Arena of Honor - Season 1 Round 12
Another round of Arena of Honor was up, and once again it was time to get ready for the battle. I was ready for the challenge and confident with our team. We were doing good since we formed this faction, which turned out to be a permanent one as we got along well and our vision for the event was quite similar. We were getting successful results overall, and dominating the battlefield most of the time. Our way of controlling Altars and other minor buildings were flawless, but there was a point of the game where we were failing most of the time… the City of Glory!
Our faction was formed by all fierce fighters, who knew when to step up, when to take an action without needing to take any commands on voice, which was the key to our success! What we were missing is a “whale” in our team. A player, who could change the odds, defend against all enemies, who could compete for the Glory City! Our strongest was Tweety, who was actually the leader of our alliance and also leading AoH matches. He was surely a strong rally leader, but even his strength was not enough to compete against those who were close to maxing their accounts… This was the reason we never had the chance to actually win an AoH match, cause we never successfully occupied the middle city!
Then why did I keep calling our team successful? Because we had a great run of getting 2nd place in all of our matches together!
This was what a team who could never claim the City of Glory could do to take the best possible outcome! Knowing our faction’s strength, and also my own, I was happy with what we were achieving! But this was never enough… I always had the urge in me, to win at least one round of this event!
At the beginning of AoH, back when the event was first introduced, I was a part of a very strong team and started the event by winning all my matches! I knew how satisfying that feeling was, and I wanted to experience that again… For the last couple of rounds, I am playing with my friends, in a weaker faction than I had before, and getting the win with this team would mean much more to me! There were 3 matches left until the end of the season, and I was ready to do whatever it takes to fight for the win!!
Our team this round was Lyyanna, ЩаКакДам, apxucmpamer, BonnieP, HeliumSloth, Ashun, Кастанеда, Tweety, Kayanide, and myself! We were relying on Tweety’s strength, hoping not to have any maxed accounts on the battlefield… We were a coordinated team and with some luck in the matchmaking we could make the difference!
Soon after taking our places on the event map, we started scouting our opponents to get some information! To our right, in Red Faction, there was a team of MBL & WxC combined. We realized Pinky was in their team as well, who could give us a fight and cause some trouble!
Next to them, the Green Faction was also another team of MBL! We were expecting these two factions to work together, form a small alliance and help each other out! That could change the balance of this match but for me, it was just another opponent and nothing more!
On Purple Faction there was a team from N0X, and their main rally lead was Belore II. He was strong, but not at the level where our rally leaders cannot deal with!
Our neighbor to the other side, Yellow Faction, has Neo members in it. According to our discussion in our team, we decided we could deal with them as well.
Things were looking good so far. There were strong opponents on the map, but they were not at the level where it became impossible to even fight against them! I thought we could have a chance here, until I saw the Cyan Faction and the BDR players!
The good thing was, this was not the main team of BDR but probably a secondary one! They were still looking stronger than us but it was still possible to get something out of this! It wouldn’t be easy, no, but I was eager to get the win and our team was experienced enough to handle these situations!
I was having thoughts about a different approach for this battle. In all of our previous matches, we were building Trading Posts from the Strongholds, to maximize our point income. With the latest update, there were new buildings introduced, which had different purposes, and could be taken only by the troops from the Clan Castle!
Looking at their descriptions, I felt like these two new buildings could help us a lot, especially the Catapult since we were having trouble claiming the City of Glory, and could use its help kicking other factions out of the castle! But to do so, we had to build inf/cav/spear/bow camps rather than Trading Posts! It was a risky call, more like a do or die one… Cause if that strategy would fail, we wouldn’t be able to get our usual 2nd spot either!
I asked Tweety about this, I always count on his expertise. He also played in one of the previous time slots, so he had the chance to give it a try there. He said it would be better to stick with the Trading Posts so we followed. That’s how the game started for us, and we built full Trading Posts once again!
We sent reinforcements to our Trading Posts to level them up quickly. It was important to pay attention to this, so that we could start generating more points faster! Our strategy of building Trading Posts kept on going with the second wave of Strongholds too, and we also managed to take the Altar in our area!
I kept looking around, to see what our opponents were doing. I saw Cyan Faction, BDR players, were building Offensive Camps. I was worried as they could make use of the new changes with this strategy, but was also excited to see what would happen as if they would fail we could have a chance to take the upper hand against one of our main opponents! Our neighbor to the right, the Red Faction also built some Offensive Camps. They went for a hybrid setup with Trading Posts. I thought the event would require factions to focus fully on one type of building to get maximum benefit from it, so from my point of view Red suddenly became a weaker opponent and I was glad to see that as they were our neighboring faction.
The match was going mostly balanced by the new Altars opened. We were in control of our area and Altars, but the more buildings we started to get the harder things started to become. Many factions started targeting our buildings, we were getting a lot of defense notifications… We were dealing with those buildings one by one, this was not the first time we were being targeted in an AoH match. That wouldn’t be enough to stop us!
While we were clearing the enemy from our castles, I saw a different defense notification. When I clicked it, I couldn’t believe where it took me! It was our Clan Castle, being occupied by the Red Faction!
