The dawn of the Arena of Honor (AoH)

I had been awake for way too long. A few members of my alliance had decided to participate in the new event Arena of Honor together. Only five people could form a team together, the other option was going in alone. For the first time it would for sure be better to join as a group. That way we could most likely coordinate well and maybe even get a win in the first match. That would be fantastic.

As always I had studied the description and rules of the event, as given by the Old Gods. While the old gods tried to give guidance to the lords and ladies, they were gods and therefore their messages were sometimes strange and not clear enough for us normal humans.

The AoH though seemed pretty straight forward. Basically you had to take locations, as you had to do in other events like Alliance Conquest too. Nothing new here. There were a lot more locations to capture though. And you could upgrade some of those locations. Then there were buffs … constant attacks by other parties and the City of Glory in the middle. If you really thought about it, maybe it was not so straight forward as first expected.

There would be more than those five people per team too. Which meant communication might become a problem. I was not sure how to handle that. Then again, I had only read about all that stuff. The real match would follow soon. First though I would need some sleep. I could not do more at this point anyway and nothing could be gained by being too sleepy to pay attention to the match.

AoH Preparations

All the members of the team had gathered. There were Sir ST, Ibrandul (me), SiR ST, magigian and AnaGrama. A solid team. Sadly not everyone who had applied had made it into the final team. One other alliance member had been kicked out, because of a mistake of our planless leader (I will not tell you who that was, other than it was not me :P )… Anyway, the team had been finalized and was there to compete.

The general strategy was decided on. It consisted of “Let’s see if we win this. No, we will win this!”. As you can already tell it was a grand strategy.

As soon as we were allowed to enter, we joined. No problem there, until we found out the hard way, that we had not talked about troop composition. Yeah, a good start. Not everyone had brought the troops needed by our rally lead. Well, at least everyone had brought their highest tier of troops.

Our allies were from another alliance but both from the same. They would be able to coordinate well with each other, so another problem gone.

We checked our closest opponents, and we knew we could win this. The stronger opponents were further away so no direct problem for us. Studying the rules had paid off, as we knew we were basically safe. This match would be a piece of cake. Take everything we could, crush the opponents to both sides, take the City of Glory … yeah, no problem. At least that’s what we had thought.

The match begins

We reinforced our Clan Castle and took the locations that opened up without a problem. Some recalled their troops right afterwards … which was bad. Someone had not informed them, that we would have to hold those locations for a certain amount of time before they would really belong to us. Those mistakes were rectified fast though. No problem … it was still all going according to plan, even if we were back in points.

When the timer had counted down we could construct things on those spots. So far everything was according to the rules. Even with the blunder in the beginning we would certainly be able to take the victory here.

It took some time for all to construct their buildings. I was one of the slow ones to realize when locations were ready to upgrade too. If only the UI would have shown us in a comprehensive way, when locations were ready …

Okay, maybe I was kinda blind in this event. It took quite some time to realize what those yellow circles meant. In hindsight I feel quite stupid … especially since I payed attention to the red ones that showed up later on …

While the strategy was sound, we were sometimes too slow or too dumb. It was frustrating.

We were still figuring out what to do in this event, while others seemed to be way ahead of us. We had taken another Clans Castle and someone might have reinforced it but to be honest … I did not even realize that at first.

To my horror I realized that even with the additional points we had gotten from the other Clan, we had fallen behind another Clan.

Rank three … while  our goal was to win. That was not acceptable. We were still debating on how to proceed, when we finally realized that the Glorious City was about to be conquered by another Clan.

We had been too occupied with trying to hold our locations and kicking out attackers.

As soon as the timer had reached zero, we knew we had lost. No, we still could take back the City of Glory. We just needed some coordinated attacks!

Yes, we still had a chance. We would kick out that Clan and take the Glorious City and with it the victory! That was obvious. And it would be a good twist to the story, right? Well …

Inefficient … that’s what I would call our approach. Were our rallies successful? No. Was someone else successful in taking the City of Glory? Again, no. We had lost our chance to win. We had lost a lot more than that. What had gone wrong?

The second place was a good one, we could agree on that. And we had been very lucky. Without really understanding the new game mode, we had not ranked last. That should count for something. And it did not annoy us at all, that with the setup we had, we should have won … nope, not at all (ok, it annoyed us a lot … but it took a bit to realize that… again, we sometimes are not the fastest people 😉 )

What I learned from the first match

Coordination

Coordination is one of the key elements in most game modes. AoH is no different in that regard.

If you go in with a team, check what troops are needed and stack up on them.

Define roles. You need more than one rally lead to really do something here. You can win with one rally lead by taking and holding the Glorious City, sure. But what if someone else takes it and you need to kick that person out? You can start multiple rallies on a location here. Use that to your advantage. Then there are other roles that are important, like people to upgrade buildings and mine. It makes the match so much less complicated if you have clear roles set.

Situational Awareness

The UI is helpful. If you see a yellow circle in the bottom right side, it means you have something to do.

Don’t ignore them. It is bad for you and for your team. The buffs you can get are quite good and you will need them most of the time.

The same goes for red circles. They show you either incoming attacks or when a location will be captured and therefore lost for your Clan.

Timing

You see a red circle and a timer counting down. It is for one of your locations that is about to be captured. Well, good news first: Until the timer reaches zero, you can still take the location back and till it reaches zero the location still belongs to you. As soon as the timer reaches zero a bubble will pop up around the location and you have to retake it.

With that in mind, you should be aware of them and you should act. At the same time though you still have time to rescue the situation. Don’t rush all in, especially if it was the City of Glory that took a location. The stats are not that good usually and even a filler can retake the location and recall the troops right afterwards. Most of the time speedups are not needed either for that.

Locations

The Strongholds are safe from all but the City of Glory until you lose control of your Clan Castle. You really need to keep it under your control.

Altars on the other hand can be attacked by everyone. Keep that in mind and use it to your advantage. The available buffs depend on the location of the Altars compared to your Clan Castle.

Sept of the Seven

You want your own for the 100% heal speedup. Getting the Septs from other Clans is less important, as you won’t get a higher buff… but … if you take their Sept, they lose their heal speedup.

City of Glory

Whoever should hold this location and be worthy of it, shall win the match. Seriously … this location is game deciding in most matches. Not only does it give you points from other factions, it can also attack for you not attackable locations and occupy them for you. Even if you can’t hold it, you should try to hinder others from taking it. You really want this location … and you want it as soon as possible. Oh and use a rally … you will most likely not win alone.

For further emphasis here again the screenshot of the final result:

Yellow never lost their Clan Castle. The red square is because of the City of Glory. Same for green. You really should not underestimate the importance of this location!!!