00 	Porsches are lame, the Blopsmobile is fire (#5) has declared WAR on My other dominion is a Porsche (#8).
2024-09-07 15:15:09 	Blackmail a Blopper? Suck a big one Barbarian! (#5) has declared WAR on Click Clack (#12).
2024-09-07 15:59:58 	Realm #5 is realm #6's best player (#12) has declared WAR on Blackmail a Blopper? Suck a big one Barbarian! (#5).

I believe these were the last freak outs that resulted in abandons. In both instances we were hours away from warring both realms ourselves; the first to slow a threat, the second to snare. Had realm 5 warred us in this timeframe, we would have instantly declared back that may of lead to a potential war hit which I’m sure would’ve led to more complaints.

I wish it had ended there, but sadly there was cheating.

2024-09-07 15:15:09 	Blackmail a Blopper? Suck a big one Barbarian! (#5) has declared WAR on Click Clack (#12).

I’ve debated just how far into this I want to go because even as I write this story, I’m still frustrated by it. I sought the opinions and advice of my packies. The suggestions ranged depending on the day. The final decision to mention the following is that of my own, albeit extremely toned down. There is a cheater amongst us. He privately messaged outside of realms to war us. Given his position on GPC, he threatened to nerf blops further (not his first time) if his demands weren’t met. His cheating is not unique to this round and evidence over the span of 2 years has been submitted. Unfortunately, he merely got a slap on the wrist.

To this cheater, you are a disgrace to the Dommunity.

Chapter 5 - Final Frontier[edit]

JC and I defended and slugged through dead doms’ 5:4 threats for 27 straight days now. We are a lot smaller than we’d like to be, not to re-mention that JC has eaten 3 suicides, but has recovered remarkably and is playing an amazing role of watching my back. However, because of the stunted growth, this is exactly the perfect playground for the slow + efficient strats. Hello, Realm 7.

We noticed how strong The Real Elf Woods (#7), played by Weaser, was looking. I had everything all chalked up and wanted to go to war before he could build up and train. I don’t know why, but Yams and Fetty didn’t feel the pressure of doing so right away. I couldn’t get a real opinion from JC as he was headed back to work. We ended up warring 24 hours later, and I believe till this day that it was a super mistake on our behalf. Woodie pumped so much OP in that short span of time with his nice eco and this comes back to bite us. Still, we had things under control for the most part with fireballing him down and sinking him to limited levels. However, not that I didn’t think it was possible, but he caught JC completely off guard with an 86% r/r. We messed up, messed up bad. I had just woken up that morning and JC had great uneasiness about needing to grow so he could continue to threaten and that he found an ‘EZ hit’. He had already sent, and I did a quick calc and told him that at 80% he gets kind of close. JC reassured me that everything is okay, so the idea of him stocking to r/r didn’t cross anyone’s mind until it was too late. Now we’re in scramble mode. I needed time. More time to reload and get myself into a better position to grow, and we’ve lost that. I’ll now have a woodie in range with amazing all-in dp. JC can retal, but it’ll feed the woodie again and we chose against it. I was feeling low at this point because I know that we’ve given away our decent position and I’ll eventually be stuck. For whatever reason, the morning comes and I just so happen to wake up to see how things looked before woodie’s troops got home. I check my range, and Apep - 0/6, +7 OP Against 'Good' Races (#9), played by DavetheGoliath, has just entered my range. This was the miracle that we needed, but the only way it’ll happen is if JC retal’s woodie the same tick I send to keep him from entering my range as I was vulnerable on an r/r. Somehow JC also woke up and it was around 2am or so for him. We’re all awake, so everything lined up and we went for it because it meant giving me some space back. JC eats 5 more hits and that’ll end his reign of terror in Round 41. I have a bit of space now, but we know our position is still feeling fragile. We also lost a lot of steam from our hopefuls of Yams’ human and Fetty’s nomad, with both eating an invasion from gnomes. Somewhere in the timeline, Yams selflessly goes Scion to help with ops efforts, and Fetty goes 5:4 mode. With about 2 weeks left we felt it was no longer a round for us to win, but rather a round for Realm 7 to lose. As a realm, we pull together one final effort to get me a hit. I have been watching Deathpool (#11), played by Damdred, for a couple of days now and his activity seems to suggest security and what seemed like autopiloting. The choice was actually between Damdred and 9’s Kobo, but the reason we went with Damdred was because his ratios appeared to be lower and potentially having our last war with the first realm that warred us felt poetic. The plan was to war, snare, and then lightning bolt down some dp followed by the hit. However, we needed everything to align. We needed bare minimum OP training between No place like gnome (#7), played by Faith, and Weaser, on top of Damdred keeping his foot off the dp train. I woke up, and to my surprise all of the above had happened. But even then, the scenario was close and could have potentially played out this way from our point of view:

