The first Alliance Conquest match. This is an event where two alliances face off and battle for dominance on the map by capturing valuable castles and earning points for them. Each castle provides different bonuses and a different number of points. It’s an old event, but it’s always exciting. Personally, I think it’s the best event we have in the game. We’ve been preparing for two days now. Every edition is a new challenge and a test of our skills. New features in the game mean new tactics. We have new players, so everyone will have a chance to prove themselves.

For this edition, I’ve managed to set up better configurations, so this will be a debut. I just need to set everything up properly.

The day before the event, we find out who our first opponent is: LEG (LEGION). It’s going to be tough to win. They’re definitely a demanding opponent and possibly better than us, but anything is possible here.

Match day arrives. The atmosphere has been tense since morning. Everyone is trying to tweak something, and the leadership is working on the best strategy. But will all of this be enough to win? I start logging into the map…

And here come the first problems. Despite very high number of players, the opponent completely takes us by surprise. It’s rare to see as many as 98 players, and we’re far short of that. Sometimes a difference of just 2–3 players can ruin the game, let alone 13 as in this case. The opponent hit us first.

A new feature in this edition is that you can’t “prepare” a window for an attack. You can’t click on a building while there’s a bubble over it. We’re not entirely happy with this because you can’t see how many troops are in the building. Maybe this will level the playing field for all players, but that remains to be seen.

Let’s begin…

Up until now, I’ve always managed to capture at least one building during the game. Now it’s not that simple anymore. Counting down… 3…2… 1… the bubble drops, and you have to quickly tap on it, then select the attack, the appropriate army, and send it. Once we’ve got that, it’s a quick speed boost and boom. I feel like I did it really slowly, and it took forever. Plus, the speed boosts didn’t work too well because of lag. Oh well, we’ll have to work on that some more.

At the start, we only take one building; after all, there are more of them, so more people can fight over the buildings. Meanwhile, the opponent secures the remaining three available ones.

As soon as the first bubble drops, we manage to take over a warrior building very quickly. The score in the buildings is 2:2, but we’re already down in points against LEG. Things are relatively calm for now. A few solo attacks, but no major changes. After a minute, we lose the top-right building. The opponent took advantage of a moment of inattention and the fact that they’re very close to it. We’re back to a 1:3 score, unfortunately.

We move on to phase two: unlocking the ports. For now, the point difference isn’t large, but it favors the opponent.

Again, the countdown: 3…2…1… the building is unlocked, and I repeat my action. This time, I did even worse. I failed to press the 75% speed boost properly and fell far behind. Luckily, another person from the alliance did very well—specifically the ckprezes, who always captures buildings for us. We have both ports! 😊

A quick decision after the swap at the top—or maybe even too quick. Chaos reigns on Discord; two or three people are counting down, and we make a mistake. Our warrior leaves the port at the wrong moment, and the opponent takes advantage of it. The leadership is furious. Just as we were about to regain points for LEG, we’re back to a stalemate. Both teams score the same number of points, but we lose because we have fewer of them.

Amid all this chaos, we manage to capture one of the buildings, so now we’re making up for our losses.

We’re entering a phase of fast rallies and building swaps. So far, we’re doing much better. While LEG has very fast rallies, we have better teamwork—not just in rallies, but in individual attacks as well. Thanks to this, we manage to recapture the port and start taking the lead. It’s only halfway through the game, and everything is still ahead of us.

Preparations are beginning for the Casterly Rock, which is one of the most important buildings because it yields the most points.

3…2…1… and I repeat the action. Again, I feel like everything is happening too slowly. Even though I’m clicking quickly, the windows appear with a delay. I’m starting to get frustrated that I can’t help the alliance with this. Fortunately, ckprezes takes over the building again, and we perform a controlled swap. This time, everything went very smoothly. A quick change of warriors, followed by support. We’ve got it!

NoS starts pulling ahead of the opponent. By controlling most of the map, we earn more points and thus pull ahead of the opponent. For now, the lead is about 5-7 thousand, so we’re not safe yet.

Everyone is relaxing a bit because there’s plenty of time left until the final phase of the game. LEG seems to sense this and takes advantage of it. First, they surprise us at Casterly Rock, quickly taking the building through a rally, and then they capture another one of the ports. We let CR go for a moment, and the battle for the ports begins. Their best player is stationed at CR, so we take advantage of the fact that other buildings are within our reach. Aside from CR, the opponent is only guarding the Mother, but that’s not enough to compete with us. Our lead increases to 10,000.

We start preparing for the mines, the final phase of the game. This is where anything can happen. Our lead is too small to let this moment slip away, so everyone is on standby.

3…2…1… the action repeats once more, this time it goes a bit smoother. Quick speedups and I’ve got it! I take the next mine and the opponent takes the second one. We’re tied 1-1 in mines, but that’s good for us because we have the point lead. We make a quick decision to swap out, and it works perfectly. At such a crucial moment, I manage to free up a building, and our top player instantly takes it.

Fast rallies begin on both sides. However, LEG needs to hurry if they still want to fight for the win. After another minute, not much changes, and we see the opponent start to give up on further resistance. For us, this means a sure win because the attacks have stopped.

Summary

We didn’t know what to expect. LEGION is a very strong alliance, and given their significant player advantage, it seemed likely they would win. Fortunately, we weren’t intimidated by this, and we managed to win by a comfortable margin. This victory propels us to 7th place among the world’s top alliances, which means the next match might be an impossible fight for us, but we’ll definitely give it our all.