Alliance Conquest continues! 4TR vs HFE!

After a tough defeat in the first round, we had to move on with the season. It was a painful defeat in a match in which we definitely showed our weaknesses, so even though we were facing a stronger opponent, we still had a great chance to win, which makes this defeat even harder. The good news is that we will now have much weaker opponents in the next matches, so I expect that we will now have a few wins in a row. However, with this defeat in the first round, we can probably say goodbye to our efforts to reach the playoffs this season... But we will not despair, we have to move on! There are still many matches ahead of us this season and even though we can no longer fight for the biggest goals, this will certainly not diminish our efforts to give our best in all the remaining matches!

Just as I had assumed - HFE! We are facing a much weaker alliance than us. It's just like that - you have to achieve good results from the very beginning of the competition in order to compete against the best, and since we were defeated in the first round, I expected such an opponent. At first glance, logic dictates that this should be an easy match for us, but we should not pre-emptively write off the opponent! I constantly tried to convey this to my teammates as soon as we found out who the opponent was - we have to stay motivated!

The preparations for the match went in the usual rhythm: I quickly assigned which player would fight for which Castle and we could calmly wait for the start of the match. I decided not to fight for any of the Castles this time either, but to wait and see if I would have to attack their Castles if necessary, and eventually I might go to fight for Casterly Rock, but we will think about that when the time comes. I was happy to learn that we managed to gather as many as 40 players in the match, which is one of our records! Maybe because the match was played on Saturday when many of our players can play matches, or maybe because of my great dissatisfaction that I expressed in the alliance chat after the defeat in the first round, but a lot of our players showed up for this match!

On the other hand, HFE clearly had big problems with their players... Maybe they assessed that we were too much for them and decided not to show up for the match against us, I really don't know what happened, but they showed up with only 9 players... All of that meant that we were huge favorites in this match and anything other than our big win would be a miracle.

This turn of events made me think about why I soon changed the match plan: since it was certain that we would win even before the match started, I decided to watch this match from the sidelines, not to interfere but to let my teammates play on their own, and I would order them what and how to do it! I did not make this decision because I wanted to save speed up or heal items, but because I wanted to give our weaker players, who in the vast majority of cases cannot express themselves like us who are much stronger, a chance to play too! Especially because there were so many of us! As we know, the strength of the players in this event is extremely important, it is necessary to place the strongest players in the Castles so that the opponents have a lot of trouble removing them from there and taking the Castles, so a large part of the weaker players just send troops to defend, they cannot experience the elation when they win the race for the Castle, or when they attack and take the Castle from the opponent! I saw this match as an ideal opportunity for our weaker players to experience what it feels like!

On that note: the match has begun, the troops are out!

Big success - we took 3 out of 4 Castles!

I knew it was of great importance - they with only 9 players in the match can hardly do anything against our defense, and with all that there is only one of their strongest players in the match - danis6. We only need to send troops to the defense and we are secured for the continuation of the match, so I ordered my teammates to, as always, focus first on the Temple and Tower, the primary goal is to defend those two Castles, and then the Outposts. I eagerly awaited the reaction of the opponent when the truce period expired, I wanted to see their strength. But, that did not happen... In fact - not only did they not attack us, but Lorki managed to take possession of the Targaryen Outpost, the only Castle that belonged to them, with one solo attack!

Things were going exactly as I had assumed they would - in fact, they were just waiting for us to take the Castles and send troops to defend them, since HFE made it clear right from the start that they had no intention of fighting too hard. In a way, I can understand them, they are simply no match for us and they are aware that they cannot beat us, so they do not want to spend too much and will try to save their speed up items for the next matches. Unfortunately, in the recent past we have encountered situations like this quite often...

The time for the races for Ports was slowly approaching! I had no doubt that we would have a hard time taking the Ports if we lost one or both races, but why complicate things? I do not want to give them even the slightest chance in the match, and that is why I called for seriousness the whole time! My teammates took my words seriously, since we won both races and took both Ports!

The situation was quite clear - we need to send troops to the defense and calmly wait for the continuation of the match. Now we are already approaching the halfway point of the match, very soon we will have to fight for the central Castle - Casterly Rock, after which we could officially declare victory in the match. The situation was still unchanged - there was still no reaction from our opponents, so our point advantage was growing every minute. Since the situation in the match was like that, I decided not to even try to fight for CR, although traditionally, in most matches, this was the moment when I would join the match. However, this time there was no need for that.