-Weaser r/r razes me -> Faith suicide hits me
-Faith suicide razes me -> Weaser r/r hits me

It might sound far fetched but it is OD after all and we wouldn’t put it outside the realm of possibilities. I asked Yams for the calcs and the margins were razor thin with potential training, investing and r/r. Knowing that, we decided that we couldn’t play scared and to go for it anyhow. Damdred ended up releasing all his spies and wiz in an attempt to cause a bounce, and it almost worked too if it weren’t for that meddling Yams! Thanks to Yams for noticing <3. After the hit on Damdred, Faith was pushing Suicide Squads making us think the hit scenarios may happen, but it wasn’t until we realized Weaser wasn’t stocking that we felt we could breathe a sigh of relief.. We pulled it off. We felt good. But that didn’t last long as less than 48 hours later Faith hits Damdred for over 600a on an ares drop. After this he’d get hit about a dozen more times. News later came out that Damdred’s home was hit by floods due to a hurricane and he lost power and communication. I am happy to say that he is well along with his family. I’m really sorry that I defiled your dom!

Final Stretch[edit]

I knew that #7 had run me down by this point. My hopes of an EG hit were no longer realistic. We were still at war with #11 and a bf on Damdred would yield a decent land gain with the war bonus. We worked out all the possible sui threats and then Gothia, Cinnamon Buns N’Roses (#13), beats me to the punch. I’m thrown into a frenzy in messing up the new ops calc and wondering about ranges. I simply took too long and a woodie in 14 (Toss my salad, Esthera) hits Damdred knocking him out of my RG range. We ultimately decided that I would still make the ultimate BF by leaving RG range and exposing myself for the rest of the round. I’m feeling real bad now as my hesitation cost me an extra 200+ acres, while pissing Yams and JC off that they said nothing to me for what felt like the next few days. My brain is telling me that I just simply need to add as many acres as I possibly can now to pad the final count. I proceeded to bf’ing Damdred 3 more times, but the hope was 5 if he wasn’t hit. (Damdred, once again, sorry!) During these bfs we were very aware of how exposed I was and that there could always be that secret dom laying in wait with less to play for just hoping for that huge hit. I assumed by this point that as long as I defended Rury’s 5:4 as a troll, I may be slow, but I’m also ugly (#8), that I’d be safe. Depending on the send, I gave myself a margin from 30-50k over on dp for absolute assurance. I intended to keep going, but Faith’s 5:4 actually exceeded Rury’s with a couple of days left in the round and I ultimately decided to play it safe. I would just wait for Faith to send before I made another 2-3 bfs to pad my land to just over 9k. Faith, however, with the land he recently got from Candarius went full Shrines on top of his near maxed hero + cas/red techs. Initially, we all thought it was a building mistake. It was not and we quickly saw he was at max casualty reduction. We knew it wouldn’t affect SS, and he ends up bfing by only sending Juggs and basically loses no OP. I was fine to wait, but this was the final mistake of the round. I had thought I had canceled my application for RG. I had two separate conversations with Yams during the day, and JC at night, discussing that I should cancel and believing that I did. The application went through and now I’m stuck in guard with no hopes of hitting for the rest of the round. Absolute gut punch, and I mentally halfway threw in the towel.

To end, we were our own worst enemies as we gave 3,192 acres to just the woodie and gnome. We didn’t deserve it, but we received two separate final miracles. We felt that #7 took a while to take action, but I also thought it was because of the sui threats that were looming out there. If you’re going for the win, it would be silly to not at least consider being careful right? Which is why I thought they were right to be patient about it. It turns out me rejoining guard might have been the biggest blessing in disguise ever. Though I didn’t do the math, Harm (Flickerbolt (#3)), aka Mr. Gang Bang himself, semi sui’s Faith and net-gained huge acres.

2024-10-02 05:03:36 	Flickerbolt (#3) invaded No place like gnome (#7) and captured 503 land. 

