Round 45 - Dr. Evil

FOREWORD

I wasn't going to play this round. Honestly, it was supposed to just be one little draft round and then I was done. But here I am again, writing another roundfail. I sound like a relapsing addict. It's Rio's fault really, you get off the juice and he comes into your DMs pushing promises of war and suddenly you're right back in the rollercoaster car about to drop into another round.

Actually, it wasn't the promise of war that sold me. It was the promise of proving whether or not blops are actually still worth anything in this game. We are inching, with painfully small baby steps, towards fireball not being totally useless - GPC had just unveiled a very welcome and long overdue change to how mutual war affects rejuvenation, as well as a nerf to the overbearing mutual war op bonus, reducing it by 2% overall. Would it be enough to tip the balance? I wasn't sure, but at least we definitely weren't going down the route of adding friendly spells that bring roasted peasants instantly back to life, like Jcinnz had previously announced. Forget the crack cocaine of playing OpenDominion, I want what he's on.

Rio wanted to run two bloppers, two attackers, and we had a fifth slot available as a bit of a flexible position. An opper, or an attacker, or another blopper could fill it depending on who was available. We would play slow-ish, but deliberately exercise war to slow down fast attackers.

"Either it works, or it will prove how poor blops really are," said Rio.

I sighed, wrapping the cord around my forearm and pulling it tight with my teeth, readying the OD needle. Through gritted teeth, I said: "Alright, let's do it."

Last round I successfully dragged AgFx out of retirement, but this round I set my sights on Swamp Fox. I knew it was going to be difficult - of everyone that had disavowed themselves of the community after the Dark Times, Swamp Fox was the one that had most successfully disconnected from it. He simply went back to reality and lived his life in a non-tick-based format. No more worrying about making hits. No more worrying about dp. No more discord. No more hiding in car parks to guest on niche podcasts. Just an OD-free existence. So I knew I had my work cut out for me.

Rush: "Hey Swamp, can I tempt you back to OD?"

Swamp Fox: "You son of a bitch I'm in."

That went a little easier than I'd anticipated.

Rio drafted Gothia to be the second attacker, and we mulled over options for a fifth player. I initially asked Lud, who said the same thing he says every round - "oh I'm not playing next round, I want to be productive" - before he inevitably signs up and plays anyway. But you can't just point that out to the guy - that would be rude, right?

Lud: "Oh I'm definitely not playing next round. It is insane how productive I can be when I'm not playing OD."

Rush: "You say that every round! And then you end up getting drawn in like a moth to the flame."

Lud: "Yeah... but I'm trying to be strong."

So Lud was out. Spoiler alert, he signed up anyway and ended up being one of the biggest pains in our collective asses.

With the fifth position in our pack open, and Rio suggesting a third blopper might be the best fit anyway, I suggested Cronel.

Blopping used to be more viable than it is now. You had some economic support, they took that away. In those days, Cronel would consistently finish in the 4k acres zone. In recent rounds, he's consistently in the high 5ks and mid 6ks. So to say he's improved a bit as time has gone by is a bit of an understatement. He finally figured out that balance between ratios and economy and dp that lets a blopper walk the tightrope between safely pelting enemies with wet noodleballs and being ripped apart by sharks as soon as their name touches the Town Crier. Most dedicated bloppers never manage this. A lot of positions at the top end of the Rush Ranks are riddled with liability players that will feed your competition at some point, often at the worst possible moment. You've gotta be careful who you draft when you want bloppers, we're a real minefield. But I was confident Cronel had evolved beyond that stage. From caterpillar crawling along at 4k, to butterfly finishing on decent 6ks, Cronelus Monarcha was the blopper for the job. I asked if he was free and he said aye. We had our five.

WEEK 1 - MULTIVERSE DREAM TEAM?

At realm assignment we landed with mris, mdk, Kongb, Phage, MusicDJ2555, Gwyn, Syscero - and oh yay, Elf Woods. Mris, mdk and Kongb did make for a potentially broken realm coupled with Gothia and Rio, with the kind of blops and ops support Cronel, Swamp Fox and myself could provide. It's usually what you'd describe as a "lottery win realm". I don't know how it happened - we know realm assignment was going haywire this round, with the Emperor creating infinite realms, and at one point the round countdown timer was even going backwards. And this was the realm composition that fett collapsed our infinite quantum superposition into when he intervened to kill the loop. It all felt out of place, like things weren't meant to be like this. I kept half expecting to find out that this version of mris was from a parallel universe where preying mantises were the dominant species. But no, turns out, it was our mris.

Meanwhile, over in realm #7, Dave was doing his John Travolta gif impression wondering where all his active realmies were at. They're all in our realm Dave.

In contrast to last round where the theme directive was "uhh anime", this round it was a bit more prescriptive: pick a character from the Austin Powers universe. Why? Because it's giffable. Job done. Naturally I grabbed Dr Evil before Cronel could. Muahahaha. Muahahaha. Muahahaha! We got a lot of gif mileage out of our theme.

I struggled a bit at race selection because Gothia wanted to go Sylvan, and with Cronel and Swamp Fox already taking Undead and Vampire respectively, there just wasn't a good wiz blops race to choose. I considered Icekin for a bit: despite not being a naturally blops friendly race I usually do quite well with them, hitting 7k last time I played one. But Rio and mdk both questioned this choice, and mdk suggested Demon instead. I hadn't played Demon before, but by all accounts from attackers and bloppers that have played it alike, it wasn't great. Mdk said it had a cheap 6pt defence unit for 10% swamps so what was there to think about as a blopper? Fuck it, I figured I might as well give them a shot and see what all the griping was about. Looking at the race, that swamps requirement for cheap elite dp was literally the only perk in my favour, and the rest was attacker-oriented trash: a racial spell I couldn't use, an op bonus and a spec dp unit perk I probably wouldn't see much use from. Demon do also have Miasma, a war-only spell, but I probably wouldn't find a use for it in our heavy wiz race realm. It's an okay-ish-maybe counterblops spell - but the best offence, as the saying goes, is a fuckload of fireballs. I probably wasn't going to be wasting wiz str on Miasma. In fact, by the end of the round, I'd have cast it precisely zero times. I forgot it even existed. Performance-wise, Demon seemed to grow somewhat slower than Sylvan, and was otherwise flavourless to play. If boring was a race, Demon is it.

Overall, the realm strategy was to play slow and war often. So the majority of our attackers went for wiz races and a mid or slow speed attack style. With my blopper hat on, if I looked at our realm, it would be a hard pass for war. Four dark elves, three sylvans, two icekins and a mix of vampires, demons and undead and nothing else. The plan was to war as soon as blops went live and start limiting FA realms.

We got off to a rocky start. In the first two days, our all-star realm had some rookie moments. Gothia sent out knowingly unsafe on a bot and got hit by an Orc:

2025-06-08 06:59:51 Fun Dip and Cherry Coke (SugarJon) (#7) invaded Felicity Shagwell (Gothia) (#5) and captured 45 land.

In fairness to Gothia, Fun Dip had better targets. It later transpired that Fun Dip just basically had no ops support to find them.

