AoH – The Day I Retired from NPC House Duty

Going into today's AoH match, we're still testing the waters and trying to adapt to what feels like a possible Season 5 meta shift. I'm still attempting to hold the NPC House, but honestly, it's becoming harder and harder. Even before, I was struggling against the clones of our biggest accounts, and now we've added Balrum to the roster... an absolute monster Infantry player.

At this point, I already have a feeling this might be my final game trying to hold the NPC House.

If I was struggling before because of weak reinforcements, now a Balrum clone can probably erase me from existence without even trying.

Still, the matchup overall looks favorable. TIS and RRH bring strong competition, but we definitely have a good shot at taking first place tonight: https://youtu.be/TuEUfauqHCI

The game begins and we immediately rush the Strongholds and secure our House. My opening is prepared in my head at this point.

I only take one Stronghold without using my lord march because I know I need to race over to the NPC House before the Strongholds are fully upgraded.

The first wave goes smoothly and I prepare to move toward my assignment.

And right on schedule, as the second row of Strongholds opens, our House captures the NPC House and I send my lord march in to defend it.

https://youtu.be/uuDP4tfqnDM

Now the only thing left is hoping for proper reinforcements this time... otherwise this is going to be a very short visit. At least the bubble gives me a few minutes of peace, lol.

We build Infantry on the second row to counter the Towers around Center and with that completed, the match finally starts taking shape.

Unfortunately, despite our best efforts to keep my lord march alive inside the NPC House, the moment the Balrum clone attacks... I'm gone. It wasn't even a close fight. Even with random commanders, my account simply cannot defend against that level of power.

Hotep has to step in and take over. I guess this officially marks the end of my NPC House career. At least until my account catches up a bit more.

With my lord march now free, I try contributing wherever I can. At one point I spot what I think is a random spam march defending an altar, so naturally I speed in for a quick cleanup... Only to discover it's actually Dakarshur: https://youtu.be/lEDgiZ5Xr0Q

Absolute disaster. The report is disgusting. I haven't killed a single troop while losing nearly half my march in return.

In open world PvP I'd probably going crazy after a trade like that, but thankfully this is AoH, so I can just heal my T5s and move on.

At this point I become a lot more careful about what fights I choose. Instead of contesting monster accounts across the map, I settle into more... realistic objectives for my account and start securing NPC buildings. I take our Sept first, then follow up with the NPC Sept for more points. I guess my usefulness has officially been downgraded to "professional NPC janitor." Still, every point matters.

And while I'm handling side objectives, the real heavyweights in our team are battling House Targaryen head on. The score between us stays incredibly close while House Lannister slowly falls behind.

After learning my lesson the hard way, the mid game becomes much slower for me personally.

My account simply isn't built to fight against the absolute monsters running around this battlefield, so I focus on expanding our control across the NPC territory instead. Every building counts and little by little we slowly widen the gap over House Targaryen.

When Center is about to open, I have some doubts we can hold it but the rest of my team is far more confident. So we for for it. And surprisingly, while pushing for Center, we still maintain excellent control across the map. Usually when we go all in on City of Glory, the rest of our buildings start collapsing one by one. But not this time.

We win the race into Center and immediately plant our monster Infantry account inside. Reinforcements speed in immediately. And well, this is exactly why we built Infantry earlier. Now it's time to see if this strategy actually works.

And as we're reinforcing, we can already see enemy rallies being started. If we survive these first hits, the game opens up massively for us: https://youtu.be/ErogLD8frws

The moment the other Houses realize they can't directly contest Center, they start attacking every building we own across the map: Altars, Dragonpits, everything they can. Nothing is now safe!

But what surprises me the most isn't the enemy strategy... it's our response. Usually I'm one of the few players running around cleaning up spam marches and recovering loosely defended objectives, but this time the entire team is helping out. And we look incredible doing this as a team! Everyone is defending our territory, like a true House Stark.

With Center secured and our map response looking decent, our score spikes. But there's still a problem. We're only in first place because we hold City of Glory. If we lose Center, we probably lose the match. And if we botch the mines phase, same outcome.

So as the small mines prepare to open, the pressure starts rising again. We don't need a killer mines phase. We just need to get a fair share of points while still defending Center. We can do that, right?

We absolutely can! I alone manage to hold two mines during the phase. As usual, I don't get many reinforcements because I'm not one of the giant accounts, and even if I did get reinforced, those players could still kick me. But reinforcements would've helped deplete the points faster at least.

Regardless, our entire team executes the mines phase really well and we solidify our lead this match.

With the small mines finished and the end of the match approaching, everything comes down to one simple objective: Hold Center.

At this point, we've already proven we can do exactly that. The enemy pressure slows down, our defense is on point and the outcome becomes clear: A clean victory and a very educational one too.😅

I think this match officially confirms that I won't be assigned to hold the NPC House anymore until my account improves a bit. At the same time, bringing in our Infantry monster was absolutely the correct move and feels like the final missing piece for our roster.

For our team this marks the ending of a clean match and the start of a new roster.

And for me, it's one step closer to that beautiful AoH Season 5 skin I'm chasing.