Lower Bracket Semi Finals ; BDR vs HOH

After our unnecessarily close match against N3O that ended with us taking the win, we had been mentally preparing to face off against HOH for the next elimination match in the lower bracket. I was very much looking forward to the game, i had stocked up as best as I could on speeds for this do or die match. Unfortunately it was not to be! I was not selected for the participating 70 for the game. While it was disappointing and made me sad for a bit soon I was excited at the prospect of sitting on the sidelines and cheering for BDR.

So as the participants from both sides piled onto the map I joined our voice call and settled down to watch BDR thrash HOH handily like we did in regular season. Or so I thought....

Things did not start out well for us, since we were able to pick up only the Lannister Outpost while everything else went to HOH. We had rallies up almost immediately on the Warrior as it is one of the more important buildings on the map now due to the base attack it provides. Unfortunately our first wave of rallies did not do much good. HOH meanwhile had their eyes on Lannister Outpost, that being the only objective under our control on the map. It looked like there was a bit of miscommunication or just lack of coordination as our rally fillers couldn't fill God Emperor fast enough and we lost the Outpost.

The map was looking rather dire but there was no time to rally anything else as ports were about to open, This time BDR racers popped off and we captured both ports. I breathed a sigh of relief, seeing a way for BDR to come back into the game. But that relief lasted no more than a few seconds. The swap attempt on Targaryen Port got sniped by none other than Grombold. At least we pulled off a more or less flawless swap in the other Port. But again the triumph of a swap well done lasted only a few minutes as the objective was snatched away from us.

Things were looking rather dire and unexpected. This was not supposed to happen! We came in expecting a tough game, but this had begun to look like a stomp in HOH's favour and I did not like it.

By the time Casterly Rock became open to attacks, the whole map was under HOH control. we had already attempted to rally different targets but success was yet to grace us. All that changed when SICKNESS took the central building for us and we pulled off a perfect swap. Tholking, our usual CR holder was not available today so it fell to FALCONN to guard the most important objective on the map.

We were winning most if not all of the rallies on the various targets, but either HOH's reinforcement game was the best in Westeros or we were failing hard with timing our rallies right. I was inclined to go with option two which were soon confirmed by Tanalyn who was slightly irritated with the situation but handling it all remarkably well. We had CR which we defended a few times with minimal trouble and we were slowly picking up other objectives around the map. about 20 minutes into the match we finally managed to pull ahead in terms of points per minute though we were lagging far behind in total points still.

This was one of those games where both alliances are constantly attacking multiple objectives or specific players are soloing certain locations to bleed the opponents. It was becoming quite hard for me to keep track of all the action. But every time we were rallying any objective my teeth would clench while I watched and hoped for a positive outcome. By the halfway points in the match the two alliances were neck and neck in total as well as points per minute, with HOH having a slight edge.

By the time the mines opened we were the ones in control, more or less. we were ahead in points and were generating points per minute as well. But this was a game of inches and the mines could make or break the game for either of the teams. As soon as the mines opened our racers rushed out but despite our best efforts we only managed to get get one of the mines. But we couldn't hold on to it for very long, HOH forces kicked us out of Targaryen Mind.

But we were so ridiculously close to a victory! HOH were still a bit behind but if they exhausted both mines we might fail to win this game even if we took and hold every objective in the game other than the mines. Fortunately the Lannister mine was soon ours thanks to the judicious usage of stratagem and we turned our eyes towards the other mine. Oni Fae is quite strong but a slew of solos and rallies from BDR forces was enough to dislodge her out of the mine. With the mines under our control, HOH's chances of winning hit a 0. While we focused on keeping and draining the mines, HOH used this opportunity to take as many buildings as they could.

The match was much closer than it needed to be and we made quite a few mistakes in the early game but slowly improved over the course of the match. Our next opponent is WxC and I am hoping that our rematch would be much better than our previous encounter.