Can they recover from this? - Arena of Honor Season 4 Special Round

As there were some technical difficulties with one of the rounds of this Arena of Honor season, specifically the round 4, the Old Gods organized a special round between the normal rounds specially for the warriors that couldn't attend the 4th round or that did and couldn't compete. This special round happened in the middle of the week instead of Sunday as the normal rounds and comes with one special rule: the score and rewards will be given only if the score in special round is above the one from the 4th round, otherwise if it's lower no loses will be taken. Since they didn't do that well on the 4th round, Shado and the team decided to give 'it a go and see if they can improve their score and maybe get some more rewards. However, due to the time it was scheduled only 7 of the original members could attend so they gathered together and went to the Arena of Honor battlefield. Once they arrived there, pre-registration papers were signed, and the team was registered with only 7 people with the team to be completed during the matchmaking.

Watching the matchmaking, Shado noticed that the team was completed with a few very strong warriors, [NBe]Mirela, [NBe]Ledogi and [CHN]Stereor. Very strong warriors joined the team but that was meaning that the battlefield will be stacked with the same warriors most likely. Once the matchmaking was completed, everyone entered the battlefield to see which house will pick them this time and against whom they will fight. Shado's team was chosen by House Stark this time to fight for them and as soon as every house picked their teams, the team started marching towards the frozen north of the battlefield where the House Stark clan castle is located. Once they arrived there, everyone started deploying their camps and start preparing for the fight. As mostly always Shado did a quick inspection of the battlefield to see whom they will fight against.

The inspection ended as Shado thought, the battlefield was stacked with very very strong warriors, including House Lannister having the strongest [FFS] team fight for them and House Baratheon and House Greyjoy having picked 2 very strong teams. A strategy was made with that in mind regarding what to build on the strongholds by the team and it was finished right in time as the actual battle started and the strongholds opened for attacks.

After the occupation time passed, the team commander decided to go with military camps for this fight, and while Shado thought that it's not the best idea as there were also Baratheon's and Lannister's doing that, he decided to go with the flow and hope for the best. The first set of strongholds went well, and it was looking like things are going their way but then the disaster happened for House Stark. When building the 2nd set of strongholds, there was a bit of indecision between the members that delayed the building of strongholds and that combined with none of the team members reinforcing the clan castle with a lord march, made the worst thing that can happen in Arena of Honor, happen.

Starks lost their Clan Castle and Baratheon's noticed that and quickly reinforced the castle so Starks couldn't take'it back with solos. El Sicario did a quick rally to try and take'it back before it was too late but was the rally enough?

Unfortunately, it wasn't enough, and House Stark found themselves homeless within the first 15 minutes of the battle. Even worse, while having the clan castle, Baratheon's could attack the strongholds too, so they kicked the constructors from there and slowed down the Starks points generation even more. Once the clan castle dropped the protection bubble, a war to recover their clan castle started for the House Stark.

it wasn't an easy fight as the Baratheon's didn't give up easily to the extra points a Clan Castle provides but after 10 minutes back and forth fight with clan castle exchanging hands a few times, the Starks finally managed to recover their clan castle. Was it too late for them to do something meaningful in this battle? Possibly, as they were falling behind with every minute, but they decided to not give up and try their best on altars and specially give everything on the City of Glory battle.

Same as everyone in the team, Shado was doing everything in his power to try and save this round, constantly scouting all the altars under attack and trying to get new ones for the team but despite that, having military camps and not being able to occupy any watch towers or catapults was hurting the team's points generation a whole lot.

Being so behind in points, the only chance for the team to do anything good in this special round was to occupy the City of Glory so the House Stark sent their strongest warriors to rally the city, El Sicario rallied, Mirela rallied, TyrionLannistr rallied, and they were all joined by the strongest warriors from all the other houses. All the houses teamed together to fight House Lannister represented by the [FFS] team led by Vitoo. A lot of rallies started as soon as the city opened for attacks, and they got filled almost instantly so within seconds they were already marching towards the City of Glory. On the other side, Vitoo massed millions of troops into defending the city and he's going to need them as 8 rallies were heading towards the city from all directions.

Despite not being able to win against Vitoo, every rally was able to damage his forces, so the battle became a back a forward battle between [FFS] reinforcements and the ability of the other houses to heal quickly and redo the rallies. The other houses forces combined were a huge threat and they even managed to kick Vitoo from the city a few times but every time he was getting the city back it was somehow getting harder and harder to kick him out mostly due to the high healing cost the other houses were having after each wave of rallies. The fight went for tens of minutes and the snow that was surrounding the City of Glory turned red from the blood of the fallen soldiers, as none of the houses wanted to give up on the city. Lannister's having the catapults helped them tremendously with keeping the city as they had time to reinforce between the rallies and ultimately, despite all the effort coming from the other houses, with 10 minutes before the battle ended, they managed to secure the City of Glory and ultimately the win.

Shado and a team ended up on 6th as they didn't manage to recover from that disastrous start. They didn't lose anything in terms of fame points, but Shado noticed once more that going for military camps when you're not the strongest team on the battlefield always ends very badly. Hopefully the next rounds will go better for him and the team, and they'll manage to actually score some fame points as the season it's on its middle and the rankings aren't looking good at all for Shado. Will he be able to climb the ranks or he'll stay on the bottom? We'll have to wait and see. See you all on the battlefield!