And so another War draws to a close...

[willng3]

Once again it's that time to create this thread where I really don't know what to say and instead create a wall of text discussing anything and everything that comes to mind regarding the war itself and the players that made everything we worked towards possible.

Unless something magical happens, we've placed 5th this War which is a vast improvement from War 4.  Several people will claim that it was because of luck that we placed so high, but I must disagree.  We made several very good calls when things seemed to be heavily against our favor which ended up keeping ourselves alive far longer than had we not made those choices.  For instance, Death was completely clueless about us still having Dims in our vault, hence why we were able to defeat them relatively easily.  In a sense our 0-5 standing in Round 3 may have given us the greatest advantage throughout the remainder of the War because while other teams still had to worry about which deck to send where and whether or not they'd be able to stick certain cards in each deck, we had one deck to worry about, so it was just a matter of switching out cards depending on what opponent we had to face.  And that's not even taking into account how fantastic Aether is as a duo element.

Justifications out of the way, I'm quite pleased by how things turned out.  There was a bit of a lull in activity during the first round that had me a bit concerned, but I'm more than happy to see that the people who helped with the preparations during that first round stuck around and continued to be efficient while contributing to many discussions throughout the War.  I'd also like to both praise and apologize to Kai specifically since he managed to stick around for the entire War despite not receiving good communication from myself in particular due to how the entire support team idea was structured this War.  Kai, if you read this after the secret War sections have been revealed, just know that you were a very important part of our support team throughout the War and I wanted to personally thank you for playing the part of defense so well throughout the War.

I said this at the beginning of War as well, but my main goal was to simply do better than last War.  We succeeded at this objective, no question.  I had low hopes of reaching the top place from the start, but I still wanted to try and make this as much of a fun learning experience as possible for the rest of you, and from some of the responses I've gotten from some of you, I think this was a success as well.  Special thank you's go out to Helston, drolly, and Belligerence for serving as the main work force throughout pretty much the entire War and most importantly for doing such an excellent job of managing support team match-ups and strategy; I sincerely hope that you receive some other form of recognition in the future for the work that you put into this team.

It seems like I should have more to say, but nothing's coming to mind at the moment.  Oh well, I hope to see you guys from henceforth in whatever the community brings forward

[Belligerence]

My turn!

When I first created an application for War, I fully expected to get put on a support team - I did, in fact, start on a support team. That's fine, I had few upgraded cards, some rares, and only a few months of play experience. When I got promoted to the main team, I was extremely happy, not only to be part of the larger part of War, but also to help out and interact with the "bigger" Elements players, i.e, those who have been around for a while. In this aspect I was not disappointed. I learned a LOT in this war, not only about PvP events, but about deckbuilding and planning.

I would like to thank will, drolly and Helston for making me think outside my usual realm of planning more often than I have ever had to before, in Elements at least. I had a lot of fun, and I'm more than happy with how well we did, given how bad Life did in War 4.

Will, you did a great job as General, especially given that sometimes you had RL complications (like all of us). Even when things turned sour, with only a single deck in our Vault, you kept us going far longer than we had any right to.

I'd like to say "thank you all for the experience/memories/something soppy like that" but I won't. If you want to imagine I did, you can however.

Ultimately, similarly to what will said, I believe what was our downfall was also our greatest blessing. Being knocked down to 1 deck meant we didn't need to worry about which deck to send where, and second guessing if that deck was the right choice. On the other hand, it made predicting us easy, and that was our downfall. I think the only thing I regret about this War is my screw-up where I used the wrong deck.

[Helston]

Took a few days for me to get around to this, and it'll take a few more before I hit the feedback thread.

First of all will, thank you for bidding on me during the Auction. On the last day before the auction started I changed my application form having entropy as my only listed favourite element to what's there now (time/life/air). I enjoy working with all elements, and I wanted to learn about an element who's workings I had no idea about. When I saw a bid from 10men at 1 card (at 2am or so), I was really excited, and when I saw you bid 3 cards, I was over the moon. I hope I've lived up to the expectations that my application implied.

At the start, I had little idea of what we were really doing, and was hoping to see a whole lot of Vault ideas from other people to get my creative juices flowing. Unfortunately that didn't happen, and my introduction to Life was rather slower than I'd hoped. As the structure of the team slowly arose, I started to get the hang of it all. I went from finding or modifying decks we'd used, to searching wider and finding older Life decks and sprucing them up a bit, and coming up with one or two of my own simple decks. All while being counterdecked the whole way, as things tend to go with me.

Thank you all for the work you've put in and the attitude we've brought through this, especially will, Belligerence and drolly. Despite losing majority of our Vault in a single round, it was great to see you guys trying to help us rebound. I was amazed that that Frogtal held together for as long as it did, and making it this far shows our dedication to getting things right and hanging on in there.

I'd like to say I've learnt a lot, but I don't quite know how much I've learnt, and I've got a feeling I won't know for some time yet. I do know that Life is now, along with Entropy, one of my favourite elements, and definitely my favourite to try to build with (entropy is more a favourite for splashing into places where it really shouldn't go). I wish you all the best for the future.

[willng3]

Oh 6th place.  Apparently I missed the whole standings being based on win percentages thing.  Either way, still awesome :D

[drolly]

It's high time for me to reply here, too; I've been neglecting my duties during the last weeks I'll post in the voices and the feedback threads soon™ but I deem this to be the most important one right now. Well, may it be placed here just before the section is opened.

Let's start at the top: willu, you're not only a great master but also a great general. For a short moment, I was a bit sad when I saw that you overbid Jenkar on me (as I had been sympathizing with Air quite a lot) but the first days on Team Life made me forget about that pretty quickly. Your first posts helped incorporate us newbies very well, you came up with the most deck ideas and whenever someone was clueless, one could be sure that a helpful answer from you would come soon. Not to mention hanging around with you is always a pleasure.

Helston, I can't quite believe that this was the first time you played the role of the strategist. You always kept track of our vault like no one else. I don't refer to viewing and editing a spreadsheet; it looked like you had our available cards in mind all the time, always being able to tell how we could modify and tune the decks we were about to field. Don't worry about your seemingly poor prediction skills; I daresay most of your suggestions looked fine to us and like to blame bad luck for many of our losses.

Belligerence, you were a lifesaver, no pun intended. Especially when RL began to force me to decrease my activity during later rounds, the team was in need of another active member and you filled that spot nicely by catching up with two weeks of preparation. Not to mention that you helped us organize our support team battles, which got more and more successful.

Speaking of activity, I was a bit disappointed to see that nearly all the work was mostly done by two to four instead of six team members. Given that even veterans didn't show much activity in this important and prestigious event, I have to assume that the evil world outside held them hostage. Well, exams and stolen cameras can serve as good reasons why not to play Elements.

When I think about my own contributions to our team, it turns out that at the time I wrote my application, I had imagined them to be much greater than they should become. I could have won a few more matches, yes, but it's a natural phenomenon that the Scout is sent to the most unpredictable enemies. What bugs me more is, for instance, that I didn't come up with a single deck idea myself due to the fact I had never played decks of my favourite element. Also, that vault tracker that went into sleep nearly as fast as a certain team member ... it was too ambitious for me to keep it updated and I didn't care much about making it accessible and editable by others. Still, I'm happy about my successes, the great time I've spent with Team Life (well-earned 6th place for a pitied element, yay!) and the enormous amount of experience I've earned while playing against real experts and watching them think and play.

Well, I that's all I can think of saying right now. Leafy +reps to you, guys, and have a good time until we meet again