Meanwhile, sim issues plagued Rio and mdk. Rio discovered his sim, given to him by mris, was short on docks and was limiting his army, while mdk's sim had so many issues with it that he hadn't spotted (such as razing temples) that it completely gimped him as an attacker, and he was forced to deconvert on day three of the round. To his credit, instead of losing interest, he became an invaluable asset on the ops and blops side instead. Switched-on attackers know all their own weaknesses and can predict when they're coming down the pipeline for others, and intuitively know when's best to strike thinking about the longer term. And mdk really shone in that role.

Music, a school kid, did not have the activity level needed to defend his dominion and also seemed quite resilient to discord notifications, so would constantly miss advice that would help him stay safe. I got the impression that in addition to a big window of inactivty while asleep, his school must have had some sort of no smartphone policy, meaning that for ~16 hours a day this guy was not logging in. He also didn't seem to use automations. So he unavoidably became a prime feeder for spirits because he didn't have consistent dp coming in, but had tons of drafts from his sporadic activity, protecting him against regular attackers while assassination was disabled. It was unfortunate, but he would later become pretty clutch in some borderline blops scenarios where we needed someone on insane spies to get us over the line, so he went from being a liability to being invaluable as the round progressed.

And, of course, Elf Woods bounced his first hit. Didn't even bother updating ops and just yolo'd.

As we approached day 4, which as we all know is when the round actually begins, it became pretty clear that #3's halfling, Bunk beds: +3 barracks housing (Rury), was going to be the one to run. He was significantly ahead of the scrum. It was difficult to get blops ready while he was breathing down everyone's necks, modded up and spamming specs while we were bringing in 10% towers and defenceless wizards, and we could barely grow because we needed to focus so much dp. Thank god for the rejuv changes making mutual more of a question mark. There were more than a few hairy moments where some of us were very borderline on dp - but as is always the case in OD, there's always someone fatter and less defended out there than me, even with the blops dp / econ sacrifice. Someone gets a hot sim, flies ahead, doesn't pay enough attention, gets smashed. The meat shields above us served us well to get us into position to take action. The same hour blops went live, we declared war.

2025-06-10 18:30:03 FIRE THE LASER! (#5) has declared WAR on War: Now available at a random time on day 3 (#3).

Bunk beds' blops preparation was lacklustre but it wasn't nothing. He had some Wizard Guilds, just not enough to dissuade us, and had brought in wizards, but again, not enough. It was weird; he'd semi-committed but still left himself open. It seemed indecisive. Wizard blops are very weak compared to their former iterations, perhaps he figured it wasn't worth investing in defences - but then why go half-way?

We assassinated every last wizard we could and set him on fire. Then we did the same to their lyc, Sprite -0.5 DP (Poige). Poige would spend the rest of the round spitting feathers about our realm and blaming us for ruining the round. Dwarf Miner: -5r (Oment) had plenty of time to make an effort to bring in defences before our second wave assault started, but elected not to, so we roasted him too. We also considered burning Spirit: Spectre +1 DP (Vinn) for a bit, who after seeing the blops damage we were doling out to his team mates did eventually build some WGs - but too late if we decided to go after him. There was some debate about it.

Gothia wanted us to hit him before his WGs came in and extend the war a bit until rejuv kicked in. He suspected because of the nomad's obssessively precise training figures (all 5s and 10s) that it was probably Vinn. Mdk on the other hand, wanted to move on and address other emergent threats.

Gothia: "Can we please roast him before we move on? Vinn is very skilled and he will win a round soon, let's make sure it's not this one."

Rush: "We'll need to continue the war if we burn the nomad. It's significant resources from us just to limit him a relatively small amount."

Mdk: "We can always come back for Vinn later. I'm more worried about #1's three gnomes and their human, #2's big nomad and #4's human converter."

The Underground Society had also dropped again, which is an excellent Wonder for bloppers but also fantastic for attackers, acting like a quasi-Armada wonder as well as a 24/7 Fool's Gold. If we had that wonder, Rio wouldn't have to wake up in the middle of the night suffering from panic attacks over lamb stealing his 1-hour's worth of platinum production for as long as we held it. I wanted us to move on from #3 and focus on grabbing it as soon as possible. And so maybe-Vinn was spared the rod.

We cancelled the war but we still had to keep an eye on the halfer's op with the lingering war bonus. Despite limiting him he was still clearly ahead - he had the land lead. Towards the end of the war Cronel was potentially hittable if they assassed his drafts. He works night shift so I'd expected him to be awake, but he'd fallen asleep at work instead. He needed to drop dp specs to be safe but we couldn't reach him for over two hours, by which point he was firmly in the danger zone. Fortunately, #3 seemingly did not check beyond a cursory look at a few of us about 10h before the end of the war bonus. Instead they went for a spirit in #8 instead.

2025-06-13 07:16:25 Bunk beds: +3 barracks housing (Rury) (#3) invaded Church Burners (Omnialloy) (#8) and captured 71 land.

Wonder take-downs are usually a stress point in the round, at least for me. This round, though, it actually wasn't too bad. Once the Americans finally woke up after their Friday morning lie-in, we were able to take it down pretty quickly.

2025-06-13 11:14:52 The Underground Society has been destroyed and rebuilt by Gentlemen, welcome to my underground lair... (#5).

Even changed the realm name for maximum cosplay. That's just how organised we were.

With the Society secured (for my second round in a row), bolstering both our bloppers and our attackers, we were able to turn our attention back to the next new runaway threat: the lyc in #10, Werego Vespucci (Weaser). This one was a little different to the halfer - he'd obviously seen what we'd done to his rival and decided he didn't want to meet the same chargrilled fate. He wasn't the only one, we detected several other realms bringing in blops defences after we fired the laser (though as would later become obvious, plenty others would still try to fly light, and would rightly suffer for it). But Werego had brought in a staggering nearly 50 WGs. When you consider the meta to fob bloppers off was 30, he clearly wasn't taking any chances. I went through historical barracks spies and spotted that he had also been bringing in Archmages, which could mean his blops defences were both high and unstabbable. I ran the numbers on his docks and he wasn't sinkable either, and with his wiz defences, the likely scenario was we could kill maybe 3k peasants.

Rio had noticed that Werego was curiously behind schedule in joining the Royal Guard, which meant he was also going to be slower than others to get into the Elite Guard - which would take him out of range of most of us bloppers except for Swamp Fox, who would have to become a One Man Army and wage most of the blops war solo, flinging maintenance fireballs after the rest of us volleyed him down to base. But it gave us the window of opportunity we needed to recharge just enough after knocking down the Society to go and fling fireballs at a single target, if we wanted to go for it.

There was some debate in realm chat as to whether or not the proposed war with #10 was even worth it.

Gothia: If we only fry 3k pez for 18 hours, I'm not really sure it's in our interest to war the lyc at the moment.

Rio: We've gotta slow a potential runaway, regardless. Otherwise he pulls away with a bunch of large explorers to help him target hunt.

Gothia: I agree that he needs to be stopped, but your statement assumes we're the only ones capable of doing it.

Rio: We're the only ones willing even if others are capable. We're positioned to blop. Others will have to do their part in pushing op, which we can't do right now.

