The Cost of Victory: A CCS War Chronicle

Since my main account has been called "Fat.Com" by everyone, it’s time to shed some weight. In GoTWIC, I know only two reliable ways to lose power: invading or participating in Champion City Siege. Since invasions come with unpredictable losses, I opt for the more controlled alternative: CCS. Besides, my Battle and Bravery Tokens are running low, so this event came at a perfect time. My only hope is that I walk away with more Battle Tokens than Bravery ones😅

Starting close to a hefty 1.7 billion power, I take note of my power, just so I can keep track how much I’ll regret this decision after it ends.

CCS is usually a "whale watchers" event. Accounts like mine typically reinforce and sacrifice troops for tokens while max accounts duke it out, killing millions in a single hit. It’s a spectacle of destruction and very little strategy, a perfect setting for chaos.

As I pay the 10k blue diamond entry fee, my heart sinks. NBe is here. Fantastic. Battle Tokens? Forget about it! I’m going to get a flood of Bravery Tokens instead.

Among the heavyweights present, I spot Meridianos and it’s clear this won’t end well for us. Still, we’ve got our scrappy crew, with our own heavy hitters like ImperialRock and Ganicus.

Right before the start, our roster gets quite large. On Discord, leadership reminds us to use simple castle skins to reduce lag, but some players can’t resist showing off their flashy skin animations. Interest is so high in this match that we’re swapping out alt accounts to make room for actual players.

Prepared with two infantry presets, I’m ready to fill and hold as instructed. To my surprise, we manage to snipe the Great City at the start

We quickly fill it with reinforcements; 30 players, each sending over 1.3 Mil armies, alongside their main dragons armed with red skills. Even if most dragon skills don’t stack beyond 2-3, our defense looks solid. Or is it?

Then comes the slap. Meridianos hits, wiping out my troops in one devastating attack; 122 million power gone. Bravery Tokens, like I predicted. My troops may have been brave, but they stood no chance.

We reinforce and hold. The game turns in a cat and mouse scenario. The screen is a blur of rallies and solos. Amid the chaos I struggle to target the city for reinforcements.

Another Meridianos hit, another 122 million power gone. After just 2 hits my Altar Energy is gone, I can't even resurrect all the troops from the 2nd hit. And all this happens in the first 7 minutes, there's 90% of the game left to play. Scarry!

The map is swarming with rallies and solos; as well as our reinforcements. City of Judgement? Should be called "Murder town", it would be a more fitting name for what happens there.

As I sip my tea, my hand shakes, wondering if my troops deserved this fate. They could’ve been gathering resources or fighting Rebel Camps, but instead, they’re sacrificed to the great CCS meat grinder.

While I'm contemplating their fate instead of speeding them in... we lose the City of Judgement. This was probably what NBe was waiting for. To bleed us out and as soon as a few players stopped reinforcing, they could take the city.

At this point, I was ready to call it a day and pack up, but our CCS leadership was determined to reclaim the city. We began setting up waves and waves of counter rallies. I've never seen rally sizes over 7 million, but in CCS, they seemed to be normal.

Despite having 6 rallies running constantly, each one ended in humiliating defeat. My marches more T4 heavy, and although I had fewer troops overall, the loss in power is bigger, averaging nearly 150 million power lost per hit.

Seeing how "well" our efforts are going, leadership calls for 10+ rallies, acknowledging that 6 simply won’t cut it. So we continue the assault. My T4s are nothing more than cannon fodder at this point, while others are sending full T5 marches. This game truly is incredible, but not in a fun way.

Even with 10 rallies hitting close to each other, we still can't reclaim the City of Judgement. Halfway through the game, it feels like we've hit a wall. I can’t see a way back in, and judging by the silence in chat, I’m sure my teammates are just as drained and disappointed as I am.

A few well timed solos hit alongside the rallies, some are winning, other not. Even their combined strength isn’t enough to kick them out.

Like mad men, we keep pushing, refusing to back down, and eventually catch them off guard, reclaiming the city through sheer brute force. Barbarossa falls to timed rallies. The city is taken by Ganicus, who is shortly rallied out himself. TheOnlyKing briefly claims it but is forced out as well. After a series of hot swaps, ImperialRock manages to get in the city, and this time we hold strong, reinforcing back to 30 people. Now it's just a "speed in" game like it was at the start.

There was a strategy change, ImperialRock switched to spears. This gave us a better chance to hold the city. And this time, our commitment is stronger than at the start. Reinforcements pour in faster, without hesitation, no holding back, we're all in now.

Even when we take waves of coordinated attacks and get low, we quickly get back to a full 30 people. Through sheer determination and teamwork, we manage to hold the city until the very end. The souls of all our dead troops can be in piece, their sacrifice was not in vain.

As the game concludes, I’m left sure about whether I can really call this a win. I guess it depends on how you measure success. ImperialRock got 1st place and held the city for the longest duration, but we didn’t manage to get 2nd or 3rd place. The result feels ambiguous. Still, from my perspective we can call this a win. At the end of the match, we held the city the longest.

I managed to stack up some good elimination points, well above the 1.5 million required for max rewards, along with a decent number of tokens. Now that my token supply is back up, I can finally be a responsible lord and keep my royal troops safe for the next month or two.

While I'd love to say it was a pleasure to play, I ended up spending hundreds of millions of resources just to heal my troops, not to mention the weeks of healing speed-ups I burned through. My altar energy is fully used, and the altar is full with troops.

With all the losses, my account is going out at 1.6 billion power. In the end, I only lost 70 million power worth of troops? Not as bad as it could've been, honestly.

For me, Champion City Siege is never a pleasure, but it’s always an unforgettable experience. Despite the odds, despite the crushing defeats and the overwhelming rallies, we stuck together, endured and in the end we came out victorious. With a fresh batch of Tokens and Battle Diamonds I now need to retrain the troops I left behind today.