If I had sent, all that Harm testosterone might have been unleashed on me instead. During these hours and before the Harm bomb, we actually warred #7 in hopes of simply slowing down Faith by potentially sinking and limiting his sends + full lightning bolts to take some stats off him. After the hit, since we no longer thought gnome had a chance, we refocused our efforts on Weaser even though we only had 3 people in range including myself. Weaser only needed 1 regular hit + a bf to win. There were no hits available on a regular day, and he waited until the last possible hour he could, but they found jboy who had just sent on his own bf. While jboy was defended, Tidnab, the selfless realmie that he is went for a raze on jboy knocking off just enough dp for Weaser to make the hit.

We all mentally threw in the towel after that, whether anyone admits it or not. Then all of a sudden: BOOM!

2024-10-02 17:59:38 	Cinnamon Buns N’ Roses (#13) invaded The Real Elf Woods (#7) and captured 533 land. 

Gothia 5:4s Weaser for the 3rd largest hit ever in OD. Second miracle is complete. Now we’re scrambling once again to figure out what we can do to prevent Weaser from making another hit. Myself, Cand, and Vovin assassinate some draftees because specs was all the woodie can get in before the round clock is over. Woodie had already used his FG so Vovin said he would wake up the hour before woodies troops get back to steal plat and send some lightning bolts his way with Cand. Ticks go by, and woodie isn’t stacking, but instead investing in walls. Our chances of closing out are improving every tick after that, along with the hopes of an early disable.

But of course, RNG gods hate us and no such thing happened. The hour before comes, Vovin and Cand did all they could to dwindle resources. The last possible hour is upon us now. Yams has opped everyone that can possibly give the woodie a big enough hit to pass me. Fett is sitting on standby with 5:4 to knock anyone who does anything stupid out of winning range, while Yams and I anxiously sit by. Tick. Tock. Finally, the hour is done. The round is secure. Realm 6, we did it! With a massive amount of luck. Harm and Gothia (Rio for encouraging), drinks on me.

Epilogue[edit]

Truthfully, I am doing our realm a huge disservice without mentioning more details of how great we were as a whole and the wars/battles we went in and out of. We referred to the round as Round of the Stab because everyone was ready and available to take a piece out of anyone when called on. We warred Realm 3 and successfully snared Elei (If I did they’d have a samurai (#3)) for a hit that I didn’t get to mention. We participated in 9 wars together, not including the ones declared on us, and we left lots burning and storming. To Realm 6, I’m sorry for the excessive amount of group pinging, especially when a third of the time lead to nothing lol. Thank you for always responding.

Candarius, I enjoyed our many talks from video games to father advice. You killed the Jester role. Your willingness to be around to help will be missed until the next time. Jez, you stab loving maniac, I only wish you didn’t convert and stayed alongside with us for the stabbing fun. The war times were simply better with you around. Vovin, you were like a big brother throughout the entire process to me. Your calm and collected self kept me level headed whether I successfully expressed it or not. Lars, last time we fell short, so this feels extra good. I won’t forget when you trained ratios for weeks at a time, and showed up perfectly when your moment arrived. Yams will always be the guy that makes things make sense to me. Thank you for always calc-ing things at the drop of dime and talking through all the number scenarios with me. Our rock. Fetty spaghetti, thank you for telling me Halfer sucks, it made this feel just a tad better. I understand that you’re a busy man, but you were there when it mattered. You have a thankless role in the community, so double thanks to you. Cents, what can I say? We’re nothing without your support. You never ask for anything, and only give. However, don’t ever go for 900 schools again. Frisko, once in DC, and now in OD. Lucky charm much? I know I drove you crazy lots with ops requests, but finally your watch has ended. Rest well brother.

JC, we make fun of you a lot for being the selfish bastard that you are. In fact, you are. With jokes aside, JC is the typical guy with a hard exterior, but has the softest teddy bear interior. Even though you almost cost us the round :P , the results couldn’t have happened equally without you. There were low nights that you could have easily quit, but you didn’t. You stayed engaged and spoke with me privately when it seemed everybody else was checked out. Thanks for having my back from the start. Love you bro, I owe you this one. I will remember.

Finally, to my Wife: it looks incredibly bad that a grown man is on his phone/laptop inside our delivery room while you’re in labor. You never once gave me shit, and instead gifted us our beautiful daughter. The Realm, the Pack, and I all thank and love you <3.


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