Syscero: We needed another realm to step up while we dealt with bunk.

Rush: This would be a hard pass from me usually. 3k pez is not worth the resources and risk. And it's our boy Swamp Fox that'll be in the danger zone all war, the rest of us will fall out of range pretty swiftly.

But we all knew Rio was right. And it's not like we had better targets, or that it was even a nuanced situation. And if Swamp Fox could manage the op bonus, it was low risk to us even if the damage was also trivial. And so we warmed up the laser.

2025-06-13 18:59:09 FIRE THE LASER! (#5) has declared WAR on Together we can sea the world (#10).

I had a whole bit here about Swamp Fox waging a one-man blops war against the top threat, our canary in the coal mine, but then I deleted about two hours worth of this roundfail by accidentally overwriting the file so you'll just have to use your imaginations. Sorry Swamp, your moment in the sun was eaten by Microsoft.

Anyway, depending on the strength of your imagination, that was either an incredible action sequence, with one puny little fire mage against a giant angry wolf, or... maybe like two stick figures, with one throwing noodles at the other? Or maybe you're one of those people that literally cannot picture things in your mind, and if that's the case, I'm not really sure you're getting anything out of this paragraph, so perhaps it's best we move on.

With the #10 lyc lightly singed and slinking off into the Elite Guard, we turned our attention to a second wave target... except we didn't really have one. None of the attackers in our realm seemed to have an opinion on who we should roast, which meant they weren't worried about any of the others in #10. The new guy, Syscero, wanted to burn their Monarch, Laura Bingham (B). And so Laura Bingham was burned.

Let's just quickly recap this first week in three lines to make a point here:

2025-06-10 18:30:03 FIRE THE LASER! (#5) has declared WAR on War: Now available at a random time on day 3 (#3).

2025-06-13 11:14:52 The Underground Society has been destroyed and rebuilt by Gentlemen, welcome to my underground lair... (#5).

2025-06-13 18:59:09 FIRE THE LASER! (#5) has declared WAR on Together we can sea the world (#10).

I've seen a lot of impressive blops feats in my time, but coming out of a war against top op, knocking down a Wonder and then starting another war with the next top op, in the span of just 48 hours, is up there. Our realm had a ruthless kind of organisation to it and was pursuing its goals aggressively - slowing top ops, bolstering our bloppers and attackers, and trying to keep the environment conducive to an eventual realm win. It wasn't an easy balance: the early war with #3 had damaged the econs of us bloppers, having to bring in massive towers and spywiz units instead of dp, while staying ahead of modded-up, specced-up and probably coked-up fast attackers. It's tantamount to fireballing yourself with how much it hurts. Towards the end of the war with #10, mris remarked with shock at how tiny we were, and admonished us for not focusing our econs. Like, hello?

Mris was right about one thing though, we did need to seriously pivot back towards efficiency. Only Swamp Fox was able to get a decent econ going, able to play a bit faster as Vampire, so he became our nominated canary in the coalmine and was tasked with going pure efficient to try and stay in range. I was trailing him by about 100 acres as Demon, which I was beginning to think of as essentially a much worse version of Sylvan for blops, while Cronel and Syscero were trailing me by about the same amount as Undead and Icekin respectively, and mdk even further behind. We were almost all built for slow, but in all the early chaos, we were growing so slowly even Wurst's famous crack team of snails from yester-year would look on and blush.

Whenever I land with a bunch of veteran attackers, as I had this round, I like to ask them for their read of the round at the one week mark. It's always interesting to see how they expect things develop and compare it end round with how the round plays out. Unfortunately, this round none of the attackers seemed willing to make any educated guesses. I can only assume they were paralysed with fear of having their potentially inaccurate predictions recorded in this roundfail, forever showing them up as charlatans and pretenders. Or they're just lazy.

So to make up for the fact that I've got nothing to share, here's a video that, I think, effectively captures the essence of our realm and its influence on the round at this point. And, let's be honest, it is way more educational than anything that bunch of layabouts was ever gonna come up with:

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/T1swuHPA1OU

Right?

WEEK 2 - GOTHIA REVENGE ARC

Remember that orc that hit Gothia on day one? Well, Gothia hadn't forgotten. Fun Dip (SugarJon) in #7 had smashed him on day one when he'd made a risky send and, although taking hits earlier on seem to be easier to recover from, it was still a setback for Gothia.

Now that the runaways had all sauntered off out of range of our blops, we had to gear shift and start looking around at the slow threats that might cause problems for us later. Unfortunately for Fun Dip, he was assessed to be one of them - and had the dubious honour of being the only person to negatively impact our realm so far, which just increased his Most Wanted rating.

Mris did the scouting for this war, and had narrowed it down to three possible realms to go after.

Mris: Realm #2 has an obviously strong nomad but also no op in their realm for us to worry about, and an orc that we can also hit. Realm #8 is top op for many of us so doesn't make sense for us to go after them while we're all making an economic push. Realm #7 has the strongest orc and strongest human. Again no op in their realm for us to worry about.

Rio: I like #7 as a target. Good options, no immediate threats - and we get revenge for their orc hit on Gothia.

Kong agreed with a humblebrag:

Kong: The orc is a bit concerning. He has the same numbers as I did last round even though I bounced a hit oop.

Gothia, unsurprisingly, was in favour of the war too:

Gothia: I like warring #7.

So. We were warring #7.

2025-06-16 21:31:00 FIRE THE LASER! (#5) has declared WAR on LFO: Liza Flying Over 🌈 (#7).

The plan was to fireball and sink the orc, but we didn't have enough bloppers around immediately at war dec to do quite enough sink damage and the guy had hundreds and hundreds of spare boats just lying around. We needed one more blopper to sink him but after pinging Gwyn and Music and a bunch of others, we just could not get it over the line and the orc was able to chortle his way to a bot hit.

2025-06-16 22:00:18 Fun Dip and Cherry Coke (#7) invaded Sinking without thinking (#0) and captured 58 land.

Gothia was not impressed. We were three wars in and this had been our first fail, but since the orc was still getting lit up, it wasn't all bad.

We burned the orc and probably someone else as well, I forget who. I spent two hours writing about the tail-end of week 1 and pretty much all of week 2 and then overwrote my notes so I'm mostly working from memory here in week 3 here.

[Post-round edit: the second target was Grapes. Sorry Grapes! That's what happens when you turn your back on the path of chaos I guess...]

Oh, I almost forgot until Cronel randomly reminded me - we also warred #11 and roasted the goblin Delta Forks (Disco), their gnome McRangers (Crazy Guy) and dwarf Don't live in someone else's Shadow (Empoy). After the war, it was pointed out that we almost helped feed their goblin to the lyc, which instigated some mixed reactions from our attackers in realm. Some were all "not our problem", others were "fuck 'em, they need to manage their doms better", while very few (okay just one) conceded that it was something we should be more mindful of in future wars. In the end, though, it was the Demon, Meal Team 6 (Slice) who we hadn't even touched that ended up feeding Werego when he carelessly explored into range massively underdefended.

2025-06-21 13:59:22 Werego Vespucci (#10) invaded Meal Team 6 (#11) and captured 113 land.

