Arena of AFK?

The 5th match of Arena of Honor came up quickly. I wasn’t prepared or really feeling it. I did, however, manage to wake up on time for the 3rd match lol. We take those small wins. I won’t lie though, I am already over the season. My solo journey has been an interesting education, to say the least. I am not sure I understood the extent of the depth of the chaos of this event. The Old Gods opened up many different avenues to victory which spices up the event. Originally it was if you take the City of Glory, you win. Now, I have seen teams win without even glancing at the City of Glory. Some focusing on clan castles, others bringing it down to its most basic parts by just working on generating more points per minute then their enemies. In a weird way my solo adventure has allowed me to become an Arena of Honor historian of sorts. The lack of a set team and the inability to plan around my team makeup and strategize with familiar faces, have freed me up to see what other people are doing, and hypothesize on why. 

In this match, I would be in the House Targaryen

I seem to get this house a lot on my solo adventures, not that I mind cause I love all things purple lol. What I do not love is the dang Old Gods made me commander again. Y’all I don’t understand how to aim the attacks, so the fact that I keep being commander is causing me to want to develop a drinking habit. Take a shot when ch1 is commander, take a shot when someone goes afk…. Etc

Speaking of the AFK… If I had one wish it would be if someone goes AFK during a match, they would be unable to play the next match. If they go AFK again after that, then they are no longer eligible for the season. Yes it is harsh, but I am not sure people are aware how much being afk affects the team and creates a self fulfilling prophecy. You leave because maybe things feel hopeless. There is now more pressure on those remaining to do more with less, and you have guaranteed a worse performance by just being gone. There are sometimes good reasons to go afk, family emergency, loss of power, instability around the world, so it sucks that they would be punished too. 

This throwaway group was even quieter than most of the others, and none of the groups are super chatty since you don’t even know who you are playing with until it is time to play lol. I made those who were not offline commander and let the group know, I have no idea what I am doing so feel free to jump in. We ended up deciding on camps, but I think we made the wrong kind of camps. 

We could counter the Watchtowers and Catapults, but not those who would counter us.

As the Altars opened, we did a decent job grabbing those.

But while we were playing checkers the enemies were playing chess grabbing an extra clan castle each. I tried to figure it out, but I think it is beyond me. Clicking on command didn’t give me options just suggestions and none of those were neighbors clan castle lol. Clicking on the Greyjoy Clan castle didn’t give me the option either…. What kinda witchcraft are yall using and will someone teach meeeeee lol.

Luckily one of the teammates figured it out and we managed to take House Greyjoy.

We were trailing in third place and it wasn’t particularly close. The clones wouldn’t beat us, but there was not much hope of taking second place let alone first. The Starks and Targeryans were just such solid and strong teams. They had such amazing control of altars, extra clan castles and seemed to  be working as one unit. Unlike us where those of us present were just trying to do whatever we could just to hold on. As the match dragged on more began going afk. This time I didn’t blame them. Heck, even I wanted to go AFK at this point. Rank was decided, what was the point? Yet I kept going through all the things. We weren’t going to get Glory. A strong Inf player from WWW had taken up shop and we couldn’t touch them. So I spent the remainder of the match doing what I could to pass the time. 

As was foretold, we did indeed hit 3rd, aka the new last except ya dont lose points. 

The Map tells the tale on how strong the enemies were... Honestly, I am surprised the Starks didn't pull off 1st with how dominant they were.

We did alright all things considered, but I find myself getting angrier and angrier at the afk. I have a million things I could and should be doing, but if I want to play Arena of Honor, I show up and do what I can despite how the match shapes up. Win, lose it is just not in me to intentionally abandon a group knowing the effect means they will have to work that much harder with less help. It makes me wonder if this whole solo journey is possible for the whole season. I did give my word so I shall suffer on. It does make it clear who can’t be counted on as allies in not just this event but any event, so I suppose if there was one bright spot, it would be that!