HOH vs BaN - Siege of Winterfell Season 13 Round 2 - Can David beat the Goliath?

Season 13 of Siege of Winterfell continues with round 2 arriving swiftly!

Our first game of the season ended up with a confident victory against NBe. But there was a downside of it, as we boosted our score high enough to have a big chance of facing a very strong alliance in the next round. And that's exactly what happened... We got BaN, the newest top alliance, formed by the merge of BDR and N3O which alone were very strong opponents in this game mode already with N3O always dominating Siege of Winterfell seasons effortlessly! And BaN is like N3O on steroids!

That pretty much captures the mood before the upcoming clash. Our chances to win were like winning the lottery even though we were considered as one of the top alliances in the game!😂

Our instructions were simple: don't spend too many days of speed-ups on healing! Healing more than twice (with the bought event heals) and getting slaughtered again in seconds was pointless. It was quite obvious that we would need those speeds later in the season, hopefully in the play-offs too. Of course, that doesn't mean we wouldn’t try something! We had a secret goal: reach 3k points, which would be a huge accomplishment vs BaN!

Let's dive into the action and see if we managed to achieve our goal!

Part I: Early Domination

Even though our chances were slim, we gathered 92 members ready to play, while BaN had 97 players on the map. As we prepared for the bloodbath, we took a look at the battlefield and saw all the powerful fighters: Meridianos, Baiziming, Ur Candy and a lot more... I thought that surviving for 10 minutes would be amazing. I had no idea how our "David" team could match the enormous power of "Goliath".

Luckily, HOH had some brilliant tacticians who could always make a plan. This time, the strategy was not to divide our forces but to move as one group to one building, as splitting would certainly result in losing both sides of the map.

Our chosen building for the push was the Hot Springs, which could provide us the much needed healing buff. To be strategic, we didn’t move to the right side of the map immediately; we didn't want to reveal our plan too easily. We gathered as usual, as if we were forming small groups for the whole map. We only started moving when the countdown was over.

This move paid off because BaN divided their team, sending many armies to the Armory side of the map. As a result, we faced fewer (though not weaker) enemies at the Hot Springs. Upon arrival, we had more armies than BaN and used this advantage to launch a passionate attack. However, our great passion quickly turned into suffering...

Everywhere I turned, I was surrounded by players with 4-star premium commanders! You can imagine how fast I was dying. I wasn’t alone - almost every HOH member met the same fate. Despite having more banners, we crumbled quickly against these strong deployments, and soon no one was left alive, allowing BaN to easily capture the building and continue their marching towards our side of the map.

It's important to mention that healing costs in Siege of Winterfell have always been high and the new research tree didn’t help much in reducing them, so most of us decided to heal once or use less than 3 deployments for the further fight.

Unsurprisingly, it didn’t take more than 10 minutes for BaN to approach our base. A few of their banners were taking over the two Greyjoy Outposts on our side. I thought, let’s try. As I headed towards the building, my teammate LadyOfThorns ran beside me, saying: “We can at least try, right?” I nodded, and we rushed to meet our fate.

Our first attempt was an absolute disaster - we died in the blink of an eye! But the second time, with more help from our team, we managed to defeat the BaN armies stationed there and occupied the building, earning some nice points which got us closer to our 3k goal! We had no chance to grab any bags with resources from Winterfell, so our only way to score some points was through passive points offered by buildings.

We did well for the first 15 minutes. However, it became increasingly difficult to survive coming out of our base with more and more BaN forces arriving at our gates! Some lucky ones managed to sneak out and made a great stand at Base 4. Brave HOH warriors kept BaN busy there as long as possible, but in the end, we had to admit we couldn't hold them off for long.

But the heroic fight of the first 20 minutes resulted in us reaching our initial goal of 3k points!!!🙏

Part II: Base Camping

As mentioned earlier, it was really hard to leave our base – we were completely surrounded by BaN. We were rapidly running low on troops, but a few brave souls still ventured out for some fun. This fun could be “Catch me if you can” or solo attacks on strong players. We didn’t want to just sit and wait for the battle to end. Although we had Skribbl running in the background for those who preferred that sort of fun.😂

Our last significant attempt was for the Greyjoy Outpost 1. This action depleted our remaining troops, leaving us with nothing else to do but be a little annoying. Completely encircled by BaN forces, we pretended to venture out over the “wall” and then recalled when they moved toward us. This showed how much they craved elimination points, which we didn’t want to give them. We had lost enough for today. This childish prank got boring after a few minutes, so we stopped, just like we stopped everything else. We knew we couldn’t expect more - they wouldn’t retreat or give us any free points, so there was no point in making it longer.

Cheronkov from BaN delivered all the packages without any disturbance from our side, earning a huge amount of points for his alliance. BaN occupied the whole map, resulting in a score over 120k for them, while we got our 3k and left the battlefield crushed but completely satisfied that we achieved our goal! David didn't beat the Goliath...

We can only hope that the next battle will be more "balanced". We shall see in several days...

Thanks for your attention and till the next time!!!😀