Outplaying whales | AoH | Events with N0X

It had been a rough second season of AoH for Hotep. It had been ages since he had gotten a win, and even second places had become rarer than he would have liked to. Always, the matchmaking was either not in their favor or something was just off, and so things did not work. 

This time, Hotep was sure he had found an almost perfect group. Through the friend of a friend, he had gotten two good accounts from VMD, Wind5 and Samantha into his group that would help Renamer and himself in the rally leading and strong solo area.

With EpiX, Exto, Comm, Nee, Sancere and Solaris, his most reliable and experienced fillers were present as well. Originally, Anzore was supposed to be in Solaris place to have one more cav lead, but he did not show up in time. 4 rally leads should hopefully be enough, so did Hotep think.

Joining the map, there were a variety of alliances present in different groups. No one that was unbeatable, though, for sure. One tSB group, one HVL/NBe group, one GJs group, one M1B group and one IlI group. All alliances that Hotep knew, but none of the stronger accounts were familiar to him, so he could only guess their strength. Arguably a good thing, as knowing them would have probably meant they were far too strong.

With him and his faction looking through gear, they found one strong cav lead, GRIZZLI, but with Hotep’s group being spear-cav, they were not too worried.

Merry, on the other hand, who Hotep recognized after some thinking as a lead in an AC match a long time ago, did look strong, although the troop type was not clear.

In the end, they could only guess, and so they started with the strongholds, waiting for things to unfold.

As too many others went for troop camps, Hotep decided they would focus on Trading this time, ignoring all the fancy and complex strategies that would get along a full camp build.

The first battle of the day for Hotep would take place on the Altar of the Stranger, close by.

MUZIKANT got reinforced, so he had the army size in his favor, but with counter and a stronger synergy, even the counter of Kevin to the weakness part of Hotep synergy was far from enough.

It would not take long for Hotep though to meat the main enemy of this story, a spearmen account from RRH, Miltiades:

With Daena, Arymidon, Sararer and Dany, Miltiades had a basically perfect setup and without a counter-rally lead on Hotep's side, he knew there was no way of kicking that guy. That meant they either had to hope for others to do their job or accept second place at best if he got into center.

Meanwhile, Wind got a visitor, GRIZZLI. Luckily, Hotep did not plan to hold with inf. Any inf hold would have no chance against this account.

With Merry showing up soon after, the whale trio was finished. Merry’s cav was not strong enough to kick Hotep while he was reinforced…

...his spear was, though.

With those 3 accounts on the map. Hotep knew he could not hold center. So he shifted the plans. If there was someone to rally out the RRH lead, they would deny anyone else to gain control of the center while winning from trade alone. They had gotten 3 maiden altars by now, so they were in a good position for that strategy.

And a possible rally lead against RRH would soon be found: "IlI, what do you think about helping us kick center?"

Then the center opened, and of course, Miltiades got it. This was the deciding moment: Would someone be able to kick him? With just 3 and a bit million troops inside, it was not like it could outnumber every attacker. Hotep had two very intense minutes in front of him, but, while he was taking care of the altars, someone else took over the castle, an already established face:

GRIZZLI. Hotep had no idea how he won against his counter, but maybe the center was so depleted from catapults that it was possible to pull off. Anyway, cav was something they could rally.

Never mind…

Miltiades had soloed himself back inside….

A mid-tier inf lead would take over soon after. It looked like Miltiades reinforcers were not on point.

Then GRIZZLI would take over, and then Wind5 finally had his opportunity to launch a rally.

With weakness vs female and spear vs cav counter, the rally is quite decisive, although GRIZZLI had the better commanders.

It would take 2:30, 2 and a half minutes (!) until Wind would get kicked out. For a second, Hotep was hoping they could hold, but then…

… Miltiades struck back, and with the clearly stronger synergy, it was not surprising he won.

At that point it was 2 minutes until the mines and Hotep’s group was basically even with the Stark's, another full trading group.

It was so close, they had to fully commit to the mines. Their 4 leads needed to take and hold 4 mines; that was necessary. Still, Hotep wanted to keep an eye on the center. After losing sight of the center’s time and, because of that, losing a match in a previous match, he would do anything to avoid that.

When the holder of the center switched just seconds before the mines opened, Hotep as relived

Then it was time to get to work…

Reinforcing and taking mines lake crazy, Hotep was more than just busy. Even non-Rally leads ran for buildings to give them any edge possible.

When the mines were almost done, Hotep’s Tyrell's had played out a clear lead over the Stark's. 3k was not much, but in a max trade vs. max trade match, it was hard to catch up.

The Stark's had one lass ace up their sleeves. Without Hotep realizing it, they had become the holders of the center, and they were about to be done. Not again! He had one match like this before; that could not happen again.

At that point, Hotep was basically screaming at Wind5 to set up a rally as quickly as possible and let the other fill. Within 30 seconds, the rally was formed and filled, and with 12 seconds left, the rally sent.

Wind and Hotep spammed speeds on the rally to get it in as quickly as possible.

4 seconds before the center would have been taken by Stark, Wind had kicked them out! After that, Stark was defeated. Although Hotep’s faction could not hold the center afterward, their win was secured:

Thanks to their committed leads, but also their great reinforcers and supporters, they were able to get the win done. The rally of Wind was perfect teamwork, something Hotep would remember for a long time. 

Even though the map had a lot bigger whales, with teamwork and a few decent accounts, Hotep and his group were able to outplay them and secure the victory in a very intense and close match, gaining a lot of good reports as well, of which only a few made it into this story.

Hotep's perfect group had really been that, perfect. It allowed him to finally get a clean victory after quite some time. Only time would tell if they could build on that…

GOT WIC Chronicler HotepRa