The Day Center Said No & Everything Went Wrong Afterwards

This AoH season has been great for me and my team and with the new skin being added I need the wins because I really want this skin. Not only does it significantly increase the AoH stats, but it's also quite a decent grind compared to, let's say, the equivalent AC skin.

I already see people using it and I'm barely past the midpoint, but I'm not a player who constantly gets top ranks for the extra Glory Coins, so I have to take it slow. Needless to say, I'm counting on every win and looking forward to finally getting it later this season.

We normally have great results in AoH but this time trouble is already on the horizon. Before we even start the match, one of our big players is not online and hasn't "accepted" the game today, so a little panic grips our group as we mobilize to find a replacement at the last minute.

But before we agree on who should bring in what alt, Effe comes online and we're ready to start with our usual top tier roster.

The map isn't easy, but it's not impossible either. If we play this right, we should be able to come out on top, as we usually do.

https://youtu.be/E3V4MLtX914

Starting off we take the Strongholds rather fast and proceed with our usual troop type build, countering the Towers so we get the initial capture points.

So far we're in a rare but ideal situation. The bottom right House is the most advantageous position because it reaches the NPC House much faster than the others due to how the game calculates troop travel times. On top of that, the Towers are Inf, so our first row of camps is Cav, which increases our holding strength for the second House since the Female synergy Hotep uses favors mono Cav.

So far so good! As we proceed to the second row of Strongholds we're actually sitting in 1st place because we've already taken our NPC House while the other Houses haven't reached theirs yet 😀

But the second row is building slowly as we're already racing to contest Altars and reinforce two Houses. It's about this point that we need to take a look at our opponents and start thinking about the bigger picture.

Before I take both Septs for the points I also look at the Camps the NPCs were building and let them finish upgrading before taking them.

I notice the other Houses are committing heavily to their NPC Strongholds and already sending reinforcements so they build faster. I've seen this a few times as an off-meta build people are starting to use. It works best with Trading Camps, but it's not bad for Troop Camps either.

At the time we don't think much about it because the game is moving fast and Dragonpits are already opening. But I can't help noticing we're slowly losing ground as the match progresses.

By the time Center opens we're significantly behind both Houses and I still can't quite put my finger on what went wrong. We had a clean start. We got our NPC House super fast. We had the capture points. Yet somehow we're now looking up at both opponents.

Needless to say, if we're this far behind at the midpoint of the match, Center suddenly becomes our only salvation.

At that moment the calculation is simple. If we don't get the City of Glory, we're finishing last. If we do get it, we're back in the game.

The discussion ends fast and we're committed to holding Center.

But Center does not go down without a fight.

We are not the strongest team on the map so we can't simply YOLO one rally and take it. So we double rally. We coordinate the hits. We even weave in a solo between the rallies. But it's not quite enough this game.

And when we finally get inside... we can't hold.

Even with a full house of reinforcements we get hammered from both enemy Houses. Wait? What? Maybe it was just a coincidence. Or maybe it wasn't? But from where I was sitting, it certainly felt like both Houses are working together to keep us from holding Center.

Either way, the result is the same. We throw everything we have into the City of Glory and come our empty handed.

https://youtu.be/EPo71ZG27Og

And that was probably the moment the match slipped away from us beyond any chance of recovery.

Now our only realistic comeback path is the small mines. The problem is that once we start doing the math, even a strong mines phase doesn't seem enough anymore.

It's around this point that we switch to Trading Camps. If we can't win through Center, maybe we can get back enough points from the Trading Camps?

We give the mines an honest try, but once again it feels like we're fighting two Houses at the same time. Nearly every mine we take gets contested almost immediately and we're constantly forced into defensive fights instead of holding more mines for points.

Oh yeah, but our suffering isn't over just yet.

By switching into Trading Camps after losing Center, we accidentally exposed another weakness in our gameplay.

For you see, we kind of needed those NPC reinforcements to help hold our House...

And just as the match enters its final stretch, after losing Center and struggling through the mines, we suddenly lose our House as well.

Before we can even organize a counterattack, House Targaryen already has a serious holder inside and 10 million reinforcements. It looks like they were better prepared to take our House than we were to defend it.

The moment they took it, they knew exactly what they were doing.

Needless to say, we fumble the first retake attempt and they lock it.

At this point the game is already gone, but now it's personal.

So with whatever pride we still have left, we organize one final push. Triple rallies! And some solo sprinkles on top. Anything and the kitchen sink: https://youtu.be/MnzLZGh4ItA

And just before the curtain falls, we're able to take back our House.

Not because it changes the end result. Not because it saves the match. But because some things are worth doing for our ego more.

The scoreboard comes up and I honestly can't remember the last time I've seen our team finish this low. And I don't think it was bad planning or bad execution. It felt more like a perfect storm of small disadvantages, failed timings and unfortunate circumstances that slowly snowballed into a match we could never fully recover.

But let's look at the bright side. We didn't lose any Rank Points and only dropped a bit in Team Score. After the winning streak we've been on this season, eventually a bad day was bound to happen.

I'm not thrilled that my skin progress got delayed, but at least next week should be a little kinder to us😅