And so Swamp Fox sighed and clicked explore.

Unfortunately the lyc then found another huge hit pretty much immediately. Another explorer slacking on his Ares casts.

2025-06-22 20:00:14 Werego Vespucci (#10) invaded 🧄Garlic-Tunneler Goulash🍲 (Jcinnz) (#12) and captured 169 land.

And so Swamp Fox sighed and clicked explore. He'd be doing that a lot this round.

WEEK 3 - SCHRODINGER'S CRONEL

We missed the perfect opportunity to mess with #1 because Cronel was sleeping again.

It had become an emergent theme this round that when we needed blops, someone key - usually Cronel - was asleep and limiting what we could do. We were a mix of Euros and Americans, so our timezones were a big factor to plan around. Cronel had said he operated on EU time, since he worked night shift, but in practice that turned out not to be the case. Middle of the day blops needed? Oh it's a Thursday, Cronel sleeps all day on Thursdays. Saturday night blops needed? Oh that's Cronel's usual sleeping hours. Monday morning blops needed? Cronel is technically at work - but is also ASLEEP AT WORK. I shit you not, I'm not even making this up for a bit, he was just asleep at work. He was Schrodinger's Comatose Cat. Open the lid of his box and it was only in that moment the universe would decide whether he was awake or asleep. And mostly it was the latter. There was no pinging him back to the waking world, you just had to wait for him to rise from his coffin on his own time - which could be anywhere from three to eighteen hours later. It was like he'd studied under Jmerc's tutelage last round and decided that being randomly AWOL when he was needed most would only add to his reputation for chaos.

It wasn't all Cronel of course. Swamp Fox was caught red-handed sleeping in one day instead of blopping, and then spluttered that he was in fact fixing a sink first thing in the morning and his fingers were too covered in plumber's putty to use his phone. Naturally nobody believed him.

Gothia was becoming increasingly agitated as the hours ticked by and we still didn't have the numbers to effectively sink Michael Jordan (zooj) in #1, who looked in a very strong position. He had plenty of op to make a hit and it was only a matter of time before he sent, and we needed seven people online at the same time to ensure we could sink him enough to limit him. We had five, once Swamp Fox had washed his hands. We could probably do it with six. It was prime EU hours, so of course Cronel was asleep. Our backup American bloppers, Phage and Music, were also asleep. Mris, the caretaker of these two young ODers, resolutely refused to wake them up early to blop. What sort of American values does that instill, I wonder, if you aren't teaching your kids to enjoy the smell of war in the morning?

2025-06-23 12:58:28 Michael Jordan playing G.O.A.T simulator (zooj) (#1) invaded ...I sHaLl bE BaCk... (#0) and captured 107 land.

Gothia was not impressed.

This was our second 'war fail' and this time, we had fumbled so hard we hadn't even managed to declare war. And for the next 24 painful hours, we would wait for him to build his land (to ensure he didn't bring in docks), then try to organise enough people online again to sink and fireball him, and once again fail to do so. The plan for war was firmly in the EU dead zone, between 2am and 6am, so I was definitely asleep. Cronel, who was always asleep, was also asleep. Swamp Fox was our General, and the only other person who could declare besides me, so of course he went to bed early, tuckered out from fixing sinks. And so war was off the cards until I woke up the next day. When I woke up, I was glad I had spent my wiz str the previous evening flooding merfolk and lizzies.

It had taken us a whole day to get our acts together and even then, it was still borderline whether we could pull it off or not.

2025-06-24 11:20:11 FIRE THE LASER! (#5) has declared WAR on Elon Musk Playing Starship Simulator (#1).

[Post-round edit: That's right. We went to war on zooj. I never thought I'd see the day!]

It was still amazing to us that after the blops capability we'd demonstrated so far, and our ruthless focus on taking down any competitors to our realm, that so many dominions were caught with their pants around their ankles, playing greedy like there wasn't this pack of scorpions out there waiting to sting you to death if you started to look intimidating. Once we sunk MJ, we kept him sunk, and watched as he did virtually nothing except build docks from a daily bonus to protect himself. It wasn't enough. He was going to be stuck for several days while his boats regenerated. I have a rare tip for attackers here: if you get sunk, build lots of docks. It's always your better option than doing nothing, or trying to rely on DBs. I suspect zooj didn't have the experience dealing with blops to know what to do in this situation. Maybe he'll know for next rounds. Our veteran attackers picked him out as a threat so he'll likely have to deal with them again in future.

Someone who wasn't Michael Jordan in realm #1, but was in realm #1, sent me a DM on the off-chance I was in #5 and one of the bloppers currently wreaking havoc on their realmie to plead for mercy, and suggested that all we were doing was griefing that player. I'm not gonna say who it was because I do have some sympathy for their intentions, which weren't to maliciously influence the game, but this is what would later lead to accusations of me cheating by Sly on the Rules Committee. I floated the sentiments to the realm. Rio seemed a bit skittish about the griefing accusation, while mdk was more hardline that it was a war game and sometimes your risks don't play out.

Rio: In fairness, we can move on. But he has also done the bare minimal effort to help himself.

mdk: These blops are nothing compared to what they used to be... The guy can seriously rezone smithies to docks if he wants to, but if he refuses that's on him. And fireballs are 20-24 hours, and half your peasants are protected for free.

Cronel: He finally has docks coming in.

mdk: Only his DBs. They have been targeted once when they are looking strong.

Gothia: The thing is, he did nothing to prevent it. If he did rezone to docks and invested in harbour and trained spies, then I would understand.

mdk: Calculated risk. But then you can't cry about it when you eat blops because of it.

Gothia: Exactly.

Rio: Players complaining usually can't see past their own perspective. "I want them to do X as it benefits them and me. What?? They did Y and that hurts me and not sure it helps them right now!" - I say it in pretty much every win I've had. Sometimes I'll do something that hurts me a little if it hurts someone else a lot. As long as it doesn't benefit your main threat, if it helps someone else, it's usually okay.

Gothia: Amen brother.

Rio: A lot of these wars have been to position our sylvans ahead of the people we're taking down. I don't see the lyc as the main competition for the win at this point: it is humans, sylvans, dwarves and gnomes.

Rush: War cancel is three ticks away, I take it we are not extending?

Gothia: Yeah we should cancel once their big gnome gets rejuv.

Rush: I think his rejuv kicks in at the same time war cancel is available.

Gothia: Perfect timing.

'Griefing' is a term that has only really come to the fore of our community in relatively recent rounds and is bandied about far to leisurely in my opinion. It's used as a cudgel to condemn blops by people who either don't like blops, or who are upset that they are being used effectively against them in the moment. Or both. There's a lot of crossover in those two groups. It is not griefing to target a threat and neutralise them. It is not griefing to target a greedy player and punish them for it. It is not griefing to use the tightly controlled blackop mechanics available to you in a war game to hurt players outside of your realm. Tattoo these three sentences on the inside of your eyelids please.

Regardless, it was time to move on.

2025-06-26 11:33:47 I always cry at endings… even evil ones. (#5) has CANCELED war against Basil Exposition Playing Cooking Simulator (#1).

