N0X UC S22 – Match 4: The Final Showdown vs HD!

Stepping into our fourth UC playoff match, I have to say this has been the best season N0X ever had. First time reaching this stage. One loss against WxD, two important wins against UTB and LEG, and now we face HD!. And deep down I already know this will be our last game of the season, so I am very curious to see what strategy leadership picks.

One day before the match, I remember the joke we pulled on our RoD frienemies, so I start training T1s again just in case.😜And right as leadership is debating real strategies, HD! decides to invade our kingdom and zero one of our careless players. It was not even a good attempt with several hits needed and with heavy casualties on both sides. The attacker really struggled to finish the job. But the damage was done, psychologically more than anything else, and the stage was set for a complete strategy shift.😡

So yes, the RoD card is played again. And my intuition paid off, because as the match starts, I already have my best T1 squads warmed up and ready to enter clown mode.

The funniest part is that this game, the least important match of the season, has the highest participation ever. Peak N0X priorities.

And even funnier, both sides enter with exactly 69 accounts. Nice. At least we have slightly higher starting points.

First buildings open, races begin, and we get Mother while HD! wins Warrior and both Outposts. They try a Warrior swap, but it's slow and we intercept, ending up holding Mother and Warrior. Normally I would be thrilled with this 50-50 start, but tonight captures mean nothing. As soon as those bubbles drop, we will be launched out into low orbit.

Bubble drops. And, pretty much as expected, we are kicked out of both Mother and Warrior.

The whole map turns red, like expected. We actually lose Warrior to a bank?!? But the real fun is still ahead!

Second wave opens. Another 50-50 split. In a normal game, rallies would be called right about now, speeds burning on healing, and building swaps getting ready. But not tonight. Tonight we are saving our energy for the chaos that comes later.

Needless to say, the bubble drops again. Map goes red again. No worries, it's all going according to plan. We are not losing, we're just luring them in a false sense of security, as the real victory tonight is not in these building Points.😜

So far we won two races: Mother and the far Outpost. A bit slow for us, but there's no real pressure to win races in this match.

When Casterly Rock opens, it is a coin flip, and we call the wrong side. HD! enters CR first and denies us the safe occupation time allowed by that four minute capture bubble. 

With only two races won and now at the Strongholds stage, HD wins both Stronghold races too. Shameful for N0X, including myself, since I am supposed to be a racer. But this is a low risk, low stress game, so it is fine.

Then the stage opens for the most intense part of any AC or UC match. Normally the hives lose their shields, rallies fly across the map, solos hit left and right, and the game comes alive.

But not here. And not tonight.😅

Tonight is T1 Season. Tonight we are like 70 bees stinging an angry bull. More annoying than dangerous, but extremely effective. And oh boy, HD! is getting annoyed.

We sting them so much they disband close Outpost because they are losing to our T1 rallies. Healing is not worth the trouble. And then they disband the second Outpost too? Maybe the healing costs? Maybe a mistake? Or maybe they are just tired of speeding across the map to hit castles with zero troops at home and want us gathered up into a single place? Because on the rare occasion they do find troops in any of our hive castles, it's T1s that give them close to no points and cost us almost nothing to heal back up so we can continue to sting.

We take the bait and we march for far Outpost, fill it, and watch HD! as the try and fail to take it back, untill they eventually sync rallies to kick us out. It's funny to watch the random solos and rallies bounse off our T1 defenders.

Honestly, this was the most intense coordinated moment of the entire match. If you can imagine the excitement going on so far this game, it's simply riveting.😂

And nothing beats the visual comedy of a Cassandra rally of six million T1s smashing a Vorian defender sitting on 2.4 million T5s. Not to mention we only lost 153 T1s and injured over 2Mil T5s. Enjoy healing that!

As we enter the final stage, we haven’t even reached 30k points. If we want to walk out with real rewards, we need a perfect chain: win a mine race, nail the swap, trigger the stratagem bubble, and pray the universe blesses us one more time this season so all three land back to back without a single mistake.

Despite running my best race of the match, I lose far mine. But that doesn’t mean N0X loses it, it just means I don’t win.😜With a little luck, we slip inside anyway. First step done.

Next: the swap. Can we pull it off? Turns out yes. They have no HD! lines, timing is hood and we execute a clean swap. Second step done.

Now comes the final part, the stratagem bubble & reinforce everything. The bubble minute should give us plenty of time to reinforce, and after it drops we can tank a few hits just like we did in the Outpost. This is the moment where the final starts need to align.

And… they don't.

We can’t push the emergency bubble in time. Their hits start to land, our holder drops while most of our reinforcements are still jogging across the map. I’m not shocked, holding with T1s was always going to be pain, but I’m still disappointed we didn’t get the bubble off. With that, the mine is gone. There’s nothing more we can do there except throw a few hopeless attempts just to confirm the obvious. And yeah, we can't take it now.

Time to change the strategy if we want a better outcome. Taking other buildings is hopeless and pointless; we can’t hold anything for more than a few seconds, even if we'd manage to take something. The only remaining source of points is the HD! hive. Good enough!

We start rallying their "point holders" like they’re the City of Glory in CCS or AoH. And most rallies bounce, but some eventually break through. And watching our army lines march back across the map like a we just hit Rebel Camps on the map is kind of hilarious.

Despite their T5s, they cannot stop the T1 madness forever. After a few attempts, we finally push past the 30k threshold. A perfect ending for a season built on sweat and tears.

And just as the match is closing, HD gives us one final goodbye gift. They swap DiAblitA into the far Port, the same player who invaded us and triggered this T1 clown fiesta response in the first place. How... poetic? HD! is 100% responsible for what happened tonight, even if they probably see it differently from their points of view. And they made that POV known on the official Discord shortly after the match ended.😀

The match ends exactly how we wanted. Our chances of beating HD! in a real game were slim to none, and even though the original plan was to play honorably and give this match a proper run, like against UTB and LEG, where we pulled off two great wins, tonight we chose the terms of our defeat. We secured 30k points, placed first in eliminations, drained HD of speeds and boots, and denied them elimination points for the season.

A fitting end to an incredible run. I am proud that N0X played four UC playoff matches in Season 22 and climbed this high.

Season well played! Curtains drop! And N0X is out. See you next season in UC!