N0X SoW (S17 M4) – The Zoomies Reminder We Needed

N0X is going into the second half of SoW Season 17 with two wins and one loss. We kind of needed three consecutive wins at the start because the second half is always harder, with the matchmaking bringing stronger teams closer to or above our power level.

And stepping into our fourth match it’s no surprise we’re facing one of the stronger alliances that will surely put up a fight: RRH.

By this point it feels like we meet them in every major event. It’s not a shock to see them again this SoW season. Their score is higher and I know they’ve improved their roster since we last fought them in Alliance Conquest, but we also have a guest powerhouse with Rock playing this match with us. So this should definitely be an interesting fight.

As the match is about to start, we’re slightly underrepresented with 86 accounts versus their 96. Over 95% participation is impressive, so I have to tip my hat to the RRH team. Their starting points already show their numbers advantage.

I’m still optimistic going in, especially with our ace up the sleeve, but SoW is a numbers game, and my optimism has a thin layer of worries sprinkled on top.

The game starts and the first marches sprint toward Hot Springs. And yes, I’m on Hot Springs duty, as usual🙂The initial fight starts almost immediately, but somehow RRH gets more people there faster...

By the time I arrive with the rest of the N0X team, RRH is already swarming HS. The numbers are devastating: 112 RRH marches versus our 78?!? Part of that is our, slightly, lower attendance, sure, but I can’t help wondering how they got there so quickly?

https://youtu.be/jdpzFEmyC9o

Only a few accounts on our side, like Rock and Bearface, were already there when the full RRH force arrived to contest.

We manage to kill a few of their marches, but the fight is clearly not going our way. Soon enough we’re wiped at both Hot Springs and Armory. Not exactly the start we were hoping for.

We heal up quickly and rush back in, but once you lose the starting races it becomes extremely hard to recover. Now we’re trickling back into the fight one by one while RRH is just waiting for us. If my Rule #1 of SoW is “It’s a numbers game”, then my Rule #2 has to be: "You need critical mass to snowball any objective." And after losing the opening race, we’re now fighting without that critical mass.

After dying three times at HS and N0X breaking both of my own SoW rules, the battle turns into a retreat. RRH pushes us out of the center and all the way back toward our Strongholds.

Wherever we try to make a play, they appear almost immediately. And they always have the numbers advantage all over the map.

At first it feels like good coordination from their side. But the longer the match goes on, the more something feels… off?😶

Soon enough we lose the fights at the Strongholds as well. Again they simply bring more marches to every fight, faster than we can.

So we keep falling back. This time all the way to our Outposts.

Ten minutes into the match and the hopes I had going in are already fading fast. The only snowball N0X is forming right now is this match rolling downhill.

The healing bill without Hot Springs is painful, but I’m also running out of troops for my respawning marches. So I bite the bullet and start healing anyway.

Leadership calls for map control. But even when we spot an undefended building and start marching toward it, we rarely reach it alive. Before we even arrive, RRH patrols poke us along the way.

And if we somehow make it there, several RRH players are already waiting to finish off the job.

https://youtu.be/LhMiZuGdtkA

They dominate the map so bad they even manage to take the chests spawning deep on the N0X side.

That’s when the picture they are paining starts to become clear. This isn’t just the numbers advantage. This is also speed superiority!

So after failing the opening races and losing the Strongholds, we try a different approach. Maybe we can still get points the classic way by driving dragons and collecting "packages"?

But if RRH has been dominating the speed game so far, then trying to control dragons becomes nearly impossible as well. They react faster and arrive immediately. And every dragon path ends the same way. With RRH already there in greater numbers.

By the time the match reaches the second half, the score difference is three to one. Honestly, the numbers on the scoreboard don’t even reflect how bad this feels. At this point I’m wondering why we haven’t called the match yet. The healing cost speeds? The broken morale from constant defeats? It doesn’t feel worth it anymore. At best we might reach the 20k checkpoint. That is, if we’re lucky.

But the match continues. So we keep experimenting. We try sneaking behind them to flip objectives, hoping they’re distracted elsewhere. But every time we approach an “empty” building, RRH arrives before we do.

Again. And again. And again.

They’re running laps around us. Even when chests spawn closer to our side, they somehow still beat us there.

Sometimes we start marching first and they still rush past us and grab everything. At this point the game is undeniably lost. Even I can see that. But the match still hasn’t been called, so we continue through the suffering, hoping for… I don’t even know what at this point.

Leadership instructions start coming in less often. Eventually, after several more failed attempts at... everything, the call finally comes around the 40 minute mark. The match is over, stop healing. Finally someone puts an end to our misery.

I make one final push with the few troops I still have left and listen as leadership summarizes what went wrong and it’s exactly how the match felt for me.

RRH won the race to Armory and Hot Springs, and that set the tone for everything that followed. They had more people waiting for us and could pick us off as we trickled into fights. But as the match went on, the real advantage became painfully obvious. It wasn’t numbers, account strength, or even strategy. It was speed!

They were simply... faster. They were everywhere on the map while most of us were always arriving just a little too late.

Before the match even ends, reminders start going out across different alliance channels: for the next SoW matches we prioritize marching speed above everything. No PvP gear, speed gear! No PvP march animation, speed animation! No PvP castle skin… you guessed it, speed castle skin!

And I have to admit, I was running full PvP gear instead of the Zoomies preset I originally made for AoW and completely forgot to use in SoW.

So that becomes my Rule #3 for SoW: "Speed wins games. Always bring the Zoomies preset!"

Because in the end map control imposes tempo and tempo decides everything else.

The match ends and we walk away with almost nothing, not even the 20k rewards, just the losers consolation prize.

Worse still, N0X now sits at 2 wins out of 4 matches, and our playoff hopes are starting to drift away. But who knows… maybe next Wednesday the whole team shows up in full Zoomies gear and we’re the ones running circles around the map.