2025-06-26 11:34:24 FIRE THE LASER! (#5) has declared WAR on The Young and Free (#2).

Mdk had been keeping tabs on the #2 nomad, Tailgating at Taj Mahal (SlyPimp), and had expected him to hit at the end of the previous tick (while we were still locked into war). He was in the middle of "9hr-ing", a playstyle for certain races whose troops get home in 9 hours instead of 12, and crucially before their first hit's land arrives, meaning they can hit twice on the same land. But Taj had not sent at the end of the tick when cancel became available to us. We had planned to war immediately war #2 anyway and fireball the nomad, but when he didn't send, sinking him in the middle of a 9hr became the new strategy.

Kong: That's killer for a nomad. After pushing 5% mods for a hit.

Gothia: He will be able to send quite fast again if he just builds docks.

We sank him. The timing could not have been more perfect from our perspective - and of course, it was very unfortunate timing for him. Unlike the previous realm, however, his reaction was to immediately bring in lots of docks, limiting the long term harm immediately. This guy's been sunk before, methinks.

We weren't done yet though. This war wasn't just about bloppers sinking some attacker. It was time for some real showboating.

With the war bonus, and without Ares, #2's court magister, the undead Breakdancing at the Great Wall (Karpatheo) with "the gifted" title, was hittable by Rio. And not just hittable, triple chainable by Gothia and mris. And not just triple chainable, potentially quad chainable by Kong if the stars aligned and somehow we managed to keep Ares off for six ticks. That last one was unlikely, and required Music with his insane 1.3 spy ratio to wake up and keep him snared, and also for the entire playerbase to ignore the target for several hours. But hey, you never know. Shoot for the stars.

With some coordination and some sleep-rousing the Americans, we got enough of a motley crew together to pull off the snare when Breakdancing was at 3 hours left to recast.

2025-06-27 13:09:59 Victorious on the battlefield, Nigel Powers (#5) conquered 165 land from Breakdancing at the Great Wall (#2).

2025-06-27 13:10:06 Victorious on the battlefield, Felicity Shagwell (#5) conquered 148 land from Breakdancing at the Great Wall (#2).

2025-06-27 13:11:04 Victorious on the battlefield, Goldmember (#5) conquered 140 land from Breakdancing at the Great Wall (#2).

Gothia, at last, was impressed.

Swamp Fox: This will be a great part to Rush’s story. Less than 24 hours from "we should look for war hits" to "let’s snare and triple tap this guy" 🤣

Shortly after, our mercy blops target from #1 managed to cobble enough boats together to make a hit and got instantly gobbled up for it.

2025-06-27 13:41:47 Michael Jordan playing G.O.A.T simulator (zooj) (#1) invaded Land Of The Tainted (#0) and captured 91 land.

2025-06-27 13:59:55 Business Cat Rides Again (Lud) (#11) invaded Michael Jordan playing G.O.A.T simulator (#1) and captured 126 land.

Rio: His boats situation meant he needed to leave more dp home. He just went mad on op after our blops. Annoying that we worked for a hit and 11 sylvan just got one for free.

Business Cat in #11 was a constant source of consternation in our realm. Everything we did seemed to also benefit him indirectly, and when it couldn't, he found another way to keep the advantage. And he'd taken precautions againsts us, running high docks and making himself virtually unassailable by our laser.

But he wasnt the only regular beneficiary. Fenrir (King Jota) in #9 was also often a net benefactor from our efforts, but he was afforded more respect given their realm's more pro-active approach to war.

WEEK 4 - POUNDING ALOTTA FAGINA

Quite the spectacular week, but a terrible start for us. Kong, our hotshot top attacker who was ahead of everyone else in the realm and our best chance for the win, sent out on a hit that would ultimately cost him his shot at the round.

2025-06-29 18:18:26 Alotta Fagina (Kong) (#5) invaded Moshing at Machu Picchu (Cosula) (#2) and captured 123 land.

The realm hadn't checked the sleepy nomad in #2 that we'd sank in the middle of his 9h and, well, it soon became apparent that this was a massive oversight.

2025-06-29 18:29:29 Tailgating at Taj Mahal (SlyPimp) (#2) invaded Alotta Fagina (Kong) (#5) and captured 207 land.

2025-06-29 18:45:28 Purple Wolf Tail And Raging Fiery Hobpot (playt0i) (#12) invaded Alotta Fagina (Kong) (#5) and captured 169 land.

2025-06-29 18:48:55 Delta Forks (Disco) (#11) invaded Alotta Fagina (Kong) (#5) and captured 153 land.

2025-06-29 18:59:59 Business Cat Rides Again (Lud) (#11) invaded Alotta Fagina (Kong) (#5) and captured 149 land.

Kong was absolutely demolished in 30 minutes flat. Everyone was aghast. I don't know how you send out without checking the top threats aren't ready to stomp you, but that's what happened here. Mdk blamed himself harshly for not playing lookout and fell on his sword. It was all very dramatic. Kong, on the other hand, seemed quite relaxed about the whole thing. And our pack welcomed our fallen realmie onto Team Blops.

Ops in general, despite the massive amount of experience and activity in our realm, were not our strongest suit. I was constantly flying by the seat of my pants with no spywiz strength to run checks and our attackers were mostly pretty comfy updating people once every 1-2 days(!) while they knew they were safe from all-ins sitting at home. I couldn't even use Swamp - who was the only explorer ahead of me - as a meat shield because he was constantly prepping to defend Werego, which meant he generally carried about 25% more dp than I did. I was 150a behind him and had 4-7 threats to second-guess. I tethered my dp to another Demon who was a few% bigger than me and just hoped he was paying attention. He had an annoyingly high spy ratio so it was often more costly than I liked just to check up on him.

Anyway, I digress. I was talking about our disastrous start to the week. Alotta Fagina wasn't the only one of us to get royally fucked.

You see, veteran player and four-time roundwinner Rio, did not understand how guard works and kept resetting his application to the Elite Guard. Just four hours before he was due to join the EG, he took a clear sight on someone marginally outside of his range, which reset his application. It wasn't long before an eagle-eyed #10 took notice.

Two hours after he would've been in EG were it not for that op:

2025-06-29 14:56:58 Werego Vespucci (#10) invaded fellow dominion Nigel Powers (Rio) (#5) and captured 134 land.

Rio then got carried away with revenge blops and reset his application a second time. This one's not his fault though, it was a bug. Not that it mattered much though, because he then reset his application a third time by taking ANOTHER op on someone out of range. And so Werego came round for seconds.

2025-06-30 18:49:46 Werego Vespucci (#10) invaded fellow dominion Nigel Powers (#5) and captured 134 land.

Of course I am being a bit glib here - it's obviously very easy to just forget the weird red tape of the guard application process and take an op. There really should be an "are you sure?" prompt that gets in the way, or something that forces you to cancel your application before you just get hard reset like that. Or just do away with info ops resetting your guard application entirely, what's that all about anyway?

That said, he did make the exact same mistake twice in 24 hours. We're into meme territory. I updated the realm message:

"Message of the Day: Day 25 of asking, is Rio in elite guard yet?"

