1 AM RIVALRY -BwF vs SsT | Alliance Conquest S24 R1 | Events with N0X

There was no room for Hunger in N0X anymore. A week before Alliance Conquest he had to leave. But he did not want to miss out on AC, so he reached out to old friends and ended up joining in BwF for the AC season.

BwF played at 1 GMT, which was 3 am for Hunger, but he was usually awake for that long anyway, so it was not that big of a burden. Something that was an issue, though, was the timeslot itself and who played it. With a lot fewer alliances playing at 1:00 compared to Hunger's native 19:00 slot, there were only a few very interesting alliances to match, and the rest were either impossible to beat or very easy.

So Hunger had to hope they would get one of those close matchups. And he was lucky in Round 1; they would instantly get SsT an alliance which, although relatively new in this specific form, had been a rival of BwF for quite some time. What BwF had in teamwork and numbers, SsT had in raw strength, promising a fun but also expensive match.

The participation numbers indicated a match as expected. BwF had 20 more players, but SsT’s big accounts were all there, ready to solo out most of BwF's accounts.

When the map opened up, BwF won the races on both outposts and was able to intercept the warrior swap from SsT, meaning they only controlled the mother.

SsT rallied the far outpost while BwF was busy with Mother, securing it. Sadly BwF was unable to take the mother with a strong lead of SsT inside.

After the port races, where both sides got one port, BwF took a look at the reports that had taken the far outpost, and since the account looked weak, Hunger tried a solo.

Even with a third of the troops, Hunger was able to win thanks to the counter and his account being a bit stronger. He did not really expect to win since he was on the weaker side compared to some of the top enemy leads, but this showed him he was for sure also not the weakest account on the map either.

SsT made an attempt on Warrior but failed to kick the cav player of BwF out of there.

With SsT only having the port and mother and both under good accounts, BwF focused on the defense, defending the warrior and their port, before losing the port eventually in SsT's second attempt.

Meanwhile, BwF won the CR race, and Hunger won the far Stronghold race, the first race he was actually committing to.

So far everything looked good, but with strong accounts on the enemy side, that would change quickly when they rallied out CR in their first attempt.

With both ports and CR, SsT quickly caught up in points.

And things quickly got even worse when BwF's attempts at rallying the port failed while SsT’s strong accounts, Khan and Oberdonkt, started to solo out building after building.

In the end, Hunger was the last one standing, but that was mostly because of the lack of attempts, and he would crumble soon after.

But not all went bad. Larwain, BwFs strongest account by far, had soloed out CR while SsT was busy kicking Hunger, and the BwF rally wave on far port had been a success

SsT would respond quickly, though, rallying the far port, taking it in their second attempt.

Larwain also got kicked by another strong SsT lead. They were back at square one, and this time with even stronger accounts in the building.

Hunger could do nothing but watch SsT take over the lead. BwFs 15k point lead from like 10 minutes in had evaporated, and now they fell further behind every minute.

Hunger had a small cameo in the close outpost, taking out the holder there, but as soon as the bubble dropped, he was kicked again, making this yet another building loss from BwF.

Down 6k and with most buildings being held by unkickable SsT accounts, BwF needed both the mines if they wanted to have a chance.

BwF only won a single race, with the other one going to SsT, but Hunger noticed something: He had been slow marching to the right mine, which was in SsT’s control, and he hit it just seconds after the bubble dropped, being the first to hit it.

And he quickly noticed the racer had not put up a real formation and had probably just picked auto select, making it very easy to solo.

With both mines, they just had to hold now. And holding them, they did. The first rallies were already marching on the left mine at this point, but everyone in BwF knew how important this was, and so the reinforcements never stopped. After attempting a few waves on the left mine they switched to the right one and tried to mostly work with solo.

But most solos failed, and with more and more people coming in, SsT was unable to take the mine.

Hunger kept checking if any of the big SsT leads disbanded, and so when Mother turned grey, he saw his chance.

After the mines were done, they only had to keep trading buildings back and forth so SsT could not secure more points than them, which turned out to be easier than expected.

Hunger helped a lot with soloing buildings and searching weak points, allowing him to get a few more solos off.

In the end, BwF had been able to win the match against their rival with just a 3k point difference. The joining points SsT was missing alone were able to bridge that gap, showing how important BwF's numbers had been.

Hunger himself somehow got rank 5 in elims in BwF, which surprised him a lot but probably showed that not only account strength but also how you use it mattered.

BwF had beaten their rival, and Hunger had gotten a very fun match he enjoyed a lot. That's what he wanted to play AC for. The next match was probably impossible, but that only meant Hunger could sleep more, so he was not too worried. If not on Saturday, Round 3 surely would be interesting again and something to look forward to…

GOT WIC Chronicler HotepRa