Arena of Honor - Season 3 Round 5 - Friendly Fire

The weeks quickly passing between Arena of Honor rounds, and Westeros is now officially entering spring, it's the begin of march, the snow has melted, and the trees are starting to bloom and for [N0X]Shado it's time for the round 5 of this Arena of Honor season. Since he joined the team, 3 rounds ago, all he got were wins and he quickly climbed in the Glory Rankings but can he and his team maintain this pace or there will be other teams standing in their way? As per usual the team's fighting time is early morning at 6 a.m. and on Sunday, 2nd of March at 6 a.m. sharp Shado went to the registration tavern to sign the pre-registration forms needed for ImperialRock to register the team. Compared with the prior round, [DUM] DU RI AN and [DUM]STRAW BERRY left the team, and they got replaced by [N0X]NIGHTQUEEN and [WxC]csnmf.

After the team registered, everyone waited patiently for matchmaking, and just a few minutes after, the gates of the battlefield opened, and everyone stepped in the battlefield. For this round, Shado's team was chosen by Daenerys herself to fight for House Targaryen in the south-west forests, near the dry desert. A quick inspection was performed on the other teams on the battlefield, and it was looking like none of the other teams could challenge House Targaryen in this match, but Arena of Honor is very fast paced and if you're not paying attention, you could lose everything in a blink of an eye. The only other strong team on the battlefield was fighting for House Baratheon and was mostly made of warriors in the same alliance as ImperialRock so a verbal agreement was made between the teams to not attack each other, but sometimes agreements get broken as we'll all see.

The time for inspections was done when the horn that sounds the begin of the fight was heard and the first set of strongholds dropped their bubbles. House Targaryen's warriors rushed to occupy them, and everyone knew exactly with how many troops they need to reinforce in order for the strongholds to be fully built before the next set of strongholds open. For this round, Tominy, team's commander has decided to go with cavalry camps as being the better team on the battlefield meant that they didn't need to counter the NPCs on the Watch Towers and later on the Catapults to win the battles.

House Baratheon was the only other house that decided to go with military camps, the rest of 4 houses decided that they should build trading posts. As expected, House Targaryen's plan worked as they were able to occupy all the initial altars and their NPCs forces were the strongest on the map, however, what they didn't expect is House Stark losing their Clan Castle so early in the fight and giving House Baratheon access to another 12 strongholds. A house losing their Clan Castle so early in the fights changes completely the pace of the fight as being the strongest team on the battlefield is not enough anymore, you have to actually fight for every altar, dragon pit and the City of Glory to be able to complete in points with a house with more than 1 Clan Castle, and as it will be seen later, things will only get worse for House Targaryen. Shado helped his team as much as possible and did his best to not let altars fall in enemy hands. He had his eyes on Altar of the Stranger and upon sending his spies he noticed a lot of troops stationed there but with no high rank commanders to lead them in battle, so he decided to launch a quick solo attack.

An easy win for Shado but on Arena of Honor there's no time to celebrate as there's action happening all over the map. About this time, ImperialRock noticed that House Baratheon's team didn't hold to their prior agreement, so they become free to hit on altars as well. While scouting the altars, Shado found another one with a lot of troops and no commanders, it was looking like it's a trend on this round to not set commanders. He didn't think twice and took the opportunity to eliminate the enemy.

Despite having most of the altars on the map and the Watch Towers, House Targaryen wasn't able to make a big difference in points and despite being on 1st place for now, there were only 5000 points difference between 1st place and 5th place so everything was still on the table.

It was now time for the City of Glory to drop bubble and open for attacks and ImperialRock was able to take 'it with a swift solo attack and being the strongest warrior on the battlefield none of the other houses really challenged him to battle.

Seeing that City of Glory is sorta safe with ImperialRock there and having all the catapults, the warriors of House Targaryen thought that the win is in their back pocket already but then, House Baratheon managed to surprise them again, and occupied House Lannister's Clan Castle too.

Having 3 Clan Castles now and access to 36 strongholds, meant the points generation of House Baratheon could surpass the ones of House Targaryen. But House Baratheon was spread so thin all over the map that it was impossible for them to hold all the strongholds and the points generated by House Targaryen's City of Glory, Dragon pits along with a whole lot of altars were enough to increase the gap in points and ultimately get the first place at the end of the battle.

Very well fought battle by House Targaryen and House Baratheon especially, and another win for Shado and his team, a win that didn't come as easy as the final score might show. Shado is now 2 consecutive wins away of the Glory King rank, will he be able to obtain 'it for the first time in 3 seasons or will some other team stay in the way in the upcoming rounds? See you all on the battlefield!