It made a change from every other update of asking, "is Swamp Fox in range yet?"

Naturally Rio brought out his "in every round I've won I've been hit at least once" line to remind everyone that he wins lots of rounds, and mainline some copium that this wasn't a major setback. Still, if anyone could claw back an advantage, he could.

I recorded a podcast on the round with AgFx, Volv and Lud, and we discussed some of the current events. Until Kong's insta-death and Rio's guard shenanigans I had been planning to loc-post myself so I could go into more detail about #5's behaviour, but I decided I didn't really want to have to explain all those misplays that had just happened so I decided against it. These guys were clearly just trying to embarrass me before the pod record.

During the pod, I also made brief mention of the fact that I'd received a DM asking us to stop "griefing" during our earlier war with #1. Sly, who was on the rules committee, caught wind of this, and started giving me shit in DMs for not reporting it. Which was fair enough, that's his role. It's just that he couldn't seem to stop his obvious dislike of me from getting in the way of some basic fact finding. And so after reading his messages, dripping with his trademark condescension, I told him to get lost.

Sly would grow increasingly bitter and erratic as the round developed, and it would not be the last time #5 heard from him in his role as attack dog of the Rules Committee.

WEEK 5 - COLLUSION!

We had been intending to war #9 and sink Fenrir, so Rio could push suicidal op and nail the #11 sylvan once the lyc sent. Sinking the DE meant Rio could probably get away with it.

Unfortunately, this incredible plan all fell apart with one simple question.

Rush: DE is sinkable?

Mdk: Hmm, he has a lot of docks.

Rush: Is that a no? lol

Rio: Hmm, probably not.

Oh well, there goes that plan.

Rio instead suggested we snare an explorer in #10 instead, and while we didn't have a concrete plan, we knew we were going down the spy blops route in the near future, so we aimed to get our ratios up. Mdk and I pushed to 1.0, while the ever-scrimping Swamp Fox plumped for a 0.7. Cronel, of course, already had more than a 1.0, but pushed it up to a 1.2 anyway just to flex on the rest of us.

At some point Gothia noticed a scav drop on the lyc, which was bad news. It meant he had a target. We started scouting around, and confirmed our suspicions.

Screaming Mimis (Craghack) (#8), had inexplicably entered range underdefended. Realm #8 had others bigger than him able to get ops on the lyc, so they must have known his op, so this had to be a case of blindly exploring without paying attention. Screaming Mimis put himself on the lyc's radar relying on 6.3k draftees for defence - which would just be assassinated by the lyc's team of elite explorers. Even worse, Screaming Mimis, having entered range, also did not slam defence. The guy seemed to be completely oblivious to the danger he was in. It became imperative that we had to intervene, and on Mimis' schedule.

We identified Laura Bingham (B) as the best snare target - high land, lowest dp of all the super explorers, and the worst estimated spy ratio - somewhere between 0.3 and 0.6 depending on whether they were spies or assassins. A 1.0+ should in theory stomp him.

There were two problems: due to the timing of the lyc's planned hit, we had to snare Bingham at Ares 8, which is a very long snare campaign and the mechanics of the game push back hard to try and prevent long snares, giving the subject resilience which massively boosts wizard strength recovery over time.

The second problem was RNG. We needed a 70-80% estimated success rate to pull this off. It needed every single player in range to contribute, even our attackers on - and lets phrase this generously - suboptimal ratios. We couldn't waste any snares, so we needed to know when to stop before we saw 0. And we needed to wait and not snare between ticks to let resilience drop a little to improve our success chances.

Gothia calculated that a hit on Bingham would be 418+418 acres if the lyc went for the merf anyway, which was frankly obscene.

Swamp Fox was not impressed with this plan. He gave it a zero percent chance to succeed, saying Bingham would be getting 10%+ wizard strength recovery per tick, and that we didn't have the numbers or the ratios to pull this off. He was in an unusually downbeat mood considering we were about to war. It perhaps explained his disinterest in pushing his ratios to 1.0, and instead he elected to focus on acres. He was also constantly hovering on the cusp of entering Elite Guard to avoid getting bottomfed, and us needing him to participate in a war snare campaign had the dual effect of making him the preferred option for a lyc snack while also resetting his guard application to its maximum duration.

I hadn't done the maths - we had mdk and Kong, both with bigger brains than me, for that stuff - but I wasn't as pessimistic about our chances. I knew long snare campaigns were hard but I also knew they weren't impossible with broken realms. And our realm fit the definition of broken. If anyone could pull it off, it was us.

So it was time to brush the dust off the old laser.

2025-07-09 14:06:08 FIRE THE LASER! (#5) has declared WAR on ---> https://youtu.be/jVSZdsAq4Bo?si=vbHsuSwN6L8APWtn (#10).

The plan was for a group of us on high SPA to snare and then stop at 8 successes each. Then disband, assuming he had any spies to get rid of. Then a secondary group with lower SPA to take over.

You might think disbanding first would make more sense, but snare is the most time-senstive op in the game. You have to hit them hard and fast and you don't have time to mess about, because if you fuck it up, you are stuck in what is essentially a failed war for three days. Also it's embarrassing.

It took all 15 snares from me to see 8 successes. Others in our group were reporting similar success rates. RNG was massively fucking us over, taking us closer to a 50-60% success rate instead of the projected 70-80% we needed. Swamp Fox, it seemed, was going to be proven right.

Even worse, the second I declared war, one of our key first wave snarers, mdk, straight up vanished. As we all reported our snare successes, he was worryingly absent and not responding to pings.

Gothia: Where is mdk?

Kong: @mdk

Swamp Fox: ...

Gothia: @mdk

Kong: lol

Gothia: Fucking hell.

Rio: I'm here now.

Gothia: Oh we have Rio.

It was Rio to the rescue. He filled in for the missing snares we needed from mdk, and the group successfully took him below 25% - but he wasn't at 0. Mdk would end up on the reserve group instead, assuming he hadn't dropped off the face of the Earth.

Rush: Where tf did mdk go, wasn't this whole plan his idea? lol

Rio: Mdk taking the Cronel approach, sleeping.

Swamp Fox: We need to keep him at zero to keep this easily managed.

Gothia: Yeah, when mdk gets here he can take him to zero.

Rush: I'd rather he was at zero right now.

Rio: Mdk in fairness is probably off saving someone's life from cancer.

Rush: That can wait!

Rio: Priorities.

Mdk did show up after about 15 minutes and it was down to some crazy shit going down at his hospital. Someone better have been dying to risk our snare campaign!

I'll save you eight hours of excruciating detail and just say the snare campaign seemed borderline as hell initially but our recovery was decent and we had good coordination (ie not wasting snares) and some clutch successes from Cronel's superior SPA that put us into more comfortable territory as the campaign went on. End result: we successfully stripped Bingham of his Ares, and kept it off.

The result of this war forced the lyc to make a choice. He either took the hit he had lined up, and Gothia got insane acres from hitting his Monarch, or he sat and protected him, potentially missing the opportunity to hit the merfolk. We couldn't keep Bingham snared forever, and we were essentially babysitting the #8 merfolk, praying that at some point he realised the danger he was in and started taking his defence seriously.

