Here we go again | AoH S6 R8 | Events with N0X

After playing the reset match, Hunger was ready to play at 12:00 again. Since their team had skipped a match earlier in the season, they would do back-to-back matches now with mostly the same team. In their reset round they had done very well but missed first place by just a bit since they had no way to kick tHeBrAiN out of center.

For 12:00, Hunger was hoping they would get an easier opponent to kick to get first place this time around. They had also lost one of their bigger score accounts, so maybe that would ease the matchmaking a little.

Hunger's hope would not last long, though, when he joined the map and checked the rankings.

They had gotten the brain… again. Well, that could be a problem. He was in a new team, though, this one being maybe even stronger with a few strong inf leads. The other enemy team was much weaker, having basically only GeorgeBylis and Meiestrix as leads.

The only upside of this matchup was that they at least knew how to deal with them, and so they instantly started building offensive camps since they expected them to go trading, which they did as well.

The formation was not so clear, though. The watchtowers were inf this time, so both the team of Hunger and of George started building cav in the first row to get the first captures. With George’s team going cav-inf later, Hunger was in a difficult situation. They decided to go almost full cav with only one inf camp originally, but that put them under pressure from the full spear NPC Houses, which were built to counter their team.

Because of that, an interesting dynamic developed where their team would get kicked by the NPCs from Greyjoy, who then got kicked by the Starks (George's team). And then George's team would get kicked from Hunger’s team. This cycle was repeated a few times with the 2 left watchtowers.

Seeing this as an issue, even after they had claimed their first few warriors, which sadly did not include any warrior buffs, Hunger had to make the executive decision to build a few more inf camps, slowly going from the one they had now to three while trying to secure more attack buffs at the same time.

Every buff mattered to beat the Starks and Greyjoys in the watchtowers and soon the catapults as well, so their team also went heavy for dragon pits, getting 2. That was far from easy, though, with tHeBrAiN killing more troops than losing on solos, only failing due to his march getting annihilated.

Then with them still struggling for the catapults, the center opened, and just like in the match before, tHeBrAiN was too fast and could not get soloed out. Even though they knew it would be difficult, their team decided to try at least once.

A rally from Stark had kicked a lot of players out of the center right before their rallies hit. That was not planned but worked out perfectly either way, allowing Chaos to easily get it.

They had no chance against the following George rally and got kicked. George cav was just way too strong for Chaos inf to have a chance. George in turn would then get kicked by tHeBrAiN. For a second they hoped to be able to keep up this cycle of kicking, but the second time around, tHeBrAiN and his team were more careful and tanked both Starks rallies and the ones from Chaos and Vangark from Hungers team easily, taking the center yet again.

Hunger’s team was already looking at other things by then. With their NPCs surprisingly kicking the Starks out of House Greyjoy. Chaos quickly went in there. Solos from Geroge would be lethal here, but George was busy with a last effort to take back the center. But once that had failed, Hunger was just waiting for the solos to come. George had a full minute, and Hunger was staring at the castle worried, but nothing came. Seemed like George had not realized the importance of that third house for Hunger’s team.

Around the time they got their hands on the third house, they had also finally won the battle for watchtowers and catapults. With NPC Houses out of the picture and Stark lacking the buffs and the cav troops to win, their position had solidified.

And yet again, right before mines, their team would do their best to bridge the gap between them and rank 1.

But while they could halve the gap with yet another great mine run, it was just not possible to make up for the 30k point difference they originally had. Unlike the match before, their Watchtower and Catapult battle had not been smooth, and so it was close to impossible to compete with a team having the center while having a solid trade build.

Either way, they had performed very well considering the strength of tHeBrAiN and, in this match also, George. And while Hunger had hoped for another 150k, in the end the rewards were decent either way.

It had been a fun and challenging match, and they had some good laughs in voice chat, especially when Hunger lost to the NPCs of one of their players during the match, so given that Hunger did not dislike this match, but he for sure hoped not to get tHeBrAiN a third time  in a row the following week…

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