A Tale of Ultimate Conquest

Ultimate Conquest – the final showdown for all alliances to increase their roasters to maximum strength and compete for the top spot. There are three major contenders this season, HOH, BAN and WxC. Each having certain specialties which make them unique and provide an edge in combat as we will see. WxC – has the strength, towering above the competition in alliance score and overall combat strength of their top rally leaders. HOH brings coordination – while lacking a true maxed account, they have many top tier rally leads who are able to hold buildings, and their reinforcers are ready to defend them well. BaN has a mix of both, with Tholking the maxed accounts are well represented, but also under him there are several top tier leads. In addition coordination is also a strength of BaNs. 

The Ultimate Conquest competition thus far has not seen any of the heavy hitters fighting against each other, in BaN we have faced LEG and RRH, HOH faced GCM and then WTF, the previous seasons champs – who have powered down significantly in this season. After two easy matches breezing by, both teams now prepare – HOH wants to test BaN, see how they are able to use their strategies and just practicing for a future potential loser round matchup. They do not want to dedicate all of their speedups now as there are several rounds to go. The winner of this match goes on to face WxC in the next winners bracket round – so also a tough match to contend for. 

As the preparations were ending both sides had brought all 70 warriors to the battle, fully prepared for battle and the opening races. The timer ticked to 0 and the races began, each side winning 2, HOH the towers of warrior and mother, while BaN got both outposts, each side knew the other would swap – warrior was done first, and BaN sped in, just able to counter the swap. On the side of warrior, no swap would occur – depravity with his Vorian line had raced in and he would hold. Moon who occupied BaN side outpost would also hold, having a strong infantry line and enemy outpost would be swapped. 

Before ports BaN also blitzed a rally wave at warrior, quickly taking back control and preparing for another swap – MnwahR would be the one to hold it with his vorian line and then we prepared for ports – the races opened and both ports were won by HOH – quite a blow so early into the match, with outcomes uncertain. As ban carefully watches for any swaps, enemy port is not swapped – depravity won it and he will once more try to hold, hoping to fare better than in warrior. For our port, they conducted a hard swap successfully. BaN once again set rallies against depravity, hoping for speed to be able to take over the building quickly, Tower of Mother was getting solod by top rally leads and needed constant reinforcement. As the rallies hit, once again they were victorious and removed depravity, next would be to swap in falcon to see how he might hold, however quickly the infantry players began to attack – infantry being very strong right now, especially vs spears made solos easier. 

Grombold holding our port was next, due to holding the building with 1 commander to little, the BaN forces were able to solo him out – also El Sicario gave it a try here and the results were very strong. 

After winning this objective CR was next – and Problemkii raced towards it, occupying it and requiring no further swap to Tholking – a common choice for CR given his strength over all other rally leads. For this match though, problemkii was more than enough to hold against the HOH forces and with all buildings under control, it seemed that this match was strongly going in favor of BaN. 

Strongholds were up next, and they went 1:1 on the races, not having much impact on the game overall besides the first capture points. 

By the time hives had opened, HOH had hidden most of their troops – but a few stragglers were still to be found: the player Nebula having been on the offensive was caught by sicario having maximum troops resulting in a big loss for him:   

  As the mines opened HOH knew this was their change to get 40k points for the rewards, and they went 1:1 – HOH winning with a rally lead and quickly reinforcing, BaN conducted a good swap and also held – quickly setting rallies against Delthulu in enemy mine. However as the solos began hitting, HOH used the bubble skill, giving them 1 minute to place the proper reinforcements and prepare to tank, the rallies marched and were quickly speedup, HOH unable to withstand the might of so many winning rallies lost the mine and ended with 30k Points.   For the BaN forces it was a great morale boost, seeing the third contender fighting against us like this we looked forward to the future rounds and hopefully finals to come! For now, celebrations were underway.