AAO UC (S23 M3) – One Player vs an Entire Alliance

My alt alliance AAO keeps steamrolling through UC and at this point it’s pretty obvious we’re no longer really “A League material”. Honestly, I’m already curious how we’ll perform in the Super League next season because this roster has grown into something genuinely strong.

Our run has been going so well that I even rushed home from work for our Wednesday match… only to realize we skip the midweek slot because we’re sitting undefeated at the top of the bracket and only play weekends now. First world UC problems, I guess😅

This round we’re facing PhD and I have a feeling this won’t be the last time we see them. There’s a decent chance this becomes a preview of the finals, so I go into the match expecting a serious opponent.

I prep properly with a 10k army size skin and 75% army size buff as well as my dragons adjusted for every troop type except bows. Sorry Richard!

As the map fills up though, one thing becomes obvious immediately: PhD isn’t showing up in full force. By the time the match starts we’re sitting on 70 accounts while they can't even scrape together half that number. Good sign for us, but numbers alone don’t always win games if the enemy has a few giant accounts.

Phase 1 starts terribly. I was definitely not expecting what comes next.

Despite massively outnumbering them, we only win ONE out of the four opening races. I would call that an absolute disaster. Suddenly the match looks way more dangerous than expected because if they race better and have a few strong holders, even out superior numbers can struggle.

Thankfully their reinforcements aren’t nearly as scary as their races and we quickly take back Warrior. Taking it over also means breaking their initial buff chain.

Then we move onto Mother and flip that too. Within minutes, the entire buff line changes "ownership" and AAO starts controlling the map.

Before Phase 1 is over we have some extra time to break the last bastion under the PhD flag and this actually falls easier than the previous ones. And within just a couple of minutes from the rocky start, we're now in a comfortable position to transition into Phase 2.

Phase 2 starts and this time we win both Port races. In AAO the holders race themselves so we don’t need to bother with swaps, which simplifies things a lot. But just as we start reinforcing ports, we lose Mother again.

That immediately becomes priority number one. We retake it quickly with our bigger accounts and suddenly everything settles down again. Buffs are ours, map control is ours, points per minute works in our favor... all back on our side.

But before Phase 3 starts, one particular player starts becoming extremely annoying: Oxdradium.

They keep solo blitzing our Spear holders over and over. Speed in > hit > speed back > heal and repeat. And while they can’t really turn the match around alone, they’re bleeding us constantly and forcing heals every few minutes.

Since we already hold the entire map, I suggest something simple: Disband on him and trap him inside a building!

• If he stays inside, great, problem solved!
• If he abandons, we immediately retake!

It's a simple cat-and-mouse game, but we don't feed elims and we don't waste heals.

But since I stepped down from leadership recently, my suggestion kinda floats into the void 😅 No worries. I throw the idea out there and move on.

But this account continues to hurt us and does decent damage even vs our Cav leads. These blits hits will become problematic over the course of the match and since leadership didn't like my idea I'm now curious to see how they plan to deal with it😳

Moving into Phase 3, as CR opens we win the race, but we're holding the map is starting to thin us up and we don't have enough big accounts to hold every objective. I'm a bit surprised to see GentlemaN in CR since that is not one of our better accounts and CR is one of the better buildings to hold😅

Meanwhile Oxdradium keeps farming our Spear buildings and every hit hurts more than the previous one. At this point I’m reinforcing mostly out of team spirit because strategically it’s starting to feel questionable.

Then finally, after yet another painful hit, someone else says: “Let’s disband on him and trap him.” And this time, it’s the greatest idea in the world 😂

Before the next hit lands, we disband and "lock" Oxdradium inside our close Outpost.

I’m not saying “I told you so”... but internally I’m absolutely seeing that Kanye meme.

At this point the real question becomes: Will they abandon the building and continue harassing us somewhere else?

Surprisingly... no. They actually stay inside the Outpost. And honestly? That turns out perfect for us. We keep all our buffs, they stop harassing our Spear leads and the entire map becomes infinitely calmer.

Phase 4 opens and we win both Stronghold races as well. Ironically, I had a Stronghold assignment and didn't win the race, so my personal contribution this match is looking slim, similar what an NPC would probably mange to pull off😅

When Phase 5 starts and the Hive bubbles drop, we start clearing points without much resistance.

With Oxdradium effectively neutralized and the rest of the map under control, the game slowly turns into maintenance mode.

At one point Oxdradium hits one of our stronger Cav accounts where I had hidden some troops and is annihilated.

You liked bullying our Spear accounts! How do you like hitting into a big Cav account? You don't like it, do you! How the tables have turned 😄

Eventually even Oxdradium loses points to a random troll hit and I realize our entire match somehow became centered around one single player bullying all our accounts across the map. This was more about Oxdradium than PhD. Honestly, respect! They carried PhD’s entertainment value almost alone.

As Phase 6 approaches and the mines are about to open, we realize we don’t even need them for the 80k rewards threshold and PhD can’t realistically catch up anymore. So instead of sweating over mines, we basically repeat the same “generous overlords” strategy from our previous match and allow them space to get their own rewards.

By the time the mines are nearly depleted, we’re comfortably sitting near 80k while they climb over 40k themselves.

The game ends with AAO taking another clean win over PhD... or maybe over Oxdradium featuring PhD 😅

And after the match I check the elimination rankings because I already know what I’m about to see.

Sure enough, there’s Oxdradium sitting comfortably at the very top of the A League elimination charts. Glad we could help!

But on our side, this marks our 9th win of the season. Two more and AAO finishes undefeated A League champions.

And at this point I’m already more excited about next season’s Super League than I am about the rest of this one.