Counter is so 2025 | AoH S5 R2 | Events with N0X

Arena of Honor was back on the menu and while LordofHunger was having a super busy weekend, for AoH he always tried to have time and so he was once again up at 1:30 am his time, already super exhausted from the day, to play AoH with his friends CHaos, NO REAL and Tasteit.

As usual, since the time was bad for most of their friends as well, they played which a bunch of randoms, although they did have a few players from the previous round as well who had stuck around for the next match.

As usual, their team was very infantry-focused, with Chaos and NO REAL, their two strongest, both being infantry. So far in the new season, their heavy inf focus had not been an issue, but it might be a bit different with this one, as Hunger soon realized when he checked the other players.

Most of the enemies were nothing to worry about; there was one name Hunger instantly recognized. GameofKorea he knew from a past AoW but had seen the account keeping up with the newer stuff as well. Hunger was not 100% sure if they had Brienne, but he deemed it likely.

Either way, a rally from Korea against Chaos or NO REAL would be quite costly and would make holding the center borderline impossible. They would have to try, though.

They started off going for cav camps, securing the House next to them and also allowing them to take the first Watchtower. Meanwhile, Hunger tried to spot Korea and eventually found him before going for a solo. He knew he would not get anywhere, but to check weapons and to show how strong he was, he still decided to send a full march.

While Hunger countered Korea, the much, much stronger commanders, weapons and advisors made it an easy victory for Korea. Counter only did a little there when the account difference was so big and with the early fight snowball from female, Hunger delt no damage.

If it was not clear before, it was now. GameOfKorea would be an issue. If he got in anywhere, no one from their team could kick him. Even with a rally, Hunger would do very little damage.

For now they had to keep going with their original plan. A few minutes later, while Chaos was taking a Dragonpit for their team, Korea and Chaos had their first battle.

Chaos had almost 4 times as many troops as Korea and yet it was still close. Had Chaos troops not killed Korea's troops by the end of the battle, Korea would have won this encounter. With the center opening in just 4 minutes, it was clear that if Korea got off to a decent rally, Chaos would have no chance to win a battle. Not a good sign indeed…

When the Center opened, Chaos rushed in and every filler was ready to speed in, Hunger even used 75%s. They would have no chance to kick GameofKorea, so they had to try to be there first and somehow hold it until the end of the battle, just to make sure they would win.

Luckily for them, Korea did not try, or it would have been very close. By then they had also won the battle for the catapults, taking all 3, meaning the only losses from the center would be from the incoming attacks.

It took Korea quite a while, but eventually the first rally was launched and somehow, they were able to win the first encounter.

With just 3 million troops, Korea’s rally was rather small and while it was closer than they would have liked for a small rally, it was still much better than the earlier battle at the Dragonpit. Maybe, just maybe, they could actually hold this one.

The second rally from GameOfKorea arrived just a few seconds after the bubble, giving them 5 minutes of breathing room.

While Hunger mostly did clean-up duty of small marches in altars and reinforcing during the match, he did find a few occasions for good hits like this one.

Here their dragon pit got reinforced by more than 7 million troops and while the lineup was not the best, using a low-spending, all-female lineup, it was still a lot of troops and Hunger was happy he had been able to solo that.

But then the bubble on the center dropped and the next rallies were up.

GameOfKorea had taken their time but gotten a much fuller rally this time. Even with some random spear in there, he had no issues beating Chaos defenses this time. Due to them having more than 7 million troops in, the building was not lost, though and so they could reinforce back before Korea could solo. It was much closer than they would have liked, though.

(For video clip check the comments)

This story would repeat itself multiple times, but each time their team was faster than Korea’s solos. The battles also showed how key it had been to get all the Catapults. The attacks from them would have easily gotten their team below the 7 million threshold, meaning they would have lost the building in an instance.

In the end, their team work had paid off. While Korea was stronger in a 1 vs 1, he lacked the coordinated team they had and so was unable to get a win. That he countered Chaos was only a secondary issue.

With all the Watchtowers, Catapults and the center, they had gotten a great score and Korea's team, the Lannisters, would even drop to 3rd since they had put all their focus on center.

Korea for sure tried though…

After the match was over, Hunger quickly went to bed since he had more stuff to do in the morning. He would remember this match, though, as another example of how little counter mattered in the top bracket these days, going both ways. With Chaos in his team, he was hopeful to collect more of those examples in the following matches of AoH as well…

GOT WIC Chronicler HotepRa