Blades Beneath the Snow - Arena of Honor Season 4 Round 14

Christmas is now knocking on Westeros doors, and everyone is getting festive, putting decorations on windows, making plans on the Christmas meal, going to get firewood and but the best and bravest warriors in Westeros are preparing for yet another round of Arena of Honor. Things are no different for [N0X]OliverQ that's preparing for his last round of this season as he'll be traveling to visit his family in Essos and won't be able to attend the last round of the season. Unfortunately for him, another season has passed, and he wasn't able to finish his valyrian research, so he'll still be fighting with a lower tier troop for now. Once the preparations were done, he headed towards the mercenary camp and as soon as he arrived there, he signed the registration papers and waited patiently for the Old Gods to complete the matchmaking.

As soon as the matchmaking was completed, the battlefield doors opened, and everyone stepped inside to see which house will be choosing them for this round. Sansa Stark raised her finger and pointed at OliverQ as her first pick for the round and also named him the team's commander and along with him Sansa also picked [TNP]Karma, [Lik]AcarA, [N2D]Ned 2067, [SFu]Etheras, [FVG]Arovist, [QMI]Ragnarok and [KUM]Akubi.

As soon as the other 2 houses picked their teams everyone started marching towards their clan castle with OliverQ and his team marching towards the frozen north where the House Stark's Clan Castle is located. Once everyone arrived there, they started setting their camps around the clan castle and making last minute preparations and OliverQ took advantage of the last few minutes to send scouts over the battlefield to check what the other houses are up to.

The reports weren't looking too bad, the enemies were strong but defeatable, so OliverQ thought they might be able to get another win, was he right though? Thoughts had to be put aside as the battle started, and the strongholds opened for attacks, so everyone rushed to quickly occupy them.

After the strongholds got fully occupied, OliverQ as the team commander, decided to apply the strategy that worked for him in Round 13, and go with military camps to try and occupy the AI clan castles as quickly as possible. His plan worked, at least at the start of the battle, within minutes the Starks managed to occupy the Greyjoy's and the Baratheon's clan castles and things were looking very good for the team that were able to control 36 strongholds now.

But you know how it is in love and war, if you lose focus, you're doomed. And that happened to House Stark too as they didn't pay enough attention to what enemies are doing and it didn't take long for House Lannister to contest the House Baratheon's stronghold. Seeing points advantage slipping thru his hands, OliverQ tried a few desperate solos in an attempt to recover the clan castle.

House Lannister however expected that to happen and sent a huge force to defend the Clan Castle, a force that OliverQ had no chance to defeat. With the Clan Castle lost for now and without a way to take'it back, OliverQ and the team decided to focus on the altars that were just starting to open and try to conquer as many as possible.

The initial fight for altars went well, the other houses didn't expect the swift solos coming from the House Stark, but as the minutes passed, they quickly started to adapt their strategy and started reinforcing their altars or sending very strong warriors to defend them. They didn't know however that part of the House Stark's plan was to make the other houses keep their attention on the altars while the most important building, the City of Glory was about to open for attacks.

Once the city opened, every house sent their best warriors to start rallying, but House Targaryen decided to do an unusual thing and take the lead with a quick solo. Seeing that, Sansa decided to name OliverQ and AcarA to rally the city together with House Lannister.

The rallies were quickly reinforced, and they started marching towards the city in minutes. It didn't take long for them to arrive in the vale where the City of Glory is located and as soon as they arrived, they noticed the impressive force defending the city. They didn't think about it for a lot of time, and they started charging towards the enemies, millions and millions of troops clashing in front of the castle, troops falling on each side so quickly, the sound of the weapons clashing could be heard from the House Stark's clan castles and the snow was turning red within minutes.

While OliverQ's cavalry rally was easy deflected by the spears guarding the city, AcarA had an easier time kicking the remaining forces and now House Stark had to defend against the incoming rallies. For a few minutes things did went very well for the team, managing to deflect a lot of rallies despite not having the catapults, the reinforcements went quickly in to replace the fallen troops but as the seconds were passing, there were less and less troops defending and a rally from House Lannister managed to break their defense. A back-and-forth battle between the 3 houses took place for mostly the battle, with none of the houses managing to hold the City of Glory for the 4 minutes.

With just 8 minutes left to fight, Cersei managed to find a way to hold the city despite the relentless attacks coming from House Targaryen and House Stark and without enough time left to be challenged it was looking like House Lannister took an enough lead for them to win the round. From being the 1st for most of the battle Starks were now in danger to lose even the 2nd place so they decided to focus their attention on that and try to conquer altars from House Targaryen in an attempt to keep at least the 2nd place.

Unfortunately for them, that plan also failed and despite fighting valiantly and relentlessly for the whole fight, the enemies managed to be more organized, and House Stark only managed to get a 3rd place in the round.

Overall, it was a good season for OliverQ with ups and downs, with victories and defeats, with tears and laughs and at the end of season he ended up with 279 fame points that weren't enough for top 300 in the glory rankings but still were a great achievement for him. He's now looking forward for the season 5, where he hopes he'll be able to finally unlock the tier 5 troops and perform better in the fights, maybe even find a team who knows. See you all on the battlefield!