So it was good news for Bingham, but it was still a very bad scenario for the lyc, who had to pass on an easy 75%. And anything that was bad news for the lyc was an avenue we were going to pursue. We had some idea of when Bingham probably went to sleep based on automations and fools gold, so we pushed the snare a few hours longer just to see if he'd give up and go to bed with no spells, but he did recast as soon as he had the wiz str. I think we pulled off a 10-hour snare in the end, and it could have gone a few hours longer before we were tapped out too. Meanwhile, Gothia found another hit:

2025-07-10 18:15:59 Victorious on the battlefield, Felicity Shagwell (#5) conquered 253 land from Fire-starting in the Hanging Gardens (Mongoose) (#2).

Rio laid out the two ways it could have gone:

That war/snare job meant instead of: Lyc + 500 Gothia + 850 Sylvan + 400 DE + 400 Nomad + 400 Dwarf + 400

It is: Lyc: 0 Gothia: +500 Sylvan: 0 DE: 0 Nomad: 0 Dwarf: 0

It hurt all of our competition but still helped Gothia, and Rio still had his suicide card if the lyc bottomfed. But that card had an imminent expiry date.

Our realm's attackers post-round credited this as the pivotal moment that the lyc lost the round. I don't know if that's really true or if it's a bit of back-patting. It could well have led to Gothia winning the round had he taken a different decision.

This chain of events meant that this war was going to turn out to be one of the strangest non-wars I've ever seen, more a game of nuance and edging than fireballs and big hits. From the outside - at least according to the peanut gallery in the main discord - it looked like absolutely nothing was happening. I don't blame them; if I was on the outside looking in, I doubt I'd be taking a wide enough view of the landscape to include the merfolk in #8 in the equation. There are very few players in this game that look at the bigger picture, and a lot of them were already in our realm.

Without the hit on the merfolk, it became likely that as soon as the lyc could escape Rio's suicidal op, which he would do at some point during the war, he was safe to drop guard and bottomfeed. And one of us would be the target.

Swamp Fox took himself off the menu by entering Elite Guard, which left me on the chopping block.

I was given a temporary reprieve (and potential out) when Taj cocked up and made a hit that would take him sailing into the lyc's range, then inexplicably didn't slam dp and just got slapped straight back out of range again.

2025-07-11 19:54:30 Werego Vespucci (Weaser) (#10) invaded Tailgating at Taj Mahal (SlyPimp) (#2) and captured 275 land.

At this point if we'd cancelled the war, I might have dodged getting chomped entirely. Unfortunately it was a few minutes into the next tick when I had a brief discussion with Gothia and we decided to cancel, which turned out to be a huge mistake, because it meant he could still hit me with the war bonus on his return - and worse, we couldn't blop him back from dropping EG.

2025-07-12 07:58:20 Werego Vespucci (Weaser) (#10) invaded Dr Evil (Rush) (#5) and captured 202 land.

Gothia blamed himself. I blamed myself. Rio blamed both of us. It wasn't our finest moment.

I get hit so rarely that I'd forgotten how much it sucks. And this was the first time I'd ever been bottomfed. It absolutely tanked my econ and I spend the rest of the round trying to recover. I think I finished on only slightly higher pez than I had before the hit.

FINAL WEEKS - COMING UNDONE

Business Cat and Fenrir were now the likely winners if they could outplay Werego. Our realm was starting to arrive at the conclusion that we weren't going to win this without a hefty injection of luck. Business Cat and Fenrir had outmanouevred Gothia with a combination of skill and their own luck, and he found himself further and further behind, his op to low and his dp too high from dealing with Werego to make the hits he needed to catch up. Being further ahead, but at the wrong moments, and not able to capitalise on scenarios that could benefit him if the wind blew even slightly in his direction, seemed to have crippled him.

At some point, during one of our regular wars with #10, I said what many of us were thinking: that we weren't going to win this.

Syscero offered to full send on #10's Wonder if it helped. The guy was an absolute legend. But taking down their Wonder and probably getting hit in return was not an outcome I wanted to see.

Rush: "I don't think we're going to win this, so at this point it's more about making sure other realms don't get free land."

Mris: "We can still win this."

I admired mris' unflappable optimism. It's what we all needed to hear. Someone to pick up our spirits in the dark times. As long as Business Cat and Fenrir didn't get any more legs up on us, maybe we could still pull through after all and win this.

2025-07-13 10:23:38 Victorious on the battlefield, Goldmember (mris) (#5) conquered 191 land from Lizardfolk: Ore Mines now protect boats (#3).

2025-07-13 10:47:35 Presenting Fenrir to Masters Agility Championship (#9) invaded fellow dominion Goldmember (#5) and captured 278 land.

2025-07-13 10:50:34 Business Cat Rides Again (#11) invaded fellow dominion Goldmember (#5) and captured 251 land.

I cancelled my plans to attend mris' upcoming self-help seminar.

Business Cat later surprised Werego with a sneaky (and as far as I know, unprecedented) move that enabled an all-in hit against the runaway. He'd released a chunk of his own dp units and retrained them as spec op, and Werego's gang of super explorers had missed it. Internally a few realmies were quite agitated by Business Cat's constant profiteering off our efforts, and also held the sentiment that he seemed to lack the 'killer instinct' to take risks, having played things differently than they would have in a few situations. But this move certainly shocked and impressed all of his detractors.

There was some further drama from Sly who started accusing mdk of having access to his realm discord chat after mdk made a comment about Sly 'whining for weeks' about his round. This would be Sly's second public paranoid fit of pique in a couple of weeks and it left mdk totally nonplussed. At one point mdk was told there were discussions within the Rules Committee about locking him over his comment. He also mentioned that Sly seemed to be convinced I was a cheater and that I went out of my way to target him, and that I seemed to be 'living rent free' in his head - this was reflected in a comment he'd made publicly that he was planning to start smurfing (essentially creating a new account to evade proper realm assignment - as a regular solo player Sly would consistently complain about landing in ghettos), to which he then followed up by saying I would somehow find him anyway, implying again that I was a cheater. I'm not even sure why I was involved in the discussion at all since I had nothing to do with any of it.

I don't feel a great need to defend my character against these accusations though so I'll skip over my feelings of outrage etc and just say that I don't know where this sentiment comes from. These are the facts. Historically I don't think I've been involved in taking Sly down directly in any blops war; I always try my best to target who I perceive to be threats in competitive rounds. And if I'm rank chasing instead, I'm not targeting FAs. And even if I was fed his location, it still wouldn't change anything. I just don't target people for silly disagreements or past grudges I have with them in the discord. There are bloppers that will do this - Cronel has his famous List for example - but I can confidently say I have and will never target someone for being toxic, because that in itself would be toxic. And meeting toxicity with more toxicity would just be the very definition of hypocritical. A bit like someone on the Rules Committee suggesting they'll start using a smurf account, in violation of the rules they helped write.

Fortunately it seems rationality still prevailed on the RC in spite all these theatrics, and mdk did not get locked.

