Arena of Honor S6 R2: All OUT Altars

Dear Lords, it’s time for this week’s report. What has been the most exciting event for you all this week? Is it the new season of ‘Siege of Winterfell’, or the new season of ‘Arena of Honor’, which has just kicked off with major changes? Somewhat unexpectedly, this week marks the second consecutive week of Season 6 of the Arena of Honor. My old friend Loconet uwu and I are once again fighting side by side; he is a trustworthy event commander, and having fought together since time immemorial, our rapport is rock-solid. So, let’s take a look at the second round of Season 6 of the Arena of Honor.

Survival Strategies for a Nightmare Start

CNMD is definitely not the sort of player I’d want to see on another team.

Right at the start of the match, whilst all the players were choosing their spawn points, I noticed that CNMD—the reliable and formidable player who had fought alongside us in the previous round—was once again on the same map as us. Unfortunately, this time he was playing for House Greyjoy, putting him in direct competition with our own House Lannister. Overall, House Greyjoy’s competitive strength far surpasses ours; they even have an infantry player, Latrasil, who is more formidable than I am. Consequently, we had to devise a strategy at speed. Capturing the City of Glory was essentially impossible; Loconet’s cavalry line-up is certainly no pushover, but it is far from sufficient to defeat CNMD, let alone an infantry player like myself. However, based on our experience from the previous round, in the new season of Arena of Honor, the aggressiveness of the NPC mirror teams is likely to offer us some hope. We can accumulate points by amassing a large force and defending the altar; provided we are sufficiently proactive, and other Houses are unwilling to expend large amounts of march speed to guard the altar, we might be able to secure first place without capturing the City of Glory, thereby earning more points in this unfavourable match-up.

Loconet was on the same wavelength as me; in fact, he went one step further than I did. Whilst I was still explaining our strategy, he had already swiftly contacted CNMD and formed an alliance with House Greyjoy, agreeing to refrain from attacking one another as far as possible. Now that we have a clear strategy and have made all the necessary preparations, let us press ahead!

Tactical Strategy: ‘All for Altars’

In the early stages, we briefly hesitated over whether to convert the trading post straight away to use the trade points to gain extra points, but we still harboured a sliver of hope of capturing the clan castle from the NPC forces, Furthermore, we intended to attempt to capture key tactical strongholds such as the catapult and watchtower. Consequently, Loconet ultimately decided to have antshee from BTa take charge of defending our clan castle and to establish a spearman camp based on his main force. The other members were given clear tasks: to try to capture as many altars as possible and to defend them at all costs amidst the frenzied NPC raids.

I always buy up all the race boosts, but I’ve never had enough to last; I hope they’ll make more AOH-exclusive race boosts available for purchase in future.

To be honest, compared to the strategy of having to consider whether we can capture the City of Glory, executing this strategy—which I call ‘All for Altars’—is actually quite straightforward. My main force is tasked with capturing the altars held by real-player teams, whilst I can easily defeat the majority of NPC forces occupying altars using my second or even third-line teams; Whilst I attempt to capture as many altars as possible to accumulate points, I also rapidly rack up my kill count. In this strategy, the only resource I need to be mindful of—or rather, one that is bound to be severely depleted—is the race boost. This is precisely why, in every round of the Arena of Honor, I make sure to purchase every available race boost from the event shop; in my view, in the Arena of Honor—where each session lasts just one hour—the most precious resource is time, as each altar requires time to be successfully captured. Once an altar you’ve spent time capturing is taken from you, you’ll need to spend more time reclaiming it. This isn’t a week-long event where you can afford to take your time; I’m certainly not willing to hand over an altar just to save on these march speed-up items.

Successful execution of a strategy doesn’t rely on just one or two people, especially when we knew full well that we had no chance of taking City of Glory. I kept shouting to the team:

‘Don’t give up on any altar you can take—we can come first!’

The NPC’s Frenzied Assault and the Civil War Among the Infantry

In this round, the NPC teams are still aggressively vying for the altar; teams that refuse to use their march speed boost to defend will see their points gap widen.

Our strategy seemed to be working well, and the general course of events unfolded much as I’d anticipated. Just like in the previous match, the NPCs were frantically raiding the altars of every clan. I’m sure every clan’s screen looked just like ours, filled with alerts that their altars had been captured. As soon as other clans lost their resolve and abandoned their defences, we pulled further ahead in the score; Loconet’s opening command for antshee to capture the clan castle proved entirely effective; we successively seized the catapult and watchtower, and from that moment on we began to extend our lead in the points tally.

The gap between lordMARTY and me is huge, I’m feeling a bit down.

I reckon Jon Snow is responsible for such a huge gap; I didn’t expect that, even with so many T5s, we’d still be so far behind!

Despite suffering frequent defeats at the hands of lordMARTY, there are still some battle reports that have lifted my spirits.

In these Altar Defence battles, House Stark has an infantry player, lordMARTY, who always manages to get the better of me. Like me, he uses Sinara and Vorian to form his infantry unit, but his line-up includes another top-tier commander, Jon Snow. To be honest, I’m quite surprised by the gap between us. Relatively speaking, my legendary weapon setup should give me a slight edge, whilst his combat adviser holds a greater advantage over mine. I thought this would be a closely fought, back-and-forth battle, but it seems I can’t defeat him easily; However, as long as I press the ‘Race Boost’ button a few more times, I should still be able to defeat lordMARTY. Perhaps I ought to consider levelling Jon Snow up to awakening stage; even though he’s one of the earliest top-tier commanders to become available, he might just be a timeless choice that never goes out of fashion!

Final Showdown: Mine Raid

The latter half of the event unfolded exactly as I’d anticipated, with the City of Glory being occupied by CNMD, and his cavalry formation, led by Brienne of Tarth, seemed to have no equal on this map. Capturing the City of Glory allowed them to plunder points from other clans, leading to a tight tug-of-war between our score and that of House Greyjoy. Even though we strove to gain an advantage at the altar, we were unable to pull ahead, and were occasionally even overwhelmed by House Greyjoy. Of course, this was entirely in line with our expectations, and we remained completely unfazed. The decisive factor in the final stages lay in the battle for the mine shaft!

House Greyjoy, which had been trailing throughout, quickly found itself in contention for the title with us after capturing the City of Glory.

‘Get ready to take all the mines!’ Loconet issued the order before the mine shaft opened.

We rack up points at the mines incredibly quickly; by the time we’ve finished raiding the first one, there are still points to be plundered from the mines held by other clans, so we won’t hold back.

The mine shaft not only needs to be captured, but also requires reinforcements from teammates to quickly drain the points inside—that’s our advantage; We have clear tactical directives and the resolve to execute them. Having secured the majority of the mine shafts and rapidly drained the points from them, there were still plenty of points left to be extracted from the mines held by other clans – and we certainly showed no mercy! Through our aggressive plundering of the mine shafts, we gained a sufficient lead to guarantee first place in the points standings, which we maintained right through to the end! And this is the best outcome I can imagine from this battle.

Thanks to Loconet’s skilful command and the ‘All Altars’ strategy, combined with the team’s concerted efforts, this victory was hard-won.

Before the event ended, I sent a squad of rally to CNMD; otherwise, he’d probably have been bored stiff in City of Glory.

If, at the start of an Arena of Honor event, you realise there’s an opponent on the battlefield you simply cannot defeat, or you’ve been placed in a hellishly difficult map, how would you respond? Would you give up straight away to spare yourself the humiliation? Or would you try a different approach? Share some fresh ideas with us to spark our creativity!