No time to warm up - N0X vs RRH | Alliance Conquest S23 R2 | Events with N0X

Before he could start with the upcoming match, Hotep had a confession to make. He had missed the first round versus German Jokers. And there was no good reason for it. He fell asleep and woke up 30 minutes into the match.

It was hard to describe how sad Hotep was to miss the match, and he put all his energy into preparing for the second round to make up for it, while also making sure it would not happen again.

But of course that's not the topic of this story, but it meant Hotep was going in without any warmup or preparation. He had helped out in other alliances but had not played with his main account or main alliance.

After N0X won round 1 against Jokers, without Hotep, their next match promised to be a very hard one, and well, it would be.

RRH was their opponent. They had played them a lot in recent events, and while N0X always tried, saying RRH was stronger would underplay it. It did not help that RRH always liked to treat N0X like a rival, something that N0X did not return. The only upside was that N0X had nothing to lose, and so, as always, they would try and see what they could do. 

N0X attendance was not great, but with the time ticking, Hotep had no time to think about that. With 2 accounts and rusty still, he just had to try to keep up, starting with the initial races.

It did not start well. They only won the race for the close outpost, and there they fumbled the swap.

At least they were able to, in return, intercept the mother race, but since the N0X holder was ónly a weak rally lead, it would be hard to hold.

N0X started by rallying warrior to deny RRH the base attack buffs, and since the lead inside was not that strong, they did get it.

They tried to get an outpost next to get the base buffs for themselves, but they bounced hard on the outpost's cav holder. To make it worse, mother also got soloed out. 

They had another outpost to rally, though, and they did get that one, but they lost the warrior at the same time with a strong rally wave from RRH, making the entire operation pointless. Surprisingly, Hotep would actually be the one to take it. As a cavalry player, he was not meant to hold, but they had no slow marcher, so the duty was on him. 

RRH would start solos as soon as Hotep’s Outpost opened. In previous events and seasons, Hotep would have died here. He had been soloed out by a few alliances in the last AC season, but this season, with spear base reduction and Cassana, there was just one player in RRH winning solos on him, a big improvement. 

Shortly after, they would win warrior back from the weak lead holding it and also win the CR race, getting their biggest account in. Things started to actually look decent. With Hotep holding against the solo wave, he had given his alliance enough time to recover their lost position.

Well, at least he thought so. As soon as RRH rallies hit Hotep's outpost and the first rallies all won, instantly kicking him, Hotep's enthusiasm was gone quickly. Sadly, he was still way too weak to tank spear rallies, especially with Baelish.

Without the warrior buff, their small advantage quickly crumbled. Next, RRH took back warrior. N0X would get mother in the meantime, but that was not enough to keep up with RRH.

CR defense was next, and while it looked great initially, N0X just could not keep up, and with 3 heavy hitting rallies, RRH got it down from 18 to 0.

That was pretty much the deathblow to N0X's ambitions. Balrum had been the one account they had held against RRH in previous AC seasons, and losing a defense on him was very demotivating.

N0X would keep trying a while longer, even taking warrior for a short time again, but without an outpost, it meant nothing, and it was lost soon after.

N0X had just been unable to hold on defense while at the same time losing too many offensive operations. Winning against RRH was, of course, basically impossible, but N0X had also had many misplays, and the shot-calling was not on point yet. Especially Hotep felt like he had mostly just gotten overwhelmed. Without a warm-up, his shot-calling role had been vacant too many times while he managed his two accounts.

N0X and Hotep himself definitely had to improve if they wanted to make UC this season, but Hotep was still confident they could make it. They only had to keep improving, starting with Round three, which was already around the corner…

GOT WIC Chronicler HotepRa