Back to the round. In the final week, it all fell apart for #10. I felt a little bad for their realm, which had performed well and which had, against the odds, kept a solo fast attacker that had randomed into their realm last-minute ahead of the scrum for so long. But they hadn't learned from a lesson we'd taught them early on: snare was their achilles' heel, as it often is for efficiency explorers. We had kept Bingham without Ares for 10+ hours earlier in the round while we babysat an efficiency explorer with a serious dp deficiency, and yet, Bingham didn't seem to have prioritised upping his spy ratio and instead tried to keep pace with the rest of his pack of super explorers - a challenge given we'd dented his econ in an earlier war. This decision to hoover up as many acres as possible instead of bolstering his spy defences left him vulnerable, and #9, who had already demonstrated a willingness to war, were able to take full advantage.

2025-07-19 22:53:00 Myths and Mistakes (#9) has declared WAR on Eat Sleep Explore Repeat (#10).

2025-07-20 00:01:17 Presenting Fenrir to Masters Agility Championship (King Jota) (#9) invaded Laura Bingham (B) (#10) and captured 510 land.

At this point, every efficiency explorer on Fenrir's menu should have been amping Ares and dumping spies, keeping it above 12h but at the very bare minimum above 9h. This was the final stretch. If Fenrir got another snare hit, it was ov-

2025-07-21 00:04:42 Presenting Fenrir to Masters Agility Championship (#9) invaded Leif Erikson (DavetheGoliath) (#10) and captured 524 land.

Oh no.

Welp. Congrats #9!

We finished off our round by indulging in the first and only frivolous rank-chasing war of the round:

2025-07-21 20:51:39 FIRE THE LASER! (#5) has declared WAR on Eat Sleep Explore Repeat (#10).

I lit up Bodhidharma (Chunk)'s frankly obscene castle and, taking advantage of Lightning Storm, was able to leapfrog mdk in the electrofancy ranks and steal the title from Moshing at Machu Pichu (Cosula), who was more preoccupied with stealing the top fireballer rank from Cronel, beating him by 19k at the finish line. It was the first time in the entire round our blopping numbers had looked good. It's slim pickings out there targeting all these top attacker threats you know! They have sweet fuck all peasants to roast to begin with and at best middling investments to crush. Hey let's add some sort of peasant value modifier based on prestige. One FA's peasant has got to be worth 10x an explorer's, right?

CONCLUSION

I hope I've been able to do my realm some justice with this roundfail, but I'm afraid I probably haven't. I haven't even covered every war, and there were a few doozies in there where we really screwed up, like our late-round war on #9 where we seem to have done basically no homework and had a "fuck it lets go" approach to snaring the target (Serving Thyestes' Family Dinner (mcgeeal)), who had a massive stock of plat that he just invested into walls and took our hit off the table. This round I have irl been probably the busiest I have ever been when trying to keep on top of my notes, so I'm certain I've missed a ton of key details. I didn't even talk about the time Swamp Fox joined EG by accident. Rio can't get in the damn thing and somehow Swamp Fox can't stay out of it? What is going on with guard applications? Or anything on a timer, really. Spare a thought for Oment who accidentally abandoned for a tick. At least we all know now we get one fake abandon per round if we choose to. Just say it wasn't for realsies and you didn't mean it.

That said, realm #5 and this round has been one of the most fun experiences I've had in OD. Every war was a blast, and there was real excitement in our realm making all these bold plays. From the concept of our pack, to the realm comp at realm assignment, to the ruthlessness and effectiveness of our wars, to the chaos and even our mistakes, it was a wild ride from start to finish. We did something truly unique this round with the whole realm on-board. And Rio did what I thought was impossible: he proved Loki's early concept of a 'combat blopper' Dark Elf (ref: roundfail round 41 ) viable. Dangerous top attacker threat, then sui threat, finishing 8th in land and 7th in the Rush Rankings this round. He's just showing off at this point. If only he could figure out how guard works, he'd be unstoppable.

Rio had also proven what I had doubted: that blops are effective in their current state. Our realm was pretty unrepresentative of a normal realm, and we likely won't see anything like this again for a while, but we were a pretty terrifying realm if you found yourself in our crosshairs. Unless your name is mcgeeal. It's the first time in a very, very long time that it felt like our blops were capable of consistently altering the course of the round in our favour. In concept and (mostly) in execution, our realm was monstrous. And so, my opinion on blops as it currently stands, for whatever it's worth: I think wiz blops are sufficiently punishing early, but they do fall off quite hard in the mid to late game. I think spy blops are somewhat inaccessible without a lot of dedicated ops and blops players, although Rio's combat blopper playstyle showed you can also be pivotal in tipping the balance as an attacker, helping to make the difference between uncertain and successful in war snare and sink campaigns. And maybe spy blops are okay like that. If you have lots of ops and blops players in your pack, you have less attackers and are forced to rely more on chance at realm assignment, which is a balance in itself.

The Underground Society was amazing for us this round. It really was the jewel in our deadly blops realm crown. There was a scramble for it from several realms when realm #2 sent it back to #0 during one of our wars as a "fuck you", including from #11 who did significant damage to it. Ultimately it came down to a single cyclone who got it back. While we were discussing to coordinate a chain of hits to take it down (we had estimated that it was on much higher hp than it actually was), Cronel had woken up and thrown a single cyclone at it without reading the chat, rendering it once again the property of realm #5. Other realms should count themselves lucky they didn't snipe it - it would have brought all hell down on them. But we were also lucky they didn't too, because we didn't want to have to deal with being diverted into time-wasting and damaging Wonder-wars either.

Thanks to packmates Rio, Gothia, Cronel and Swamp Fox. Great dudes all. And thanks to mdk, kong, mris, phage, Music, Syscero and Gwyn for completing such a fantastic realm. Syscero in particular was a pleasant surprise for everyone - an old returning player from classic, new to OD, he picked all of the concepts up effortlessly and was exceptionally helpful with blops early on, before converting and having the usual first-time converter experience. It would have gone a lot better for him in his conversion if he hadn't been so helpful on the blops side to begin with!

And while I was glad I could pull Swamp Fox out of retirement, it was not without cost. It seems every time I play with that guy our realm causes seismic waves of antiblops sentiments and this round was no different. Almost every threatening realm felt our laser at one point or another. Of course, those that got truly atomised by it only have themselves to blame - greed is risk, and you can't get angry when your gamble doesn't pay off. Well, you shouldn't get angry, anyway. And hey, if you don't agree, I've got the number for a great tattoo artist I can give you. Tell 'em Rush sent ya and they'll hide all the lasers so you don't get triggered when you arrive.

Congrats to King Jota and realm #9 for the win. You guys made a great team, picked your wars wisely and coordinated well. And Jota's had a win due to him for a long time now. Glad to see he finally got it in the bag.

I was Dr Evil, and I finished on 6,296 acres, and 40th place for land. Quite a bad finishing position for me, but I did suffer a dirty bottomfeed in the late game.

To wrap up with a bit of fun, here's a handful of AI-generated images from realm #5 and of course the highlight of the round: https://imgur.com/a/muN2b6S

TL;DR

From the discord of realm #5, this round in a nutshell: https://imgur.com/a/8aLZ3UD