AoH Season 5 - First Blood - Go Big or Go Home!

Arena of Honor is one of my favorite events, mostly because it is a low risk, no death PvP mode that you can enjoy with just a small group of friends. It has that AC vibe, but it feels much more cozy. With the recent changes, it has become even more relaxed. Out of the six teams we used to have, half are now "placeholder" NPCs, so it is basically our team versus two other human teams.

With these changes still fresh, everyone included, we were experimenting and trying to figure out the new AoH meta.

And now that a new season is starting, it is time to actually put into practice what we have learned in Season 4.

Season 5, fresh after the holidays; time to dust off the old roster and see who is up for another round of AoH.

The roster looks great. We have a good balance of rally leads, house holders, and fillers. With my new batches of T5s, I can finally play a proper filler role and not feel embarrassed anymore, since my main contribution used to only be T4 meat shield.😅

That said, I am now running into a problem that most big accounts eventually face😂, the three million total troop limit. With the new meta where each team holds two houses, more than half of my troops are locked inside houses for the entire match. That leaves me with one full lord march for objectives and one half sized march for reinforcements. Definitely not ideal.

On a similar army size note. The new skin looks great. The extra 40k base army size, up to 60k collection with other SS skins sounds amazing. Still, it would have been truly amazing if it also increased the total number of troops we could bring into an AoH match.

As the game is about to start, we discuss our options. Do we go Trade Camps like we did for most of Season 4, or do we fully embrace the new Troop Camp strategy that seems stronger now that there are only three human teams on the map?

After a short pro and con discussion, we decide to go with Troop Camps and commit to it, unlike last time where we swapped mid game.

The next question is troop type. Cavalry would be great against NPCs in towers, but spears would counter the house on our right. In the end, we choose Cav. We want those early capture points, and we are confident we can handle the house fights ourselves.

We capture the first row of strongholds quickly. When we move to the second row, we already secure the NPC house to our left. Right away, the biggest issue I expected shows up, finding spare troops for reinforcements. Especially this early, when strongholds still need to be built up.

As expected, the second row of strongholds is painfully slow. This has always been a weak point for us, and now, with a second house to babysit so early, the far strongholds take forever to upgrade. We even had to pull one lord march for the new House, meaning we had to resend new marches back to strongholds. All this "walking" is not doing us any favors early in the game.

At least the match is anything but boring. The first ten to fifteen minutes, which used to be calm and predictable, have turned into a chaotic scramble as we try to secure buildings according to our revised Season 5 strategy.

My lord march has not stopped moving since the game started. I rush it to the stronghold Hotep abandoned so I can enter the new House. I barely finish upgrading my strongholds to level three when the Sept opens, so normally, as is tradition for me, I fee obligated to take it.

At this stage, though, our house is clearly behind the other two. We are overextended and underdeveloped. The leaderboard does not look encouraging at all. Still, the start was textbook good, so maybe we can turn this around before the end.

The game feels like it is moving very fast. I am almost caught off guard when the Dragonpits open, marking the midpoint of the match, even though it feels like we are barely past the first quarter. This is probably because of all the extra steps we now take, which delays altar fights, especially for us, locked in two Houses. But with Troop Camps, altars are not nearly as critical as they were when playing Trade Camps.

On the bright side, while our biggest accounts discuss who takes which Dragonpit, I try to grab four altars at once😱. Two are open and mostly useless, but points are points. The other two belong to House Lannister, who had the audacity to take them right from our front yard. I really dislike seeing that so I feel it is my duty to correct this injustice brought upon our great House.

In the end, our team takes and holds two Dragonpits. I manage to take and hold only the two new altars, because House Lannister clearly wants the other two in our area. No problem. I make it my personal mission to annoy them around those altars for the rest of the match! Spam marches, get ready to scramble!

As we move into the second half, progress is slow, but our Troop Camp strategy finally starts paying off. Not if you look at the scoreboard, though. We are still far behind. Even so, we stick to the plan, questionable as it looks.

Then comes a pleasant surprise. Our NPC troops manage to take a second placeholder house, the Baratheon one to our right.

Celebration is short lived, because this creates yet another logistic problem for us. Where do we find another house holder with a free lord march? And where do we get the troops to defend it?

Our score is barely half of what the other two houses have, and the City of Glory is about to open. We are clearly overextended and falling behind fast. Still, somehow, we keep telling ourselves this is all part of the plan.

Now is the moment to see if good execution can save this new and mostly untested strategy. If we want to win, we need to step up our game now unless we want to finish on what's realistically last place now.

Time to shape up or get out!

We have less than a minute to plan before the City of Glory opens.

Do we go all in on center? That has not been reliable in the past.

Do we commit to the second house? That was not planned and we are not really prepared for it.

The decision is kind of obvious. With our score this low, holding the City of Glory is the only realistic way to win.

We rally it with our strongest account, scrape together every spare troop we can find, and hope for the best.

By the time we arrive, it is already taken, but we break through anyway and manage to claim it under our banner.

Now we just need to find troops, any troops, to reinforce it until the bubble comes up and we can breathe again.

With center about to be tagged with our Stark banner, we turn to the second house our NPCs stole from Baratheon. Big brain time, coming up!😀

Since we now control both houses next to us, no NPC can directly attack our original house. NPCs move counterclockwise, and Baratheon is to our right. That means if we hold this new house, we can move our main house defender there and leave our original house lightly defended. Not empty, obviously, since players and center can still hit it, but no longer heavily stacked.

With this bold plan and a lot of hope, we continue our game, hoping for victory in the first match of Season 5.

We hold center well. The bubble goes up, giving us the perfect window to swap house holders, moving our defender from the original house to the Baratheon house. Things seem to work without a hitch.

Just by holding center, our points skyrocket. We jump from third, which is basically last place, straight into first.

Now only one obstacle remains, the small mines phase. We prepare to take at least a third of them to secure our lead.

Timing is tight. The center bubble is about to drop, so we have to watch that too, but we manage to clean up four mines. Not great, not terrible, but just enough to stay in first place.

Some cheeky NPCs sneak into center, but we kick them out and retake it before anyone really notices.😝

During the small mine phase, I am as active as ever. I take one mine, reinforce two others, and use the chaos to flip two enemy altars.

A full day of work for my little account.

As the match nears its end and our strategy has clearly secured first place, nothing can really change anymore. So I decide to have some fun and take the NPC Septs. Honestly, that is something we should consider more in future games. Fifty points per minute for basically free objectives is hard to ignore.

The curtain falls shortly after. We are miles ahead of the competition. The early game looked unimpressive on the board, but the second half launch sends us straight to first place. In the end, that is what really matters.

I also get a rank promotion.😳I am shocked for a moment, then I remember it is a new season and ranks were mostly reset.

All things considered, we still have things to learn in this new AoH NPC mode. But learning while winning feels pretty good. Hopefully, the rest of the season plays out like this, because that new skin is looking better and better every match.