More complicated than expected | EXc vs vIp | EXc plays AC

Hotep was excited to play AC again. The few months of break in between seasons almost felt like years. Time to get back on track. With Hotep shotcalling while playing 2 rally leads could become challenging quickly, so he needed the help of others to have any meaningful chance at keeping control over the match. Because of this he hoped to get an easy match for the first round, so his team could get used to playing with each other once again.

The most important person for Hotep would be Wolfie. Wolfie would help Hotep as an additional shotcaller to keep track of all the things he missed. Enemy rally waves, a building low on troops, a timer he had forgotten about: That was her job and with her probably being a shotcaller for longer than Hotep had, Hotep trusted her to be perfect for the job.

Hotep had hoped for an easy match, but that did not mean that they would get one.

Unlike what this screenshot might suggest, vIp was still a decent matchup, having dropped power a bit. vIp had some strong rally leads and with the holiday season, EXc’s participation was questionable at best, so there were a lot of question marks in Hotep’s head before the match started.

The participation turned out to not be an issue. Even though vIp was able to get a few more players in, 70 was not a bad number for EXc considering the holidays.

Starting the match, Hotep had planned a swap on mother, while rally leads would race for the outposts and warrior directly. The player who originally was in the plans for slowmarching, theHunter, was absent that day, so a replacement had to do it.

At the start, EXc won every race except warrior, a good start! But look at that! No line towards mother. The slowmarcher assigned was also on vacation and when the match started, the network of their holiday place broke down.

So SHEWOLF had to do the holding, which was far from optimal. The account was one of the weaker leads and could easily get kicked by strong cavalry solos, let alone rallies.

This was not a good start!

With 3 buildings won, Hotep did not see the need for any offensive action and vIp, apart from a few solos, did not do much either, so it was time for the port races. 

Both EXc lost, that was not good. Mother at risk as soon as they figured out the weakness and now both ports lost? As soon as those bubbles dropped, EXc had to get moving.

The start would be speed rallies, with a focus on the opposite side port, although a few bleeding rallies were sent on the home port as well, as the inf players should avoid the enemy port, defended by cav.

The timing was good enough, although not yet perfect, so Tora is able to take the port. With CR opening at that moment, many leads came too late though to race for CR and that led to vIp’s strongest player winning the race and locking down CR.

Deciding that Hora was too hard to kick, Hotep and Wolfie decided to skip CR for now and focus on the other buildings. With him being in CR, he at least was not able to bleed with solos.

It only took 2 rallies for Antheia to get the port. Apparently they were reinforcing with low amounts of troops, so they could get kicked easily by rally’s countering the spear holder.

With the point tick now on EXc’s side, it was time for them to play defense again, with the first rally wave coming for Tora’s port.

Their reinforcing was a bit off and the rally timing of vIp was decent, so the rallies took the port. Hotep had a lot to worry about. Down in points, down in points per minute and still with the issue of mother in his head, he was not sure if this was winnable. But EXc had shown they could kick vIp’s stronger leads, just not their strongest, so it was no time to give up. Far from it

Two waves of speed rallies would secure the outpost that had been lost to bleed rallies before and also secured the port yet again.

The Outpost would continue to get traded back and forth, but with both ports and at least one Outpost always under the control of EXc, they started to build up a lead over vIp.

vIp also apparently lost steam. The rallies and solos became less and less frequent. Maybe they were out of heals. They still did not send more than solos towards the tower of mother. Apparently, they never saw the potential of that building. Hotep himself was sure that he could have just soloed SHEWOLF out of mother if he were on the enemy team.

Anyway when the mines opened, EXc had built up a 9k point lead, which meant they only needed half a mine to win. Easy right?

Of course, they lost both races. Why should they make things simple, right? But the holders were not leads, so mass solos was the order Hotep gave.

And so before they could fully reinforce, EXc had soloed their players out of both mines, securing them the win. vIp had no steam anymore and did not even try a rally wave on the mines. It was just not worth it for them

With the match being over at this point, Hotep wanted to find out one last thing: How strong was this “Meister Hora”? And could they have won a rally on him. Willingly being the test subject, Hotep sent a rally on CR and... lets say… that would have been an expensive win at best…

With Bleed and Jon, Sandor and Daeron, even a full counter rally could not do much. On their own, probably not a single rally from EXc would have won against him. In a group they might have been able to, but that was not needed.

In the end, EXc’s win looked more convincing than it was. For the first half, vIp was able to keep themselves just behind EXc, always ready to strike. If they had gone for mother and by doing so, gained more troops to use due to cheaper healing, they might even have won. Hotep will never know why they did not go for it.

Maybe sometimes a battle is not won because of one side being better or worse, maybe, sometimes, knowledge is more important than anything else. Them not knowing how weak mother was may have lost them the match.

For EXc it had been a successful, for Hotep a rather stressful match. He would need to find other way to split his tasks. Also, EXc would need some more practice, as they did not do slow rallies or a swap in the entire match. So there was still a lot to work on and Hotep had to get back into the planning room…

GOT WIC Chronicler HotepRa