While we were waiting for the race for Casterly Rock to start and for the Strongholds to open, I already started calculating in my head whether we would be able to reach the 80k point mark, which is actually the only thing that can be our goal in a match like this. I didn't know the exact calculations since I didn't know the exact number of points we would get when we captured all the Castles, but I realized that we would be very close to that limit... While I was calculating all this in my head - the race for CR began! But, something else happened, very important...

We won CR, but WE LOST LANNISTER PORT?? How could that happen??

Since I decided not to interfere in the match, I didn't even send my troops to defend the Castles, so I completely missed the fact that Lannister Port was left almost unprotected, which HFE took advantage of and took it from us! Although it doesn't mean much for the final result - it's a big blow to our efforts to reach 80k points! Now all those calculations that I calculated literally half a minute ago fall flat! I couldn't believe it! I later found out that my teammates completely relaxed, didn't send enough troops to defend that Castle, which is why we lost it. Of course, I'm largely to blame for that since I didn't do anything to defend ourselves from their attacks, so I can't be too hard on my teammates - the blame is entirely mine!

I knew it wouldn't take us long to get that Castle back under our control, but maybe we just lost the chance to get to 80k points... Those few minutes that Lannister Port was under their control meant a lot! And of course - as soon as the truce period was over, Paul attacked and got that Castle back under our control.

With this act, the match was officially decided - there was no more time, nor did HFE have enough players to capture all the Castles and thus win! However, we were only now starting a race against time, 80k points is really a lot in a situation when the opponent did not have many players, or when we could not get many points by attacking their cities! Our imperative was to capture literally all the Castles and hope that this was enough to reach the much-desired maximum score in this match! Time was slowly passing and every few minutes I was recalculating whether we could reach 80k. We were a few seconds away from opening Strongholds, we had to take both at all costs!

Mission accomplished!

I was still more interested in math than in the map! There are 39 minutes left in the match, we are gaining 1300 points per minute, which means that by the end of the match we will gain about 50k points from the Castles alone, plus 16k from Mines if we take both, plus about 24k points that we currently have... It will be very close! The good thing is that HFE is not even trying to attack anymore, instead they have created a rally in which they have hidden the remaining troops and it is obvious that they are waiting for the end of the match. However, we have our own worries! Time is running out!

Now we are making a completely illogical move, but I have assessed that this should be a safer option for us - I decide to remove Paul from Lannister Port and send him to fight for Mines, so even though there was still a lot of time left until the end of the match, I wanted to do it in time to keep Paul free, so we wouldn't take any big risks when the battle for Mines start. In this situation we are in now, when every point is important to us, we run the risk of being without one of the key Castles, which brings us a lot of points, however, I estimated that our remaining players are not strong enough to defend against their possible attacks, so I decided to accept that risk! That's exactly what we did - Paul left the Port!

The story from the last match is repeating itself... We simply weren't quick enough to retake the Port and send enough troops to defend it... No more waiting, I have to join the match too!

Of course, I had no problems taking control of that Port, the opponents are simply too weak from what we've seen in the match so far. However, we're still a long way from 80k points and time is running out! HFE has completely given up on the match, now all eyes are on us and our fight to reach 80k! In this great confusion and desire to meet the goal, the numbers in my head are mixed up: at one point I'm sure we'll reach 80k points, but in the next calculation it turns out we won't, and so on forever! The "battles" for Mines are starting soon, with 16k from them we might have a chance!

And that's it! If we win both Mines, which is certain to happen, after we collect the maximum number of points from them, we will have plenty of time left to reach the goal! All that's left is to do the last thing in the match - win the Mines!

And that's it! We did it!

Just as I suspected, by the end of the match HFE no longer attempted to attack any of our Castles, so a few minutes before the end of the match we reached the much-desired 80k points and thus recorded our first victory of the season!

Unfortunately, there's not much to say about this match. From the moment we found out who our opponent was, it was clear that we were big favorites in the match and that it was just a question of how much margin we would win. Our opponents made our job a lot easier by not showing up with a larger number of players, and in addition, the vast majority of their best players were not in the match, so they really didn't have any big chances in this match. I hope that this match was just an exception and that they will have more players available in the next matches. We, on the other hand, finally entered the match with a slightly larger number of players, and although we knew we would win, I'm glad that we maintained our seriousness throughout the match and didn't allow any unwanted situations to arise. Although this match was not a measure of our true strength, especially not after the match we played in the previous round, I hope that things are getting better for us. In the end, the whole match came down to whether we would be able to reach 80k points, which we managed to do, but that's not our thing - we've done our part and are ready to wait for the next opponent! I sincerely hope that in the following matches we will have approximately this number of players in the match, although we should not forget the fact that we will not be able to count on Paul in the last two matches. In any case, this was an easy match for us, a kind of warm-up for the rest of the season!