CCS41: Crimson sunrise at Shadow Fortress

Champion City Siege is one of the oldest as well as respected tournaments in the world of Game of Thrones. It has existed since the beginning of times together with Old Gods and always attracted many participants by its unique and valuable rewards together with curious viewers eager to watch another epic battle.

There exist 8 ancient cities in Seven Kingdoms and each city hosts its own battle. Every city grants a title of Champion Conqueror together with a unique badge, "SF" troop appearance medals and other rewards including a great amount of diamonds to the one who manages to occupy the city for the longest time. Also Champion Conqueror will get the right to grant a few unique titles with good battle and economic bonuses as well as reward lords who will be considered their most valuable supporters with chests full of diamonds.

Nearly once per month strongest alliances gather waiting when each of Champion Cities loses its protection and the battle for the title of Champion City Conqueror will begin.

Lords and Ladies of 1HR are always waiting and preparing for the new Champion City Siege. The whole month before the event we are recruiting millions of troops, saving healing potions, accumulating resources and mustering our armies to arrive fast to support our strongest banners if they manage to occupy the city.

This time we got matched up to fight for Shadow Fortress. Previous CCS was hard and we lost many soldiers even though we managed to hold Champion City for the longest time and got victory we had to pay the iron price so this time the decision was made to take it easy and play leisurely…yeah right like it ever worked out this way 😂. After observing of all other kingdoms the next alliances were considered our main competitors:

WoW. Average sized, active and competitive clan with a few strong rally banners. The alliance was seen as the main opponent for Champion`s title as it was expected they should bring to the fight a big army led by YumiBaby and Melonpi 0v0.

FuK. Relatively new alliance with some good fighters like DrFate and Ghostrider56 and high participation level. Previous CCS they managed to unite Lords and Ladies from other alliances under their banner and took the win

TQL. One of the oldest clans in Seven Kingdoms with a lot of experienced players, good organization and high fighting spirit. Although it wasn't clear would they be able to bring enough troops to fight and whether they have a strong enough banner to be able to stand everyone else's attacks holding CS and emerge victorious after all.

Also we saw that Gjs is one of the competitors for the Shadow Fortress and even though it is a big alliance having strong rally banner Biet but experience of previous CCS showed they aren't much interested to compete for the title so it was expected to see them participating in the battles but not fighting for the main reward seriously.

Somewhere in one hour before the start of the battle and it was early foggy morning around 4 am after midnight our forces started to arrive to the Southern side near Shadow Fortress and build up a war camp there. First arrived 1HR leadership including me duke1 and Alatunn - most skilled and dangerous fighter of our kingdom who already came out Champion Conqueror twice in three previous CCS and even him being a DEP member he always joins us for kingdom related events like KvK and CCS. While more and more of 1HR members were coming to our camp there were only a few lords from other alliances lonely standing on the other sides of Shadow Fortress. At that moment I had only one question: “ Where is everyone? Do we take it for free this time?” From the other side, the strongest 1HR banner, DAEMON KING who was also joining DEP for Ultimate Conquest but returned to 1HR for CCS, had not appeared yet as well. Closer to the start of the battle main opponents started to arrive, first only a few WoW lords together with YumiBaby and Melonpi 0v0 set their camp on the opposite side of the castle, right after that FuK army led by DrFate took Western side and TQL placed their troops to the East from us. At last Gjs Biet followed by 4-5 lords and some shady group called themselves SYS came to Shadow Fortress – everyone prepared to fight for the Champions title.

The battle started with a mess where CS ownership changed hands every few seconds before Alatunn managed to take it over and get reinforced quickly. Right after all of the competitors saw that they can't recapture it easily, they started to rally their troops for big attack as they obviously didn't plan to give it up so fast.

While we lost most of our garrison inside and tried to send new reinforcements and heal our wounded troops WoW Melonpi 0v0 without waiting for new rally returned to attack Shadow Fortress with a big cavalry squad on his own and his swift strike has reached its goal - he was able to capture the castle and Alatunn had to retreat.

Now we changed roles and it was our time to attack but DAEMON still wasn't seen anywhere close approaching our camp. What could happen to him? But there was no time to wait tick-tock tick-tock Melonpi 0v0 started to improve his score and went on the first place with occupation time. At this point we saw that other lords launched their attacks trying to get the castle for themselves so our rally attack has been started as well. This time our army, fully composed of cavalry, arrived first and landed devastative strike vanishing Melonpi’s garrison without taking much damage back.

FuK, TQL and Gjs forces striked Shadow Fortress in a few seconds after us and Melonpi 0v0 got into the same situation that Alatunn was in just a while ago - even he managed to hold the castle he got left not so many troops in his garrison and while his battle comrades tried to help him sending new troops Alatunn repaid the debt and with lightning fast cavalry attack knocked out leftovers of WoW troops raising 1HR banner over Shadow Fortress again. 

The battle over the fortress got into a circle where we 1HR and mostly WoW took the castle back and forth from each other with others sometimes polishing its doorstep with their boots but not being able to hold it for any amount of time.

At last DAEMON KING has arrived on the battlefield and we got 2nd strong rally banner capable to devastate any enemy defense we could face.at this battle

At this point WoW was holding Shadow Fortress and Melonpi’s score was a bit better than Alatunn’s but with new double rally attack of Alatunn and DAEMON forces we managed to take over the castle very fast additionally some other 1HR lords arrived right after DAEMON which made our reinforcements stronger than before. WoW YumiBaby seen that things are going out of hand launched the desperate attack trying to prevent us from filling up the castle with troops but only got bloody beaten as her troops arrived one moment too late and had to face fearful odds while attacking garrison consisting of 4 armies belonged to 1HR lords.

Even though it seemed for a moment that we started to win the battle it was far from its end as other parties already assembled new rally attacks while we didn't plan and actually didn't have so many troops to withstand all of possible attacks without retreating from the castle. As it came out later WoW had the very same situation — they already lost a lot of troops and couldn't hold the castle tight anymore. At this moment Alatunn`s and Melonpi`s score was nearly equal again and after a few minutes chaotic battle with Shadow Fortress changing hands non-stop started and it went that way until the very end. Millions of dead troops were laying everywhere around the Shadow Fortress and at last moments of the battle it almost stopped on its own,

After dust has settled it turned out that WoW Melonpi 0v0 made longest occupation time and emerged as new Champion Conqueror

Despite finishing second there were no regrets about us not winning this CCS. Our plan, taking into account 1HR lords were exhausted by previous events including previous CCS, was to play it half power with using limited amounts of reinforcements. In such circumstances second place seemed a good reward, we also had fun fighting dynamic and intense battles against our opponents. Luckily they appeared to fight in such an early hour and made our day that we were waiting for the long month to be able to fight for Champion City once again. Congratulations to WoW and Melonpi 0v0, they played well, paid a high price - over 1 million of elite T5 soldiers were lost in desperate attacks to return control over Shadow Fortress and preserve Melonpi’s first place and fully deserved to became Champions! As for us tired and satisfied with our results we broke our camp at the Southern side of the castle and slowly marched home to our kingdom already planning how will we fight at upcoming Champion City Siege but that’s another story 🙂