N0X AC (S23 M4) – Vacation AC

After finishing the regular season, I realized I never documented N0X’s 4th match against SFu. And while that’s perfectly understandable considering I was traveling that weekend and playing from a tiny laptop screen instead of my usual home setup, it still feels wrong to leave a gap in the season story.😊So it’s time to fix that and wrap up the season properly!

Before jumping into the game itself, let’s take a quick look at where N0X stood at this point in the season.

Coming out of the first three matches, we were sitting at 2 wins and 1 loss. The wins were rather comfortable, but the RRH defeat was really hard to swallow. If we wanted to keep realistic chances for UC qualification alive, we needed to be on our toes the rest of the season because, realistically speaking, we could probably only afford one more loss... and preferably against one of the absolute monsters alliances in the final matches.

Which brings us back to SFu😀Not exactly a free win, but definitely an alliance we could not afford to lose against at this stage of the season.

And it seems N0X understood the importance of the match because we brought 93 players onto the map, including me on vacation, compared to the 85 SFu showed up with.😏

I’m expecting a relatively smooth game and honestly hoping for one too, because I’d really rather not force my poor laptop to keep up with my crazy gaming. I need to take it easy and remember it's not my home PC and a setup clearly not built for this kind of suffering ^^

But let’s get into the actual match!

As Phase 1 starts, our racers (excluding myself because... laptop) do great work and get 3 out of the 4 starting buildings. Leadership decides not to contest the lost Outpost immediately and instead focus on defending the buildings we already control. With all the important buffs already on our side, risking existing buildings just to greed for a second Outpost isn’t worth it.

Phase 2 starts after we comfortably tank a few low hits on Warrior and we win both Port races. After executing clean swaps on both buildings, we can finally divert our attention toward the last remaining SFu controlled structure on the map.

And without too much trouble on the rallies, although still while juggling some annoying cross rallies on Mother, we finally secure the Outpost. Just around the 10 minute mark, the map turns fully N0X blue.

Not gonna lie, even from my tiny laptop screen, that’s a very nice sight to look at!

Phase 3 starts and I kind of get nervous about Casterly Rock.

Since CR is the only building opening during this phase, everybody races for it. I don’t think I’ve ever personally won a CR race in my life. On the bright side, that also means nobody will notice me not winning this one either, lol.

Thankfully, N0X wins the race and as I watch the swap happen, still without Discord because I’m trying to look socially functional at the family table while semi-secretly watching the tiny marching lines on my laptop than the actual conversation happening around me, something goes wrong. SFu intercepts our swap! And just like that, the perfect blue map is now gone.😱

Such a shame. We could have had the full N0X blue canvas already, but SFu had to ruin my visual masterpiece by sniping the swap.

Now that they hold CR, SFu starts spreading pressure across multiple buildings which makes it difficult for us to organize proper coordinated rallies on Casterly. They seem focused to kick DYW out of the far Outpost, but we hold comfortably. At their strongest hit, they probably got our defenders down to around half strength? That's nothing really dangerous, but it still successfully distracted us from focusing fully on "mid".

Phase 4 goes much better for us. We win both races and execute perfect swaps on both Strongholds. The alliance buffs jump, but without CR under our control, they still aren’t at full potential.

At this point I’m convinced the next move has to be against Casterly Rock because I NEED to see the map fully painted N0X blue again. 😂Not being on Discord and not hearing the calls is driving me crazy because I have no clue what the actual plan is.

But instead of focusing CR... we lose Warrior. I guess SFu really wanted that building because they had been hammering it nonstop all game. This time they commit harder than we do and finally manage to take it.

Naturally, the next rallies go toward Warrior instead of CR and thankfully, with a bit of luck the final hint in our rally wave kicks them out. Alright! Now we're... back to where we were a few minutes ago.😅NOW can we go for Casterly? Please?

SFu continues spreading pressure all across the map, a strategy I honestly don’t fully understand because they don’t seem to have the account strength to realistically threaten multiple targets simultaneously. Which means exactly what you’d expect: they spread themselves thin while we start focusing pressure on CR and after a nice wave of coordinated rallies being sped in... we take it!

But our assigned CR holder can’t move in, so we assign another big Infantry account into the building instead.

Sadly, in the chaos around Casterly, we lose the close Outpost. Not really a problem. I'd sat it's actually worth it. Trading an Outpost for CR, especially after having both Outposts earlier, feels absolutely acceptable to me. At this point we effectively control almost all buffs and the overwhelming majority of the map points.

And now, with only one building left outside our control, it becomes our responsibility to complete this winning picture.

My visual dream is almost complete.

Soon, all buildings are under N0X banners. All buffs working for us. 1300 points per minute rolling in.

This is what maximum map control looks like before the mines phase. Beautiful!

Meanwhile SFu continues applying light pressure everywhere without really achieving much with it 😀

I guess now it’s time to clean up their hives since Phase 5 has been open for a while and they’re still holding some scattered points in their hive.

At this stage all that’s left is waiting for the mines in Phase 6.

Now I really want us to take both mines too. Not because we need the points to win, the game is already comfortably ours, but because we want the biggest score possible for UC rankings... and because I personally want the visual satisfaction of seeing literally the entire map under N0X control up until the end.

Maybe I’m a little obsessed with clean maps. Just maybe.😅

But when the mines open, each alliance wins the race closest to their side.

We reinforce our mine immediately and launch rallies toward the Targaryen mine hoping to complete the full map takeover. The problem is... SFu rallies our mine at the exact same time. So attention gets split on both teams.

Our rallies become slightly desynced which gives SFu just enough time to reinforce properly. Meanwhile, while they’re busy defending their mine, we’re equally focused on holding ours.

So in the end... both alliances stabilize the mines they originally won and nobody flips anything. Too bad. I was hoping we could clean house but instead... both teams deplete the mine points on the positions they initially won and held.

The game ends with N0X comfortably above 110k points, a dominant performance overall against SFu.

Still, an even bigger score would have helped our UC ranking push a bit more, and the fact SFu still walked away with around 50k points shows they weren’t complete pushovers despite how controlled the match felt from our side.

Looking back, this was exactly the kind of "recovery game" N0X needed after the RRH defeat.

Good map control, strong races, coordinated swaps and stable pressure throughout almost the entire match.

And after Game 4, sitting at 3 wins and only 1 loss against RRH, N0X was still looking very solid in the race toward UC qualification🙏