It was shocking to me… All those matches we played, we never really had the threat of losing our Clan Castle! And I was thinking Red Faction had a wrong strategy with their Offensive Camp / Trading Post hybrid setup! I couldn’t be sure if it was us who didn’t have enough troops to defend the Clan Castle properly, or them with actually a good stratagem. Either way, I started asking for help from our team immediately! Losing the Clan Castle would cut all our access to the Trading Posts, and that would result in a huge loss of points!
Luckily, Tweety was fast enough to respond with a strong solo attack, and managed to take our castle back without giving the Red Faction enough chance to actually occupy it! We started reinforcing the building back, this was for sure an important lesson for us and taught to be more careful with our defenses! With a mixture of shock, stress, and relief, I once again started focusing on Altars to keep what we were doing…
Our control on Altars were pretty good just like our previous matches, we were holding all Altars residing in our area and we were also fighting for Altars from different areas as well. Also with the help of our Trading Posts, we took the 1st rank!
We failed to capture any Dragonpits, and couldn’t really take a Watch Tower as the troops of our Clan Castle were not as strong, but we were still keeping the lead! It was coming close to City of Glory to unbubble, which would determine the actual difference between the factions, and would be the main point of the game for getting the win out of this match! I was hyped and also curious to see how it would go with the Catapults next to them. One way or another, we had to be ready as this could be the decider of the entire match!
Our faction didn’t have any player who could take the City of Glory with a solo hit, we had to start a rally and launch it also using rally boots to make things faster. This was what we did in the previous match. Once the City unbubbled, I saw no rallies from our side… I asked Tweety if he could start one, but he told me to wait. It was a strategy which worked properly in our last match, so I was kind of surprised to get the response “wait”. I followed the order, but I was keeping my eye on the Glorious building to see how things would turn out.
It was first the Cyan Faction, BDR, who took the castle. Just 1 second after that, Purple Faction’s march reached the building and kicked BDR out! The moment Purple Faction was getting ready to reinforce, Red Faction’s armies showed up and captured the castle! Just in a couple of seconds, the City of Glory changed hands 3 times!
Tweety ordered our team to keep focusing on other buildings and don’t waste any time with the Glory City. I was still curious as to why we were not trying to rally the castle! “It doesn’t worth the effort and troops lost”, Tweety said. He was not expecting any of our opponents to actually occupy the building, as he thought they were almost equal in terms of strength. He was thinking of dominating the map, with all the buildings we could get while others were distracted with the City of Glory, we could actually get the win. I didn’t think of this to be honest, but I liked the idea. It could be an easy win if things go in our favor!
Following the orders from him, we started taking more Altars. We also managed to take two Dragonpits. It wasn’t hard to claim all those buildings for us as almost all other factions were fighting for the Glory City. The idea of Tweety was genius, and we were still in the 1st place!
While the fight was ongoing, one of the new buildings, Mine Shafts, opened. Since they didn’t require Clan Castle troops to claim, we were able to attack them! We captured two Mine Shafts and obtained even more points!
The fierce battle for the City of Glory was still going on. I was checking the action there from time to time, and it was changing hands constantly. No faction was able to overcome the other and this was great news for us!
The end of the battle was coming closer, with only 12 more minutes to go! We were working non-stop to stay in the lead! But again, I saw that defensive notification… Our Clan Castle was under Red Faction’s control for one more time! I couldn’t believe how this was happening as we weren’t used to seeing Clan Castles getting captured in our previous matches. Maybe going with some Offensive Camps was actually a good idea that we should have considered.
This time it was going even worse, as Red Faction managed to reinforce the building with some of their accounts. That would be a disaster for us to lose such a crucial castle, that easily, while we were going for the win! We had to do something and do it quickly!!
Tweety was fast with the response again, but a single solo hit was not enough. The building was reinforced this time, even if not fully it was still not that easy to take it back! More of our players started hitting them, including me! After spamming a lot of hits we took it back again but losing the castle twice in a match was not promising. We had to be careful in the remainder of the match!
Bad news kept coming for us… With the first available space, I checked the City of Glory again. The Red Faction was about to occupy the building, that way we would lose the first spot! Apparently, that was the reason why they couldn’t fully reinforce when they took our Clan Castle. We were so distracted and missed what was happening.
8 minutes to the end and Red Faction was in the lead. There wasn’t enough time for us or any other faction to turn this game… We were so close to the win, I felt devastated! There was nothing to be done though, we had to keep fighting to make sure we were safe at rank 2!
I asked everyone to keep it together, and focus on the buildings at hand. There was no way we were losing anything else. Our team with experienced players reacted well to this. The best thing we always did, our success in dominating the map was paying off! We managed to hold all the buildings we had at hand, and even contested some others, and finished the game in 2nd spot!
This was the closest we could get to the first place. We followed an interesting strategy, by not going for the City of Glory at all, and it was about to work for us! In the end, we finished 2nd again, and got another +20 points! I think we still played a good match, and did everything in our power to win. I have no regrets about the outcome of this game.
GGs to all players attending this match, and good luck to all for the rest of the season!
Arena of Honor - Season 1 Round 12 Highlights;